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.

Being unable to post photos of funny signs outside of bars or live-tweet bad reality TV had more of an effect than I'd anticipated.

Of course, summertime also seems to come hand-in-hand with partial nudity. Wearing next to nothing out in public is just as important a part of summer as barbecues and trips to the beach. That is, unless you’re anything outside the socially acceptable body types. Then it suddenly becomes an opportunity for people to dole out their own specific kind of “fashion justice.”

I know that the world can seem like a scary and terrible place, where it feels like the threat of judgment and exclusion is constantly looming. That’s because it is; but there’s so much more love and kindness on this planet than evil and suffering. There is generosity and spirit in every human being that runs so deep, you’ll find it hard not to fall a little bit in love with each and every one of them.

"The universe is a big, dark, cold empty space — but you're not any of that. You're a light."

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

Think of #MondaysWithMatt as the ultimate #MondayMotivation. Today's topic is how to handle mental health in a partner.

I've long considered myself a collector of failed relationships. From the girlfriend I asked out during a bar crawl and dated for eight days to the conservative Christian who thought her love was “saving me from a life of debauchery,” I actually gained a little pride from my list of failed love affairs. However, while these relationships were problematic, what made them “failures?”

You are not where you're from, and you are not your environment.

Matt breaks down the major differences between unschooling and a traditional classroom setting.