You Don’t Owe Anyone A Perfect Story.

Career change (nervous breakdown optional)

Feels like a Friday post. But you can on Saturday too if you want.

Either way, you want to chase the hat.

NGL leaving my job after was terrifying.

No backup plan and no health benefits. Just me, a spiked nervous system, a trashcan LinkedIn bio I abandoned circa 2017 with honours.

I spent the first two weeks crying, I did that. Then reorganizing my fridge, using a lot of Windex around the house, checking my email like a raccoon checking dumpster locks. Nothing came. And sigh.

No word from HR. But the world didn’t end. My old boss didn’t send an apology or even a passive-aggressive emoji. Just hot red radish silencio ad absurdum. For a while.

And then something weird happened.

I started sleeping again. My shoulders unclenched for the first time in six years. One day I laughed. Can you / I believe it? Like really laughed. And it was not a coping mechanism sliding into an entropic spat of sob sobs.

It turns out walking away from a place that gaslights you into thinking you were the problem can be the best career move you have ever made.

I’m still broke and scared and still always figuring it out. But at least now when I cry, it’s not because I’m being slowly turned into spirals of flesh-coloured chaff in the old pencil grinder gig 'conomy, know what I mean?

Anyways, freedom’s weird. I think I want to hesitatingly and forcefully recommend it.

Hopecore! 💓

🌸stay tune 📺 . .

sorry for upcoming long vent:

so my local situation has been pretty horrid since new presidential era lmao (i think same thing can be said to US situation as well) .. im still trying to find a good balance of my headspace to keep creating and what motivates me to keep going, and for now... i think what motivates me to want to create is to be where my followers (or those who enjoys my art) can stay sane or be reminded of what's still good in our normal, mundane days to strive for. I hope we can be together to strive for hope. so yea, i will try to keep illustrating, creating, experimenting! being a doomer wont do me or anyone moving forward, but I will do what i know best to keep the cog moving.. sorry to be hopecore it's my only weapon for now lol!

The performance review said you were “pleasant under pressure.” You thought about telling them it was acting. But why ruin a standing ovation?

most people

who are harassed at work

never file a complaint.

not because they don’t care but

because they’re scared it’ll make

everything worse.

Anxiety isn't drama...it's data.

Chiharu Shiota: Stairway (2012)

"There must be satisfaction gained in accurately naming the thing that torments you."

-Miriam Toews

Just finished Women Talking (both the book by Miriam Toews and the movie by Sarah Polley) and I honestly don’t know how to describe it without using all caps. It’s probably the most clear-eyed thing I’ve ever seen about what it actually feels like to live in the aftermath of harassment. If you’ve ever felt like you were losing your mind trying to name something everyone else was fine ignoring I really highly recommend this rare artwork to you all.

You did not deserve to be sexually harassed. This is true no matter what you wear, how you look, how much money you make, where you work, what you do, or anything else.

From the series "Civilizations", 1983 - by Vitaly Butyrin (1947 - 2020), Lithuanian

Being sexually harassed is less like you were running and tripped, and more like someone pushed you. Replaying everything you did or didn’t do doesn’t actually help you to prevent it from happening again.