Quotes

So I stumbled across this quote by Matt Gemmell recently and it made me stop mid-sip of my overpriced oat milk latte and go, “YES. THIS. FINALLY.” Here it is:

“It’s OK to cut out negative people from your life. Everyone has a right to their opinion, but people don’t have a free pass to be heard by you, particularly if their manner of expression is consistently unpleasant or unproductive.”

I’m not saying I got it tattooed across my chest in Comic Sans, but I did scribble it on a Post-it and slap it on my fridge next to a magnet shaped like a screaming possum. Because let’s be real: some people are walking thunderclouds who never bring snacks or decent conversation to the party. Okay, onto the rant!

Opinions Are Not VIP Tickets

You know that person in your life (or maybe just on your Facebook feed) who thinks “just saying what everyone’s thinking” is an excuse to be a relentless buzzkill or an aggressively loud conspiracy theorist? Yeah. Them. They love to scream “FREE SPEECH!” like it’s a golden ticket to the Chocolate Factory of your attention span.

But here’s the thing—and it’s a big one, like family-reunion-potato-salad big: they have the right to speak, sure. But you also have the glorious, soul-saving, peace-restoring right to not listen. Freedom of speech doesn’t come with a built-in megaphone that points directly at your face 24/7. It’s not some magical force that requires you to sit politely while someone insults your intelligence, identity, or basic sense of decency.

Cutting the Cord (Emotionally, Not Like… the Cable. Unless You Want To.)

There’s a weird guilt that comes with cutting people off, especially if you were raised with that whole “be nice no matter what” kind of vibe. But sometimes? Being “nice” to toxic people just gives them a comfy seat on the couch of your life, where they can kick off their muddy boots and spread negativity like glitter at a toddler’s birthday party. And glitter, as we all know, never leaves.

So let’s just say it out loud: You don’t have to keep someone in your life just because you’ve known them since high school or they’re your second cousin or they once lent you a lawn chair in 2009. If someone constantly makes you feel like trash wrapped in tinfoil, you are not obligated to keep giving them access to your emotional bandwidth.

Especially Now

Have you noticed how everyone suddenly has a podcast or a TikTok where they’re just… confidently wrong? Like, proudly peddling conspiracy theories they found in a Reddit thread written by a guy whose profile picture is a lizard smoking a cigar?

There’s a lot of noise out there right now. Political bile. Unfounded rage. Deep-fried misinformation. People using “opinion” as a shield for racism, bigotry, and just plain being a jerk. And if you’re anything like me, it starts to feel like walking through a crowded room where everyone’s yelling into a megaphone made of static.

You don’t owe your mental health to every loudmouth with a hot take. You are not a public service announcement. You are not a debate moderator. You are not legally required to “hear both sides” when one side is spouting hatred wrapped in the American flag and the other side is just trying to, you know, exist.

My New Mantra: Block, Mute, Repeat

Let’s normalize saying “No thanks” to garbage energy. Let’s normalize muting people who drain us. Let’s normalize unfollowing the guy who thinks the moon landing was faked and that oat milk is a government mind-control serum (okay, I might listen to that one just for the entertainment value).

Cutting someone out doesn’t make you cruel. It makes you the bouncer at the club of your own sanity.

So yeah…

There’s a weird kind of freedom in reminding yourself that your attention is a privilege, not a guarantee. You can walk away from people who turn every conversation into a rage-fueled monologue. You can reclaim your headspace. You can choose joy, quiet, curiosity, love, literally anything other than someone else’s performative rage.

So here’s to turning down the volume, unfollowing without guilt, and leaving toxic folks on “read” forever. Your peace of mind deserves a little VIP treatment.

P.S. If someone’s ever told you “you’re too sensitive” just for asking to be treated with basic respect… they’re the problem, not you.

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” – Jim Rohn

Let me tell you a story.

A few years ago, I found myself staring at the blinking cursor on a half-finished novel. Again. Same cursor, same blinking, same doubt. It wasn’t just a writing rut—I was in a full-blown life rut. You know the kind: every day starts to feel like a photocopy of the last. Wake up, scroll on my phone longer than I should, eat the same breakfast (oatmeal with just enough cinnamon to pretend it’s interesting), and convince myself that tomorrow I’d finally get my act together.

Except tomorrow kept standing me up.

And then one morning, while mindlessly scrolling through a rabbit hole of “motivational” quotes—because that’s what you do when you don’t want to actually do anything—I came across this Jim Rohn quote: “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.”

Now normally, I roll my eyes at stuff like that. Too tidy. Too Pinterest. But that one? That one smacked me in the face like a cold wind through a broken window. Because it called me out. No cosmic lottery was coming to save me. No magical inspiration fairy was going to whisper the ending of my novel into my ear while I watched YouTube. I had to change something.

That Nagging Need for Comfort

Here’s the thing: change is awful. At least at first.

Comfort zones are like old sweatpants—fraying, stained, maybe a little smelly, but so familiar. I was clinging to habits that made me feel temporarily safe but were slowly smothering my long-term happiness. I told myself I was “waiting for the right time.” Spoiler alert: the right time is just code for “never.”

But I started small.

I got up thirty minutes earlier. Not to be one of those annoying “5AM Miracle Morning” people, but just to carve out time to write before the world could interrupt. I swapped doomscrolling for journaling. I even said “yes” to a Zumba class, which was both terrifying and weirdly fun. (Still can’t shimmy properly, but hey, points for effort.)

The Sneaky Power of Small Shifts

Something interesting happened once I started changing tiny things: I began to trust myself again.

When you keep breaking promises to yourself—like I’ll start the novel next week or I’ll finally leave that toxic job after the holidays—your self-confidence quietly erodes. You stop believing your own voice.

But when I stuck to a single promise, even something as basic as “I will write 200 words today,” I felt a tiny flicker of pride. I wasn’t waiting for inspiration. I was showing up for myself.

Those flickers grew. One small change led to another. It was less about overhauling my life and more about tweaking the dials. I didn’t need to burn everything down—I just needed to stop sleepwalking through it.

What This Quote Actually Means (To Me)

Jim Rohn’s quote isn’t telling us to hustle harder or become productivity cyborgs. It’s a wake-up call. It’s a reminder that hoping things will improve is not the same as choosing to improve them.

It’s not about chasing some glamorous ideal. For me, it was about reclaiming a little agency. About saying: Okay, I may not control everything, but I can control something.

If You’re Still Stuck…

If you’re reading this and thinking, Yeah, but I don’t even know where to start, I get it. Truly. That space between wanting to change and knowing how is foggy and frustrating.

Start messy. Start unsure. Start with something you’ve already been thinking about for way too long. Rearrange your furniture. Unfollow someone who drains your energy. Sign up for that class that scares you a little.

Just don’t sit there waiting for your life to magically glow up on its own. That’s not how it works. Or if it is, I’ve never seen the memo.

The part where I get all reflective…

When I think about that version of myself who felt stuck and tired and weirdly hollow, I don’t feel shame anymore. I feel gratitude. Because he finally did something. Not huge. Not dramatic. Just something.

And that’s when life started to feel better—not by chance, but by change.

I was standing in line for coffee, sweating like I’d just sprinted through a marathon made entirely of awkward social encounters. Nothing dramatic had happened. No screaming toddlers. No spilled oat milk. Just me, alone with my brain, convinced I’d somehow messed up the simple act of ordering a latte.

“Did I say it too weird? Did the barista think I was rude? What if I said my name too softly and now they’re going to call it wrong and then I’ll just stand there like a total idiot while everyone stares…”

If that sounds familiar, congratulations—you might also be playing Seth Godin’s anxiety game: “experiencing failure over and over again in advance.”

And wow, that quote hit me like a ton of emotional bricks wrapped in passive-aggressive to-do lists.

Living in the “What Ifs”

The thing about anxiety is that it’s sneaky. It wears different outfits depending on the day. Sometimes it’s dressed as perfectionism, whispering that if I just do everything flawlessly, I’ll be safe. Other times it’s a full-blown doomsday prophet in my brain, predicting terrible outcomes to things that haven’t even happened yet—and probably never will.

Like, I’ll be about to hit “send” on an email and suddenly, my brain’s like:
“You’ve definitely used the wrong tone and now they’ll hate you and you’ll be blacklisted from polite society and also probably die alone.”

Cool. Thanks, brain.

It’s wild how vivid the mind gets when it’s scared. It paints entire failure montages—job interviews where I say something stupid, parties where no one talks to me, dentist appointments where I somehow offend the hygienist and she never flosses me again out of spite.

I’m not just worrying. I’m mentally rehearsing disasters like a Broadway understudy for disaster scenarios that don’t exist.

Fear Without a Trigger

What’s especially frustrating is that nothing needs to happen for anxiety to show up. It doesn’t need a cue. There’s no “and now presenting: the stressful event!” It can kick in while folding laundry, checking the fridge for the fifth time, or walking through Target trying to remember what I came for (usually deodorant, always forgotten).

And then comes the guilt loop:
Why are you anxious?
You have nothing to be anxious about.
Other people have it worse.
Get it together.

Which, by the way, never helps.

Because anxiety isn’t always logical. It’s not always triggered by trauma or current stress. Sometimes it just is. And that’s okay. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not something broken in you. It’s just your brain trying to protect you by showing you the worst-case scenario on repeat, like a glitchy PowerPoint.

The Mic Drop of the Seth Godin Quote

When I first heard Seth Godin’s line—“Anxiety is experiencing failure over and over again in advance”—I felt like someone had cracked open my head, peeked inside, and nailed it in one sentence.

It reframed things for me. Made me pause. Made me realize that I was running disaster drills for fires that weren’t even smoldering.

What if I just… didn’t?

Not in a flippant, “just stop being anxious!” way (if only), but in a small, curious way. What if I noticed the fear spiral before it swallowed me and said, “Oh hey. I see you. You think we’re going to fail. That’s sweet. But maybe let’s wait and see?”

Sometimes I even write down my worst-case scenario and then, right below it, the most realistic one. And below that, the best possible outcome. It’s weirdly grounding.

A Tiny Bit of Peace

Here’s what I’ve learned—and I’m saying this both to you and to future-me who will 100% need to reread this:

Anxiety is trying to keep us safe. It means well. But it’s also not a prophet. It’s not fate. It’s just a loud narrator with terrible timing and a flair for melodrama.

You don’t have to rehearse failure to protect yourself.
You can just show up.
You can let life surprise you.
And maybe, just maybe, you can order your latte without mentally planning your exile from society.

(A Personal Rant About Living Someone Else’s Life)

I was twenty-three the first time someone told me I was “wasting my potential.” The accusation came wrapped in concern, like a sad little gift box from someone who just couldn’t believe I’d choose something as impractical as writing for a living. I remember the way their eyebrows crinkled, like they were physically pained by my decision to not go to grad school, not take the corporate job, not follow the plan. Their plan.

And honestly? For a hot minute, I believed them.

When the Blueprint Isn’t Yours

There’s something weirdly seductive about living by someone else’s script. Like, it comes pre-loaded with steps. Go here. Study that. Date someone respectable. Get a salary with benefits. Schedule joy for weekends and vacations, if there’s time. The world practically hands you this cookie-cutter life and dares you to color outside the lines.

But here’s the thing: sometimes those lines? They choke you.

When I first heard the Steve Jobs quote — “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” — I think I physically exhaled. Like I’d been holding my breath for years and suddenly realized I didn’t have to keep performing in someone else’s costume.

We all come into this world with clocks ticking quietly inside us. Not in a morbid way, just… true. Limited hours. And how many of those hours do we spend doing things because we think we should? Because we’re afraid of disappointing the people who mean well? Because risk is scary and validation is addicting?

The Great Identity Costume Party

For a long time, I lived like a shadow version of myself. I wore outfits I didn’t like. Laughed at jokes I didn’t find funny. Went to events where I felt like a cardboard cutout of a human. I even tried out a “business casual” phase — blazers, loafers, corporate jargon (Let’s circle back after we’ve aligned our priorities and touch base on the low-hanging fruit to ensure we’re leveraging our synergies moving forward.)

I kept trying to stuff myself into molds that weren’t shaped like me. Like putting on shoes two sizes too small and wondering why I couldn’t dance.

Living someone else’s life, even a polished, successful-looking one, is exhausting. And the weird part? You can get really good at it. Scarily good. Like Oscar-level performance good.

But eventually, something breaks. For me, it was a Tuesday night and a cheap bottle of red wine. I sat at my kitchen table, looking at a spreadsheet I had no interest in finishing, and just thought: What am I doing? This isn’t a life. This is a rental.

So I quit. I left the job, the apartment, the whole dang storyline. And yes, I panicked. I cried into my cereal. I googled “how to know if you’ve ruined your life.” (Spoiler: you haven’t.)

Making Peace with the Messy, Glorious Unknown

When I started freelancing and writing fiction full-time, and leaning into the weird, messy, artsy version of myself, I didn’t magically become a zillionaire. But I did start waking up not dreading the day ahead. I stopped editing myself in conversations. I wrote things that made me feel something.

So yeah…

I don’t think we talk enough about how terrifying it is to stop living someone else’s life. It means admitting you don’t know where the road goes. It means possibly looking ridiculous. It means doing the scary brave thing and saying: “This is who I am. This is how I want to spend my limited, irreplaceable time.”

And you know what? That’s worth it.

So if no one has said it to you yet today: you’re allowed to choose a different path. You’re allowed to rip up the script. And if your version of success looks wildly different than what your family or peers expected — that’s not failure. That’s freedom.

Now go dance in your own shoes. Even if they squeak (mine squeak like bloody hell).

I still remember the first time I wore leopard-print pants in public.

It was a Wednesday. I had an iced latte in one hand, mild anxiety in the other, and exactly zero business walking into a coffee shop dressed like a disco ball had gotten frisky with a safari guide. But there I was—strutting (read: internally spiraling) across a sea of denim and neutrals, feeling both foolish and fully alive.

That, my friends, is what Marilyn Monroe was talking about.

“It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”

Let’s talk about that.

The Myth of Playing It Safe

For a good chunk of my life, I tried to blend in. I thought it was safer that way—less awkward, fewer questions, no raised eyebrows. If I could keep my head down, wear “sensible” shoes, and stick to polite opinions, maybe I could make it through life unnoticed and unscathed.

Spoiler: I was very bored. Worse, I was boring.

And here’s the kicker—I wasn’t even happy. I was just… beige. You know that feeling when you’re in a conversation and your brain goes, “Are we really talking about the weather again?” Yeah. That was my whole existence for a while.

But being “normal” is exhausting. It’s a full-time job with no benefits and a dress code that sucks the soul out of you.

The Power of the Ridiculous

There’s a kind of magic that happens when you stop trying to be digestible and start letting yourself be a little absurd. Whether it’s fashion, opinions, hobbies, or how you decorate your living room (hello, disco ball in the kitchen), leaning into the ridiculous is like giving yourself permission to actually be a person.

Not a carefully curated brand. Not an algorithm-friendly highlight reel. A human being, weirdness and all.

Some of the most delightful people I’ve ever met are gloriously ridiculous. One friend wears socks with avocados on them and swears by peanut butter on pizza. Another sings show tunes in public like we’re in a live-action musical. And I love them for it. Not because they’re “quirky” but because they’re alive in a way that people who cling to conformity often aren’t.

Fear of Cringe Is Killing Us

Okay, not literally, but stay with me.

We live in a time where being “cringe” is treated like a social death sentence. Express an unpopular opinion? Cringe. Post a vulnerable thought online? Double cringe. Try something new and flop? Oh no, eternal internet shame.

But guess what—ridiculousness is where growth lives. Creativity lives there. Joy lives there. All the most unforgettable stories I have (and probably you too) came from moments where I was slightly out of my depth, a little over-the-top, or laughing too hard to care how I looked.

Playing it safe won’t give you stories to tell. Being ridiculous will. (Plus I find the word ‘cringe’ so…..cringe!)

So What If They Think You’re Weird?

This is the part where I get a little soapbox-y, so buckle up.

People are going to judge you no matter what. You might as well give them a damn good show.

Wear that neon jacket. Take up pottery even if your first bowl looks like a tragic ashtray (like mine did). Start a blog with twelve readers (hi, Mom). Go salsa dancing even if you’ve got two left feet and one of them’s on fire. Just… do the thing. Whatever it is.

Because living loud, living honest, and yes—living ridiculous—is the only antidote I’ve found to the soul-numbing dullness of being “normal.”

So, yeah…

I’ve learned more about myself in moments of absurdity than I ever did in quiet compliance. So here’s where I land: If the choices are between being a little cringe or being completely forgettable, I’ll take cringe with a side of glitter, thanks.

Life’s too short to be beige.

Go be ridiculous. Marilyn would’ve approved.

P.S. I just got me some purple eyeglasses and I love them! My spouse says I’m cultivating my Dame Edna persona…perhaps I am.

Have you grabbed a copy of my latest book, The Golem’s Guardian? If not, you can grab your copy HERE