Written in 2014.
Not giving a fuck
I have spent much of my life caring too much about what other people think. About whether I am offending someone. About whether I am being judged. Over time, that habit became exhausting, and worse than that, it made me cautious in places where I should have been clearer.
This is the point where something shifted.
People are judging you all the time. Some of them do not like you, and there is nothing you can do about that. Trying to manage it through politeness or self-erasure does not help. If anything, it makes the problem worse. Standing for something draws clearer lines, and while not everyone will approve, most people respect clarity more than compliance.
The internet amplifies this discomfort. Criticism becomes visible in a way it rarely is in real life, and that visibility feeds the illusion that everyone is watching. The truth is simpler and more liberating. Most people are not paying attention at all.
You do not need everyone to like you. When someone disapproves of you, nothing actually happens. The world does not collapse. The moment passes. Life continues.
What does matter is your people. The small number of individuals who know you, who understand you, who make you feel at ease. It is easy to neglect them while trying to impress strangers, employers, or imagined audiences. That is almost always a mistake.
There is also a quieter constraint at work. An internal observer that monitors your behaviour, shaped by social expectation and habit. Over time, it can feel like common sense, or reason, or maturity. In reality, it is often just fear wearing a sensible mask. It watches, but it cannot act. Only you can.
Much of what follows from this realisation is practical rather than dramatic. Accept awkwardness. Learn to sit with silence. Tell the truth more often, without turning it into a performance. Stop obeying boundaries that exist only because you have never questioned them.
This was written at a moment of frustration, but the underlying insight still holds. Self-respect grows not from defiance, but from choosing where your attention and energy actually belong.