Matt Joseph Diaz

When you go through a difficult, traumatic, or transformative experience, there’s a part of you that wants to hold onto the person you were before it happened. You try so hard to hold onto a simpler time–a time when things weren’t so scary. But you can’t.

Welcome to Monday Motivation with Matt Joseph Diaz! Every Monday (obviously) I'll be serving up some motivation to get you through the week.

This week, Matt talks about fear. What happens when the worst thing you can imagine happening, actually happens?

There’s a big difference between talking and communicating. One exists to relay messages, ideas, and feelings: the building blocks of being a person. The other exists to fill time. I’m by no means here to tell people how to approach their relationships — I just don’t want people to feel pressured to fill silences with noise out of the fear their partners won’t think they care.

How embarrassing is this story, and is the value in it (be it entertainment, educational, or both) enough that the benefit in sharing it outweighs how mortifying it is?

I’m not writing this in order to get defensive about my number of partners, by the way. I’ve had sex with around 25 people since the end of 2012 and I’m perfectly proud of and comfortable with that number. However, asking someone you’re dating about how many people they’ve slept with is a question meant to make them feel ashamed.

Tinder's convenience hasn't “converted” anyone into suddenly only wanting one-night stands. I’ve never heard anyone say “I used to only want to sleep with people I was emotionally invested in, but Tinder is SO CONVENIENT.” Nobody’s treating their sexuality like impulse-buying a candy bar by the checkout counter at a fucking grocery store, so stop treating them like they do.

One of the most dangerous aspects of positive change is our tendency to demonize the people we’ve been. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t lain awake in bed, plagued with the thoughts of a cringe-worthy move they made in their younger years, or some kind of toxic behavior they exhibited before they knew better.

Being asked about my weight-loss “secrets” make me uncomfortable. It feels very different from people wanting to know about my story. It feels like being asked to provide a shortcut.

This is literally the cutest, happiest thing you will see all day.