barbiesdisciple.me

Author: Ondine

  • Start with Desire, not discipline.

    You aren’t inefficient, just running on dead battery.

    How many moments can you count, in a single day of your life, when you can confidently say: my mind is fully relaxed?

    When we’ve done absolutely everything we could to ensure we suffer a little less tomorrow, and we finally get in bed — why can’t we shut down the feeling that there’s still more to do?

    It’s sickening to realize how primed we are to optimize every second of our lives — scrolling on our phones, hoping to stumble across some better alternative we should have already been implementing. Then that little voice creeps up again: “You should have thought of that sooner, you fucking useless idiot.”

    And of course we ignore it, because this is normal now, right?

    Every day goes by. You can feel the life in you waning, thinning out. The life of your dreams becomes a stranger. We turn into machines of discipline, perpetually panicking about whether we’re pushing hard enough, and we stop being simple creatures of love and desire.

    Desire is not loud. It doesn’t scream productivity metrics at you. It’s the small clench in your gut when you think about the life you actually want — before you start listing all the reasons you can’t have it.

    I implore you to worship Desire again. It is the only real antithesis to the slow, quiet death of becoming a heartless machine.

    You might say: The last time I felt that strongly about life was probably when I was a kid — and only the sky knows who I even was back then.

    Lucky for you, your desire never left your system. It has been there the whole time, buried under fear, restlessness, resentment, and the constant demand to be better, faster, more optimized. And how beautiful is it that this thing — this Desire — is the only thing that is entirely yours.

    Recently, I took a decisive step to fight the ongoing brain fog and anxiety caused by overexposure to information: I limited my access to my goddamn phone. I stopped purchasing monthly 4G.

    Because we never needed this much.

    We never needed to scramble and flit around like this. All we ever needed were our hands, our senses, our presence. Don’t you remember?

    And that has to be the best decision I’ve made in five years. I don’t need much at all — just my hands and my imagination. That’s more than enough.

    I choose to move through my day with my senses again. Who said I need Google Maps at all times when I can get lost and let my heart memorize the streets? Who said I need to watch another tutorial or browse examples of “successful experimentation” when I can just make a mess at home and learn by doing?

    When did we decide that every step must be optimized before it’s taken?Most of our problems are invented in advance. So why should I be scared of opting out? And if Desire is ever going to return to the surface, fear has to be shown the door. Shooed away.

    Confront it, feel it, then fear will leave you for good.

    If that warm, tingling feeling creeps into your stomach, perfect. Underneath it all is simply love. It’s crazy how far we wandered, only to get deeply lost. But it’s okay. Getting back doesn’t require reinventing yourself. It only requires shedding the defense.

    You don’t need to become disciplined before you can love this life.

    Now when Desire sets in, I urge you to let it guide your steps, even when it feels uncomfortable. It may feel like your enemy at first — that’s understandable. This system has been shouting at us for years that desire is reckless, indulgent, dangerous.

    Be brave with it. Be so fucking brave. Or go back to that life you swear you hate so much and never leave it.

    When that zeal — that raw, almost embarrassing zest for life you thought you lost — starts rising again, you’ll find yourself moving in ways that surprise you. The actions won’t feel forced or strained. You won’t need to whip yourself into motion. You’ll think, where the hell is all this ease coming from?

    And then discipline follows.

    Discipline is nothing but the byproduct of following Desire long enough.

    When you force discipline first, you shame yourself into motion. You rely on fear of consequences. That kind of discipline isn’t sustainable — it requires constant maintenance and constant self-attack.

    But think about a time you were obsessed with something — designing, writing at 2am, learning what you actually cared about, even loving someone. Did you need discipline to stay up late? No. You didn’t feel disciplined. You felt pulled.

    That pull is Desire.

    When the pull is strong enough, discipline shows up — but it doesn’t feel like discipline. It’s just there, quietly, and it doesn’t plan on leaving. You show up for what matters because not showing up feels wrong. It’s seamless.

    And Desire isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s quiet. Inconvenient. Unglamorous. But if you follow it long enough, you begin organizing your life around what matters — and from the outside, that organization looks exactly like discipline.

    Early mornings. Boundaries. Saying no. Practicing daily.

    Not punishment. Structure in service of what you love.

    It feels strange, I know. Almost wrong. But remember: this is not an invitation to crawl back into the cage you’ve always known. That resistance you feel is only the echo of an old survival system, trying to stay in control.

    Once you recognize it for what it is, it can’t trap you anymore.

  • Just Get Off Pinterest. Create from void.

    To Designers and Artists.

    Let’s be blunt: lock the fuck in. You have no choice if you actually want to be a designer who creates something real. Why? Because we’ve somehow collectively decided that before we even trust our own opinion on what looks right, we run to social media to figure it out for us. We go on Pinterest or Instagram and recreate what’s already been validated, what’s already got the applause. And honestly, it’s embarrassing. We’re acting like human versions of generative AI—taking the aesthetics that already exist, stripping away any real nuance or soul, and calling it creativity.

    If you can’t sit with your own ideas, if you’re constantly jumping from one borrowed trend to the next, then you’re not designing. You’re just remixing someone else’s work and slapping your name on it. Even AI can do that, and you know it. This should alarm you. If you’re dressing up as a designer because it seems cool but you’re not doing the real work—if you’re not willing to let ideas simmer, to give them meaning and intent—then what are you really creating? Nothing that’s truly yours. And that’s the wake-up call. Because the world doesn’t need more empty-ass designs with no story. It needs your real voice.

    So let yourself fall flat on your face. Why are we so scared of that? What’s going to happen if you fail? Maybe ten seconds of embarrassment, max. And if you’re that terrified of those ten seconds, what real thing are you ever going to achieve? Are you not more afraid of living your life hiding behind stripped-down aesthetics that mean nothing?

    Fall flat on your face. Fail miserably. At least then it’s your own voice leading you, and that’s not failure—it’s growth. It might feel weird, but in the grand scheme of things, it dissolves into pride.

    And hey, once you know this, you can’t just go back to scrolling and pretending you don’t. If you read this and still run back to social media to let it decide things for you, shame on you.

    Peace.

  • Love, Dangerously

    for the one who makes loving easy.

    I have always known too soon — not in a reckless way, but in the way stories know where they’re going before the characters do.

    When we danced at prom, it wasn’t dramatic. It was quieter than that. A recognition that settled into my body without asking permission. Her hand steady. Her presence gentle, careful, attuned. Something in me softened immediately, like my body recognized home before my mind could interfere.

    That terrified me.

    I told myself it was absurd to see a life with my person so early. Marriage. Devotion. A future unfolding all at once in my chest. I tried to rationalize it away — hormones, projection, fantasy. I promised myself it would fade if I behaved correctly, if I didn’t indulge it, if I stayed disciplined.

    It didn’t fade.

    It waited.

    So I learned how to restrain myself instead. I learned how to be impressive, autonomous, composed. I told myself love was something I could return to later — after I became better, sharper, more deserving. Romance went on a leash while I worked on becoming acceptable.

    And I was exhausted.

    On paper, I was doing well. School was fine. Life was managed. I was independent, capable, handling everything neatly — and living with the volume turned down. Running on half power without knowing why.

    The truth is, with my person, I am safe enough to be unbearable. I am dramatic. Possessive in the way devotion is possessive. Soft. Emotional. A complete brat. And instead of turning away, she meets me there — and falls for me more. As if my intensity isn’t something to tolerate, but something that belongs.

    She is tender in the way forests are tender — not fragile, not loud. She holds me without shaping me. With her, I don’t brace. I melt. I feel held without being diminished, desired without being consumed. I feel allowed to exist fully.

    There is nothing rational about how I know us. It doesn’t ask to be proven. It doesn’t justify itself. It simply is. Like a fairytale that doesn’t bother explaining the magic — only that it works.

    Metaphysics has always whispered the same unbearable truth: you don’t arrive at the life you want by withholding the feeling of it. You live from the end. You let yourself feel it now. You soften instead of forcing.

    I knew this. I still fought it.

    I was afraid indulging in love would weaken me. That romance would dull my edge. That seeing forever in my person so clearly meant I was naïve.

    Then came a day that looked like nothing.

    Too much sleep.

    A body aching with desire.

    Letting myself drift into us — images, warmth, sensation.

    Late food.

    Old photos.

    Love looping through my mind like a spell I stopped resisting.

    Nothing productive happened. And for once, there was no guilt.

    That’s when I realized I was never undisciplined. I was starving the part of me that animates everything else.

    I am not built for austerity. I open through beauty, through sensation, through devotion. I need romance the way some people need structure. I need to feel good to feel powerful.

    We’re told love should be rational. Measured. Earned through time served. That it shouldn’t interrupt work or outrank ambition. That devotion — when it comes early, when it comes intensely — is childish, irresponsible, something to be corrected.

    There is a particular disdain aimed at young lovers. A smug resentment disguised as concern. As if tenderness before exhaustion is a moral failure. As if joy must wait its turn. As if love is only respectable once it’s been starved, postponed, made small enough not to threaten productivity.

    That isn’t wisdom.

    It’s a world that hates anything it can’t monetize or control.

    I tried to submit to it once. I tried to make myself sensible with love. All it taught me was how to abandon myself politely.

    My person doesn’t distract me from who I’m becoming.

    She is the ground beneath it.

    My heart was never something to tame.

    It was something to trust.

    I don’t become worthy of love by waiting, rationing, or pretending I don’t know what I know.

    I become myself by letting love take me fully — wildly, tenderly, unapologetically — even when it’s too soon, even when it’s obvious, even when it feels dangerous.

    ⸻

    For my sweet,

    Thank you, my love, for holding me gently when I spill over, for loving me most when I’m soft, dramatic, and unguarded.

    Thank you for telling me that loving me is easy, especially in the moments I forget how to believe that.

  • I fucking hate making moodboards

    This is about fashion school lol. Manifestors / law of assumption people, keep making moodboards ily.

    I’ve accepted that I fundamentally hate making mood boards, which is honestly a dangerous thing to admit as a fashion student, but here we are. Every time someone says “start with the mood board,” a part of my soul quietly leaves the room. Because why are we asking me to explain the vibe before I’ve even lived inside it. Why am I being asked to know what I’m making before I make it. That’s not process, that’s clairvoyance.

    Mood boards feel like being forced to pitch a personality you haven’t developed yet. Like, hold on, I haven’t even spiraled properly. I haven’t touched the fabric. I haven’t messed up. I haven’t had the emotional breakdown where the idea finally reveals itself. But you want me to confidently assemble twelve images from Pinterest and pretend they mean something cohesive? Be serious.

    And the thing is, I can make a good mood board. That’s not the issue. I just hate that it comes first. Because when it comes first, it turns into a costume. A promise. A hostage situation. Suddenly everything I make has to obey a collage I assembled while half dissociated and over-caffeinated. Now I’m not discovering anything, I’m just trying to fulfill a contract I made with myself too early.

    For me, the work comes from staying inside the mess. Touching things. Doing something a bit ugly. Letting the idea show up late and slightly uninvited. Meaning doesn’t arrive pre-packaged. It condenses. Slowly. Against my will. And only after that does a mood exist. Only then does it make sense to look back and go, oh, that’s the world I was in.

    So yes. Mood boards come last. Or not at all. At best, they’re documentation. Evidence. A crime scene photo. At worst, they’re a lie we tell to look organized. I’m not anti-visual. I’m anti-pretending I already know who I am before I’ve stayed with myself long enough to find out.

    Anyway. If my grade suffers, so be it. I’ll be in the corner, weaving something questionable, minding my business, and letting the vibe catch up later.


    (From someone who gets straight A+ for all design projects *wink*)

  • Stay with yourself

    On creation, presence, and not performing

    This idea came to me while weaving for the first time. It was a school assignment, which meant it would be graded, which normally means I would be strategizing, polishing, performing. I’m obsessed with image and coherence, with finishing things until they behave, until they know how to sit properly in the world. And yet, for once, I allowed myself to slip. To do something unresolved. To make something a little ugly. Strange how unsettling that felt. But at the same time, so freeing.

    The piece is all black, built from different textures in a plain weave, interrupted by a few sprinkles of pistachio-green glossy embroidery thread. They aren’t neatly placed, not intentional in the way that earns approval. They’re just there. Nothing clever. Nothing impressive. Probably not an A+. But my heart was allowed to breathe.

    For the first time in a while, I stopped trying to achieve a look. That phrase has always unsettled me, because it’s never just about aesthetics. It carries an undercurrent of escape, a desire to be somewhere else, someone else. Please, just anywhere but here. Anyone but me. This time, I stayed, and staying was hard. As I worked, things I hadn’t made space for began to surface. Tension I’d been holding together with taste and control loosened. There was no concept to hide behind, no justification to rehearse, just my hands, the material, and the discomfort of not performing refinement but practicing it.

    As all creatives eventually learn, whatever you make is a manifestation of you. Not metaphorically. Literally. Your work speaks your mind, your soul, your dreams, your fear. And it’s kind of fucked up how the environment teaches people to fear and resent their own self-portrait, to distrust what comes out when they’re being honest. I have moments like that too, where I try to make my work resemble me less. Anything to soften it, to make it less revealing, more digestible, something people can consume easily and live with comfortably. Diluting the self starts to feel like responsibility. Learn the rules before you break them. Make sense first, then become yourself. In this world, that logic holds.

    But at some point, I found myself in a different world. Mine. And there, the idea sounds deranged. What a strange way to think. If you’ve reached that level of exasperation, congratulations. That’s the beginning. That’s where you start molding yourself from here, not into something else, but into the only version that exists. Refining the one and only you. The you that isn’t encouraged to show up, that hesitates before saying hi, that feels like a liability in polite spaces.

    This is where the work becomes staying. Learning to sit in the void of yourself and speak into it, instead of scrambling for references, scrolling endlessly, outsourcing your center of gravity. It’s hard. It always feels unbearable right before it becomes inevitable. There’s a moment where you know, deeply, that it has to be done. You can’t betray that voice forever without paying for it somewhere else.

    At first, the things you make when you stop diluting yourself can look messy. They can even disgust you. They feel like a bug in the system, something that exposes too much and refuses to behave. But if you keep going, if you don’t abandon that place out of panic or shame, it becomes home. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s yours. And once you live there long enough, refinement stops being a mask; it becomes care.

  • Learning Is Not a Public Service

    For the Lovely Few With an Insatiable Hunger for Knowledge and Greatness

    I care about learning. I just don’t care about learning from everyone.

    Sometimes I learn because I’m curious. But most of the time I learn because I’m headed towards a vision and I need specific tools to get there. I’m not interested in learning as a personality trait or a moral performance. Thus don’t have the habit of learning something “just in case”. That to me is That to me is food hoarding, but under the guise of intellectualism.

    I like my life the way it is: I love that I’ve reached a level of nonchalance that offends people who think they knew me and intrigues those who haven’t. I love that I no longer outsource my decisions to other people’s opinions, and that I act—quietly, without asking permission—on what I know is right for me. I love that my life centers around my impulses, because for me, that is the only way it works.

    That is why life doesn’t feel out of rhythm with my body, even though I still go to school and still keep time. To live this way, I had to give up being an overachiever, collecting perfect grades as proof of worth. And that’s fine. Nothing is worth sacrificing my bodily rhythm for.

    So no, I’m not wandering around confused or empty. I’m already busy cultivating my own thing, which is precisely why I don’t invite every opinion into it like it’s an open house.

    People love to say you should talk to as many people as possible because it expands your worldview. That may be true if one’s sole ambition is to accumulate experiences. But I don’t want my worldview expanded indiscriminately. I want my life a certain way. And some people’s worldviews resemble lives I would hate to live. Proximity to that does not enrich me. It irritates me.

    I pay attention to people who are genuinely intelligent in areas I want to be good at. I engage with people who share my values. I show up for people who are actually part of my life in a real way. Everyone else exists, and that’s fine.

    I don’t believe more input automatically makes life richer. Sometimes it just makes it messier. Sometimes it adds nothing except opinions I didn’t ask for.

    I’m not trying to absorb the world. I’m trying to shape mine. If something fits, I’ll take it. If it doesn’t, I won’t. That’s why you’ll never catch me overexerting myself to understand why something doesn’t resonate, as though accommodation were a moral obligation.

    Again, learning, for me, is directional. Sure I don’t expect it to be linear, but I’m not a hippie collecting vibes. I’m that person with a plan, mildly amused, and dancing past conversations that don’t concern me.

    XOXO

    To those with an insatiable hunger for knowledge and greatness: you don’t have to know everything that’s out there. Social media has you convinced that being “disgustingly over-educated” is something to perform, display, and monetize. It isn’t. What matters far more is knowing yourself, really, really well.

  • Deal with your shit yourself. you’re an adult.

    this isn’t a manifesto about doing everything alone. it’s not a bootstraps sermon. it’s not a denial of care, context, or difficulty.

    it’s about authorship.

    the other day after class, i stayed back to work. i was painting, quiet, focused, mind elsewhere. a few students from another class came in and sat opposite me. they started talking — loudly — about how intimidating our class was. how talented we were. how “cooked” they felt. how teachers couldn’t stop praising us.

    it was awkward. not because they were complimenting us, but because the compliments weren’t actually about us. they were about their discomfort. and suddenly, without asking, that discomfort was placed in the room for us to hold.

    that’s the moment i paused. not out of guilt. not out of superiority. but because i recognized the dynamic instantly.

    self-deprecating humor is wildly overrated. not because humility is bad, but because this kind of humor isn’t humility — it’s delegation. it’s a way of handing your self-worth to the people around you and waiting for them to manage it gently.

    the problem is, when you do that often enough, you train people to overlook you. worse, you train yourself to believe being smaller is safer.

    and i don’t bond with people who do that reflexively. i dislike the dynamic. it’s unstable.

    being an adult is a privilege. no permission slips. no supervision. complete authorship. your actions land. they shape the world, whether you acknowledge that responsibility or not.

    someone once said that the people you dislike reveal more about you than about them — usually as a kind of moral warning. especially to women. as if discernment itself is suspicious. as if not being endlessly warm, cheerful, and accommodating is a character flaw.

    i don’t buy that.

    disliking certain dynamics doesn’t make you cruel. it makes you specific. noticing that you’re turned off by mediocrity — especially mediocrity that demands accommodation — doesn’t mean you think you’re better than others. it means you don’t accept it in yourself. that’s not villainy. that’s alignment.

    being an adult, to me, means dealing with your interior life yourself. not perfectly. not silently. but responsibly. it means knowing what belongs to you to carry, even when help exists. it means not making other people responsible for regulating your insecurity just so you can feel more comfortable in the room.

    support is real. care is real. community is real.
    but support is not substitution. being held is not being carried.

    i don’t want to be employed as someone else’s reassurance. and i don’t want to outsource my own authorship either.

    you don’t have to be yippee all the time. you don’t have to shrink to be liked. and you don’t have to accept every dynamic just because refusing it might make you look “mean.”

    sometimes rolling your eyes is just clarity arriving early.

    deal with your shit yourself.
    you’re an adult.

  • call it champagne problems

    a rant. If you stayed till the end, untriggered, know that i appreciate you.

    i’ll only speak for myself. about being privileged.

    no matter how privileged someone is, the pain of being dismissed and not listened to is real. privilege doesn’t erase it. it just makes it illegible.

    growing up, i was told i was too different to matter.

    what are you saying again?
    we don’t get it.
    go back to your fancy home and complain there.
    you’re sad? call mommy and daddy.
    little bitch with champagne problems.

    when you’re seen as capable, resourced, doing fine, your pain stops qualifying as pain. it becomes something people explain away, minimize, mock, or quietly enjoy. competence is mistaken for immunity.

    this is where the rhetoric breaks.

    we’re all in this together.
    leave no one behind.
    support women.

    it holds until it’s you.

    until you’re the one people put on a pedestal you never asked for and wait for you to fall. because watching someone “above” bleed feels like balance.

    “why would you be confused about life anyway?”

    ” your parents’ money got you here. you don’t get to complain about emotional distance when you never had to complain about material lack.”

    every time i tried to say i needed more than just money, it was treated as offensive. ungrateful. absurd.

    my parents did spoil me. they gave me comfort, access, things. and sometimes, in the same breath, they tore me down. called me a burden. compared me to other kids with “humbler” lives. as if gratitude should cancel hurt.

    i grew up split between worlds. too privileged to be allowed pain. too emotionally hungry to feel at home in comfort. no place really contained me.

    later, i understood more about where some of this came from. my parents grew up in poverty. survival came first. study hard. work hard. stay afloat. feelings weren’t something you sat with. they were something you outran. they worked relentlessly to get me here. i see that now. i also see how destabilizing it must have been to raise a child who wanted emotional presence when you were taught to suppress your own just to survive.

    then i thought to myself, maybe if i offer help to others, everyone will feel better. it’s the one way for me to help ease people’s pain, to escape being painted as a bitch. that’s when i learn that wanting to help someone was never neutral either.
    if i offered support, i was a bitch who thought she was better than others.
    if i stepped back and stopped engaging, i was still a bitch who thought she was better than others.

    when it became clear it was never about what i did. it was about where i was placed in people’s imaginations. once you’re cast there, everything becomes evidence.

    so you decided that i’m a bitch. yes, oui, i’ll be a bitch just for you. better yet, i’m the bitch who knows she’s better than you. so listen up: you don’t get to project your pain onto me because you think i’m not suffering enough, then cover your ears when i assert boundaries. u say u hate bitches at the top looking down on u, then show up to their face with classless, embarrassing behavior. you don’t get to arrive with daggers of prejudice and spite, then accuse me of being uncooperative or condescending. you’re causing the problem you keep crying about. nothing worse than a broke bitch with an inferiority complex.

    here, is my performance Oscar worthy?

    P.S. : i think about marie antoinette sometimes — not the cake meme, just a girl who loved her simplicity dresses, loved her kids, and still got blamed for being visible and “fine” when the room decided she wasn’t allowed to hurt. yeah. i’m with you.

  • On Fairness, Difference, and the Refusal to Flatten

    Life will never be fair — and it never should be.

    Fairness implies sameness. But life is not a courtroom, and humans are not equal vessels. Even if everyone were returned to the same baseline — the same resources, the same starting point — sameness would never hold. Difference is not learned; it is emergent.

    Attempts to flatten difference do not erase hierarchy; they distort it. When contrast is forcibly suppressed, it sharpens underground. Artificial sameness produces exaggerated division, harsher and more brittle than the natural variance it tries to deny.

    You see this lie everywhere.

    “Everyone is beautiful,” people say — until someone is told, you’re beautiful like that obese woman. The recoil is instant. Suddenly, beauty was never about perception. It was a moral placeholder. A word emptied of content so no one has to confront taste, preference, or desire.

    When people say “everyone is equal” but still sort, rank, desire, exclude, envy, and elevate — what they’re really doing is lying about the mechanism while still obeying it. That lie breeds resentment.

    Let ugly be a thing.
    Let beauty be a thing.

    Let mediocrity exist exactly as it is — but never confuse it with excellence. Not out of cruelty, but out of respect for truth. Acknowledging this is not my lane is not self-rejection; it is maturity. Not every space is meant to hold everyone, and not every contribution is inherently valuable simply because it exists.

    Exclusivity has a function. So does rarity. So does discernment. When everything is declared equally valuable, value itself dissolves into noise. Participation trophies do not protect anyone; they only muddy clarity — and clarity is not violence.

    A simple example: I have no literary talent. I would never call myself a writer. I struggle with coherence, I’m naturally clumsy with language, and writing does not come to me with ease. I use tools — including ChatGPT — to refine my word choices and structure because I am, at best, mediocre at this craft.

    Why deny it? Why sugarcoat it?

    Do I feel shame about it? No.
    Do I think I’m entitled to praise or to be called “talented” when there’s nothing to justify it? Absolutely not.

    My worth is not dependent on my ability to write. And I won’t disrespect the literary world by inserting myself into it under a title I haven’t earned. That doesn’t diminish me — it clarifies me.

    And yet, despite the lack of talent, I have perspectives to share. So here I am. Not as a writer, but as an author of my own thoughts — using whatever tools are necessary to say them clearly.

    So find your lane. And if it does not exist yet, build it. Stop demanding entry into spaces that were never meant to contain you – that’s so energetically cheap.

    Be a work in progress without self-contempt.
    Be above average without guilt, don’s feel sorry for the mediocres.

    And stop running away from yourself.

  • If you care about the world you live in, be fucking rich

    people keep saying money and power are the problem. i’ve never believed that. the problem has always been where they land.

    i care about the world. genuinely. and because i care, i’m careful about not giving my power away — not to guilt, not to shame, not to the performance of being small so other people can feel morally clean. i’m not interested in sounding good while nothing moves.

    i care about the ability to say yes without asking for permission. the ability to fund, protect, exit, support, preserve. the ability to move things instead of narrating how immovable they are.

    money and power aren’t corrupting by default. they just amplify whoever is holding them. so yes, i want them in the hands of people who actually care.

    i want to give more to the causes i care about — stopping wars, stopping genocides, protecting children, education, supporting artists and artisans, preserving traditional crafts and artisan communities, preserving culture without freezing it into museums or turning it into pity projects. keeping things alive, funded, and intact.

    none of that happens because someone writes a beautiful paragraph about how powerless they feel. none of it happens because we collectively agree that wanting money is shallow. it happens because someone has enough leverage to write checks, build infrastructure, hire people, fund exits, and keep going without burning out.

    the whole “i’m broke but morally pure” thing is not working. it’s not noble. it’s not sustainable. and it’s definitely not helping the people it claims to center. some of us who care have to be rich — obscenely rich, tactically rich, rich enough to not have to ask, explain, or beg. rich enough to absorb hits and keep moving. rich enough to make long-term commitments instead of one-off gestures.

    and yes — i love material things. i love shopping. i love beautiful objects. i love excess when it’s intentional. i’m a slut for it. handbags, clothes, texture, shine. flame me if you need to. i’m not here to be ascetic. i’m here to do things my way.

    i don’t want to spend my life whining about how powerless i am. i want to spend it being useful.

    i’m not embarrassed about wanting money. i’m embarrassed by how many people pretend they don’t, while quietly resenting those who do something with it. this isn’t about accumulation for its own sake. it’s about custody — about who gets to hold power, and whether they do anything decent with it.

    some people turn caring into a performance. i turn it into capacity.

    special thanks to Paris Hilton.


    that’s hot.