Oprinen

“Focus on yourself instead. Go see a therapist and dig into your earliest memories, what makes you tick, what you want from your life, and what you expect from love. Dig in and figure out who you are. Keep a journal and write down your thoughts every morning and every night. Listen to music if that helps you to access your emotions more easily.

While you’re doing this, train your social energies on enriching your friendships. Think about what it would take to have closer friendships with people. Would you have to see each other more often for camaraderie and familiarity to build? Would you need to have lunch or dinner so you could sit across from each other and talk? What if you hosted a weekly poker game with the same people every week, women and men? What if you tried to go out to a movie with a friend once a month? Casual friendships grow into close friendships with repeated experience, so allow it to happen. Accumulate experience together. As you each open up, trust will build.”
― Heather Havrilesky, How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life

“You are a nice person, and you’re also full of anger. You’re a walking tangle of contradictions. That’s okay. Most of us are like that. Women, most of all. How could we not be? People want us to be sexy warriors who roll over and play dead on command. They want us to be flirty burlesque dancers in burkas, aggressive conquistadors with cookies in the oven, Dorothy Parker meets Dorothy Gale, Sandra Bernhard meets Sandra Dee, Kristen Stewart meets Martha Stewart.”
― Heather Havrilesky, How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life

“You’re unhappy and you feel like a failure. PERFECT! Use that sad/angry/disappointed energy. Channel it into what you know, deep down in your heart, you love.

Spend the next six months in a state of total obsession. Get up two hours earlier than usual and write before you go to work. Come home and exercise (not optional, sorry), then write for another hour. Read or watch the kind of comedy you love before bed. Don’t waste all your time socializing. Do a little socializing on weekends, but focus. Focus! Save your money. Research part-time work you could do for your company; use your slackness as a way to sell a new position where your boss would get your best from you every hour that you’re there. Pitch it as a win-win. Or pitch working from home half the time to cure your blahs and jack up your productivity. Then overproduce at work, but fit all of your work into a part-time schedule, and fill your prime working hours with writing/comedy. Almost any capable human with a not-that-taxing job can pull this off if they put their mind to it. If you’re a manager, investigate other roles or sell your boss on the fact that you’re managing via e-mail most of the time anyway.”
― Heather Havrilesky, How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life

“I knew you were in charge of me but my mind broke on its own.”
― Alice Notley, In the Pines