RIP To The Opportunities We Missed Because Of Shyness And Low Self Esteem.

Me: this is hamletcore

My therapist: we actually call it clinical depression

Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.

— Leila Sales

“Shown here is Mary Shelley’s (1797-1851) working draft of the turning-point in Frankenstein – the moment when Frankenstein’s Creature comes to life.” (Read more here.)

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

Freddie Mercury would love Sharpay Evans and that’s a fact.

dark academia playlist compilation

dark academia - a concept playlist

music to write to

music to read to

pretentious grandparent music

the goldfinch by donna tartt

the secret history by donna tartt

if we were villains by m.l. rio

Develop a strong opinion of yourself so you don't end up internalizing the beliefs others have of you.

Go after the career YOU want.

Not the career your parents want you to have, not the career that makes the most money, not the career that seems the most practical.

Go after the career you want. Study the craft. Be the best, and watch the money come to you.

I have so much love and respect for women who are honest about their own loneliness but also find the good in it like when audrey hepburn said “I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel” and when charlotte bronte said “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” and when jenny slate said “I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that there will always be a ribbon of loneliness running through who I am. But that’s why I want to do comedy, and why I want to connect with people. You can use that ribbon to be a part of a finer tapestry, or you can choke yourself out with it! Your choice!” and when mary oliver said “whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things”