society fucked up by letting dvds go out of style because streaming is not ownership, titles leave streaming services to end up on another (or leave streaming entirely) all the time and stuff gets edited out a lot too. physical media is so important i wish buying dvds and physically owning something could be “trendy” again because corporations have ruined streaming forever with their greed
I like going to a really cool and really cheap second-hand shop where dvds cost less than 2 euros, and blu-rays less than 4 euros (1 euro being a little over 1 dollar).
it's 2022. donald trump has died in disgrace days after being impeached and jailed. my chemical romance's new album is coming out the same day as the new spiderverse movie. the lizzo and janelle monaé collab song is blowing up the radio. lil nas x has a verse in it. you and your partner have time and energy for dates after work after jeff bezos' assets have been seized and distributed to the public in the wake of his arrest for keeping employees in unsafe working conditions.
Obviously there are many things to dislike about adulthood but as someone who grew up in an abusive household for whom adulthood offered the only chance at an escape, it's incredibly important to me that i romanticize adulthood whenever possible because i know there are kids and teenagers like me out there who are seeing nothing but complaints about rent and taxes and the loneliness of living on your own and i know they're going to internalize all of that and assume it means that adulthood won't offer them the freedom and safety they've been dreaming of. So while i never want to minimize the difficulties of being an adult, i also want to highlight how incredibly nice it can be to finally have ownership of your life and your body and your time and money and food and everything else in a way that you never had before. You can choose when you wake up! You can choose what you have for breakfast! You can choose when to go to sleep or if you want to (inadvisably) stay up all night watching tv in the living room! In the living room! You can choose what to watch! These are little things, but they are worth taking pleasure in, and they are worth looking forward to.
I'm in my 40s now, but can STILL remember the first apartment I lived in alone.
The first week, I had nothing. NOTHING. I slept on the floor wrapped up in curtains, until a friend came to visit and was like "welp. This ain't keepin' on" and gave me a folding bed and a couple of blankets. There were part of it that were just... not fun.
You know what I did, though?
I made cookies. Because I wanted them, and nobody could keep me from using the kitchen. I got a cat, because nobody could tell me "no". I took long, hot bubble baths because the bathroom - and the bathtub - were MINE and nobody else's.
I turned MY music up and danced around MY living room all day (but was aware of the family with children downstairs, so shut down the one person party before it got too late).
I bought a cast-off couch for cheap and had friends help me bring it in, and sat on MY couch and sewed. And crocheted. And started to teach myself to knit. The only one there to tell me "no" was the kitten, and she loved playing with the yarn.
There were things about it that were exceptionally hard. I was a pregnant single waitress truly struggling to pay bills and put food on the table. But that's not what stuck. What stayed with me, and what was important, was those little things that made being an adult worthwhile.
You will get out and you will get free and it still rains, sometimes, but you get to decide whether to stay in or put up your umbrella or just let it pour down your face while you stomp puddles. You get to choose. It's not paradise, but it is, in the end, yours, which is such a relief. And all the things they say about the best of life being free - that's true. You will have happiness of your own making.