Sydney Penrose

I claimed that I wanted to write something serious, but I kept putting it off because I decided to focus on something else, because I didn't feel creative, because I claimed that I would come up with a better idea tomorrow, because the conditions weren't right. But did I really care about it then? If so, why was I constantly looking for new excuses... See more

it doesn’t happen all at once. it’s not like one morning you wake up, stretch your arms, and announce, right then, i’ve officially outgrown this life. it’s slower. stranger. more like a quiet restlessness that creeps in at the edges until suddenly, everything that once fit feels itchy, too tight, no longer yours.

if you have trauma with the education system (most of us do), you’ll see learning as the enemy. You’ll avoid it.

Give yourself an enemies to lovers arc with learning. When you’re falling in love you want to know more about them, the same thing will happen with learning, researching.

i used to think that outgrowing meant failure. that if a job or a friendship or even an identity no longer fit, it was because i hadn’t tried hard enough to hold on or make it work. now i see it differently: outgrowing means you listened closely. you let yourself expand, even when it was inconvenient. you listened to the whisper. you honoured the... See more

Ideas for my writing never come out of nowhere, but instead are a reflection of the strands of work that I am reading, listening, and reflecting on at any given time.

"If someone seems boring to you... it might be that you don’t know how to prompt them. You probably don’t know how much beauty lies hidden in the people around you."

How we went through a global pandemic that nobody seems to want to talk about or remember. People died. We were scared. I went without a hug for over a year and a half. We lost everything it seemed during those years and...we pretend that it never happened.