New Rules

This piece emerged as a set of New Moon intentions.

After questioning many of the expectations and patterns that had governed my life, I wanted to articulate what I would choose in their place.

These “new rules” center boundaries, desire, rest, reciprocity, emotional discernment, self-trust, and the freedom to live according to my own values.

They are not intended as universal prescriptions.

They are permissions I needed to give myself.

For much of my life, I was very good at following rules.

Not only explicit rules, but the quieter ones I had absorbed about what it meant to be good, responsible, productive, generous, polite, disciplined, loving, and worthy.

Many of them had become so familiar that I no longer experienced them as rules at all.

This piece came from realizing that if I was going to stop living by expectations that no longer served me, I needed more than rebellion.

I needed to decide what I would live by instead.

That is why nearly every section begins:

“I give myself permission”

Permission became important because many of these things were already technically available to me. No one needed to formally authorize me to rest, say no, eat on the couch, express emotion publicly, reject a rigid schedule, or prioritize my own needs.

And yet some part of me was still waiting for permission.

So I decided to give it to myself.

Some of these declarations are intentionally uncompromising:

“I give myself permission to not over-give or
self-sacrifice—ever.”

“I give myself permission to take care of myself
before taking care of anyone else.”

At the time, I needed that forcefulness.

I had spent enough time negotiating against my own capacity that softer language could too easily become another loophole through which old patterns returned.

But these rules are not primarily about becoming selfish or indifferent to other people.

Again and again, the piece returns to the idea of a fair bargain.

That language matters to me. I can choose responsibility. I can commit my time, energy, care, and attention to another person. I can make sacrifices for something I value.

What I no longer wanted was to treat those exchanges as automatically owed.

Chosen responsibility feels very different from compulsory self-abandonment.

The ordinary examples matter just as much:

“eating on the couch and watching TV
totally guilt-free”

There is something almost funny about placing that beside declarations of freedom and self-authority, but that is part of the point.

If freedom exists only in our grandest philosophical beliefs while guilt still dictates where we eat dinner or whether we're allowed an unproductive afternoon, then those old rules remain remarkably powerful.

I wanted liberation to become mundane.

I also notice that the piece contains apparent tensions.

I give myself permission to be “fluid, untamed, and feral,” while also delaying important decisions until emotional neutrality.

I reject rigid discipline while still establishing boundaries.

I refuse obligations imposed upon me while explicitly allowing myself to make fair bargains that create chosen obligations.

Those aren't contradictions to me.

Freedom does not mean having no structure. It means having greater authorship over the structures I inhabit.

And perhaps that is why these are still rules.

I wasn't trying to escape every limitation and live without commitments. I was reclaiming the authority to examine the rules governing my life and decide which ones I actually consented to.

The final permission gathers that intention together:

“I give myself permission to be totally and
irrevocably: unbound, undimmed, and
uncompromising.”

The word “uncompromising” here is not about refusing all compromise with other people. Relationship inevitably involves negotiation.

I read it as refusing to compromise away the self who enters that negotiation.

These rules may evolve. Some already may deserve more nuance than I could give them when I wrote them.

But perhaps that, too, is part of their purpose.

The deepest new rule was never any single statement on this page.

It was granting myself the authority to write—and rewrite—the rules at all.