today is my birthday! iām 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 iāve 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 donāt struggle with this as much as i do, but iāve grown to become a little exhausted by finding a thing and realizing i donāt want it anymore, but i donāt 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 donāt 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 youāll be.Ā
speaking of food, not everything you buy should be the cheapest version of it. personally iāve found itās 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 canāt 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. iām sorry.
other people are always going to misperceive you and misunderstand you, sometimes willfully. other peopleās opinions of you donāt actually have anything to do with you. theyāre not your business, and you donāt have to worry about it or change yourself.
when innocuous or neutral things make you irrationally angry or upset, step back, realize youāre having a big reaction, and then when youāre ready, pay very close attention to the thing that upset you, because youāre about to learn something important about yourself.
a pill sorter can save your life. i donāt 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, itās worth it to remind yourself that no matter how much of a mess you actually are, you deserve to be loved.
if youāre 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 youāre making decisions (what to do, what to eat, etc) so you donāt 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 youāre being one of the first three, re-assess and aim for being assertive, even if itās hard.
you can tell youāve 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 youāre one of those people who never seems to finish projects or follow through with things, thereās a chance you may just grow out of it naturally. until then, follow your interests and donāt 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 thereās no money in becoming an artist, writer, musician, etc. actually thereās a ton of money in all of those things, itās just in the stuff other people want you to make and never what you want to make. itās still worth it to develop the creative skill and not force yourself into business school because itās moreĀ āpracticalā or whatever.Ā
sleep when youāre tired. SLEEP WHEN YOUāRE TIRED. donāt beat yourself up about it, donāt tell yourself you shouldnāt be tired or that youāve already slept too much, just take a fucking nap. you would never sayĀ āhm iāve already had enough water today, therefore i should not be thirstyā so donāt 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 everythingās there that should be. it sucks to get halfway into putting something together only to find thereās 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 donāt even think about it. itās the most fulfilling skill iāve ever learned.
adding to the above, if youāre a people-pleaser, being alone is especially important, because youāve probably developed the habit of making the people youāre with more comfortable and happy than yourself, and youāre missing a lot of the beautiful and interesting things around you. when youāre by yourself, you can focus on what *you* want without guilt.Ā
sometimes youāll want to break things off with a friend for reasons that are no oneās fault, and you donāt 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 donāt have to take everyoneās feedback. in fact you donāt have to take anyoneās feedback. the other side to this coin unfortunately is that compliments donāt have anything to do with you either. itās good to accept this because it means youāll stop seeking validation from other people and wonāt let anyone elseās perspectives impact your work. anything nice anyone says about your work is merely a bonus to an already good thing.
if youāre 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 iāve been doing this, it has always, always been worth it. these things give you a chance not only to help fund and support what youāre passionate about, but they force you to take your own work seriously, and that is something thatās absolutely necessary in order to be successful.
you must become your own greatest advocate. in all respectsāin 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, itās the fastest way to figure out which people to keep in your life, because theyāre the ones who are goingĀ āoh hell yeah, youāre awesome.āĀ
be the person other people want to brag to.
at some point in your life, someone is going to hurt you, and itās 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 youāre worth the time and effort it takes to recover from the awful things that have happened to you.
developing an expertise does not mean youāre 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.Ā Ā Ā
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