Matt Joseph Diaz

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.

For a long time, passing privilege made me feel like I didn’t deserve to call myself latino.

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 on #MondayMotivation With Matt Joseph Diaz, mental health. Matt talks about binge eating disorder.

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Everyone messes up, so you can bank on future opportunities to apologize. When the time comes for owning up to your own mistakes, these tips will help ensure you make the most of making amends.

As much as you want to believe people are all the same, we don’t have the luxury of being seen as the “default” in the same way white, straight, cis people often are. We don’t have the luxury of dismissing our painful history and systemic issues for the sake of everyone getting along, because we’re still in the middle of them.

Instead of being allowed to exist as fully complex and sexual human beings, they’re relegated to being a tag in pornography. They’re seen as a guilty pleasure among those with “abnormal” sexual appetites, something to be viewed sexually in spite of their comparison to what we consider "the norm."

After spending a long time in nature, it stopped being intimidating. It started being calm. The quiet wasn't something I feared anymore. It was something I wanted to cherish.

Success is an uphill climb, but it’s rarely a directly uphill climb. There are cliffsides and plateaus, there are points where you have to adapt and change in order to make things work. These are not steps backwards, nor are they indicative of your failure—they’re simply a byproduct of life. More often than not, this ability to work with the circumstances in order to get by will take you farther than certain “skills” ever could.