Tim Smith Avatar Illustration

Tim Smith he/him

@smithtimmytim

Geek, socialist, and maker of stuff

Today’s per­son­al affirmation:

I’m lov­able just the way I am, and that knowl­edge inspires me to show up authen­ti­cal­ly in every interaction.

It’s March 1st and you know what that means: it’s my birth­day month bitch­es! 🎉 Can’t believe I’ll be clos­ing the chap­ter on my 20s. Boy am I look­ing for­ward to what comes next.

If you still don’t real­ize that large cor­po­ra­tions are cur­rent­ly in con­trol of our pub­lic spaces online, I’m not sure what’ll do it. It’s scary to see peo­ple advo­cate for the cen­sor­ship of Joe Rogan. That pow­er will always be used against pro­gres­sive ideals and organization.

When I first real­ized that I might’ve been raised in a cult, I imme­di­ate­ly won­dered, ​“How can I be the only one in my fam­i­ly to see this?” I was the fourth gen­er­a­tion in my fam­i­ly to be stuck in this cult, and only a few had decid­ed to ever leave.

Almost three years lat­er, I know that I’m just a pat­tern break­er. And that’s an extreme­ly dif­fi­cult role to play. It means being ostra­cized by peo­ple who claimed to love you. It means accept­ing new truths and new infor­ma­tion, no mat­ter how much it com­plete­ly shat­ters your sense of reality. 

Reli­gion was ulti­mate­ly an emp­ty sense of secu­ri­ty. I thought I knew why humans exist­ed, what my pur­pose was, and what hap­pened after death. And now I don’t. And inter­est­ing­ly, it’s actu­al­ly super free­ing to not know the answers. Because I’d rather have ques­tions that I can’t answer, than answers I can’t question.

I had such an amaz­ing time vis­it­ing Kenz this week­end. It con­tin­ues to blow my mind how you can meet some of the most amaz­ing peo­ple by total acci­dent on the internet.

Had such an amaz­ing week­end in Palm Springs. I feel so loved and joy­ful. What a way to end the year and start a new one. Hap­py New Year!! 🎊🎆🎈 ❤️

I saw this on Face­book and had to share. In the past year of ther­a­py, I’ve come to real­ize how hor­ri­ble and fucked it is for par­ents to be your first abuser. Both of my par­ents hit me (although my moth­er want­ed to be less involved in this type of abuse). I got whipped with the belt too many times to count through­out my life.

I used to be in the ​“I got hit and turned out fine” group of peo­ple. No hon­ey, you didn’t turn out fine if you think it’s ok to beat chil­dren. Full stop. For many years I just thought it was nor­mal. That par­ents that actu­al­ly care about their kids hit them.

But now I know I didn’t deserve that. And nei­ther does any­one else.

It’s almost become a year­ly tra­di­tion for me to tack­le a cre­ative project of some type over the Christ­mas break. Not this year. I’ve got no gas left in the tank.

I get so tired of how sex neg­a­tive soci­ety can be, and even how that bleeds into the queer and polyam com­mu­ni­ties. It’s ok to want sex, and it’s ok for that to be a key way in which you express love.

Today was my last day of work for the year. I’m so excit­ed to have two whole weeks to rest, recharge, and spend time with peo­ple I care about.

This past week­end was cer­tain­ly one for the books. It was a week­end full of kind, sup­port­ive, and like-mind­ed peo­ple. I could be 100 per­cent myself and accept­ed ful­ly nonethe­less. I also seemed to unlock the next lev­el of the game called life, since I intro­duced myself to so many peo­ple and made quite a few friends in the process. Things are look­ing up.

I sent the fol­low­ing mes­sage to some of my moth­er’s fam­i­ly and select old friends:

Howdy y’all. Just want­ed to let you know from the horse’s mouth that I’ve decid­ed to [no] longer be a Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness. I encour­age you to do some objec­tive research into your beliefs. I was cer­tain­ly sur­prised by what I found. Send­ing love and hugs. If you ever need me, you know how to reach me. May the force be with you ❤️

It feels incred­i­bly free­ing to final­ly send this mes­sage. I haven’t had con­tact with much fam­i­ly in the past two-ish years. When I first debat­ed leav­ing the cult, it was incred­i­bly scary to think about how my fam­i­ly would react or how they’d treat me.

In case you did­n’t know, leav­ing the Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness orga­ni­za­tion means essen­tial­ly say­ing good­bye to every­one you’ve ever known. Mem­bers are instruct­ed to shun peo­ple who leave the reli­gion, even fam­i­ly. It’s quite nuts. My research led me to con­clude with­out hes­i­ta­tion that this reli­gion is false and for some rea­son that means I don’t get to have a fam­i­ly any­more. The only rea­son I got to do this on my own time­line is because the pan­dem­ic turned out to be a fan­tas­tic cov­er to leave this cult under the radar. Which I guess is some­thing to be grate­ful for?

But what used to be scary, I’ve now come to accept. I mean, my fam­i­ly has shunned me before, so what does it real­ly mat­ter if they do it again? Like, ulti­mate­ly, peo­ple that actu­al­ly care about you don’t emo­tion­al­ly black­mail you into being part of their religion 😘

So this feels like clo­sure. I hope to have left things open for any of them to reach out if they ever wake up from their indoc­tri­na­tion. Till then, it feels good for peo­ple to know where I stand, and I think it’ll help me start writ­ing the next chap­ter of my life.