my skills include reading an entire page of an academic text without absorbing a single word
that mentally ill feel when u have a bad weekend which leads into a bad week and then another bad weekend and then all of a sudden it’s Sunday at 1pm and ur like…wait have I been like this for a month?
There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.
— Gautama Buddha (via purplebuddhaproject)
when i was 12 i babysat this girl for a few years and she would come to me and show me her art, drag me by my wrists and point at the pieces she’d made during the week. and she’d be like “do the voice” and i’d put on a sports-announcer olympics-style voice and be like “such form! this level of coloring! why i haven’t seen such perfection in crayola in a long time. and what is this? why jeff, now this is a true risk… it seems she’s made … a monochrome pink canvas…. i haven’t seen this attempted since winter 1932… and i gotta say, jeff, it’s absolutely splendid” and she’d fall back giggling. at the end of every night she’d check with me: “did you really like it?” and i’d say yes and talk about something i noticed and tucked her in.
she was just accepted into 3 major art schools. she wrote me a letter. inside was a picture from when she was younger. monochrome pink.
“thank you,” it said, “to somebody who saw the best in me.”
I just cried.
THIS IS THE CUTEST THING EVER
I had just moved into a new place, and while it was a decent area, a couple of my neighbors were a little sketchy. This included a guy whose unit was just off the parking lot, and whose porch was littered with miscellaneous junk like old furniture, dirty rugs, etc. While moving in, I had noticed several people coming to and leaving from that unit, all of different races but all looking equally shady. Finally, my friend who was helping me move had come back with food that evening and told me he noticed a guy in a hoodie sitting on the curb outside of that unit, just lurking. He would get up occasionally, knock on the door, and peer in through the windows. When there was no answer, he would just sit back on the curb and wait awhile longer before trying again, but he wouldn’t leave. After hearing that and comparing it to the way the several different visitors looked, I determined that unit was more than likely a drug house. I lived only a few doors down from him so this was really unsettling.
Of course no one wants drug activity happening near their home, but I especially didn’t since the parking lot did not have a secure entrance and my assigned spot was right near this unit, which made me fear walking to my car at night. But I didn’t want to be THAT neighbor that calls management or the cops over reasonable speculation. So instead, I decided to change my wifi router name to “FBI Surveillance Van #2”. Almost immediately the visitors stopped coming by and even normal dwelling noise stopped coming from that unit. It was as if no one even lived there anymore.
TL;DR - guy was selling drugs out of his home near me. Instead of calling the cops, I made him think the FBI was watching his house.
