N0CNSR · Freedom

Be a monster

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

You've got another story about why things didn't work out. A good story. Detailed. Full of people who let you down, circumstances stacked against you, and you, the person who really did try.

I'm willing to believe every word of it.

Now what?

Are you going to spend another ten years telling it?

Reality can be cruel without any educational purpose whatsoever. You can get cheated. Someone can take credit for your work. A person you trusted can turn out to be a piece of shit. Sometimes you really do everything you can and still get punched in the fucking face.

No hidden lesson. No guaranteed reward for enduring it. Some shit just happened.

But after it happened, you still had some amount of life left. And I'm interested in who you're going to hand that over to now.

The same person? The same circumstances? An endless replay of the moment you were treated unfairly?

The court of martyrs convenes in your head.

You bring the evidence. Here's where I was betrayed. Here's where nobody supported me. Here's where someone else had money, connections, a decent family, and room to make mistakes. Here's where I deserved better.

Everything is neatly arranged. Witnesses summoned. Speech prepared.

And the court rules: yes, you were treated unfairly.

You won.

What changed the next morning?

Did a job appear? Did the money come back? Did the person apologize? Were those years credited back to your account?

Or did you just get permission to do nothing again, because your reasons are valid?

I'm not saying nobody is to blame. There is a very specific asshole who screwed you over. There are decisions specific people should answer for. Demanding justice, getting back what's yours, asking for help: all of that is normal.

But sometimes “Who's to blame?” quietly becomes the only question you're still willing to answer.

Because the next one is much more uncomfortable.

“What can I do now?”

You can't get away with a convincing story there. You'll have to try something. Maybe get rejected again. Discover that some of your own decisions were shitty too. Learn something you don't know how to do yet.

And become someone who might fail again.

It's easier to remain someone who was never given a chance.

Especially if you've gathered an understanding audience.

You tell the story. They feel sorry for you. Tell you you're a good person, that you were unlucky, that anyone would have broken in your position. For a while, you feel better.

People do need sympathy. Sometimes another person's support is exactly what gets you through a day you can't handle alone.

But you can start using it like a drug.

Bringing the same story every time to get the same dose of relief. Changing nothing between conversations. Coming back when things get hard again.

Then suddenly noticing that a practical question annoys you.

“Have you tried this?”

Fuck off with your “have you tried.” You were supposed to tell me how hard I have it.

This is where it gets interesting.

Because your misfortune has already secured a permanent role in your life. It's how people understand you. It's how you get attention. It explains why you're standing still.

And if you start finding your way out, you'll have to give up some of those explanations.

You won't be able to blame every outcome in advance on what happened to you once. You'll have to find out who you are now. What you can do. Where you're lying to yourself. Where you really need help, and where it's long past time to do the unpleasant thing you've been putting off.

Sometimes people cling to their tragedy partly because they haven't imagined themselves outside it in years.

You become a spectator of your own life.

You watch another episode, comment on it, complain about the writing. What a nightmare. Everything's against the main character again. When is he finally going to catch a break?

But the season ends, the next one starts, and you're still sitting in the same seat.

You've even learned to describe it beautifully. You've got precise words, convincing explanations, an entire theory of why there's no way out.

You just haven't checked the door in a long time.

There's a phrase, “learned helplessness.” And to me, the scariest thing about it is the possibility of getting so used to having no influence that you stop noticing even the things you can still affect.

It didn't work before. Then it didn't work again. You were stopped, punished, ridiculed. Now every suggestion to try something meets a ready-made “there's no point.”

Maybe there really was no point back then.

What about now?

Have you tested this particular possibility? With these people? With the skills you have today? Or has an old rejection been given the lifelong right to speak for every future attempt?

Not everything is available to you. But between “I can't do everything” and “nothing I do makes any difference,” there can be an entire life you've canceled in advance.

So be a monster.

The inconvenient person who stopped begging for permission to make every move. Who can take a rejection without turning it into a description of their personality. Who can say “you don't get to treat me like that” and then actually change something.

Some people won't like you afterward.

Especially the ones who had it easy while you were being understanding, putting up with everything, and talking about how hard it was.

They'll call you harsh. Selfish. Say you used to be different.

Maybe you used to be free of charge.

And you'll have to endure unpleasant feelings without immediately concluding that you've chosen the wrong path.

Does it hurt to admit you've wasted years? Yes. That admission probably won't feel like a massage.

Is it scary to submit work people might tear apart? Of course. You've finally given reality a chance to answer.

Tired after a hard day? It happens. Not every difficult day means you need to drop everything and urgently find something that never requires you to make an effort.

But “it hurts because it's supposed to” can easily turn into a stupid religion too. You can spend years putting up with something you should have left long ago and take pride in your endurance. You can destroy yourself with work and call it proof of how serious you are.

When you're rebuilding your life after setbacks, I'm interested in what you're enduring it for, and what changes as a result.

If you're learning, building, breaking free of a dependency, part of the process may be hard. If you're just letting people walk all over you again, extra pain won't make it useful.

You can start with something so small you'd be embarrassed to include it in a heroic biography.

Write an email. Name your price. Turn down another request. Open a document. Ask for specific help instead of having another conversation about how hopeless everything is.

And finish it.

No promise of a new life starting Monday. No announcement to everyone you know that you're a different person now. Just leave something behind at the end of today besides another explanation.

Then do it again.

You can be a victim of someone else's actions. You don't have to erase that fact to start living again.

But you don't have to spend every year that follows proving it either.

I don't want to discover one day that I explained so convincingly to everyone why my life couldn't work out that I never actually gave it a chance.

So let someone call me a monster.

I've still got things to do.

The court can carry on without me.

You left. Why are you still living there?

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT

You already know every piece of news from the city you left. Who opened a restaurant. Who got fired. Which street they've dug up again. Which acquaintance isn't speaking to which other acquaintance anymore.

In the city where you live now, it's your third year of not knowing your neighbor's name.

But you can confidently explain why everything here is wrong.

At first, it was temporary. Wait it out. See what happens. Don't buy too much, don't get attached, don't make serious plans. Why learn the language if you're going back soon?

Then a year passed. Then another. The temporary apartment filled up with bags, the temporary job became routine, and the decision is still postponed until the next news update.

You've built yourself a waiting room with monthly rent. Nobody ever promised your flight would board.

I'm not going to tell someone who lost their home to just smile and fall in love with a new country. You can miss people, your language, your street. You can be angry about being forced to leave. Sometimes all you have the energy for is paperwork and getting through tomorrow.

This isn't a contest to see who becomes a local fastest. And being grateful for safety doesn't require you to be thrilled with every bus.

But there is a difference between the pain of loss and the habit of spending years keeping everything new at a distance. Especially when the first has become a convenient explanation for the second.

You say it's impossible to make friends here. But the only people you meet are people you can spend the whole evening discussing how impossible it is to make friends here with.

You say the locals are cold. Meanwhile, you compare everything they suggest with how things were back home. Their holidays are strange, the food is wrong, the service is slow, and the people are just somehow wrong too.

Maybe you simply aren't a good fit for each other. Not everyone has to like every country. But it's strange to demand a sense of belonging from a place you tell every day that it's a temporary mistake in your biography.

Then there's your phone. Old news in the morning. Old arguments at lunch. Old group chats in the evening. Your body went to the local shop, while all your attention spent another day several thousand kilometers away.

No wonder you're feeling stuck after moving abroad. You're hardly ever here.

You can stay connected to home. But if that connection takes up all the available space, there's literally nowhere for a new life to fit. You haven't left it even one fucking evening.

Maybe the hardest thing to admit is that you can want to return, but there's no guarantee you will. The city will change. People will move away. You'll become someone else yourself. Even a ticket home won't restore the particular life you miss.

So learning the language now doesn't mean betraying your past. Buying a decent bed doesn't mean signing a commitment to stay forever. Making a friend here doesn't mean you stop loving the people back there.

You can make today livable without signing a lifelong contract with it.

Maybe you'll go back. Maybe you'll move on. Maybe you'll stay in the place you ended up almost by accident. None of those options requires you to spend several years in emotional storage first.

Start with something that exists nearby. A conversation. A route. An activity that has nothing to do with endlessly discussing leaving. A place you enjoy coming back to in the evening.

Time doesn't pause when you emigrate. These years count as part of your life too.

And nobody will give them back afterward with an apology: “We didn't realize you hadn't started living yet.”

Freedom

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

What does it mean to be free? A post on a hot topic, as they say.

I think many would agree that Putin is a modern-day Hitler: a complete scumbag, a fascist, and a bastard. Would you kill Putin? Some people will now start protesting that "all lives are precious and equal." And I will answer: why do you think so? Do you think you have never killed anyone in your life, even indirectly?

A guy who dumped a girl, and she, after 2-3 more guys, drank herself to death because "nobody loves me, they just use me." Isn't the first guy to blame? Indirectly, they are all to blame for destroying her psyche. I think the logic is clear.

Give me a gun and put Putin in front of me—I'll think for 2–3 seconds max. Then—bang. Dead body.
Oh no, wait, I lied: of course, I'll first make sure that I won't get in trouble for this kill (at least not in a bad way).

Why did I even start this? Do you think I'm Russophobic? That's not the case: I admire Russia as a country, but I despise Putler, the government, and all Russian propagandists. And, to be honest, many people from "Rashka" too — those who have chosen the easy path of "I'm not interested in politics." They sit in their mortgaged apartments and enjoy caviar on New Year's Eve. They enjoy it until one of them is drafted and sent to die in meat grinders for the glory of Putler and his oligarchs.

“Outside politics” is simply the politics of fear.

But it's not just black and white: Ukraine has its own problems, but they are defending their country from an aggressor. I am writing all this because war itself violates my main rule in life: "Live and let live." It's a good rule. How does it work in practice? Well, if someone picks on a guy for being gay and beats him up, I'll stand up for him. But I'm not likely to hang out with gay people myself — it's just unpleasant. I have nothing against them, but they are themselves, and I am myself. Interestingly, this does not apply to lesbians — I would socialize with them (perhaps even a lot). In any case, I don't necessarily have to love/subscribe to defend a person's right to be themselves.

Freedom is not "doing whatever I want." It is not living according to someone else's lies, not faking your conscience, not serving what you despise. You can be free even in prison — remember Navalny: he was honest with himself to the end and was who he was. There are many other examples: Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and many, many others.

And what about you? You'll read this, and then you'll go jerk off to Japanese girls pissing on each other, dreaming, "I wish I were there so they could piss on me." Are you free? No, you're addicted. Your dopamine system was destroyed by porn when you were 13. Everyone "knows" that people try BDSM at 16 because "just sex is boring" and you need something "more exciting."

Freedom is saying "no" to your reflexes.

As you can see, it's just a kind of graphomania, a disjointed stream of thoughts and nonsense. But those who grasp the main idea will be able to change their lives for the better.

P.S. As they say: "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!"