Monday Morning Wake Up Call

There is nothing more liberating than to realize you don’t have to live up to anything anymore.

— Betty Broderick, Dirty John (Netflix, S2:E6, The Twelfth of Never)


Photo: Esquire

31 thoughts on “Monday Morning Wake Up Call”

  1. Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
    It really is an absolutely awesome feeling … “to realize you don’t have to live up to anything anymore.” — Betty Broderick, Dirty John (Netflix, S2:E6, The Twelfth of Never).

  2. When I took early retirement in 2009, I walked out of the jobsite into a wonderful realization I no longer had to find ways to maintain personal integrity but lightly kiss butt occasionally as cover. “There is nothing more liberating than to realize you don’t have to live up to anything anymore.” Indeed! I hit the ground running, and haven’t had any need to adjust to retirement. It seems I was born to be, um, free! Of course, it doesn’t mean no responsibilities, just that you have choices you did have when you had to kowtow to a young boss trying to figure out how to be a good boss or a manager whose heroes include Attila the Hun, Mao Zedung, Josef Stalin, and Adolf Hitler.

  3. I found school and my parents’ hopes and expectations for me to be a lot of pressure. Once I got through that, I was on my way. But now that it’s in the past, I appreciate the pressure they put on me to do my best. Still, getting out of school, much as I loved it, was very liberating. … Hahaha and then I went on to be a teacher, so maybe I didn’t get out of school for many more years. Okay, then, let’s leave it at “Retirement is sure liberating.” And where can I get a hairdo like that woman in the photo?

  4. One of the many positives about getting older. School and careers are a separate category of external performance pressures. The ‘good enough’ and ‘live to the beat of your own drum’ is a work in progress on this journey called Life. Good morning, David! 😀

  5. As I don’t know the artist nor anything TV, I can only comment to the ‘statement’. Talking to my daughter in law 2hrs ago, I said to her that one the most liberating things I did in my life was, when I decided that: I don’t have to be ‘Flavour of the Day’ for anybody any longer and ‘I can’t be loved by everybody at every moment on everything’. It was and still is v. liberating to be just myself and there are still plenty of ppl who like or even love me for Myself at my best/worst and not for What the world thinks I should be.
    We all should feel to be Good Enough – as all those lovely readers and writers out there seem to me More than Just Good Enough….

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