I have lots and generally stopped overthinking them after my first one. In theory, permanently marking your body is seen as an eternal commitment that carries a ton of weight, but I’ve really benefitted from flipping that on its head and using tattoos as a practice to remind myself of the impermanence of life and of my body (we’re all going to die :)). Now I give them to myself with needles from amazon, I let friends tattoo me, I get them on a whim when I’m traveling. I think a lot of people are scared of carrying physical markers of all the different people they’ve been (myself included), but I think doing so is actually a great practice in self acceptance—carrying all those versions of you, on you, all the time, baring them for others to see. The ones I got 4 years ago that I wouldnt get today don’t bother me even though I no longer resonate with them; they’re a personal history of sorts. And because of the whole death thing, all tattoos are temporary :)
