I used to get frustrated with people very easily, and honestly I still do, but I've gotten much better at keeping my cool. I can't think of any specific moment or anything that brought me here, but at some point I realized that getting angry and blowing up at somebody just doesn't do anybody any good. Like even looking at it from a completely selfish perspective, shouting at somebody over an annoyance isn't going to help me with anything at all, and in fact it's likely to just make the situation worse. It's been long enough that I don't really even feel tempted to anymore.

Another thing is like... I used to lean much more conservative until I eventually realized that it's just rather self-destructive. I never bought into the more extreme stuff like believing certain ethnicities are inherently, genetically inferior to others, but to put it simply for a while I was convinced that things like feminism and environmentalism were going to "take stuff away from me." Not even on some grand scale of like destroying western civilization or whatever people like to say these days, but just that I as an individual would be less likely to succeed and get rich or whatever.

I was more libertarian-ish in college, and I think it was all the battles for net neutrality around 2013-2015 or so that finally got me to realize that a complete lack of government oversight would be untenable for anyone who isn't already wealthy. From there, especially as the online right started getting louder and crazier, I started to figure out that the same people who'd been "warning" me and other sad nerds like me about feminism and whatever were the only ones who were actually trying to force people to do anything. Most people just want to exist, man. They're not trying to push some agenda on everyone else, they just wanna live their damn lives.

As for the environmentalism bit, yeah I only ever "doubted" climate change because I thought trying to prevent it was gonna stop me from getting rich and having a fancy car and shit. I always knew it was real, I just wanted to not care and be all belligerent about it. And no, of course I didn't have a plan for how I was gonna get rich lmao, I was a dumb, selfish kid. ~~Now I know I'll never get rich no matter what I do and we're all gonna die in a climate disaster anyway, so whatever lol.~~

I dunno how much I can say any of this guides or inspires me, but I do feel like I've become a better person at least, somehow.