I Think One Of The Most Important Things You Learn About Making Connections With Others Is That A Significant

i love all the words we have that mean traveler. i love the shades of difference between wanderer and rambler and rover. i love the boldness of adventurer and the purposefulness of explorer, the lawlessness of vagabond and the capability of wayfarer, the quiet reverence of pilgrim and the wild rootlessness of nomad.

I think people need to understand that part of living a healthy life is having different people who understand different parts of you, so that you don’t overwhelm your friends and expect too much of them, or ignore valuable relationships because they feel “incomplete”.

We all want to be fully seen and understood, but it’s not shallow or meaningless to just have a pal you talk about TV shows with who isn’t also, like, your platonic soulmate. That’s still your friend! You still enhance each other’s lives with your company. Not everything that matters is profound.

I think a lot of you are lonely because you’re waiting around for someone who sees into your soul instead of just plain old lookin’ at the people in your life, finding common ground, and planting a little garden there. Even if that garden only grows Star Trek fan theories and memes, it’s still good.

It just… makes me real sad that you guys can’t imagine a friendship where you don’t talk about sex and trauma constantly, or that you think these are prerequisites for “real” friendship. Like, it legitimately breaks my heart.

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Advice I gave someone today was: 'do it stupid.'

She wants to learn photography. Do it stupid. Take a million photos. Don't think about why they're not good. Enjoy the process of taking photos.

Pick out tge ones you like the most and figure out why you like them. Is it because the subject is centered? Is it because you caught them doing something cool? Is it because the light made cool shadows?

Do it stupid. If you try to do it smart, youll get stuck. If you think too much you'll never get to doing. Do it stupid.

you will live and you will say the wrong things and make mistakes and people will love you anyways.

They did that thing on TikTok again, except this one guy did the arrangement

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I think about love sometimes. About how it’s taught and seen and felt.

I think about the ‘date nights’ and flowers and cards my parents spoke of and the rigid smiles when it went wrong. I think about the vacations and gifts and parties and how much they fought. Over the kind of flower. Over the venue. Over how hot the hotel was. Over how the party was stressful. It was hard for me to see how much they loved each other over their sighs and sharp words.

I was taught to love in grand gestures, but between each showing was a cutting bitterness that I was told was love. I watched the movies and my parents and tried to learn how to love my partner with disgust between my teeth fixed into a picture perfect smile.

We tried to love like our parents taught us and it almost broke us. Accusations hissed through clenched teeth and voices raised over clenched fists as we tried, tried so hard, to love like our parents taught us. Wilting flowers tossed in the compost and dinner dates spent in silence as we ignored each other over steak.

Love like that nearly broke us, and we had to pick up the cracked bits and figure out how to love like ourselves.

Now, I think of my partner, who was taught by his parents to kill what he did not like. I think of how he instead carefully uses a cup and paper to move a spider to a different area because he knows I love spiders, and he loves me more than he hates spiders.

I think of making homemade hot pockets for my partner, because he doesn’t like to eat in the lunch room at work and I want him to have something good he can eat by himself. He smiles so softly when he sees them cooling on the counter, and he knows I love him more than I hate to cook.

I think of him buying me radish seeds because he knows I like seeds more than flowers.

I think of me moving the wasps away from his workout area because I know they scare him.

When I think of love, I think of my partner tucking an extra twenty into my wallet when he thinks I’m not looking. I think of me mending his socks because both of us hate shopping and if I fix them, he won’t have to buy more.

We buy pizza on our anniversary if we remember it. We wait till after Valentines day to buy discount chocolate. We don’t hold hands in public, instead we bump shoulders when we pass each other in public. Brief and secret and ours.

We can’t love like our parents taught us, but I think… perhaps we love like ourselves, and that’s enough.