u/Every-Garlic6106

okay let's just put all the big books down for a second. emerson, the stoics, the buddhists, whoever. lovely. genuinely. but let's be honest with ourselves

freedom is earned through discipline. that's it. that's the post

you wanna break free into nature? cute. you still gotta afford the ticket, the time off, the not getting fired. nature is free, the road to it isn't

you wanna untangle yourself from whatever's strangling you a job, a city, a family, a version of yourself? you're gonna trade for it. always. there's a currency. sometimes money, sometimes years, sometimes social capital, sometimes just the quiet violence of saying no to people who expected a yes

so yeah, discipline. fine. i'll take it

but here's the part nobody wants to sit with what if the whole apparatus of discipline gets pulled out from under you? what if you're the athlete who did everything right, woke up early, ate the boring food, ran the drills, and then one morning there's just… no track. no race no one's clocking the time anymore

we like to think discipline is the lever and freedom is the door. but a lever needs something to push against. and disciplinary societies the whole scaffolding of show up, perform, get rewarded are being quietly purged as you read this. not with a bang. just a slow softening of the ground you were planning to push off from

so what's the move when the gym closes mid rep

i don't know yet. i'm asking because this is the catch 22 that keeps me awake at night

how do you set yourself free when the very thing that was supposed to free you is being taken apart in real time??

But my dry eyes won’t let me folks plus geniuanly I had a normal average day of life so nothing really to be sad abt in particular yet the urge is real

خالي مهندس ميكانيك و اليوم خطب مهندسة ميكانيك يمكن اكثر كومبو نادرر الله ييسرلهم بس لا يطلع ولدهم ميكانيكي

today I woke up at 11:29 AM because last night I was talking to the people who live inside my phone yes, the small flat people the ones behind the glass, they reply sometimes which is more than you can say for most people. and I made lunch food for the family and felt like dad you know, dad-dad, the decent kind the kind who knows where the spatula lives. Then I retreated to my territory after the serious talk about whatever serious talks are about, and my corner was huge, the hugest tiny corner that has ever cornered, and in that corner something stirred. an urge. for what? TO DRESS UP. So I dressed up and I looked in the mirror and there he was, what a handsome man, hair done what a handsome man, well dressed what a handsome man, smelling good what a handsome man, teeth brushed shining what a handome man, and the man in the mirror did not want me to leave, he was insistent he was clinging, and I had to say sorry man, you're taking too much of my time, and I left him there to figure his own life out

then I decided that today would have side quests. plural. I walked. I found an empty parking lot and sat there and considered that maybe, maybe, there is a 0.0000001% chance this was once a lake, an oasis, a backyard for a brachiosaurus who had a wife and worries, and we will never know, we will never know, and that is the deal we signed when we agreed to be here now and not then. I kept walking. the urge for the laptop arrived. so I entered a store not an ordinary store, a store where you trade the abstract social economic construct thing for a hot brown drink, and the representative of the other party (titled: barista) and I agreed on terms, and the trade was honored, and I received my coffee

I sat at a very round table. extremely round. suspiciously round, even. I opened the laptop of I and whispered the secret word into the invisible streams of deamons yes, deamons of the Why Fye, so i can unlock my unsupervised access to the internet, checked my outlook, and the people who live inside the laptop did not reply, they never do, they're not like the phone people, the laptop people are cold and busy and probably married

so I walked again. I spiraled out. I thought meta. I thought meta about thinking meta and somewhere in that spiral two cats appeared, real cats, with real fur, and I patted them and moved along because cats don't ask anything of you, which is the whole point of cats. Then I got tired. then I went home. plz tell me the man in the mirror is doing okay without me

فجاة اختي دقت باب غرفتي هي اكبر مني بسنتين ولا ثلاثة و طلبت مني شي و اخذته بس لاول مره اشعر انها اصغر مني؟ انها اختي الصغيرة؟ اني انا اكبر منها؟ رحت قعدت مع ابوي حسيت فجاة كاننا مو عيال بعض و كانه هو و انا صحاب و ند peer لبعضنا

و اخوي الصغير كانه شخص لا يعني لي شيء و كانه شخص اعرفه من مكان و مشبه عليه مو مؤلوف

و امي صرت اشوفها كانها اختي الكبيرة لا اكثر

الي صاير معي انفصال عن الواقع كردة فعل لشيء يقهر و مستفز صاير بحياتي على مدار السنة

one day I fought a battle. for too long. it was a tough battle. the kind where you forget what you're fighting for somewhere around the middle and you keep going anyway because stopping feels worse than continuing

but in the end? i waved proudly a flag

My new flag

A white one

i waved it so hard that my arms started to hurt. i was too tired then. sat on my knees. holding proudly my white flag. it felt better than ever (too cinematic a metaphor, i know. always been a fan of drama)

here's the thing nobody tells you about white flags they're not the end of the war. they're the end of the wrong war. the one you were never supposed to be in. such ones you walked into wearing someone else's armor and holding someone else's sword as if you are fighting for a hill someone else convinced you mattered

The white flag is the moment you remember you have a choice

always keep a folded white flag somewhere. In a drawer or in a pocket, even better in the back of your head

you don't have to use it. most days you won't but trust me on this one you need it more than it needs you

و من امي. ليتني مت سبعين مرة قبل لا اقرأ الرسائل

it doesn't exist. i can assure u, it just does not exist. ive been there. checked myself. i unfolded every corner of the room and looked behind the curtain and lifted up the rug and it wasn't there

i looked. i mean i really looked. i spent years building little altars to it in my chest. i waited for it in airports and in hospital hallways and at 3am with the ceiling fan spinning. i held my breath in case it was a thing that only arrives when ur not breathing. i was so good. i was so patient. i was the most patient human alive.

and i wanna tell u smth. i wanna tell u so badly that it's real. i would lie if it helped u. i would build u a little story and tuck it into ur pocket like a sandwich for the road. but it would melt by lunchtime and u would know.

here's what i found instead. the room is empty but the room is warm. somebody warmed it. somebody left the light on. nobody's coming back to claim it but the heat is still there. and that has to mean something, even if it doesn't mean what we wanted.

so no. it doesn't exist. and yes. somehow we're still here. and the kettle is still on. and the cat is still on the windowsill. and someone, somewhere, is still trying to send u a message thru a song they picked at random. and im starting to think maybe the whole point was the looking. maybe the looking is the thing that exists.

idk. i was just thinking. don't tell anyone i told u

tldr: doesnt exist.

"becoming" / aka finding your true self, navigating who you trully are.

is the whole game. like you don't arrive. you don't graduate from yourself and get a little diploma that says "congrats ur a finished person now." that's not a thing. you just keep unlocking lil rooms in the house of you. and every room has more doors. it's doors all the way down

i used to think being "whole" was a destination. like one day i'd wake up and go "ah yes i have collected all the i's. full set. complete pokedex of self." but no. the wholeness IS the unlocking. that warm feeling of "oh THERE i am" it doesn't come from finding the final you. it comes from finding ONE more you. and then another. forever. the "i" is not a treasure. it's a series of doors and you're the doorknob AND the hand AND the little squeak the hinge makes

and like. i'm 23 and i've cried in a parking lot. i've felt my chest cave in over things that don't even have names. i've been so happy i thought my ribs would unzip. i've built things and watched them die. i've watched things i didn't build come alive

and im so grateful. for the ups, sure the obvious ones, the wins. but also for the downs. for the bad weeks. for the silences. for the stupid arguments. for being lost and too deep in mud. because every one of those was just another door cracking open. another little me peeking through going "hi 👋 didn't know i was in here did u" and i didn't. and now i do. and that's the whole thing. that's the whole damn thing

i lived a life. messy and ungraduated. the pokedex incomplete. and i wouldn't trade a single down for a smoother ride. the squeak is the song

you reap the harvest you have sown

I need tracks that make you want to sprint through a brick wall at 3 AM, I'm specifically looking for hidden gems that streaming platform algorithms bury. Give me your most underground, or forgotten bangers plz. thank you!!

اليوم رسلت إيميل محترم و المفروض يوصلني رد قريبا يارب أترفق بالموضوع

طلعت أتمشى حصلت نفسي بمحل كانّه غابة بس ديكور حمامات و شريت ماتشا كوكونت كانت سيئة مو فهمان ليش البنات يحبوها بس طلع شكلي غني لوهلة او woke ما اعرف كاني ليبرالي حسيت اني

بعدين تمشيت شوي شخص طلب مني ولاعة قلت من عيوني أفديك بس ما معي ولاعة

مشيت اكثر حصلت أم تضرب ولدها قررت أتدخل بعدين قلت لنفسي لا

التراوما جزء من حياة اي إنسان و يحق لكل شخص ان يمر بظرف صعب ليتم صقل شخصيته بس يكبر ما يحق لي أتدخل و خرب تطور شخصية شخص

قاعد ابحث عن قطط لان مشتاق لقطوي القديم مات المرحوم بس الظاهر نايمين مو وقتهم يطلعوا الان او ان المكان الي أنا فيه القطاوة قرروا يهاجروا منه و يروحوا لحارة ثانية

جاري الان الاستماع لبضع من الأغاني الجديدة ان الأوان تجديد الذائقة الموسيقية الخاصة بي

كيف اصنع علاقات احترافية؟ بدون ما يطلع شكلي طمعان بالمصالح شي مؤسف مؤسف كل الي موقف بوجهي هي معضلة ان ما عندي نيتورك... طيب ماشي

ناقصني اكتئاب انا يكفيني ضيم الايام