But I kept grinding. I’d like to say that no matter what happens, I’m proud of me but I feel like that’s performative grandstanding. Failure really isn’t an option. Wish me luck.

I would be at the gym, alone, for hours, patiently working and trying to make good decisions. Pushing myself but being careful about not going overboard and injuring myself in the process.There were nights that I was excited to hit the gym, and there were nights that I was exhausted.

In hindsight reading this sounds like I’m having dark thoughts. I’m not, I love my life. But death is just around the corner for all of us and we don’t really talk about it enough.

5/4

My friend Josh wrote this and I feel it to my bones.

4/4

rather, they appear as a wholly different people, their choices painting a portrait so antithetical to my own understanding of our professed national character and definition of reasonable neighbors that the notion of a collective "us" worth defending has become deeply, painfully fractured.

3/4

They reject mountains of irrefutable evidence for blatantly obvious lies that crumble under any scrutiny. They no longer feel like estranged family with whom one might argue but ultimately protect;

2/4

I've discovered a significant portion of the populace has irreconcilably different principles to those on which our society was built and I firmly believe. Their actions consistently betray, in extreme, the values we supposedly share and they profess to uphold.