Aleynah

Media consumption simply does not cut it. If you want to separate yourself intellectually from your peers, develop serious interests and passions, feel calmer and more collected, have deeper, more interesting conversations, and rarely feel bored— you have to read. ( Books, by the way . Not Instagram captions, not lists, not product recommendations ... See more

Today, everyone and everything is always available, and there’s nothing less sexy than that. There’s no chase. Our phones don’t allow us time to dwell, and they don’t allow us time to yearn. Why force yourself to daydream about the guy you’re seeing when you can easily look at dozens of photographs of him online? Why walk into a store in Soho and s... See more

Our breakup was so protracted, in part, because our story was so, so good, and I wanted so badly for the story of our relationship to be the story of my life — doing the dishes in the nighttime, his hands over my eyes when we watched horror movies, the love songs I wrote him on our anniversary. A math prodigy and a writer. Our children would have m... See more

Thoughts are fleeting; they change with the times. Sometimes they’re random or intrusive. Often they’re unproductive and based more on fear than love. We seek psychic security by thoroughly evaluating “all the choices,” but we feel less and less secure as a result. Follow your thoughts all day and you’ll be run ragged, darting left, right, center, ... See more

I call my mother to ask if the emotions I feel are hereditary. My father is on the line, too, but I don’t dare ask the same question. My mother once told me he was hard on me because he saw too much of himself in me. I think of all the times my father explained my outbursts to my mother, the look of arrogance on his face as I reluctantly admitted h... See more

And our phones don’t just move us out of our bodies, but they have become something of a second brain, a second body. You don’t have to remember something if you can record it, photograph it, or type it into your notes app. You don’t have to look good in person if you look good on Instagram. Our phones not only hollow out our true selves, but are s... See more

To tolerate life , as Gaitskill implores us to do, you first have to actually live in it — get up in the morning, take out the trash, eat breakfast, go to work, get on the train, try not to look too deeply into the faces of the people sitting across from you, walk home, call your parents, pay your rent — and you must do all of this amid immeasurabl... See more

You will not find your true self through a series rational choices and consumptive experiences. Some things are not chosen, they simply are.