“It Is Better To Be Hated For What You Are Than To Be Loved For What You Are Not.”

“A long time ago I learned not to explain things to people. It misleads them into thinking they’re entitled to know everything I do.”

— Lisa Kleypas

“Be willing to walk alone. Many who start with you won’t finish.”

— Unknown

It’s weird how everyone hating you when you’re nine years old still affects your self esteem when you’re 26 like yeah nobody came to my birthday party but that was like 17 years ago why is it stopping me from going to a gay bar

I know there's a lot of advice for handling things like depression and its so fucking easy for people to say "just do this and you'll feel better!" and I hate that, I fucking despise it, but I'm also gonna throw in my two cents about what is personally helping me get out of bed some days and genuinely, not kill myself.

Its taking care of nature.

Seriously. It sounds stupid and some days it feels stupid, but I put up bird feeders because I live in a semi-rural area where human activity is decimating the local bird population and options for safe feeding. So I put up bird feeders. And now I have like 83 different birds flocking to my garden on the daily and screaming at my window if the feeders are empty. And I've seen generations of baby birds brought to my garden by their parents because this is where the food is.

And I researched what plants and flowers were native to my area and I spent like $5 on a few different seed packets and sprinkled them around the grass and the sad empty flowerbeds and the lawn because the bees have nothing to eat and that's awful and it turns out wildflowers will fucking GROW the moment you look away, but now every spring and summer my lawn is a pretty little multi-colored bug haven.

And I've even gotten the chance to save a few little bug lives because of it. I've taken in cold-shocked bees and given them a warm little tupperware to recover in. I've fed bugs sugar water to get their energy back to take their food home. I've given dying bugs a sheltered, safe place to spend their last moments.

I planted a veggie garden. And I know I'm very lucky in that I have the space to do that, but also, you can grow a lot of things indoors. My friend has literally the smallest apartment you can imagine but she grows chives in her bathroom and grows five radishes at a time in a pot in the kitchen. Literally five. But it makes her so happy every single time she pulls them up or trots off to the bathroom to snip some chives.

I pick trash up every two weeks. The pick stick was like $4 online and I just put the bag out with my bi-weekly trash pick-up and its disgusting but but nobody else is gonna do it and I've only got finite time on this earth. If nobody else is going to pick up that can, I will. Because some innocent wild animal doesn't deserve to get hurt by human ignorance, and I deserve to walk home and see pretty flourishing nature instead of depressing discarded trash like I feel like most days.

I've left water out for the wildlife and watched hedgehogs, local dogs on their walks, squirrels and all sorts stop by to take a drink, because humans are fucking selfish and we're making something as basic as water so hard to access for anyone but ourselves, but I can fix a little bit of that just by putting out a bowl. Sometimes I don't even have to remember to fill it because the rain will fill it for me, and its kind of like nature's way of saying "you're helping me so I'm going to help you out too." Which is neat.

Like most days I do not want to be living on this earth but my god earth did not get a choice about us living here, and we're ruining it, and it actually feels so good to help stop and un-do a little bit of that destruction.

And you don't even have to try everything I do. If the only thing you've got the spoons to do is buy one bird feeder and you only remember to fill it once a month, its still something. That once a month could mean the difference between starvation and a full belly to a bird.

Again, none of this is obligatory and I'm not saying at all this is some magical cure for depression, but personally these things are things which are helping me slowly find things to keep getting out of bed for and things to feel a sense of self worth and satisfaction over. I feel better both in and about myself when I feed the birds, when I see the bugs in the garden, when I pick up the trash.

If its something you haven't considered yet, it might be worth a try.

You are enough as you are.

You don't need to be healed. You don't need to have accomplished certain things. You don't need to have met your goals, or done something you see as groundbreaking.

You are enough, right now, as you are. I promise.

Some of my writer’s block cures:

Handwrite. (If you already are, write in a different coloured pen.)

Write outside or at a different location.

Read.

Look up some writing prompts.

Take a break. Do something different. Comeback to it later.

Write something else. (A different WIP, a poem, a quick short story, etc.)

Find inspiring writing music playlists on YouTube. (Themed music, POV playlists, ambient music, etc.)

Do some character or story prompts/questions to get a better idea of who or what you’re writing.

Word sprints. Set a timer and write as much as you can. Not a lot of time to overthink things.

Set your own goals and deadlines.

Write another scene from your WIP. (You don’t have to write in order.) Write a scene you want to write, or the ending. (You can change it or scrap it if it doesn’t fit into your story later.)

Write a scene for your WIP that you will never post/add to your story. A prologue, a different P.O.V., how your characters would react in a situation that’s not in your story, a flashback, etc.

Write down a bunch of ideas. Things that could happen, thing that will never happen, good things, bad things.

Change the weather (in the story of course.)

Feel free to add your own.