inspiration

You Will Never Be Enough

/ Stuart Danker / 21 Comments

All your life you’ve been told you’re not enough. You’re too soft. Too short. Too broke.

And you believe it too, because people like David Chappelle, Barack Obama, and Muhammad Ali exist, people who would dance circles (quite literally in Ali’s case) around their problems. You’ll never be like them. Those people are special.

Yet, you try. You join the Toastmasters Club. You read How To Win Friends And Influence People. You even join the service industry, thinking it’ll help you with your social skills, but the only thing you learn from that stint is how to cut hair.

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All I Can Do Is Live Life Three Minutes At A Time

/ Stuart Danker / 31 Comments

There was a time when I wrote depressing stuff like this on the regular, much to the dismay of the people around me.

A downer, they called me. As if I’d forced them to live with my angst. They also threw out other adjectives like cringe, annoying, and lame.

Perhaps my biggest crime wasn’t the cringe or the regular servings of depresso. Perhaps it was taking their words to heart and not writing anything negative for years after that.

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I Ran 167 Days In A Row And I Don’t Recommend It

/ Stuart Danker / 22 Comments
A compilation of Stuart's IG Story archive

My IG Story archive is just videos of me running.

It’s not that I don’t want you to run. I don’t recommend it because you should find something that resonates with you. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with a little introduction.

So I’m the type of person who’d adopt a new habit, just because. No warning, no prep, and boom—suddenly I’m on a meditating streak.

That’s how I quit my one-pack-a-day smoking habit. I just decided I wanted to stop smoking. That’s how I turned vegetarian for a couple of years.

And as of 12 June 2024, I’ve officially run five kilometres a day, 167 days in a row. Some days I walked (pulled my back). Some days I ran circles in my room (COVID quarantine). But ever since I told myself I’d cover a certain amount of distance every day, I found myself unable to stop.

Do I want to run a marathon someday? Nope. Am I looking to lose weight? Never. So why the hell am I doing this?

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Why I’ve Lost Interest In Words And What I’m Doing About It

/ Stuart Danker / 64 Comments

So I lost interest in words for a bit. No writing, reading, or even listening to words, except when work is involved. It was just one thing after the other: a new job, a newborn, my old procrastination habit. You know, the usual.

But it’s coming up to 16 months since landing a full-time job, and I’ve realised I hadn’t written for myself since. 

Do you know how much time 16 months is? I could’ve written just 250 words a day and I’d have two novels by now. I could’ve spent twenty minutes a day learning a new language and have mastered a fourth language. I could’ve laid one brick a day and built a tiny little ledge. Okay, this one’s not so impressive, but I’d have my very own ledge. Alas, all that potential is now gone.

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So I Wore All Black For A Year To Improve My Social Skills

/ Stuart Danker / 41 Comments
Stuart in black tee doing stand-up comedy

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. My pre-all-black days.

I’ve always worn a black T-shirt for as far as I can remember. Scroll back through my Instagram account and you’ll probably catch the rogue grey or white, but I’ve always leaned more toward black clothes.

I have to credit my genesis story to the series Californication. Hank Moody was a true inspiration to the budding writer that was yours truly, and so I adopted the fictional character’s wardrobe, as well as the philosophy of a personal uniform.

But then came the next level—the day I decided to wear all black. Every day.

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