Cringe: Nope

"Learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime."

—Taylor Alison Swift, 2022 NYU Commencement speech*

This post started with the idea that it's important to be yourself, but as many things around here do, it ended up being mostly about Taylor Swift. While not intentional, I understand it, because she has been such a role model to me.

It wasn't until I reached my ”F-it 50's” that I really started trying to live by this principle. It's hard. It's still scary. But it's so worth it. Loving what you love unapologetically, being your own woman in a society that tries to make us small, is deeply freeing.

I have been told “that’s kind of cringey." Maybe? But that’s for the cringer to deal with, not me. I will just keep on being myself. I encourage you to do the same.

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*The quote comes from Swift’s 2022 New York University of Fine Arts Commencement Speech, during which she was awarded an honorary doctorate:

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