today is my birthday! iâm 33 today and i have done an ungodly amount of stupid shit in my life that honestly probably should have gotten me killed. so here are 33 hard-won things iâve learned that i wish someone had told me sooner.
whenever you buy an object, you are going to own that object for your entire life unless you make the conscious decision to throw it away or give it a new home. maybe other people donât struggle with this as much as i do, but iâve grown to become a little exhausted by finding a thing and realizing i donât want it anymore, but i donât have the energy or motivation to do anything with it. signed, a woman with a packed 10x10 storage unit who is now extremely hesitant to buy new things.
food, and by that i mean good food (and by that i donât necessarily mean healthy food, but food of good quality that you love), is necessary to live, and buying it, preparing it, and eating it is not a chore. the sooner you accept this and make food a priority in your life, the healthier youâll be.Â
speaking of food, not everything you buy should be the cheapest version of it. personally iâve found itâs always worth it to splurge on good olive oil, butter, and canned tomatoes. for years i thought i was an awful cook because i was cooking with cheap, disgusting olive oil that made my food taste like shit.
speaking of food part 2, i canât BELIEVE how long this took me to figure out, but mise en place is the real real. get your shit out and organized and prepped *before* you start cooking, even if it makes things take longer. and yes, it is always worth it to do the dishes as you go, which pisses me off.
when i was teaching myself how to cook and feeling daunted about it, the best advice i ever got was to aim to learn 15 recipes and then put them in rotation.
this is the most horrific and awful truth i have forced myself to accept: there may come a day you can no longer digest your favorite foods, and you will either have to stop eating them, or remain very close to a toilet. iâm sorry.
other people are always going to misperceive you and misunderstand you, sometimes willfully. other peopleâs opinions of you donât actually have anything to do with you. theyâre not your business, and you donât have to worry about it or change yourself.
when innocuous or neutral things make you irrationally angry or upset, step back, realize youâre having a big reaction, and then when youâre ready, pay very close attention to the thing that upset you, because youâre about to learn something important about yourself.
a pill sorter can save your life. i donât know how i managed my meds without one.
sometimes college is about learning stuff, and not about becoming something.
no matter how many perfectionist tendencies you have, itâs worth it to remind yourself that no matter how much of a mess you actually are, you deserve to be loved.
if youâre always forgetting to do important but tedious things, set an alarm and set aside one hour of each week, not to do the important tedious things, but to assess what needs to be done, and *schedule* the important tedious things for the following week. this literally changed my life.
during that hour, make a meal plan too. the point of doing this is condense the time in which youâre making decisions (what to do, what to eat, etc) so you donât have to burden yourself with them throughout the week. decision fatigue is real. any way you can alleviate that is a good thing.
learn the difference between aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, and assertive behavior. recognize when youâre being one of the first three, re-assess and aim for being assertive, even if itâs hard.
you can tell youâve processed trauma, not when the traumatic thing stops upsetting you to think about, but when the traumatic thing takes up the same size in your brain as all your other memories.
if youâre one of those people who never seems to finish projects or follow through with things, thereâs a chance you may just grow out of it naturally. until then, follow your interests and donât feel bad about putting down a hobby to pick up another.
if you love stickers but have sticker anxiety, buy vinyl stickers. you can re-stick them.
there are only a few careers i can think of that you have to commit to early in life because getting the undergraduate credentials is a pain in the ass (teachers, doctors, and engineers, from my research). nearly everything else you can switch to later, which takes a LOT of pressure off having to figure out what you want to do with your life.
people say thereâs no money in becoming an artist, writer, musician, etc. actually thereâs a ton of money in all of those things, itâs just in the stuff other people want you to make and never what you want to make. itâs still worth it to develop the creative skill and not force yourself into business school because itâs more âpracticalâ or whatever.Â
sleep when youâre tired. SLEEP WHEN YOUâRE TIRED. donât beat yourself up about it, donât tell yourself you shouldnât be tired or that youâve already slept too much, just take a fucking nap. you would never say âhm iâve already had enough water today, therefore i should not be thirstyâ so donât treat sleep the same way.
when you build a piece of furniture from target or ikea or whatever, the first thing you should do is count all the little screws and things to make sure everythingâs there that should be. it sucks to get halfway into putting something together only to find thereâs a piece missing and you have to go buy it.
learn to travel by yourself, go out to eat by yourself, see a movie by yourself. in my early 20s i was scared to do these things, but i do them so often now i donât even think about it. itâs the most fulfilling skill iâve ever learned.
adding to the above, if youâre a people-pleaser, being alone is especially important, because youâve probably developed the habit of making the people youâre with more comfortable and happy than yourself, and youâre missing a lot of the beautiful and interesting things around you. when youâre by yourself, you can focus on what *you* want without guilt.Â
sometimes youâll want to break things off with a friend for reasons that are no oneâs fault, and you donât want it to be volatile or make a big thing of it, in which case the goal is to simply fade out of their life. it is okay to let people go.
shame is useless. get rid of it.
no matter how much of yourself you put into your art (or writing, or music, or whatever), when people criticize it, they are not criticizing you. they are having a reaction colored by their own tastes and perspectives. their opinion of your work has nothing to do with you. you donât have to take everyoneâs feedback. in fact you donât have to take anyoneâs feedback. the other side to this coin unfortunately is that compliments donât have anything to do with you either. itâs good to accept this because it means youâll stop seeking validation from other people and wonât let anyone elseâs perspectives impact your work. anything nice anyone says about your work is merely a bonus to an already good thing.
if youâre an artist of any kind, take one day a year to look up opportunities like grants, funding, residencies, workshops, whatever. put the due dates of all of them on a calendar for the year following and get into the habit of applying for stuff. getting rejected sucks, application fees suck, but in all the years iâve been doing this, it has always, always been worth it. these things give you a chance not only to help fund and support what youâre passionate about, but they force you to take your own work seriously, and that is something thatâs absolutely necessary in order to be successful.
you must become your own greatest advocate. in all respectsâin health, in love, in happiness, in freedom, you must. no one will ever fight as hard for you as you will. this in turn will give you the strength and motivation to help others fight for themselves too. the only way the world will ever get better is if every person on this planet learns to see themselves as equals to everyone around them.
brag about yourself as often as you can. for one, people develop their perceptions of you based on how you treat yourself and speak about yourself. but for two, itâs the fastest way to figure out which people to keep in your life, because theyâre the ones who are going âoh hell yeah, youâre awesome.âÂ
be the person other people want to brag to.
at some point in your life, someone is going to hurt you, and itâs going to be willful and intentional. it is not worth it to waste brain space figuring out why they did it or why you think you deserved it. all you have to do is let yourself feel that pain, acknowledge it, and try to move on.
no matter how bad off you think you are, recovery is possible. the first and hardest step is to learn youâre worth the time and effort it takes to recover from the awful things that have happened to you.
developing an expertise does not mean youâre getting objectively better at something. becoming an expert is only the process of seeing your mistakes and having the patience to sit in the discomfort of not knowing how to fix them.  Â
