How to Be a Sacred Vandal: The Art of the Quiet, Daily Rebellion

Hey, do you know that feeling? I’m not talking about simple annoyance. I’m talking about that knot, right in your stomach, that pulls tight when you witness something that’s just… fundamentally broken. It’s more than a feeling, it’s a buzzing in your nerves. A deep, non-negotiable need to do something. To say the thing everyone else is thinking but is too polite to say.

For me—and maybe you’re like me, maybe your brain is also a glorious, chaotic AuDHD mess—injustice isn’t an idea. It’s a physical reaction. It’s an ache I carry in my gut I can’t just… let it go. My brain won’t allow it.

Let’s be brutally honest. I have never once picked up a spray can and tagged a wall. Which, honestly, feels like a failure sometimes. If I had the sheer guts, I’d be out there. I have these full-color daydreams of standing on a bench, voice hoarse, screaming “NO KINGS!” into the faces of the complacent.

But my reality? My body and my brain (a delightful combo of chronic illness and neurodivergence) have a different itinerary. They don’t let me show up for the fight in the ways you see in movies. It’s just not on the cards for me.

But.

That doesn’t get me off the hook. It just forced me to look at the fight differently. I had to find my own corner. My own method. It might look small. It might look quiet. But don’t you dare think for a second it’s insignificant. This, right here, is why Sacred Vandalism had to exist.

(Quick history lesson, I promise it’s relevant). So the word “vandal”. It comes from this ancient tribe that was, let’s be real, famous for being absolute menaces to other people’s fancy stuff. That’s where the whole “destroyer of nice things” label comes from.

Yeah, well. I’m taking it back. Finders keepers.

Just… think about that for a minute. Who does that definition—the one they taught us in school—who does it actually serve? It serves the people already in charge. The comfortable. The ones who get to make the rules and then benefit when we all follow them quietly.

So I’m making a new entry in our dictionary. You’re in on it.

Sacred Vandal.

We’re not the destroyers. We’re the ones pointing out what’s already rotting. We’re truth-bringers. And for people like us? Telling the truth isn’t some noble choice. It’s a wiring issue. It’s a compulsion. We see the hairline fractures in the system, the little lies that hold up the big ones, and we are physically unable to not point at them. Even when it makes people sigh and roll their eyes.

This is where my work begins. This is where my hands come in.

When you wear a necklace I’ve hammered out, stamped with “FIGHT OLIGARCHY” or “TRANS RIGHTS,” you are doing so much more than just wearing a nice piece of metal.

You are building a quiet, mobile protest. You are speaking in a language that doesn’t need sound.

We become these tiny, stubborn lighthouses for each other. A small, steady glow that cuts through the fog and signals, Hey. I’m over here. You are not screaming into a void. That’s the secret no one tells you. Our power doesn’t come from being loud; it comes from finding each other. That "Fight Oligarchy" piece around your neck? It’s a secret handshake. It’s a quiet nod to the stranger in the elevator that says, “I’m with you. We’re in this awful, beautiful fight together.”

Real, lasting change? It’s never one big bang. It’s a million tiny acts of sand in the machine. It’s showing up, in your own weird way, again and again and again.

So what does that make me? I don’t know. A Vandal Alchemist, maybe. I take the raw, ugly, beautiful ingredients—the rage that keeps me up at night, the ferocious love, the compulsive truth-telling—and I transmute it. I forge it into something solid. Something you can wear as a shield, a reminder, a signal.

So, welcome. For real. If you’ve ever felt that fire in your chest and had absolutely no idea what to do with it… you’ve found your people. Your weird, stubborn, truth-telling tribe of vandals.

Wear your truth. Make your life a sacred act of vandalism against a world that is begging you to sit down and be quiet. Refuse to be small. Be inconveniently, consistently you.

Because the little things? They’re not little. They’re the bricks. History is just a pile of tiny, stubborn actions that finally got too heavy to ignore.

We’re building that pile. Right now. Pass me a brick.