A Little More
About Me:The Longer Version

Connections & Friendship

Focusing on Who Matters

The people I choose to keep in my life play a big role in shaping what my life becomes and who I become. They play a big role in what my actual day-to-day lived experience is. They affect how seen I feel, and how seen I truly am. And I can have that kind of impact on them, too. It’s exceptionally rare to find people I truly fit with. And when it does happen, it can make a huge difference in my life.

Life is a lot harder when you're going at it alone, so I find it helpful to think about the people who are in it with me, in whatever capacity that they are. There are plenty of friends who don't necessarily have a big role in my life, but still do have some role, even if it's only myself and them catching up a few times a year or less. It doesn't undermine their value to me as a friend or person, but it can make the less frequent times we do spend time together feel even more valuable.

I've even found that the right people can give me a stronger sense of purpose in my own life, just by being themselves, which is pretty cool.

Finding a way to stay connected

I have a friend who moved away a long time ago. When they first moved, my friends and I threw an over-the-top surprise going away party for them. It was full of so many absurd gimmicks and shenanigans. I made a fully functional board game based on their life, a parody of their favorite song sung by all of their friends, and plenty of other silly but genuine and intentional acts of appreciation.

I remember thinking that things would change, and I wouldn’t be able to keep in touch anymore. At least not in a meaningful way. But I eventually found a system with them that worked and allowed me to stay connected to them to this day. It took effort and intentionality, but it allowed me to sustain a friendship with someone I deeply care about. If I hadn’t decided to go out of my way to keep that connection alive, and they hadn’t done the same, the friendship would’ve faded in silence long ago.

We, funnily enough, built a strategy to keep in touch around playing Kingdom Hearts together, one of my favorite franchises. I created dozens of pages of personalized challenge lists for my friend, for each of the 10+ games, and we found a way to go through them sequentially together, since it was a game series they'd never experienced but wanted to, and that I loved. It allowed us to create this sort of infrastructure that enabled us to stay in touch, make meaningful memories, have fun together, laugh, be silly, and just make the connection work even though circumstances would've otherwise led to us drifting apart a lot more.

We're actually finally on the last released game in the series, which is kind of surreal, since we've been at this for quite a few years by this point. But, looking back on the experience of going through those games with them, one of the important things it did was that it allowed us to be in a situation where other non-game things could happen. Like, the games themselves were a catalyst, but if we were already interacting, it opened up new possibilities for the specific activity we did in the moment, so it wasn't like we were always rigidly glued to playing through that one game. It was just an infrastructure that really worked unexpectedly well for the two of us.

I appreciate them a lot because I can be a really silly and goofy person when I'm comfortable around someone, and this friend is as well. So we get to be playful and silly around each other for a while whenever we hang out, which is something that means a lot to me.

I’m glad things worked out the way they did. It’s not so much about having people in my life; it’s about the specific individuals who have a unique place in my inner world. People who, by virtue of simply being themselves, are not replaceable to me.

Why certain connections matter

I learned something a while back that I've found to be really helpful when making sense of connections in my own life.

The quality of my life is largely influenced by the people I choose to find a way to make space for in it.

The way those people treat me, understand me, and see me, how naturally I get along with them, the fun I can have with them, the memories I can make with them, and how I naturally feel toward them all matter. Those things all make a big difference.

Plus, having someone there who gets me on some level and who I genuinely enjoy being around can make life feel a lot less lonely. It's part of why I appreciate the friends I do have that I've been able to sustain meaningful connections with over the years.

Close friendships and connections can involve some form of vulnerability, and I think it's important for me to acknowledge and account for when a friend is vulnerable with me, though I don't always notice or am as helpful as I wish I was.

One thing that I find hard about vulnerability is that the outcome of the experience can shape whether someone feels safe taking similar risks again. For example, I can trace some of the difficulties I still have in certain areas back to experiences from my childhood. A good experience can make it easier to do that sort of thing again, while a painful one can leave lasting emotional effects that can be challenging to navigate. That's part of why I think the way I respond to other people's vulnerability matters so much.

I do my best to be intentional when a friend is being vulnerable with me, since I'm not just responding to the content of what someone is presenting me with, but the expression of their vulnerability. It's not always my default to frame it that way in the moment, so I don't always center it, but it's something I can see when looking back and reflecting on past experiences. I've known people who have struggled with various mental health and emotional health challenges, and when those friends have confided in me about that, I've tried to be supportive and careful as best as I could. Although I can be pretty bad at saying the right thing at times.

There's this one instance that stands out in my memory. Several years ago, a now-close friend who I deeply care about and who is very important to me once called me after not keeping in regular contact for years. They were having a mental health emergency and needed someone to talk to, and called me. I recognized that the conversation was extremely important, so I intellectually engaged as fully as I could, and tried to choose my words as carefully as I knew how.

But, in an effort to support the person, I said something that accidentally made them feel emotionally worse. I didn't expect that reaction since I thought what I said was going to be helpful, but it turns out it made things emotionally heavier for them. It's been several years, and I do still think back to that call every once in a while. I wish I handled it better, but I'll just try to do better the next time something like this happens. My point overall, though, is that accounting for people's vulnerability is hard, and something that I would like to get better at than I currently am.

I also don't want to give the impression that by mentioning this one example, and it being something I think about still, that this is the only time where I didn't handle someone else's vulnerability perfectly. There were definitely other instances throughout my life, but this one stands out to me for reasons that I will not share out of respect for this person's privacy and the aspects of their story that are theirs and not mine.

From my experience at least, I've found that different types of vulnerability come easier to me than others, partially as a result of past experiences, I imagine. This whole page I've written is definitely far outside my normal comfort zone, and requires a type of vulnerability that I do genuinely find challenging. But despite that, the type of vulnerability expressed here is still much easier for me than some other forms of vulnerability tend to feel.

And, by contrast, I'm very comfortable being vulnerable with my friends about my social anxieties, since I struggle with social anxiety in many situations, although I am socially okay in plenty of others.

Learning the cost of letting connections fade

Over the years I've had many friendships, and other sorts of connections, and I've come to appreciate just how rare it is to meet someone, in the capacity of a friend or otherwise, who is even moderately compatible with me.

I think that's true for many people, and at the very least many people who are similar to me. Meeting people who are strongly compatible is itself fleetingly rare, so I've learned from experience the cost of losing those connections.

When I was younger, I let multiple friendships with people I was strongly compatible with fade. At the time, I hadn't fully appreciated just how much those friendships meant to me or the downstream effects that fading would have on my life.

I eventually realized it changed the shape of my life and left me with fewer close people around me today than I otherwise would have had.

Especially because I'd learned that the rate at which I meet new people isn't always constant in my life. If I'm not intentional about maintaining relationships, it's easy for friendships to fade faster than new ones are formed.

Ever since I realized this, years ago, I have made a persistent effort not to repeat my earlier mistakes. If I make a friend who I get along with really well and enjoy being around, I’ll generally put in effort to sustain that friendship in some form. Though, I’m not always perfect at doing so. It’s something I genuinely want to get better at, since I can sometimes be less on top of things when I have a lot going on.

Finding a friendship again

Over a year ago, I unexpectedly reconnected with someone I used to be really close to but hadn't kept in touch with for years. Before they reached out, I genuinely did not expect them to be part of my life again in any capacity. Hearing from them was completely unexpected and felt like it came out of nowhere. I didn't know exactly what rebuilding the friendship would look like, but I gradually found my way back into the friendship with them.

And, honestly, I'm grateful that they did. Sincerely. They're one of my closest friends now, and they're someone who I deeply trust. Having that friendship back in my life has made a huge difference in my own mental and emotional well-being. It's also led to many meaningful conversations and experiences, as well as that feeling of genuinely getting each other in ways that don't come naturally in every friendship.

Given where they're at in life right now, it's not like I get to communicate with them all the time. But when I do get to talk to them, it genuinely makes my day. I remember there were a few times they messaged me this year during times where I happened to not be feeling particularly great. It almost immediately changed how I felt; I was happier, and talking to them felt really meaningful. I remember feeling really excited to respond to them.

We actually went on an adventure together earlier this year. It was something I hadn't even expected to be possible given the circumstances, but we had the chance to do something fun together and went all in on it, to the best of our abilities lol.

Despite staying in touch long-distance since we reconnected around September 2025, we hadn't actually spent time together in person in years. I remember being a bit anxious about how it'd go the night before we hung out, especially because they were going to spend several days sleeping on my couch at my apartment while they were in town.

Sometimes when I get nervous, I end up at the gym more than usual, which was definitely the case before we hung out. I was worried that I wouldn't be entertaining enough for them, or that they'd end up regretting deciding to spend so much time together. Since we hadn't spent time together in person in years, I didn't really know what our friendship chemistry would feel like face-to-face anymore, even though we'd had plenty of natural and fun phone calls and long text conversations over the previous year.

Seeing them in person still felt like a much bigger deal. But when we actually hung out, it was unexpectedly natural. That kind of shocked me, because we almost immediately went right back to what things used to feel like. Well, it was a little different, but it had a similar overall vibe, which felt genuinely warming to me.

Since it's a friend I have a long history with, it also felt nice to spend a few days with someone who really knows me. It was an experience I really appreciated.

Those moments have also made me appreciate how much support from people I care about can matter without feeling like my well-being depends on them. A friend can genuinely change my day, make a hard stretch easier, or help me feel less alone, and I really value that. At the same time, I still try to take responsibility for how I handle my own life and emotions.

I've gotten better at letting people be there for me instead of automatically trying to handle everything alone. I still have that tendency sometimes, but I'm more comfortable talking to friends or asking for help when I need it without feeling like they have to fix things for me.

When compatibility is even rarer

That experience of reconnecting helped me appreciate how much a genuinely compatible person can enrich my life.

That friendship had already shown me how rare it was to find someone I naturally connected with in important ways. It also made me realize, by contrast, how much rarer an especially broad kind of compatibility would be if I were to ever encounter it: a connection where two people naturally fit together in a particularly wide range of ways, from their personalities and values to their interests, senses of humor, intellectual chemistry, and little quirks. One where their natural dynamic means they can both be completely themselves, feel safe and understood, have fun together naturally, and add something meaningful to each other's lives.

If I can be completely myself around someone, they can do the same with me, and I naturally connect with them across things like personality, the way my brain works, the way theirs does, and whatever else, that kind of compatibility is exceptionally rare.

Normally, the people I've encountered that I'm most compatible with tend to only align with me on a handful of dimensions. It's helped me learn not to take stronger compatibility for granted. When a connection feels that rare, I think it's worth advocating for.

Even so, compatibility is only one part of what determines the role someone ultimately has in another person's life. Circumstances, timing, individual priorities, and what both people actually want matter too.

That has made me appreciate that even an unusually meaningful connection doesn't come with a predetermined form or future. Some meaningful connections naturally involve much more occasional contact than others. That doesn't negate the value of what's there.

So far, I've been talking about connections in a broad sense. That kind of compatibility can exist in close friendships, dating, and established romantic relationships. Sometimes romantic feelings also develop within an existing friendship, and the people involved may still be figuring out what it means to them and what they want it to become. Ultimately, the form a connection takes depends on the people involved and the choices they make.

Finding that level of compatibility is difficult enough. When romantic attraction is part of the connection, too, it's an even rarer combination.

Both are valuable in their own way. If I meet someone I'm that compatible with in a purely platonic sense vs. someone I could have feelings for, it's absurdly uncommon regardless, even if one is much rarer. I imagine it's similar for a lot of other people.

When I consider how many people I meet only briefly, how varied people's lives and experiences are, and how much it takes for me to genuinely get to know someone, or even have the opportunity to do so, it's easier for me to appreciate why finding that level of compatibility can be so difficult.

Making the most of rare connections

So I guess what I'm getting at is that these sorts of connections matter deeply to me, and I don't want fear alone to keep me from being honest about that.

The exact form that takes depends on the nature of the connection and the feelings involved. A meaningful connection can be a friendship, a romantic relationship, or just a type of connection that's hard to label.

The people I choose to keep around me can have a lasting influence on my everyday happiness, my sense of belonging, and the direction my life takes. My experiences with close friendships have taught me how much of a difference they can make in the way I experience my day-to-day life.

I care a lot about the impact I have on other people, and concern about making someone uncomfortable can sometimes make me hesitant to advocate for myself. In situations that matter deeply to me, I try to balance those things as thoughtfully and compassionately as I can. I've also learned that self-advocacy has limits: I can be honest about what matters to me and make whatever effort is mine to make, while recognizing that another person's choices remain entirely their own. But I have allowed my concern for making people uncomfortable hold me back before in my life, in a self-defeating way. So I try to be brave in situations where it feels like it really matters.

Taking a romantic risk

Learning to advocate for myself has mattered in all sorts of different parts of my life. But when it comes to romantic feelings, it's been especially hard for me to put that into practice. I'm not as good at navigating the romantic life version of this stuff. And I have a much harder time taking emotional risks in that realm of life. It's something I deeply struggle with.

I generally keep this part of my life extremely private, and writing about an experience like this publicly is very far outside my normal comfort zone.

But it's also an important part of my history, and an area I've struggled with. So it feels important for me to talk about.

When it comes to putting myself out there interpersonally with romantic feelings, there'd only been one instance in the last over half a decade where I'd really allowed myself to take an interpersonal chance and be completely vulnerable with someone I cared about.

It was really scary and I remember being so concerned with the impact it'd have on the other person that I wrote an actual script, and edited it with revisions from one of my closest friends, to make sure I approached it in a way that accounted for as many important variables as possible. I really wanted to account for as many things that could matter on, and impact, the other person's side, and center those things while still finding a way to communicate what felt important to me in an honest way.

It was very unusual for me to care about someone that much, so much so that my friend who helped me edit and gave me advice on the situation noticed that I was different.

I really liked their mind, their personality, the way they expressed their thoughts and ideas, and so much more about what I got to know of who they were, what they were like, and what it felt like to be around them. There was something about them that felt unusually compelling to me. Although I had only known them for a short time and didn't know them as well as I'd have liked, I really wanted the chance to learn more.

I was actually not going to communicate how I felt to the other person until my close friend, from observing how I spoke about that person, realized how different this was for me and encouraged me to advocate for myself, something I appreciated deeply. Eventually, despite my reservations, and not having taken a big interpersonal risk like this in over half a decade, I did my best to be brave.

I remember actually physically shaking out of anxiety. It was weird because I was so concerned with both myself and the other person so it was like double the anxiety.

A big part of what allowed me to take that step was how much I trusted that person. We hadn't known each other for very long, and developing that level of trust so quickly was unusual for me. I normally take much longer to feel that comfortable and open with someone in the specific way I had with them. I was genuinely surprised by how safe I felt around them.

Due to a variety of past experiences, I'd previously developed trust issues and become very guarded over the years in situations where romantic feelings were involved.

Despite being someone who cared about and centered friendships and connections, I wasn't able to be that person in the romantic connections side of my life. It was in large part due to various past experiences and trauma, including some times when I'd opened up and been vulnerable.

So I had been guarded for many years, and avoided taking romantic risks or even allowing myself to fully be myself with someone I had actual feelings towards.

It was the only instance where I'd met someone I cared about and trusted enough, who felt worth the risks and breaking from my pattern and more protected state, to take that type of risk for.

I recognized that, despite how strongly I felt about the connection and its potential, there was still a lot I didn't know about them, since I'd only known them for a relatively short time. I wanted the opportunity to spend more time with them, learn more about who they were, and understand them more deeply. I knew that kind of understanding could only develop gradually over time. That said, I did feel that there was something unusually special there, with a kind of potential I hadn't experienced before.

I didn't know what would happen in the end and recognized that the future was inherently uncertain. But what I did strongly believe was that the chemistry and compatibility I'd experienced between us felt unusually strong, and that there was something special and promising enough there to make it worth taking the risk of exploring together in a flexible way, based on whatever actually worked for both of us; all while having fun, finding ways to laugh and be goofy, sharing ideas and being creative with each other, and experiencing the little things along the way. This was someone who I felt I could relate to across an uncanny number of different dimensions and in ways that felt new to me and were hard to explain. From what I understood at the time, if things worked out, the upside could have been unusually meaningful for both of us and had the potential to grow into something genuinely rare.

Not that I know what would've been meaningful for them, since that's something only they would know, but I thought it was realistic enough that it was worth sharing my thoughts with them on it, so they could decide. And even if it turned out they didn't feel similarly, I believed they were worth taking that chance for, and that the opportunity to know them more deeply would have been really meaningful to me.

I hadn't fully thought through this specific possibility before I shared my feelings, but looking back, I believe I would've also been comfortable with the other person not knowing exactly what they felt or wanted since what felt meaningful to me wouldn't necessarily feel the same to the other person. It would have been understandable for them to need time to explore their feelings and figure things out at their own pace, if that's what they felt they needed, even though my own feelings already felt relatively clear to me at the time. Once I shared my feelings, if they chose to explore things, anything between us could unfold gradually from there, at whatever pace felt right for both of us, without either of us needing to know in advance exactly what form it would take or what the future would look like.

The intensity of what I shared about my feelings to this person reflected how strongly I felt, not how quickly I expected anything between us to move or how intense or demanding I expected the dynamic itself to be. At the time I was very willing to be all in on genuinely trying; but I could feel strongly while still wanting any romantic progression to be mutual, comfortable, as slow and gradual as both sides were comfortable with, and shaped by what both people genuinely wanted and had room for in their lives.

I didn't recognize the importance of clarifying my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings related to that at the time, so I believe it may have been a source of miscommunication.

At the end of the day, this is someone I care about who I like being around; personally, I would've found a lot of value in just the little, simple, low-pressure things. Having strong feelings for that person was what made a version of things that worked in practice as being low-effort and exploratory, if that's what they would've preferred, really valuable to me.

Even though I don't think I communicated that clearly when sharing my feelings.

I don't think two people need to be in exactly the same emotional place at the same moment in order to spend time together and gradually explore what type of connection works for them. Especially since, despite my feelings, we didn't know eachother all too long, and so there'd naturally have been a lot to learn about eachother beyond what we'd already knew.

I knew there was a lot we didn't know about eachother. It's just that, what I did know, felt like enough for me to see that there was an unusual potential worth exploring. A lot of things clicked quickly between our personalities and way of just being ourselves in a way I'd never experienced before in the past, platonically or otherwise; it was genuinely shocking to me and hard to wrap my head around.

More generally, I don't see taking a connection seriously and leaving its outcome open while either or both people figure out what works for them as contradictory. Strong feelings don't require a fixed timeline, matching intensity, or a predetermined relationship structure. I personally tend to value flexibility, openness, support, and adapting to where the other person genuinely is, especially when I care about them.

I'm generally someone who is open to commitment when that's what genuinely makes sense for both people, but I don't think commitment, certainty, or even matching feelings have to exist from the beginning. I'm also comfortable with a connection being flexible, much less defined while people learn through lived experience what it means to them, what place they want that person to have in their life, and what actually works for them in practice.

To me, having the connection itself matters more than forcing it into a particular structure, and there's a real difference between believing something is worth the risk of exploring and already knowing what it will become. Whatever develops is something the people involved can gradually and mutually shape together, naturally and at whatever pace makes sense for them.

I believe that it's possible to leave an outcome open while also accepting that exploring something might ultimately show one or both people that it isn't right for them, without that making the exploration itself a mistake. For me, that possibility doesn't make exploring something meaningful feel less worthwhile.

One thing that deeply matters to me is that neither person feels pushed beyond their comfort level or readiness, or expected to move faster or feel more than they genuinely do. It's a nuance I struggled to communicate while also sharing my feelings at the time.

Back then, I never felt like distance had to decide things for us. Even though I felt strongly about the connection and what it might become, if we ever both wanted to explore it, I would've been comfortable staying in touch in whatever form worked for both of us and letting things unfold gradually and naturally from there, even if life had us in very different places for a while. For me, at least, it would've been worth it.

Despite only knowing them for a short time, and recognizing there was a lot I would still need to learn about them and the connection, I knew they were heading into an unusually demanding and absorbing chapter of their life, and if we ever both wanted to stay connected, I would've been willing to do more of the adapting on my end so the connection could fit within their life rather than compete with it. Plus, because I knew I'd have considerably more flexibility, I would've been comfortable carrying more of that adjustment for a while, if that made the connection easier to fit into both of our lives and felt supportive to them. I knew that if we decided to explore something, I'd care about being supportive towards the new chapter they were entering, so that they'd be able to experience that chapter as fully as they wanted, to make the most of the opportunities and experiences in front of them to whichever degree they preferred. Especially due to the specifics of the chapter. So I recognized it was important to be supportive in that area and consider it in an intentional way. I figured that if we both mutually decided to see where things could go, there'd be at least some creative way to still have room for us to gradually get to know each other in whatever way made sense for both of us. I would've wanted the connection to add something positive to their life, not take away from everything else that mattered to them or make an already demanding chapter harder to navigate.

Heck, if they barely had any time, felt overwhelmed, or simply wanted most of their attention focused on their new chapter, I would've been totally comfortable with the connection taking up very little of their time. I would've been glad simply to spend whatever time together made sense, keep getting to know them, and try to be supportive. Having the opportunity, even if infrequently, to have fun and be silly and weird together, or even just talk about our days, would've meant a lot. I would've done my best to make the connection as undemanding as possible.

But not only that, I'd reflected on the situation quite a bit, and if it was something they wanted, I would've been highly motivated to actively find ways for that chapter of their life to actually be easier with me in it than it would've been without me there at all. I've gone through plenty of difficult, uncertain, and demanding periods in my own life and know what that can feel like. If they had a high workload, I would've loved to help lighten some of it wherever that was appropriate and genuinely helpful to them, if they'd wanted. I would've wanted to help with practical or academic demands where I realistically could, while also being someone steady and reliable in their life so that the social and emotional challenges of that chapter felt easier to carry too. Having gone through difficult periods myself, I can deeply understand how meaningful that kind of support can be when it's something the other person actually wants.

I cared about them, and my life is flexible enough that I would've had room to support someone in that way if they wanted it. Because caring about someone like that was so unusual for me, I was motivated to think creatively about how I could make the different parts of that chapter easier for them rather than simply trying not to make things harder. Whether that meant helping lighten parts of their actual workload when there were things I could appropriately help with, taking some practical burdens off their plate, being really accomodating of their time when they were especially busy, helping free up some of their time if I could, being someone consistent they could count on, or just making difficult days a little easier, I would've wanted my presence in their life to reduce the total amount of stress and difficulty they were dealing with compared with what they would've had to handle on their own in a chapter like this. I imagined it could be a challenging chapter across a lot of different dimensions, including emotional, social, practical, and academic ones, and actively supporting someone I cared about that much through something like that made a lot of sense to me.

Beyond this particular chapter, though, I cared about supporting their ambitions more broadly, wherever they decided they wanted those ambitions to take them. I know that pursuing difficult goals and building an ambitious life can be hard, so it would've been nice to actively look for ways to help them move toward whatever they wanted for themselves and make those goals easier to pursue than they otherwise might've been. I would've wanted to help increase the odds that things worked out for them long-term in whatever way they personally hoped they would.

I genuinely think seeing them succeed, in whatever way they defined success for themselves, would've been really exciting to me.

I also realized that I found the idea of them feeling seen, understood, and accepted, and actually being seen, understood, and accepted, unusually motivating to me. I don't fully understand why, but I felt this sort of intrinsic drive to make them feel good and be accepted in a way that was uncharacteristic of me. I do generally care about those sorts of things in friendships and with other connections in my life, on some level, but this felt a bit different; so it was a pretty new experience for me. I cared about, and was motivated by, this far more than I'd have expected. It's even hard now, for me to describe it verbally. I just really cared about them being and feeling seen, understood, and accepted, without fully understanding why. Even now, looking back, I don't fully understand why.

I was also aware that we were at different stages of our lives, with different priorities, circumstances, limitations, and decisions ahead of us. I also figured that despite our differences in age and life stage, and all the factors that come into play as a result of, or tangential to it, there were probably ways we could creatively navigate things together so that things felt fair, healthy, and natural to both people. The way I looked at it was that there were some additional things I figured we'd need to account for and work through together, even if we didn't get everything perfectly right at first. I think if both people are well-intentioned, navigating a life stage difference still involves many of the same basic processes as navigating other differences and challenges that can come up between two people exploring a connection: understanding each other's needs, communicating openly, adjusting where needed, and figuring out what actually works for both people.

I don't know what would feel most supportive and natural to them, but I figured if I focused a lot on just doing my genuine best and actively focusing on, and centering, us being equals, it would help.

Navigating an age difference was something I wasn't very familiar with, but this was someone who felt worth giving things a real chance with. It was something that I wanted to be thoughtful and intentional about, despite the unusual situation.

The funny thing was, despite our age and life stage differences, one of the things that I really liked about this person was that we uncannily felt like equals in a lot of ways. There were so many things it felt like we naturally matched on that it felt like, with time, we'd be able to actually get, understand, see, and relate to each other in a way that felt uncommon to me. I figured that misunderstandings and not seeing each other perfectly accurately would happen at first, especially since we hadn't known each other very long, but it seemed like, with time and simply more experience being around one another, the potential for both of us to really get, understand, see, and relate to each other felt unusually high to me; in a way I was unfamiliar with.

I also figured it was important to do my best to account for our life stage differences rather than assume that what worked for me, or what I had room for in my own life, would necessarily fit theirs in the same way. I knew their needs, priorities, and what made sense for them could be different from me, and I wanted any connection between us to leave room for those differences rather than expect them to disappear. But in the end that's the sort of thing two people can only figure out together.

I was proud of myself for advocating for something I genuinely believed might have been meaningful for both people, despite the circumstances making it unusual. It felt important enough that, even though the circumstances were far from ideal, I should take action and let the other person know how I felt, so they'd have a choice about what they wanted to do.

I was also very aware that the circumstances were complicated, and that there were important considerations beyond my own feelings. I thought carefully about whether saying anything at all was appropriate, and I understood that being honest about how I felt didn't entitle me to anything or make the other parts of their life, circumstances, and existing commitments any less important.

Ultimately, I didn't know what the best way to handle my feelings was given the circumstances. It was difficult because I worried that continuing the friendship without being honest about feelings that had become so significant to me could itself be misleading. At the same time, my past experiences had taught me that I didn't want fear or avoidance alone to determine whether I stayed silent. It genuinely felt like one of those unusual moments where what I did next could meaningfully affect the direction of my life, even though I couldn't know what would happen afterward.

That combination was part of what made the situation feel unusually time-sensitive to me. I felt like I had encountered a person and connection that were genuinely rare in my life, while also recognizing that the circumstances around us were complicated. I didn't want the significance of the connection to make me ignore those circumstances, but I also didn't want their complexity to automatically outweigh the reasons I felt honesty might matter. At the same time, I didn't know how to continue the friendship without being honest about feelings that had become so significant to me. I genuinely wasn't sure what the right thing to do was.

Part of that urgency was personal, too. Not because I thought the other person needed to make some enormous decision right away, but because I'd learned how easily an opportunity to say something important can pass when I'm scared and unsure of how to navigate it, and because the connection felt so rare to me that I worried that staying silent might mean the possibility of something romantic between us would never have the chance to exist. That possibility mattered to me in a way that was unusual for me. At the same time, I didn't think wanting that possibility gave me any right to disregard the circumstances around us or meant the other person should make a particular choice.

So altogether, I felt a lot of pressure to say something for a mix of reasons, even though I felt that both speaking and staying silent could have meaningful consequences in different ways.

I ultimately decided to express what I felt, while trying to do so in a compassionate way that centered their agency, feelings, preferences, and future. I approached it as giving them information about my own feelings and thoughts that they otherwise wouldn't have had, so they could understand the situation more fully and make whatever choice, if any, felt right for them.

So, I did that, to the best of my ability.

I don't think I navigated everything perfectly, and I wouldn't want to suggest that I did. I was scared and unsure of what to do, and I was doing my best to approach a situation that genuinely mattered to me in a way that was as considerate of everyone involved as I could figure out how to do while still being honest about my feelings.

Before I went into that conversation, I'd also made a decision that I wasn't going to argue with the other person's response or try to persuade them after I'd said what I felt was important to say. I knew that sharing my initial thoughts involved explaining why I believed the connection was worth considering, but I did my best to communicate that in a way that gave them enough context to understand my perspective while trying to make it easier for them to choose what genuinely felt right for them, whatever that ended up being. I wanted to be honest about how I felt, but I also cared about them not feeling pressured and about their decision reflecting what they actually wanted. It felt really important to me.

My plan was basically to read the script my friend helped me with, listen, and accept their first answer rather than challenge it. The conversation did become a little more open-ended toward the end, but that didn't change how I approached it, and I was able to stick to that plan throughout the conversation.

Ultimately, things didn't develop in the direction I'd hoped for. That was something I knew might happen and I could accept. I wanted what was best for the other person and cared about whatever made them happiest, even if that meant what I hoped for wasn't what they wanted. I didn't need to assume that would ever change in order to respect and be supportive of what they wanted.

What happened afterward, though, left me deeply confused for a long time.

The person was my friend, I trusted them, far more than was normal for me, and I'd shared an unusually vulnerable moment with them that was really hard for me to do. I felt uncharacteristically safe around them. I had come away from the experience believing that, regardless of the outcome, there was still mutual respect and care between us.

Instead, the connection ended in a way I hadn't anticipated and didn't understand. The way things unfolded was much harder for me to process and cope with than I'd expected.

I'm deliberately not going to discuss the specifics of what happened, because those parts of the experience aren't mine alone to make public. My perspective also isn't a complete account of the situation, and I wouldn't want someone reading this to make assumptions about the other person's intentions based solely on what I've written.

I'd been comfortable with the understanding we'd made afterward. We hadn't made plans to reconect after some period of time, and I understood that we simply might not keep in touch again. I was okay with that. I'd come away feeling that things had ended on good terms, with the future left open-ended rather than with any expectation that we would eventually speak again. What I hadn't anticipated was how abruptly they would disappear, especially so soon after what had happened; it felt like such a sudden unexpected rupture from what I'd understood the situation and our relationship to be when we'd left things. Someone I'd trusted enough to be unusually vulnerable with suddenly felt completely gone, and I didn't understand what had changed or why.

Because of how unusually vulnerable I'd allowed myself to be in order to take that risk, it was genuinely shocking to me. From my perspective, I'd opened up romantically for the first time in over half a decade and shared an extremely unusual, vulnerable conversation with someone; we'd then ended the conversation on good terms with an open-ended understanding of what came afterward, and several days later, the other person seemed to disappear entirely, without me understanding what had changed or why. At the time, I experienced that sudden finality as being a response to having opened up, even though I didn't actually know what was happening on the other person's side. I'd come away from the conversation with such a different understanding of where things stood. I was so confused and the uncertainty hit me much harder than I would've expected.

Due to how everything unfolded, I shut down for a while. I struggled with some of the same fears I'd previously found challenging, and have been much more guarded about romantic vulnerability and trust since. My sense of safety in that part of my life was affected too. It was especially difficult because I'd finally allowed myself to take a type of risk I'd found very difficult to take, and had been proud of myself for stepping so far outside my comfort zone and confronting that level of romantic vulnerability at all, while advocating for something I genuinely believed was worth exploring and hoped could have made a positive difference in both of our lives.

I think a big part of it for me was wishing I'd understood what happened. Having some understanding would've made it easier for me to process the experience and make sense of what had actually happened, rather than being left wondering which of so many possible explanations, if any, reflected the reality of the situation. Without that understanding, it became easy to turn the uncertainty inward and wonder whether there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

I don't know what was happening on the other person's side; I get that people aren't perfect, information is imperfect, and miscommunication is a thing. It's possible there were circumstances, intentions, or parts of the situation I simply didn't understand. I know that my understanding is necessarily based on the context available to me, and I try to account for the limits of what I could reasonably know from the information I had. I also try to distinguish between how a situation affects me and what I can reasonably infer about someone else's intentions, especially when different interpretations of the same situation are possible, even if making that distinction isn't always easy. That uncertainty doesn't change how something affected me, but it does matter when I'm trying to make sense of what happened.

This was someone who meant a lot to me. At the end of the day, I don't want to assume the worst or come to unfair conclusions about someone I care about.

I don't want to minimize how much the experience affected me, and the aftermath unfolded in a way that'd been painful to navigate, but I also don't want it to define how I approach relationships for the rest of my life. I'm still working through some of it and trying to increase my comfort with romantic vulnerability, trust, and safety, though all three are still harder for me now than before the experience.

I don't have all the answers about what happened, and I might never have them. Part of working through the experience has involved acknowledging that I can care about the other person's perspective while still being honest about what happened on my side, without choosing between them.

I also understand that it was a difficult situation for them and that my decision to share my feelings honestly may have made their life more complicated. I do still sometimes look back and hope that I didn't have a negative effect on them.

I still think about them sometimes.

I still care about them, given who they are, and hope they're happy. One thing that really stuck with me, even to this day, was how much I liked their smile, and the look in their eyes when they were happy.

It would've been nice to have had the opportunity to get to know them better, share experiences and go on adventures together, make each other laugh, have inside jokes, be playful, commit to the bit together, find little ways to make each other's hard days easier, have normal conversations however often felt natural for both of us, and simply get to spend time with them and have them in my life.

But, regardless, I'm glad I met them.

That one time I became friends with a cat but I don't think it liked me

So honestly, there was this cat I came across once, and I thought he was really chill, so I started petting him. Then he slapped me.

And I'm still not really sure how to process that.

Understanding & Compassion

Being Kind

We’re all human. Humans are imperfect. People often get judged and treated unfairly for simply acting through the lens of their subjective understanding of the world, themselves, and others.

People all make mistakes. In many cases, the psychological mechanisms aren’t that different, even though the substance and context differ.

I’ve found that working towards genuinely understanding others is deeply important to me. People deserve to have their motivations, beliefs, preferences, decisions, and actions understood. Not just in an abstract way, but in a genuinely compassionate way.

How I think about people, context, and communication

I think context matters a lot when trying to understand people. Everyone is operating within some combination of their past experiences, current circumstances, relationships, responsibilities, available information, subjective understanding and interpretation of that information, emotional state, and practical constraints. I try to remember that whatever I happen to observe is usually only one part of a much larger picture and that there is information I’m likely unable to account for. It feels important for me to factor that in, to the best of my ability.

I also try not to let one moment, behavior, or version of someone become the entirety of how I understand them, since I recognize how limited the information available to me can be and how that can bias my understanding. I usually try to start from a human-first perspective, focused on genuinely trying to understand the other person while leaving room for context, uncertainty, and complexity.

I also think it's important not to reduce people to caricatures when discussing, referencing, or trying to understand them. People are complicated, and even when someone is absent from a conversation, they're still a full person with their own experiences, motivations, uncertainties, and perspective. I try to keep that in mind, be intentional, and make sense of situations as fairly and accurately as I can.

That matters to me morally and ethically, but it matters for another reason too: being misunderstood or reduced to an inaccurate version of oneself can be deeply dehumanizing and can have a profound effect on someone's sense of emotional and relational safety.

I also don't believe anyone deserves to be spoken about in a way that dehumanizes, minimizes, or reduces them, even when they're perceived negatively. It feels deeply morally and ethically unfair to frame another person in a way that abandons epistemic humility or meaningful nuance for emotional, social, or intellectual convenience. People are people, not simplified characters in someone else's story.

And even if someone is never exposed to any direct, indirect, or relational consequences of being treated this way, or if there are no consequences at all, that doesn't mean the treatment itself was fair. The act itself is part of how someone is treated, independent of experienced consequences.

So, I do my best to be intentional in conversations about others, even when I perceive them negatively, because doing otherwise feels unfair and, in some cases, can result in inadvertently cruel treatment.

At the end of the day, my understanding of someone doesn't change my responsibility to treat them fairly.

Generally, context matters in how a misunderstanding happened, how it's handled epistemically, and what choices were made related to it. Misunderstanding someone doesn't inherently make someone a bad person; I've misunderstood people too. Nor does simply misunderstanding someone necessarily mean they were treated in a dehumanizing, minimizing, or reductive way.

It's part of why I do not gossip about people and why, when someone is being talked about unfairly, I try to stand up for them. It is easy for me to avoid gossiping about others because it is something I feel is more internal, so I feel like I have more agency. And, if it's up to me, I won't. I sometimes struggle with speaking up for others, though, and am sometimes unsure of what to do, especially in socially complex situations.

I'm not perfect or anything. I remember working in office jobs in the past where I felt a strong need to advocate for and protect someone who was not physically present whom coworkers were speaking negatively about. But I was scared because my job was directly tied to my ability to pay my bills, and without any family support or anything, I was scared of the stakes. There have definitely been situations where anxiety has made it harder for me to speak up than I would've liked, and I didn't end up actually speaking up, but that's something I continue to work on. I do feel bad afterwards and sometimes beat myself up over it, though.

I care a lot about intentionally avoiding jokes at other people's expense. I try not to make someone the target of humor in a way that feels genuinely judgmental, belittling, or unfair to them, both when they are present and when they are not. That doesn't mean I think humor involving other people has to be rigid; people can be part of funny situations or stories, and humor can involve exaggeration or playful characterizations without implying that there's actually something wrong with them. It's just important to me to avoid making or contributing to jokes that are mean-spirited or genuinely mocking.

I also think there can be a separate effect when the same interpretation of someone gets repeated over time, whether through jokes, comments, conversations, or other social interactions. Repetition can make one way of seeing a person feel increasingly settled or obvious, even when the reality is more complicated. From my understanding, similar kinds of social reinforcement can contribute to bullying dynamics, where treating someone a certain way can make that treatment feel increasingly normal or justified and can make other people more likely to adopt the same characterization. I do my best to stay aware of that dynamic because it can become a feedback loop that materially affects someone's life, how they're treated, and even how they're genuinely perceived by the people around them.

I care a lot about how people treat others, especially when the person being discussed isn't there. I don't think people always recognize when their behavior is cruel or when they are participating in bullying, and that lack of recognition can sometimes make the behavior easier to continue because it starts to feel normal.

I don't mean that misunderstanding someone is itself cruel or wrong, to clarify. What matters to me is what people do with that misunderstanding and how they treat someone as a result of it. And even when a misunderstanding does contribute to someone being treated unfairly, I still think context can matter.

It feels important to me to speak up for people who are being mocked, gossiped about, reduced to a caricature, or treated in an unfair or dehumanizing way, because cruelty and bullying don't stop mattering just because the target isn't present. That's something I try to be very intentional about not participating in myself and, when I can, pushing back against when I see it happening. I'm not always perfect at doing that, though. Sometimes anxiety or circumstances make it harder for me to speak up than I would like, and the regret often stays with me for a really long time afterward when I feel like I should have pushed myself to do more, but didn't.

At the same time, I think intent, context, uncertainty, self-awareness, and people's different values still matter when trying to better understand someone who treats others this way. A person engaging in cruel behavior or participating in bullying doesn't mean that they are inherently a bad person, or that they stop deserving to be understood accurately and treated fairly.

I've also realized that relational safety isn't only about how one person treats me directly. The broader social environment around a person or relationship can matter too. If I feel like people around someone are willing to form very negative or confidently inaccurate conclusions about me or others when they have limited information, especially if those conclusions spread or become socially reinforced before the person being judged even knows they're happening, it can make that broader environment feel unsafe to me even if the people involved later come to see that person differently. Even when I'm not the person being judged, it feels unfair to whoever is, and it can still affect my own sense of relational safety because a social environment willing to do that to someone else could reasonably do it to me too.

When something like this happens to me, the reason I care about it isn't that I expect everyone to like me, agree with me, or interpret me perfectly. People are going to misunderstand each other sometimes, and I've misunderstood plenty of people myself. It's also totally okay for people to dislike or disagree with me if that's how they genuinely feel.

The harder part for me is the process: whether uncertainty leads to curiosity and genuine consideration of the other person's humanity and perspective, or whether it leads to confident judgments, jokes, gossip, negative conclusions that go beyond what the available information can reasonably support, or a particular version of someone becoming socially settled before anyone actually understands the person being discussed. If I know that can happen, I can become worried about what happens the next time something about me is confusing, emotionally complicated, or easy to misinterpret. That can affect how safe a social environment feels to me regardless of whether I was the original person being treated that way, although it is naturally much harder for me if I was.

If I were misunderstood and treated this way by a broader social environment, people's beliefs later changing in a positive direction wouldn't automatically make the environment feel safe again. A later positive conclusion would still be reassuring, but safety also comes from trusting how people will handle the next period of uncertainty. For me, repair in that kind of situation would be less about everyone deciding they now think positively of me and more about trusting the way that social environment deals with uncertainty: whether people are willing to preserve uncertainty when the information available to them is limited, ask questions when appropriate, reconsider assumptions, and remember that the person being discussed is still a full person even when they aren't there to explain themselves.

At the same time, I don't think getting something wrong makes someone permanently unsafe. People can make mistakes, update their understanding, and approach things differently later. I can understand not initially recognizing the impact of something and then changing how it is approached once that impact becomes clearer. I haven't always recognized the full effects of my own habits, behaviors, or decisions either, so I understand being human and not always having perfect awareness. I try to adjust when I gain new information that helps me better align the way I approach things with what I actually believe is right.

I also don't think relational safety means never making another person uncomfortable. I care a lot about trying not to make people unnecessarily or unfairly uncomfortable, and I often overthink the effects my actions or words might have on others because of that. But there are also situations where some discomfort can be a reasonable side effect of doing something important, honest, necessary, or mutually beneficial. Having a difficult conversation after a conflict, for example, might be uncomfortable for both people, but I would still see that discomfort as worthwhile if the conversation could create understanding or help repair a friendship I cared about.

If someone recognizes that a misunderstanding affected another person, recognizes that the way it was handled within a social network caused harm, and genuinely tries to handle things differently going forward, that matters to me. What matters most is being able to trust that a misunderstanding does not automatically turn into dehumanization or create a social environment that feels relationally unsafe, and that if something does go wrong, there is room for honesty, accountability, understanding, change, and repair.

A lot of the reason I care about the way I talk about others, when they're present and when they are not, comes from my own experiences growing up. I spent a great deal of time feeling deeply misunderstood and being treated unfairly within my home environment. Those experiences made me very intentional about trying not to do the same thing to other people.

To me, someone doesn't stop being a person simply because they're the person being discussed rather than someone present in the conversation. I also think it's important not to reduce someone to a problem to solve, rather than continuing to see and treat them as a full person with their own perspective, feelings, needs, and agency. I think people deserve to have their humanity preserved even when situations are complicated, people become defensive, emotions are high, or understanding them accurately is socially uncomfortable.

For me, compassion doesn't always mean trying to protect someone from information that might be painful for them to learn. I think compassion can also mean trusting another person with difficult context, while trying to communicate it thoughtfully, honestly, and with care for their feelings, autonomy, and whatever they may need in order to process it. Something being painful to learn doesn't necessarily make it harmful to know or less valuable to understand.

Personally, when something has meaningfully affected my own life, I'm generally open to having more context that helps me understand it, even if that context may be difficult for me to process. I'm open to making sense of what happened and working through whatever feelings come with that understanding. It's part of how I think about compassion, since having a clearer understanding can help me make more informed choices. I don't see that openness as meaning anyone is obligated to share something with me, though. People have their own boundaries, comfort levels, and reasons for what they choose to share, and I can respect that while still feeling that difficult context can sometimes be shared compassionately and be valuable to understand.

I also think there can be a tension between protecting someone from difficult information and preserving their agency. Deciding that someone is better off not knowing something that meaningfully affects their own life can also mean making part of that decision for them, and it becomes a form of unilaterally deciding what someone else might want, even though they might choose differently if given the agency to do so. When possible, I generally prefer having access to relevant information and the opportunity to decide for myself what to do with it. I also try to factor that in when making decisions that could affect others when possible, since enabling agency through information is really important to me.

One part of trust that matters a lot to me is feeling safe being misunderstood. I don't expect people to interpret everything I say or do perfectly, and I know misunderstandings are inevitable. What matters more to me is trusting that someone will maintain epistemic humility and remain curious enough to ask honest questions before becoming highly confident in an interpretation that could meaningfully affect another person or a relationship. I think being able to say something imperfectly, clarify it, and still feel that the other person is trying to understand you accurately is an important part of what makes vulnerability feel safe. I believe people deserve to be responded to based on who they actually are and what they actually do; at least to the best of someone's ability, nobody is perfect or anything. It feels like a core component of fairness to me. And it's hard to feel safe otherwise.

What kindness means to me

Kind and fair treatment of others is very important to me. It's something that I am very intentional about. I differentiate it from an expression of niceness, since kindness is more about real care, empathy, and being honest while handling the truth in a compassionate way. By contrast, being nice is more about self-presentation and the expression of social rules.

That distinction matters a lot to me. I care much more about being genuinely considerate and honest with people than simply appearing nice.

Kindness has always mattered to me, and my experiences growing up reinforced that. Growing up, I was in a harsh environment, and some of the clearest examples of genuine kindness I encountered came from the stories I loved. Games, anime, movies, whatever else.

I remember looking up to and aspiring to be like characters that were genuinely kind and able to support their friends; like Sora from Kingdom Hearts.

I would see the impact he'd have on other people, especially when times were hard and people were uncertain, and I wanted to be able to do that for others. Especially since I rarely had that kind of support growing up.

I also thought it was really cool to watch the connections he'd made with the people in his life. They were so genuine and real. He found a way to turn his friends into his family. It gave me hope that maybe someday I could do the same.

So, as I grew older, I found myself focusing really heavily on finding and building something similar, to the best of my ability. It's a big part of why I value friendships and connections so much. I didn't come equipped with the kind of family support most people do, so it's been up to me to build my own. I know what it's like to go without that kind of support, and I understand how valuable it can be, both having it and providing it for others.

I remember getting really emotional one year when a friend found out I was spending Christmas alone and invited me to spend it with their family. Because of my family background, I almost always spend holidays throughout the year by myself.

Holidays are also periods when friends naturally become less available because they're spending time with their own families. That means whatever support structure and social connections I have can become a lot thinner during those periods. I don't resent anyone for that. I'm glad the people I care about have families they want to spend time with and get to enjoy that time together. It's just that the cumulative effect of everyone doing something completely normal and healthy can leave me in a very different environment on my end.

So I've always found holidays difficult. I don't really look forward to them. Fortunately, most individual holidays are scattered throughout the year and pass pretty quickly. The harder part for me is the whole stretch toward the end of the year that's considered the holidays. Some years I've found myself dreading it and wishing there were a way to just skip over that part of the calendar or that the holidays just didn't exist at all.

Fortunately, there are occasional years when I get to spend a day at a Friendsgiving, Friendsmas, or something similar. Those experiences are genuinely meaningful to me. Even then, though, they're usually one day inside a much longer stretch, so the season as a whole can still be difficult.

It's kind of funny since people associate the holidays with good times, but when I was a little kid, the holidays were pretty scary and stressful times since a person in my household became much angrier and more restrictive of my agency than usual during those times. Which was kind of rough since that person had already been pretty intense about both of those things on a normal day.

So I would do my best to hide during the holidays or disappear, at least to the best of my ability.

Eventually, as I got older, that got a bit easier. When I was eventually old enough to be able to navigate around on buses, I would sneak out so I could spend a big chunk of Christmas alone somewhere.

It was actually kind of nice sometimes since there was this big mall nearby, the Providence Place Mall, which was closed on Christmas. The stores were all closed, but the interior corridors were still accessible. So I'd be able to go in there and sit down at a table.

I really liked it because I was alone in this huge building and didn't have to worry about all the normal holiday stuff. And it was an indoor place that I could actually get into on Christmas where I could stay for a long period of time, even when it was snowing and if I didn't have money to spend.

I remember one year, when I was in college, it was one of those years when I was sitting at that table in the mall on Christmas, and I felt really appreciative of being there.

Since I was so used to not feeling like I could be myself at home, I had a hard time really collecting my thoughts, getting work done, or expressing myself even in writing when I was there. And the way holidays went made that especially hard.

But since I was out, I was able to just sit there and journal, like, a lot. I remember it feeling almost like a breath of fresh air, like this pressure releasing from my chest because I could do something that felt like me, even a little.

The reason that stuck with me is because Christmas and other holidays inherently started with me being home and then leaving. So the earlier parts of the day were really rough. And that juxtaposition between environments felt really good.

I remember that I had to walk through the snow during a minor storm to get to a bus stop and then take it to Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence. From there, I walked through the snow to the mall. It was physically stressful because of the storm, but I remember physically smiling when I got to Kennedy Plaza because it felt like a really good Christmas since I was able to be alone for the rest of the day.

It's funny, because despite having a weird relationship with holidays, there have been some points in my life where I thought that, if I ever had someone I really cared about a lot in the way families are supposed to care about each other, like a partner-partner, it'd be really nice to be able to find a way to make holidays our own and have those sorts of experiences together, if it's something they'd also be open to.

I get kind of emotional sometimes thinking about what that'd be like, to have that year-to-year sort of holiday experience with the same familial unit that I see in movies and whatnot.

I've had Friendsmas-type experiences on occasion, like I mentioned, but having it with someone who's legit my family would be really cool.

I actually also really like to show people I care about that I care about them, so I feel like I'd be really good at Christmas gifts in a partner-partner sort of situation!

Actually, over half a decade ago, I had a partner who I cared about a lot and who meant a lot to me. We never got to have that sort of holiday experience together or anything, but that person's birthday did exist!

Omg I was actually so excited about getting them their birthday present that I went on an absurd number of misadventures to acquire it!

This person was a big fan of Naruto and we liked playing board games together.

One time, as a one-off thing, they saw that there was, a long time ago, a very specific Naruto board game that looked really cool, but had been discontinued for a while.

So I was like ok I got this, and secretly began the hunt.

It's been a while, so I don't remember every single step I took anymore, but I spent dozens of hours searching and trying creative strategies, hitting dead ends.

That was until I found an obscure, sketchy forum in a foreign language, I think Chinese, where someone mentioned having played the game before.

I found a way to get in touch with them, and that, like a video game, gave me a new lead.

Which I then followed.

Which, when I followed it, resulted in me finding yet another new lead.

Each step along the way, I got redirected by whoever or whatever I found, gradually getting closer.

That was until, FINALLY, I FOUND IT!

The only thing was that it was a version that was entirely in French and did not come with instructions.

But I was determined to make this work.

So I ordered it.

Eventually it arrived, we played it, and I can't speak for the other person, but I personally had a lot of fun :D

I was so excited for them to see it, and, to this day, I remember their dumbfounded look of, 'Just... how...?' when they saw it.

Oh, I also made a giant two-sided poster board that I turned into a gigantic many-panel comic strip that narrated the time we'd known each other and included a bunch of misadventures and fun moments!

But, anyways, I am not motivated to go all in on gifts like that unless I really care about someone a lot. But if I do care about someone, I can be very motivated to find a way to do whatever feels meaningful to me that I also think might feel meaningful to them.

I don't always get it right, though. I've found that sometimes I put effort into gifts that the other person did not seem to find very meaningful, despite my incorrectly thinking they might find them meaningful.

I'm not perfect with that sort of stuff, since I can't always figure out the type of thing a particular person would find most personally meaningful, but I do legitimately try when someone feels special enough for me to care about them a bunch.

Valuing honesty

Honesty is something I care about a lot. It matters to me because it gives people a more accurate understanding of reality, which helps them make choices that are actually informed and advocate for themselves more effectively.

I think people sometimes sacrifice honesty because they're afraid of hurting someone. But I don't think honesty and compassion have to be opposites. I realized a while ago that, in many situations, it's possible to be honest while also being thoughtful about how that honesty is communicated.

I've also learned that being accurate sometimes means being honest about the limits of my own understanding. I don't need to present my thoughts as more settled or certain than they actually are, and I think acknowledging when my perspective is incomplete is part of being truthful too. It's okay to just be human and up front about uncertainty, rather than something I should try to hide.

It applies to interpersonal situations, too. I might not always know what I want and that's okay. If I'm unsure if I feel up for going to an event with a friend, I try to be honest and just communicate that I'm not sure. That lets us both be on the same accurate page and I don't have to pretend to be someone I'm not. Plus, it's not always a binary. Not knowing if I feel socially up for going to an event with a particular friend on a given day doesn't mean I don't like them. And being honest about it, as opposed to avoidant, sometimes allows me to better work with them to figure out some other option that works for both of us that I didn't initially realize was an option.

Just the other month I was invited to an activity somewhere, with a group of friends, that I initially defaulted to not wanting to do because some of the logistics would've been pretty uncomfortable for me. But, I talked to them about it and ended up realizing it was basically feasible for me to do my own thing on a different time schedule than everyone else, and still be able to participate in a way that worked for me and wasn't a burden on them.

I did end up going to the activity, and I'm glad I went.

To me, the kinder approach is usually to combine both. Honesty helps people understand accurately and make informed choices, while compassion helps make sure that truth isn't delivered in a way that unnecessarily judges, humiliates, or villainizes them.

Learning to try

I've been on my own for a very long time and have faced a lot of unusual barriers on my path to becoming independent. That experience is part of why providing encouragement, understanding, and genuine support to other people matters so much to me.

Growing up, working toward a better future was not something I received encouragement or support for; the act of trying was itself frowned upon. It was actively discouraged at home. Investing in myself, pursuing bigger goals, believing I could build a different life, and taking meaningful steps toward independence often meant fighting against forces actively trying to prevent me from moving forward.

I was naturally good at school, which helped me get by academically. But growing up in an environment where trying to improve my circumstances was so strongly discouraged, I'd learned to give up before I even tried. Being so constantly shut down, advocating for myself, or really just taking any action at all or exerting my agency at all, had been foreign to me. It took me years to realize what was happening, unlearn it, and teach myself how to make a genuine effort toward something even when I wasn't sure I'd succeed.

I was intimidated by my starting point, once I realized, since I was so far behind everyone else. And, I was still in the environment that actively worked to punish me for the sorts of things that would be healthy.

Despite that, I did the hard thing and stood up for myself, gradually making progress, and it remained a substantial challenge for a long time.

I was the first person in my family to attend college. Growing up, I came from an environment where educational opportunities were often extremely limited, and even graduating from middle school wasn't a guarantee for everybody. Higher education seemed so far out of reach that I could never imagine pursuing it myself. I somehow was able to keep building until I got to where I am today. And, I'm continuing to do my best. When I look back, it's shocking to me where I ended up.

I grew up in a dangerous neighborhood, have been jumped in broad daylight, have seen someone get shot in the middle of the day, and plenty more. Living somewhere I feel safe today is something I sometimes take for granted, but whenever I reflect on how far I've come, it genuinely shocks me.

I found it really hard to focus on basic things, including school and work, when I felt unsafe both in my neighborhood and in my home environment. Coupled with how much I was still learning about simply trying, college was really hard for me at first. Getting to campus could take 2-3 hours each way, so I sometimes spent around 4-6 hours a day commuting 5 days a week. A decent percentage of that involved walking through places where I had to stay alert and riding a notably sketchy bus, and not the fun, light-up Skechers kind of sketchy; the bad kind.

I was also working just to get by financially; I've been working since I was 16. On top of that, I didn't really understand how college worked. Nobody had ever sat me down and explained what it actually was. I went to orientation and everything, but I remember being deeply confused during my first week of classes. I had almost no frame of reference for what college actually entailed beyond knowing that it was, somehow, an extension of school.

Part of what made school so hard was simply that I had very little time because of work and commuting. Both were also emotionally draining, which made it harder to deal with the challenges school presented. That compounded with not feeling very safe or comfortable in my home life. It was a lot.

When I walked down the street, I had to pay attention to a lot of different things to stay safe. I know I probably don't look like it given what my life has turned into, but I'm very street-smart when it comes to situational awareness and keeping myself and the people I'm with safe. It's a skill set I picked up through repeated exposure to bad situations while simply going about my day growing up. And it's honestly something I'm pretty proud of. There are plenty of things that I'm really bad at compared to other people, and plenty of things I'm working on, but street smarts, despite what I figure people assume, is an area I really excel in.

But that kind of awareness can also be emotionally exhausting when you're in that sort of environment all the time. Walking a long distance to a bus stop while staying on edge and constantly processing what was happening around me and problem-solving non-stop took a lot of emotional energy both before the school day had even begun and on my way back from it.

One time in college, I remember waiting at a bus stop not too far from where I lived with a stranger nearby. I was minding my own business with headphones in but no music playing. That was something I did because it let me hear what was happening around me while giving me extra protection by appearing unable to hear individuals who may be threats. In my lived experience, that has helped keep me safe more than once and is far more helpful than the one-headphone strategy I often hear people talk about.

At some point, the stranger appeared to pull out something that looked like a knife, and I sprinted across a busy street to get away from him. Doing that caused me to miss my bus. I don't remember whether I ended up late for class, but I might have been. What I do remember is telling my family about it and being met with a lot of anger that night. That felt confusing and unfair because I'd been standing alone at a bus stop minding my own business, trying to stay aware of my surroundings, and then reacted as quickly as I could to get myself somewhere safer.

I bring that up because incidents like that weren't isolated during college. They happened often enough that they took a real psychological and emotional toll on me. I had to process whatever had most recently happened, stay alert for what might happen next, commute very long distances, work a lot, deal with difficulties at home, and simultaneously teach myself how to put genuine effort into school and into building a different life.

Altogether, I found that pretty hard to handle simultaneously, and it wore on me over the years. I was in college for 4.5 years. Something that might have felt sustainable for the first few months looked very different by year three, when I was pretty burned out. I kept pushing, though, and eventually started figuring things out.

It's funny: despite struggling so much with the concept of trying, I think the sheer number of challenges I faced forced me to get better at it faster than I otherwise would have. They also gave me a lot of motivation to keep moving forward. I never really knew where I'd end up, but I reached a point where I wanted to push myself in as many directions as I reasonably could so that, eventually, I might be able to live somewhere that actually felt safe and comfortable.

It's funny that I use the word home, because where I grew up genuinely never felt like a home to me. My first real home was the apartment I moved into about half a decade ago, the apartment I still live in now. Even though I'd lived in the same place throughout my childhood and early adulthood, it still feels strange to describe it using that word. I mostly do because it's the easiest way to communicate what I mean.

I remember when I first moved into my apartment, I was extremely excited by little things like getting to decide where the forks went. I know that sounds simple, but I remember my friend helping me move in and me literally grinning while I figured things like that out. The freedom of realizing, this is a safe place, and I can actually be myself here, felt surreal. I didn't realize how emotional it would be until I was standing there deciding where to put the forks, one of the first tiny decisions I made in the apartment. It felt huge to me.

Growing up, I had much less freedom than most people in a variety of ways, including into early adulthood. Without getting into every detail, one example is that by the time I was around 24, I still wasn't really allowed to choose where things went in my own room. If I moved something, someone in my home environment could become very angry and move it back to wherever they wanted it. There were many other ways in which agency and freedom felt limited to me, but that's one concrete example.

I finally left that environment in 2020. Emotionally, it felt almost like the culmination of years spent learning how to advocate for myself, exercise agency, and actually try. Things became exceptionally bad at one point, and I reached a moment where I felt that I had to go. I grabbed a few things and left, despite not having much money or many possessions to take with me.

The money part made that especially difficult. I'd been working since I was 16, but much of what I earned went toward paying for college, rent I paid to family members where I was living, and other expenses. I paid for college myself. At the time, college financial aid calculations included an expected family contribution when determining which loan offers to offer to students, but that didn't mean that contribution was actually available to me. My aid didn't cover the full cost of tuition, so each year I had to pay the remaining difference out of pocket.

That made it extremely difficult to save, which made a lot of other parts of life harder and left me with very little flexibility. When I finally left, I was still in graduate school and was also working full-time, so even the logistics of rebuilding somewhere else were challenging.

There's much more to that period than I can reasonably fit here, and there were plenty of challenges I haven't mentioned. But broadly, that's some of what I was working through at the time.

Looking back, I think those years growing up all the way through 24 are a big part of why safety, agency, the ability to apply effort and simply try, and the ability to build a better life mean so much to me. I had to learn how to create those things for myself, so I don't take them for granted.

The stories we don't see

One thing that I've found really valuable about my experiences is that they helped me better account for not knowing other people's experiences and background. A lot of the time, people make assumptions about others, the resources they have, realities of their life, and plenty more.

I think it's important to recognize that, unless I'm really close to someone, I don't actually know everything they're going through. I can try to predict based on the information available to me, but it's plausible that I was just simply never exposed to the information necessary to allow me to better understand the other person.

This is why I care about giving people the benefit of the doubt, when it is reasonable to do so. I don't want to unfairly judge or treat others when I do not fully understand their intentions, life context, and subjective beliefs.

People deserve to be heard, and if I account for everyone having a different starting point, and being at a different place currently, it's a lot easier to support them.

A long time ago I used to do something very unusual. It's not something I really talk about, but I used to sometimes stop and talk for sometimes 30, 60 minutes, to homeless people begging for change. It was something that I felt very emotionally invested in because it felt like there were all these people who get overlooked and not treated as human. Even when interacting with others while begging for money, it's often solely transactional. So I made an effort to actually learn about them and understand what it was they were looking for money for.

There was this guy I'd only met once whose story stayed with me over the years. What stayed with me wasn't the story of how he became unhoused, but how he got by afterward. He found a way to make absurdly small amounts of money by reselling things like cigarettes to other unhoused people. Essentially he'd travel really far to get certain items at a lower price, then resell them elsewhere at a higher price. Naturally as someone without many resources, he wasn't able to sell to a ton of people or do any sort of fancy marketing. I imagine even traveling to pick up products took a while given his situation.

The reason I'm sharing this is because I was genuinely blown away by how hard he seemed to work. He wasn't able to get a job elsewhere, and it wasn't like he was saving up for anything in particular given how little this made him, but he just had to do it to survive. He was really candid with me about what his life was like, which I appreciated.

I no longer stop to talk to or give money to people in those sorts of situations like I used to. I haven't for a while. I did enjoy talking to them, but one day I learned that, unbeknownst to me, I'd gained a reputation as someone who gave people in that situation money. So word spread and I started more or less getting targeted by people begging for money from me somewhat frequently while I was waiting for the second bus I took to go to my college campus. From my understanding, it more or less turned into a situation where people who I think wanted to use money for drugs were seeking me out and lying to me for money.

That experience, plus several others in which I realized I'd been directly lied to by unhoused people who did not know who I was and were using fake stories to get money from me, made me really uncomfortable with the whole thing. I haven't been too sure how to feel about it since. I've been avoidant for a while and no longer give money, but I have complicated feelings about it.

Why understanding others matters to me

As is true of many people who had rough childhoods, I can deeply relate to being misunderstood.

Due to my background and past experiences, being misunderstood has always been emotionally hard for me. It's something I have a hard time coping with, and it can affect me pretty deeply.

I do my best to make hard choices when they feel important and necessary, and can accept being misunderstood as a result, since I don't want my life to be dictated primarily by what others think of me and how well they understand me. But it's still emotionally difficult for me.

Since I know how hard being misunderstood can be, I do my best to avoid doing the same to others. I'm not perfect, and I won't always understand everyone accurately, but I genuinely try. Especially when they aren't present to explain their own perspective.

Everyone deserves to have themselves and their intentions understood in a fair, genuine, accurate, and compassionate way.

It's extremely important to me.

Growing up, I wasn't really believed very often, and was blamed for a lot of things I didn't do. The default assumption in a lot of scenarios was that if one person was not happy, regardless of the real reason, it was my fault. Sometimes they'd hang things over the head of me or others around them by saying things like "I might as well just drop dead; is that what you want?", leveraging their mortality to punish the people around them for doing what constituted messing up in that person's mind.

I actually don't think it occurred to me before writing this very passage, but I don't think, in my entire life, I had ever heard that person apologize or say sorry, to anyone or for any reason. I genuinely don't think they'd ever done so, they were never the one to blame. The things they were upset about were often minor. For example, someone didn't automatically figure out what shirt that person wanted to wear on a given day, and did not find it for and provide it to them; and they got extremely angry. That was pretty common.

I remember this one day when I asked a member of my family if I could go on a trip my friends invited me on. I was really excited because I'd never been on that sort of trip with friends before, outside of a school trip. When I informed the family member about it, they got so deeply angry at me, they kicked me out of the house that night. Though fortunately it was temporary. I didn't fully understand why I was kicked out, I was only 16 or so. The person screamed a lot, regularly, so it wasn't anything new to me. But that day it was so loud that I remember seeing the people in the house across the street actually looking out. They seemed concerned.

One thing that has stuck with me was the never-ending screaming. Most nights I would wake up and go to sleep to the sound of angry screaming. I recognize that may sound like hyperbole, but it is not.

Really early in the morning, I'd jump awake to the sound of angry screaming, usually starting around 5am or so, almost every day. And, while trying to go to sleep, later in the night, I'd have trouble because I couldn't drown out the screaming. My sleep health wasn't too great, and that probably had other downstream effects on me.

I think when I was in grad school for the first time, it really took a toll because my workload was so high and I was commuting so far to be able to attend the program, and had a full-time position to support myself, and was doing a ton of research work to try to build towards some sort of future or escape. I also had to keep up with working out regularly, even though my nutrition and sleep weren't great at the time; part of my career can almost necessitate it at times. Normally I don't mind that much because I do intrinsically enjoy exercise, but it was another huge time-consuming aspect of my life that I had to work to keep up with on top of everything else. It was already a lot, but the lack of sleep made it hard.

For a while I actually developed what physically looked like black eyes, not from any physical trauma or anything, but from a mix of lack of sleep and poor nutrition. My eyes were so heavy and baggy that it genuinely started concerning people. Multiple people thought there was something wrong. But I think I just had a hard time managing everything. I kept pushing as best I could, though.

One thing that I didn't realize applied to me until I was older was desensitization. There's a lot of stuff I got desensitized to, that I would talk about normally without really thinking about it, but it was emotionally a lot for other people. It took me a while to figure out what sorts of things were emotionally intense for others and learn how to better filter myself to account for not making them uncomfortable. Though I think I sometimes still mess up, and am not always that great with it to this day, I do try and put in intentional effort. And I'm definitely a lot more skilled at it than I used to be, which feels validating. Although I believe I am still far less skilled than the average person, it's just that, with work, my relative baseline got better over time.

When information is limited

Most situations in life inherently involve some degree of uncertainty. The specific magnitude of that uncertainty differs based on context, but I try to approach it in as accurate a way as I know how regardless. So, I intentionally adopt a probabilistic model for making sense of uncertainty, including in situations where I think there is a high chance that my understanding of a situation, idea, concept, or person is accurate.

I think it's important to account for, to the best of my ability, the potential for error when making sense of something, since that increases the odds that my understanding will align with reality. It allows me to account for multiple possible realities while reducing the odds of being blindsided.

It also allows me to better calibrate decisions. A decision architecture that includes an assumption that something has an 80% chance of being accurate and a 20% chance of being inaccurate allows me to account for both reasonable outcomes. That applies both internally and, when appropriate, externally. By internally, I mean that viewing things probabilistically allows me to better emotionally calibrate and be more fair toward whatever I'm evaluating than I might otherwise be. If something, from my perspective, which itself may be flawed, has a high chance of being bad and a low chance of being good, it's easy to feel negatively toward or resentful of it. But if I account for the lower-probability outcome too, it changes my emotional landscape.

When I gain new information, it's very important to me to model it as accurately as I can within my own head. So, I intentionally and consciously recalibrate my understanding to incorporate the new information, while also accounting, when appropriate, for the possibility that the new information itself may be inaccurate and for the ways my own perception may affect how I interpret it.

I'm not always perfect when doing all of this, and I'm subject to emotions biasing me, leading me to come to incorrect conclusions or feel more certain than is justified at times. Sometimes I feel more certain than is justified as a way of coping with hard situations. When I realize I've done that, I often feel genuinely bad in retrospect because I allowed myself to internally treat an unconfirmed reality as confirmed. That doesn't feel fair, and it can sometimes lead to unjustified negative emotions and conclusions. It may make coping easier in the short term, but I want to be better about it, so it's something I'm intentionally working on. I want the way I actually think and behave to better align with my philosophy.

Admittedly, dealing with things this way can sometimes be trapping in situations where I am highly emotionally invested. Acknowledging uncertainty can make it, at least for me, difficult to find closure, because there's often a "what if X, Y, or Z is true?" path my mind can return to. I think a big part of closure for me is finding a way to accept that uncertainty. Instead of lying to myself and leaning into negative emotions to cope when I feel something may have been bad, it's healthier to acknowledge that I simply don't know.

At the end of the day, information, my perception itself, and my ability to reason through what I perceive are imperfect. I try to make the way I think through things more likely to be accurate and fair, whether that be toward a person I hear about on the news, a piece of media, a recently released scientific paper, the logic another person presents in a conversation, or anything else. I've learned that my abilities in this area are affected by my emotional state and my ability to cope with whatever I'm struggling with. It feels less overwhelming to process all of that when I'm not anxious, for example. If I'm genuinely upset about something, it's harder to process emotionally, so it can become easier to be more absolute in my thinking and conclusions than is justified. I genuinely dislike when that happens, so it's something I want to keep working on reducing.

One area where I do feel much more confident in myself is behavioral impulse regulation when I'm upset. Due to my background, I value that extremely highly. I do not want to be anything like what was around me growing up. As a result, I feel extremely strongly motivated not to do something impulsive like yell when I'm upset. It's deeply important to me, and something I consciously guard against. Because of that, regulating how I behave when I'm upset comes much more naturally to me than it otherwise might.

The part I struggle with at times is more on the side of initial negative thoughts, before I've had the time to work through them and think about something in a way that feels much more fair and accurate. I very much want to get better at this too, reducing the lag between those initial thoughts and a fairer understanding of things. That being said, I don't want to accidentally imply that I default to negative thoughts and evaluations whenever things are hard; that isn't my default in most situations. I usually default toward an understanding that considers multiple things possibly being true, weighs their probabilities based on the information I have, and goes from there. I'm referring specifically to the instances where I struggle to do that as well as I would like.

So I know understanding is important and all but what's up with the mTOR pathway for muscle protein synthesis

Because for real, do you see this:

Like how am I supposed to understand this, this is literally just the mTOR pathway at a glance, like THIS ISN'T EVEN THE WHOLE THING WHAT IS GOING ON THIS IS NOT OKAY.

mTOR? More like an mTORrible time.

Which is like, a terrible time but even worse because mTOR.

Memories & Moments

Making the Most of the Time I Have

There’s a quote that has stuck with me for a long time:

“We need to make the most of the time we have: to live our lives the way we wanna live. Every minute… every moment matters.”

I’ve found that the memories I make and the moments I experience within them are some of the most important pieces of my life.

So, I do my best to make memories when I can. Memories that will stay with me and carry value long after the moment they were forged passes.

I actually keep a box of memories with me all the time. I add to it whenever something important happens. The box is pretty large and physically overflowing at this point.

There was a rough period of my life a while back where I'd moved 8 or so times in one year, due to a mix of complicated circumstances and figuring out how to navigate life on my own despite a lack of resources or traditional support.

During that time, I didn't have many possessions, and knew that wherever I was staying would only be temporary. So I had to be selective with what I took with me. I would bring a handful of boxes with me wherever I went, never unpacking or feeling like wherever I was, was my home.

But I made sure to keep that box of memories. I brought it with me to each new place. They're a big part of who I am.

Years before all of that happened, I remember that I found myself in a period of life where I wanted a fresh start. I realized I had an extremely large number of photos of myself and friends from over the years, and as part of the fresh start I deleted most of them. It's something I regret to this day, and would not do again. Thinking about it does sometimes make me sad.

Building a life that fits me

I've learned that I don't have to leave all of those experiences up to chance. If there are certain memories I want to make, I can take an active role in creating opportunities for them.

I've sometimes avoided experiences I genuinely wanted because I was worried about how they might look to other people.

I've become happier as I've gotten more honest with myself about what actually fits me, including when that differs from conventional expectations.

I've worked to understand what genuinely makes me happy, what that kind of life looks like, and how to become more comfortable with those choices.

I've learned that I have more freedom to live unconventionally than I once thought. Even when circumstances limit my choices, I can still advocate for the kind of life I want to build and recognize the agency I actually have.

Part of growing into myself has been learning to separate other people's impressions of my choices from my own lived experience of them. Other people's perspectives can matter to me, but they aren't a substitute for understanding what actually makes my own life feel meaningful or right for me.

I don't want fear of judgment to prevent me from advocating for myself or living a life that genuinely fits me. At the same time, I want to remain thoughtful about how my choices affect the people around me.

I feel it's important to not ignore other people's feelings, preferences, or boundaries. I think those things deserve to be taken seriously. I've learned that I can be considerate of other people while still making my own decisions about who I am and what kind of life I want to build.

For me, self-advocacy and consideration of others can coexist.

Where I came from

I had an unusually difficult childhood, and I worked extremely hard to become independent, leave behind an environment that wasn't healthy or safe for me, and build a life where I could finally feel safe and free to be myself.

I've had to build my life largely on my own, which came with a lot of overwhelming challenges. Building the life I wanted meant making many unconventional decisions, accepting substantial sacrifices, and often being misunderstood along the way. Those choices helped me become independent and create a life where I could finally feel safe and free to be myself.

In the end, I'm deeply grateful that I fought for myself and escaped. It allowed me to access a much safer version of my life, and one where I could simply be myself. If I'd made different choices and allowed my actions to be determined by fear of taking a risk, I would've stayed trapped in a bad situation and restricted myself unnecessarily.

I used to feel so jealous of other people's starting points in life. I felt like I was behind in so many different dimensions, and I remember feeling trapped by how unfair it all seemed. I could see what other families were like and what opportunities other people had, and it was uncomfortable feeling different.

I didn't always realize how different my own situation was. As a child, I didn't think about it very much because whatever I experienced was simply what normal looked like to me. Eventually, though, I started to understand it differently.

It was a gradual process that took many years. Even now, I sometimes make connections that hadn't occurred to me before and update my understanding of my background. Sometimes that can feel a little overwhelming because, no matter how much I think I've understood, I occasionally realize there's another consequence or connection I hadn't recognized yet.

The advantages and disadvantages someone starts life with can create cascading effects. They influence circumstances that then shape later circumstances, so their effects can compound over time. It can be frustrating to notice that across different dimensions of my own life and to come to terms with some of the downstream effects of my background and past experiences. There were so many things I had to teach myself that other people had been taught. I had to learn so much through failure, a lot of failure.

Which, yes failure is informative, but it also objectively compounds itself in terms of how it affects life outcomes. There are plenty of examples at all levels of importance within my life, but as a pretty mundane example: I had no clue how to make friendships in adulthood when I first became an adult. It might sound kind of weird, but I genuinely didn't understand the concept of adults having friends; it wasn't modeled for me and it was something I only saw in fiction.

I remember, right around the time I graduated high school, I broke down crying one day because I genuinely didn't believe I could have friends anymore. Naturally, since the concept of adult friendship alone was so foreign to me, the actual mechanics of it were pretty hard for a while. Though I naturally got better with time and feel fine with it now, after working at it for years, it's not something I struggle with anymore. Having to learn so many things on my own can both feel and be very trapping.

It took a tremendous amount of effort to get to where I am today, especially given where I started. But it was undoubtedly worth it.

Learning how to talk to people

So one thing that I remember from my childhood is that making friends was really hard!!

Even though I was around people my age when I was at school, I mostly had to teach myself how to get better at socializing and making friends by working on it myself at home.

I would study anime and try to replicate the way characters talked to people. I was using it to more or less reverse-engineer how to communicate with others, make friends, and understand what normal socializing was supposed to look like.

But, little did I realize at the time, apparently, anime is not real life lol.

It was funny because I remember being REALLY on top of trying to get the understanding-friends-and-talking-to-people thing right when I was a child. But I was not... good at it. Like, at all.

At one point, when I was in elementary school, I genuinely remember seeing characters in Dragon Ball Z chasing each other. So I thought, okay, this is how I make friends.

So during recess I identified someone I wanted to be my friend, and I didn't really talk to him first because I hadn't realized that part was important yet.

BUT, what I did do was, naturally, spontaneously break into a full-speed sprint toward him while shouting slogans from Dragon Ball Z.

I do not think we became friends.

I suspect I mostly just confused the heck out of him.

He probably had absolutely no idea what was happening.

But I was genuinely trying to make a friend!! I thought that's how it worked for a bit.

That phase didn't last too long for me, though. Eventually I put together the importance of talking to people and having conversations about things.

But even when I got to the conversation phase of my learning-how-to-talk-to-people mission as a child, I struggled to socialize. It was so hard!!!

But that might've been because anime wasn't the best role model for acting normal lol.

I eventually ended up learning to speak in extreme amounts of exposition, without even realizing that it was weird. It's a common anime trope for characters to use exposition a comical amount, but it became my baseline (which, admittedly, I still do to this day; I learned how to communicate through absurd amounts of exposition and it has totally stuck with me, as may or may not be obvious by the absurd amount I have written on this page).

But the thing is, anime did me dirty in an even sillier way than just that. See, the thing is...

A LOT OF THE ENGLISH ANIME DUBS I WATCHED WERE REALLY BAD TEMPLATES FOR SOUNDING NORMAL D:

Which, sure, that's fine and all, but when that's MY LITERAL TEMPLATE FOR BEING NORMAL, it might not have been the best lol.

A lot of English anime dubs back then had characters talking really fast and speaking in a more monotone or off-tone way. The performances also had to map English dialogue onto animation originally created around Japanese audio, so the pacing and emotional delivery could sound pretty different from ordinary conversation.

So, I talked fast. And I spoke mostly monotone, but when I tried to express emotion my voice was often way off from the way I was trying to express myself.

It was really silly in retrospect, but it took me so long to calibrate speaking stuff! I remember being in high school and there was this band I liked at the time, Blink-182, and I would listen to one of the lead singers, Tom DeLonge, and try to replicate how his voice went up and down.

That's actually how I eventually learned to make my voice go up and down when I got a bit older.

It was really hard, and I remember spending nights practicing quietly to myself in high school, and then trying it out when I was actually in school.

I don't know how to describe what my voice sounded like back then, but that lead singer had an emo skater-type voice, so basically that sort of vibe became my default.

WHICH, BY THE WAY, IS ALSO NOT NORMAL SOUNDING, I HAVE COME TO LEARN, SO GUESS WHAT: I HAD TO DO A FREAKING PART 3 TO THIS LEARNING-TO-TALK-NORMAL THING WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE lol.

I unironically still sometimes get self-conscious about how I sound and whether my way of speaking (my tone, cadence, etc.) seems normal when I feel socially anxious. It doesn't happen that much anymore. But if I'm already dealing with social anxiety in a given situation, I can overthink how talking is supposed to go, and then I become very stiff in the way I speak and struggle to present myself naturally.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling socially anxious, that doesn't happen, though.

The whole talking thing, in retrospect, was kind of interesting, too, since I also naturally picked up words and ways of having conversations through video games. So I ended up with an unusual, but weirdly large for my age, vocabulary.

It was wild because where I grew up, people often had the sort of dialect or manner of speaking most people associate with that kind of environment. So when I met people over the years and told them where I was from, they were often shocked because I didn't speak the way they expected.

One time, actually, a friend in college slammed on the brakes in their car (they were going slowly on a side street) and stared at me when I told them where I lived. That memory felt so silly to me because they lived there too!!! So it's like bro what do you meannnnnn WE ARE SO IN THIS TOGETHER WE'RE BASICALLY IMPLICITLY DOING THE WHOLE TEAMWORK-MAKES-THE-DREAM-WORK THING AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW.

It's funny, though, because I actually feel really comfortable with people who have the sort of dialect and manner of speaking that's normally associated with that environment. It's something I'm super comfortable with since it's what I grew up around, so it weirdly feels natural to me to talk to people like that, even though my own manner of speaking is weirdly distinct for that background.

Also, gosh, I remember my friends were SO SCARED of dropping me off when I was older. Like, if they went to drop me off at my home, they wouldn't stay parked for more than a few moments. Which I totally understood; they weren't comfortable with the environment, and random things really did happen there. It was just something that always sort of stuck out to me.

But, anyways, ANIME!

I used it to get better at conversing, and it definitely has had downstream effects on how I even communicate today.

I don't know what's normal for children, but I don't think I spent a lot of time talking compared with a lot of my peers. Though I did like to talk when I was in a space where it made sense!

I actually did like talking a lot and expressing myself a lot when I got the chance.

I actually remember getting in trouble for it in school in 5th grade and being SO FREAKING CONFUSED!!!!

My teacher said that if someone finished a test early, they had to sit there quietly, and if they did, then they'd be allowed to talk to friends afterward.

So, I did that. But I didn't realize that she meant there were more rules that weren't explicitly stated.

I felt like being silly, so I remember leaning back in my chair, tilting my head back, sticking my tongue out, and making silly faces.

And I just... sort of did that... for like 30 minutes...

By the time everyone was done with their test, the teacher let everyone talk except me because, apparently, I had not understood what 'sit quietly' was supposed to include.

I remember being so unsure of what I did wrong, especially because I had consciously and intentionally tried to do things the right way.

I was very on top of making no noise of any type, to the best of my ability, for that whole period. I was taking it very seriously.

And then, despite me taking it seriously and genuinely trying for over half an hour, I still got in trouble.

Which, in retrospect, I totally get is a funny and silly situation :D

Long story short, there were a lot of little socialization things that I struggled with and felt behind my peers on throughout childhood and beyond.

I still don't think every social situation comes as naturally to me as it does to some of my peers, but I am definitely far better than I used to be. I've been working on this stuff for so freaking long that I have gotten way better by comparison. I can hold my own in most social situations now, so I'm fine and everything. Though I do want to be honest in admitting that it's still an area where I have things to work on.

That being said, I don't have that problem when I'm comfortable with someone or feel safe with them! If someone is my friend and I generally trust them and can be more myself, then I feel like I weirdly become much more socially skilled and natural around them!

I really like the feeling whenever I get to experience it, and it also allows me to navigate a social situation with much less nonstop, hyper-intense processing.

There are so many social rules normally, and I really, really, really don't like making other people uncomfortable. So I try to be really intentional about consciously mapping out people's nonverbal communication in my head, and I also try to account for as many variables as I can when talking to someone if I'm not already super close with them.

I also do my best to account for unknown factors and aspects of subjective perception to the best of my ability so I can reduce the likelihood of accidentally making someone uncomfortable.

But I definitely am not perfect. Sometimes I miscommunicate verbally or nonverbally in a way that communicates something I didn't intend, because I'm still learning some of this stuff.

Like one time at the gym a few years back, someone I didn't know was having a conversation with me, but I couldn't hear them well.

It felt important to me to engage with what they were saying as fully as I could so I didn't accidentally treat their thoughts as though they weren't valuable, so I tried to prioritize hearing them better.

So, I took a few steps forward so I could hear better.

Then, they took a few steps back.

Then, I couldn't hear them as well, so I took a step forward again.

And that cycle repeated for longer than was probably ideal lol.

I, much later, realized I may have accidentally made that person uncomfortable while specifically trying to be intentional about not making them uncomfortable and not accidentally devaluing the things they were putting effort into communicating to me.

It felt, and still does kind of feel, pretty embarrassing.

This was literally only a few years back at this point, and I imagine there is still stuff I can work on that I'm not really all that aware of just yet. But, hopefully, I will be one day! :D

Someone I could always talk to

Growing up was pretty hard for a handful of different reasons, but one thing that was pretty common was that I was often pretty lonely at home. It didn't normally feel that safe to be myself most of the time, so I'd spend a lot of my days at home just being quiet.

I wasn't allowed to have a phone until I was 14, and a laptop until I was 15. So, a lot of the time I spent at home, I really just had myself. There were plenty of video games, which I did use for socialization through online gaming, but, from what I understand, my experience was a lot less social than that of many of my peers until I got access to a phone and then a laptop.

But I did have a lot of cats.

They were my friends, and I talked to them all the time, even through early adulthood when I was still in my home environment. It's kind of surreal thinking about them now. I haven't seen them in years, and I deeply miss them. I really wish I could've still had them in my life.

Growing up, I would talk to them all the time, especially when I was lonely, when something bad happened, or when I'd had a hard day. It was nice because it felt like there were these people around me at home who I could feel really safe around.

Technically not people lol.

I knew, even as a small child, that they couldn't understand me. I get that. But it was nice.

I'm actually smiling right now talking about this. I almost never get the chance to talk about all of them, and I really love them. I do love them a lot.

I think that, in my entire absurdly long probably-unreasonable-lol essay that I'm writing, I feel really happy and excited to write this part. Like, I know I'm only toward the start of this, but wow, these are really good memories.

I remember there were so many times when I was hiding away in my room crying, and one of the cats, Whiskers, would always find me.

She'd always find a way into my room and just cuddle with me when I was sad. And I'd be able to talk to her, and she wouldn't be mean to me. She was the one who liked me the most.

She'd always find me wherever I was in the home, especially when I was crying. I just felt so safe around her, and it was really nice. I would tell her about people in my life and my day, and ask her what to do when I was overwhelmed and scared and felt trapped.

I knew she was a cat and was 100% certain she did not understand any of it lol, but it was still nice.

I cared so much about protecting her and spending time with her.

One thing that was always a bit silly about Whiskers was that she was pretty weird, like me. I don't even mean that in a joking way. Her personality was very strange for a cat. I also got the feeling that, for whatever reason, she wasn't that intelligent. Being around her over the years, I got the sense that her cognitive abilities might not have been quite on par with the other cats, though it's totally possible I could've been wrong.

But it made me care about her even more because there were things it seemed like she had a hard time with and genuinely didn't understand.

And I get that.

I struggled with a lot of things too. There were so many things I didn't understand and things that, even when I was a child, I had to figure out myself.

The way she would tell me she wanted to get out of a room was that she would enter battering-ram mode.

She'd slowly walk into a door.

Bonk it with her head.

Then slowly back up.

And repeat.

I don't know if I'm part of the problem because whenever she did this, I opened the door, which then communicated that this is how doors are opened.

Oh no, I'm the problem, aren't I lol.

One other thing she did was that whenever someone new was at the house, she would climb on their head. She'd literally just start scaling them as if she were ascending Mount Olympus with no fear toward what Zeus might do to her if he found out.

It was always so funny to watch because her eyes would get so wide and she'd just start climbing.

Nothing could stop her.

Which was probably a problem lol.

I miss Whiskers a lot.

Sometimes we'd just cuddle and she'd fall asleep next to me.

Or I'd wake up after going to sleep alone and find out that somehow she'd snuck into my room in the middle of the night.

There were plenty of other cats too, who I cared about and spent varying amounts of time with. But Whiskers was the one I felt really close to.

She's the one I'd go to first to talk about my day or my problems.

Again, I want to be super overt in emphasizing that I know she could not understand me at all lol.

But still.

It was meaningful to me.

Even though I know it might sound like I'm an animal person based on all of this, I wouldn't really describe myself as one. I'm not sure if I'd ever want to have a pet because the logistics seem stressful, although I'm not entirely opposed to it.

But I definitely get along with animals weirdly well.

Animals tend to gravitate towards me and warm up to me weirdly quickly; I've noticed that when I meet a new animal, they usually get comfortable around me really fast.

I also think there are many situations where I feel more comfortable with animals. Like, if I were to go to a new social event, even now, there's a decent chance I'd have some social anxiety, and I'd be more comfortable finding and spending time with the dog.

Actually, not too long ago I did exactly that, and I felt really happy. I even got to take a selfie with said dog while he stared at me like I owed him money lol.

But yeah, I still think of the cats from the home I grew up in as my friends.

I would honestly tell them jokes sometimes.

They wouldn't laugh.

But I did.

I thought the jokes were funny.

Oh! And! Guess what!?

Sometimes Whiskers sat on my shoulder like a parrot!!

Like the type that would show up on a stereotypical pirate's shoulder. She'd just do her scaling thing, but instead of scaling all the way to the top of my head, she'd stop on my shoulder.

And I'd just...walk around like that?

In retrospect, it would've been way cooler if I imagined she was some kind of shoulder-mounted missile launcher or something.

But still lol.

Also, I held her like a baby a lot, which was really cool! As in, she liked being held like a human baby, which felt really wholesome to me.

I swear I'm not an animal person lol.

These were just really important relationships in my life, and they got me through a lot of hard times from childhood through early adulthood. Like, genuinely, I think my life would be a lot different if I hadn't had them to talk to.

I know that might sound kind of absurd, but they really were important to me in terms of emotional support and just having someone there.

I could actually express my personality at home!!

Like, that was so cool.

I mostly whispered to them so I wasn't too loud or anything, but still.

It was kind of fun because it felt a little like that sitcom trope where two characters can practically communicate telepathically because they know each other so well.

I know the analogy isn't perfect since I was actually communicating to my cat and the cat did not understand what I was saying.

But it still felt a little like that trope.

Because we were communicating in a way that the other people in our broader environment couldn't hear, but we could. So it felt special, and it made me feel closer to them.

Especially because I could communicate without being misunderstood or blamed for something unfairly, which was something that made them stand out as having a unique place in my home life.

Admittedly, they couldn't understand me either.

But there was, from what I understand, genuine mutual affection. Sure, I didn't know what they were thinking, but it really felt like Whiskers liked me and cared about being around me.

And I cared about and liked being around her.

I wasn't used to affection very much growing up.

But with her, it felt real.

I don't know how many people have a pancake rival but I do and I'm scared

So this all started with the one thing you'd most naturally expect would lead to a pancake-based rivalry: breadsticks.

Years ago, I was on a mini-road trip with a few friends to help someone in a different state move. We played a version of Dungeons and Dragons together that I'd modified so we could essentially play entirely in our heads and verbally, which allowed everyone to be involved, including the driver.

Naturally, this was very cognitively draining. So, on our way back home, we felt the need for food to supply us with energy. It wasn't due to the heavy physical moving task that took multiple hours of work or anything; it was probably due to the fictional game we played while sitting still.

My friends had learned that I'd never been to Olive Garden before, so wanted to go. I heard legends of their unlimited breadsticks, but was not prepared for what would unfold once I arrived.

You see, when we were seated, we were met by a waiter. That waiter then delivered a basket of unlimited breadsticks to our table.

Then, the waiter left.

Moments later, like a Scooby Doo episode, another waiter entered from another door and approached the table. They informed us they were our waiter for the day and brought us another basket of breadsticks. I don't think they saw the other one.

We had two sets of infinite breadsticks in front of us.

Double infinity.

My friend and I felt obligated to eat as much as possible, if not for any reason than other to test the limits of math itself.

Our eyes locked, probably, and we began an eating contest.

It was intense, but one of us clearly won.

I do not remember who because I have repressed that part of the memory.

This was what started a habit of the two of us challenging each other to eating contests.

It went well across different contexts until, one day, we learned that IHOP had recently begun offering unlimited pancakes.

We knew what we had to do.

The eating competition began as you'd expect at first, but we ran into an unexpected issue.

Once we finished the first wave pancakes offered to us, the staff would only bring out 2 tiny pancakes at a time for each remaining wave. And, since the place was busy, it took about 20 or so minutes between updates.

At first, this was fine. But, we soon realized, we had made a grave mistake.

By the time more pancakes arrived, enough time had passed that we were hungry again.

Although, being mutually determined, we did not want to give up. So, we continued this for many hours.

Eventually, we realized, there could be no victor.

We decided to settle this in the future, and one day have a true pancake eating contest.

The thing is, it never happened.

My rival is still out there.

And I am scared.

I avoid them.

Help.

Building something intentionally different

Escaping wasn't just about getting away from the life I had. It motivated me to build something intentionally different. I've consciously worked to create a life that's almost the complete opposite of what I experienced growing up.

Growing up, I had what were essentially the opposite of role models around me. I learned who I didn't want to be, how I never wanted to treat people, and how I didn't want to live my life.

It's a direct motivation behind so much of what I do and the way I treat the people I care about. I know what it's like to be treated poorly, so it's an extremely high priority to me to not do the same towards others. People should be able to feel, and actually be, safe and like themselves.

I care about building meaningful connections characterized by genuine understanding and appreciation, where people can be themselves without feeling like they have to earn acceptance or change who they are.

Being able to make someone I care about feel genuinely safe, happy, understood, and appreciated is deeply meaningful to me.

I want my life to be full of meaningful people, moments, and memories, as well as meaningful ways I've impacted the broader world. I don't have to be confined by my past. If I put my mind to it, I can make both the life I live and the effect I have on other people and the world around me something I'm actually proud of. Sure, it's hard, and I'm not always perfect. But it's nice when I do get to actually feel like myself.

Being intentional

And, I try to be intentional with actually experiencing the moments in my life when I can, rather than allowing them to pass me by. I've found that being present gives me more agency over how I experience the moments that eventually become my memories. It helps me appreciate them while they're actually happening.

It’s easy to get caught up in the ins and outs of daily life. To, over days and weeks, slowly drift into autopilot without ever realizing that’s what’s happening. And, once it does, autopilot makes life feel like it’s passing by much faster. It’s dangerous and kind of scary.

I want to live and experience my life in a way that actually feels like living.

I also spend a lot of time intentionally thinking about others, trying to understand their perspective, and how what I do could impact them. I'm not perfect and don't always make the right choice. And, I don't always accurately predict what my actions or outcomes will do in advance, but I am very serious about being intentional and trying.

I care about approaching life and others this way because I feel like being on autopilot can sometimes accidentally lead to mistreatment of others. Or, if not mistreatment of others, having an unexpected or unknown negative impact on them.

One example from my memory stands out. The word 'weird' was a regular part of my vocabulary for a long time, it wasn't something I used in a derogatory or mocking way, but used to communicate when something was unusual with no negative connotation intended.

One day, someone I had known for a long time, and used that word around a lot, communicated that me describing something specific in that way made them feel bad. I remember being confused and feeling embarrassed because what I intended to communicate was not what had been communicated.

I realized that all this time I was occasionally miscommunicating with someone I cared about and unknowingly making them feel bad.

So, ever since, I've been more intentional when using the word weird, clarifying when it feels appropriate, or using it when it seems much clearer that I am not using it in a derogatory way.

I think that taking the time to really think through nuance, second order effects, and third order effects on another person can make a difference. There are plenty of instances where I've gotten it wrong in the past despite my best efforts, but I try to learn from what happened when I do.

The worlds that are out of reach

Honestly, I just thought this would be a really cool title for a section; I don't really have anything to say here.

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Anyways, here's a meme for your time:

Minimizing Regret

How I Think About Difficult Choices

Whenever I’m genuinely stuck on making a decision, I ask myself what I will regret most in the future.

Five, ten years down the road, when I look back, which version of that choice would I have been glad I made?

It's a way of thinking I picked up when I was in college that has really stuck with me. It's not the sole thing I factor in when making challenging decisions, but it's a big part of the framework I use when working through the important ones.

I don’t want to become the version of me who was held back by fear and anxiety. The version that would be full of regret over missed opportunities.

When circumstances change

I've also had to become better at separating disappointment that circumstances have changed from the assumption that everything valuable must therefore be gone. Sometimes a changed situation still contains possibilities that would still be meaningful to me, while other times it doesn't. I've found that it helps me to narrow my focus to what options actually exist in the present, rather than focus on what's already been lost.

It's something that I associate with my experience learning to navigate content creation. Even though I was unsure of whether or not I wanted to do it for years, I didn't give it a chance for quite a long time.

By the time I did and discovered I enjoyed it, the landscape had changed dramatically. With the proliferation of AI-generated content, I found it much harder to reach an audience and make that kind of creative work sustainable.

There's a type of comedy content I like to make, and post, anonymously, to make people laugh and smile and hopefully brighten their day a bit. A typical video that lasted around 20 minutes historically took me somewhere around 100 to 150 hours of work, given I did everything myself.

I really enjoyed the process and the impact I had on the small audience I built. But, I eventually had to come to terms with this type of content and creative artistic work no longer being sustainable due to the audiences for that sort of content becoming greatly diffuse as a result of the proliferation of AI content on YouTube and other social video sharing platforms.

Creators in that specific niche with previously established large audiences were afforded more of an ability to reach people that I was not. Starting years earlier would've given me a much better chance to establish a substantial audience before those changes made that kind of content creation so much harder to sustain.

It's a bit ironic because, one of the main reasons I didn't pursue content creation earlier concerns that it was already too late to create the sort of content I wanted, and to reach a meaningful audience with it. But the opportunity hadn't disappeared yet.

I just didn't trust that it was still possible at the time. The lack of willingness to tolerate the uncertainty that came with that level of trust is what actually caused me to actually lose that opportunity years later.

I still make these sorts of videos as creative passion projects, although changes in the online landscape mean that pursuing that particular kind of work as a career no longer feels realistic for me.

More broadly, though, I also try to distinguish between making the best decision I can in the present and assuming that the same decision has to define every possible future. I recognize that my understanding and ability to factor in variables are both inherently limited, so I try my best to handle decisions probabilistically, while accounting for expected variance and errors on my part, to the best of my ability. I don't ever know what's going to happen, but I can try to make sense of what seem like the most likely outcomes, while also accounting for my own limitations as well as I can.

Circumstances, information, people, and relationships can change. I think it's understandable to make a completely reasonable choice based on available information, and then update that choice as later information provides me with a better capacity to advocate for what I believe is best for me.

I do want to be clear, though, that there are plenty of situations where I can feel trapped by earlier internal or external commitments. Sometimes doing something other than what I initially communicated can feel like a betrayal of myself or others. But I've found that can leave me feeling unnecessarily suffocated by my own expectations; it's okay for me to change my mind.

It's common for me to tell a friend I'll do an activity, like go for a run, and then feel really bad if I later decide not to go because I told someone something that didn't end up becoming true. That can really stress me out.

I think I'm better at applying the framework I described to bigger situations and decisions than to small interpersonal ones, probably because when another person is involved I worry more about my potential impact on them, even when it's realistically negligible. Even with bigger decisions, though, I'm still imperfect and can have a hard time backing out of something I intended to do, especially if I've already communicated it to someone.

Though I have gotten better at pushing myself in some situations, even when it's uncomfortable.

One instance actually comes to mind. Around a year and a half ago, I was cast for an acting role as a character. I was told that the role would be at an event with Bill Nye the Science Guy.

So, naturally, I was like, heck yeah :D

About a day or two before the production, I learned that it wasn't actually Bill Nye; it would be a Bill Nye impersonator.

My motivation to attend the production plummeted, especially because it was a long commute, extremely early in the morning, and a type of production that I generally would've felt uncomfortable in. I was just in it for the Nye lol.

I also started to feel a bit sick and was concerned about the implications of that.

I ended up cancelling shortly before the shoot once I better understood what it actually was and saw how I was feeling physically by the time the shoot got close.

It was something I stressed out about since I didn't want to feel like I was doing something wrong to the casting director, but I ultimately advocated for myself and cancelled over email. It's something I am glad I did and a bit proud of myself for.

How I think about delay

I've learned that postponing a decision can sometimes alter the architecture of my choices down the road. It can happen in ways that can change the difficulty of some options and in ways that can shut out other options altogether. Sometimes it's a direct function of waiting, or sometimes it's due to an unrelated event that occurred naturally due to the passage of time. Over the years, I've found that I started gravitating more towards acting before things get harder, like when I was in school I would front-load my assignments a lot, often doing assignments 1-2 months before they were do, if it were possible at all. My environment made it easier at the time, to do them well and feel less stressed while tackling them, than if I waited until last minute. I had more flexibility in how I could approach the assignments since I had so much time, and it overall improved my quality of life a lot.

I've learned not to think of inaction as completely neutral in general, since delay-based inaction itself is a choice that results in a diferent outcome set, in many cases, than if I'd taken action at a different point. It's like that classic experience most people have of struggling to finish a paper the night before it's due.

At the end of the day, delay, along with many other mechanisms, can affect which choices remain in front of me, and the actual characteristics of those choices. That matters to me because I've found I can sometimes freeze when faced with a choice that feels dificult, which itself can change which options I'm actually choosing between later on.

I didn't really connect it at the time, but it's something that even made a difference in my own weight loss journey. I struggled a lot with my weight and health when I was younger. I grew up morbidly obese and lost over 130 pounds. At the time, I often felt hopeless. The longer I put off taking that first scary step toward making a change, the harder things became.

Being very obese, I ate and lived in a way that tended to make my weight go up over time, rather than remain stable. The shape of the choice that I faced changed the longer I waited. My health worsened and the amount of work I had to do ballooned.

My delay in deciding to lose weight had a tangible impact on me. But at the time, I didn't even realize I was postponing a decision, or that I was making a choice at all. I just subconsciously assumed I wasn't ready or able to pursue making a change to my life circumstances, so didn't entertain it as much as I should have until so much time had passed that I'd gained an absurd amount of weight and made things much harder for myself than they had to be. At any point during that delay, if I acted sooner, even after some damage had accrued and the shape of what I faced changed, the end-path would have been far easier. It's easier to lose 120 pounds than 130 pounds, and easier still to lose 100.

I didn't seriously entertain losing weight for so long, implicitly delaying without even realizing that's what I was doing. Eventually, years later, looking back, I realized that making a difficult choice was less about comparing my current circumstances with what they used to be and more about what I could still build from where I was. What mattered was choosing among the options I still had. And I might as well go down the better of the remaining paths. Though I can still find myself affected by loss aversion at times. Even when I understand the idea intellectually, it can be difficult to motivate myself to pursue a good path after I've already closed off one or more paths that might have been better. I've gotten better at this over the years, but realizing that I'm in a less-than-ideal situation can still be a pretty significant motivational hit.

A mistake that just kept getting worse

So, when I was in high school, I used to do this thing with one of my friends where we would occasionally race each other. But the thing is that racing normally was very physically tiring.

So we came up with a solution.

We decided to conduct our races solely while running backwards. It was a lot less physically demanding, weirdly enough, since we weren't really limited by how hard our muscles were working, but by our very questionable coordination and balance.

I remember thinking, "What's the worst that could happen?"

Unfortunately, that was the cue for the worst to happen.

One day we were racing backward, on a day that just so happened to be about 1 week after my first relationship had ended.

That day, we were racing backwards over cement in the plaza outside of high school. While running backwards, towards the end of the race, I noticed something. Out of the corner of my eye, to my right, I saw my very recent ex, who had been sitting very close to another guy.

So I remember thinking, "Okay, be normal."

I immediately tripped and fell.

Embarrassed, I tried to get up as quickly as I could, being unable to process how bad I was at doing the one thing I set my mind to in that moment. I wasn't hurt or anything, but quickly tried pushing off the ground to stand back up.

The thing is that my mind was so preoccupied by the embarrassment that I didn't really pay attention to how I was pushing off the ground. I pressed down with the back of my wrist, with my entire body weight, rather than a flat hand.

I fractured my wrist. It was just sorta hanging there.

I tried to get help and walked to the school, which was closed since it was after school.

I encountered someone, someone confident. They told me to go somewhere to find someone who could help me.

I did.

When I found that person, they confidently told me to go elsewhere to find someone who could help me.

I did.

Then, the same happened again.

That cycle repeated for nearly 2 hours, until I finally found someone who confidently proclaimed they could help me.

They then proceeded to wrap my arm in a trash bag in hopes of making the my-wrist-just-hanging-there thing less hang-y.

I am sometimes very bad at things. So much so that it creates a cascade of aftereffects that comedically keep getting worse.

Exploring and experimenting

I learned through content creation that I don't need all the answers before exploring something, and every outcome can teach me something valuable. For years, I kept feeling drawn to making videos, but I'd repeatedly talk myself out of it. I didn't know whether I'd actually enjoy it, whether I'd be any good at it, or whether it was sustainable for me.

A while back, I finally advocated for myself and decided to find out. I started making anonymous YouTube videos under a pseudonym, giving myself the freedom to explore and actually try the thing I felt innately drawn toward for quite some time. It worked out far better than I could've imagined. The creative process was extremely natural to me. I discovered something I genuinely loved doing, along with opportunities and parts of myself I couldn't have anticipated at the time. Feeling anxious, inhibited, and uncertain for so long beforehand was greatly misaligned to the reality of the situation in retrospect.

The experience helped me realize that some problems become much easier once I actually start. I gained experience, developed skills, and found solutions I couldn't have imagined beforehand. The version of myself who has spent time exploring something isn't necessarily facing the same obstacles as the version who was initially afraid to begin. It's why challenges and difficulties often seem so much bigger and impossible beforehand than they actually will be in practice. Oftentimes, they're dramatically more manageable than they seemed beforehand, especially because experience provides me with tools and information I didn't have before trying.

Learning to act without certainty

The future is inherently uncertain, and I've had to learn that waiting until I feel completely certain can leave me stuck. For me, minimizing regret usually means making the best decision I can with the information I actually have while accepting that I can't eliminate every unknown.

That's been especially important when I've had to reconsider paths I'd already invested in. Sometimes I have to be honest with myself about whether something still feels right for me, even when changing direction is uncertain and uncomfortable.

I learned that during my first experience in graduate school. Education had once felt so far out of reach that I couldn't have imagined myself getting that far when I was younger. But once I had, I'd gotten to the point where I intended to continue on to a PhD and become a professor. At that point in my life, it seemed like the natural direction to keep moving in. After actually experiencing academia from that side, though, I gradually realized that it wasn't the life I wanted.

The difficult part was that recognizing this didn't immediately make changing course easy. I wasn't certain what the alternative would look like, and leaving a familiar path meant accepting considerably more uncertainty. So I postponed dealing with it for a long time. I spent a long time resisting fully admitting to myself that the future I'd been pursuing no longer felt right. Then, even after I finally accepted that internally, I spent another long stretch putting off the conversation with my advisor that would allow me to actually start making different choices.

Those delays compounded. Because I continued organizing my life around a future I'd already begun to realize wasn't right for me, I made choices that made that period more stressful and less fulfilling than it needed to be.

Eventually, I changed direction. The path I chose was much less conventional and came with far more unknowns, but I'm glad I gave myself the chance to find out what a different life could look like.

I do sometimes wish I'd done it sooner. There were parts of that period I would've experienced differently if I'd been willing to act on what I was learning about myself earlier. I would've had more room for friendships, social experiences, and time with people I cared about, including moments I chose to miss and still remember wishing I'd been there for.

That experience taught me that changing my mind after learning something new isn't a failure. Sometimes new experience gives me a clearer understanding of what actually fits me, and I think it's healthy to let that new information affect my choices.

One thing that helped me was realizing that I didn't need to feel completely ready before making a difficult choice. Whatever happened afterward, I'd still have myself.

I'd still be there to advocate for my own interests, respond to unexpected challenges, and navigate setbacks.

Remembering that I can respond and adapt afterward helps me evaluate difficult choices more realistically, rather than treating every uncertainty as something I need to resolve in advance. Though I can still find myself paralyzed by anxiety and uncertainty pretty easily. Remembering this framework helps, but there are still plenty of situations where I find myself stuck, unsure of what to do, and overwhelmed by uncertainty.

Starting a new journey

When I think about regret, this quote often comes to mind:

“Starting a new journey may not be so hard, or maybe it has already begun. There are many worlds, but they share the same sky.”

It captures the idea that I never know where I am in the story of my life. Sometimes taking a certain path feels like a new journey. And, in a sense, it is. But it’s also a continuation of whatever journey I've already been on, since my past is what allowed me to get to the point where I encounter a fork in the road.

It's easy to look back at the course my life took and retroactively explain how decision A led to opportunity B which led to challenge C and caused me to pursue option E over option D. But the actual real-world path I took was a lot clunkier and more uncertain than it might look from the outside.

I gained a ton of weight when I was younger to cope with hardship and because of what was normalized around me. That eventually led me to a position where losing a lot of weight was an option when I was in high school. Which then led to friends in high school noticing my weight loss and asking me for help. Which led to me pseudo-personal training my friends at 15. Which led to me going to college for exercise science. Which led to me choosing the only in-state school with that as an option. Which led to me commuting to campus daily 2-3 hours each way through a mix of walking and multiple busses. Which led to me being on a bus at the same time as a stranger. Which led to that stranger speaking to me and seeing me from time to time. Which led to us becoming friends. Which led to years of memories, experiences, and adventures.

It's so easy to retroactively frame that story in a way that doesn't acknowledge how many specific things over many years had to line up for the butterfly effect to cause ripples in a way that would have major implications for my life. I had no way of knowing that me choosing to lose weight would lead to one of my closest friendships, so many steps removed from the actual decision to lose weight.

A choice I'm glad I made

I remember trying to figure out if I should go to graduate school a second time. It was objectively a decision that would make my life far more difficult, in many ways, for several years. But, that difficulty was temporary, and in exchange, it allowed me to access a version of my life I figured would make me far happier.

In the end, I made the right call. Having lived the version of my life where I did actually take that chance, I now know that the other road would have led to far more regret. I sometimes get stressed out when thinking about how close I was to deciding to not go to grad school again. It's almost surreal to think about.

Handling hard choices this way has really helped me a lot over the years. Sure, I haven't always made the right decision, and do have plenty of regret as a result. But the times where making a hard choice really did pan out stand out to me as having been worth it in the story of my life.

Ultimately, regret is something that's unavoidable for most people as they live their life. But, all the choices that don't lead to regret can help balance out the ones that do.