Brian Wiesner

Once people start coupling up, the challenges only increase. Making friends with other couples “is like matchmaking for two,” said Kara Baskin, a journalist who works in Boston. “Not only are you worrying about whether the other woman likes you, you’re also worrying if her husband likes you, if your husband likes her, if your husband likes him.”

What we forget, however, is that the story of the Starving Artist is a myth. And like all myths, it may be a powerful story, one we can orient our entire lives around.

Like the impressionists, we see a magical sense of ambiance in cities that never sleep; places where we don’t have to pick between living as morning larks or night owls, a place where dawn-to-dusk and dusk-to-dawn can flourish simultaneously and cross pollinate; where the vice of darkness and virtue of mornings can be experienced in equal amounts.

If there's any kind of lesson in all this, it's mostly some advice I want to give myself.

The lesson is simply: speak up .

It's OK to slip into advocacy now and then, so long as you do it tastefully. If it sounds high- or heavy-handed — or anything like nagging — you're doing it wrong. Just explain why you care about a particular value. The goal... See more

You must become so ruthless with your time that it borderline pisses people off. Otherwise, all you are is a people pleaser.

There is a striking uniformity in the way creative people-artists, writers, mathemati-cians, scientists, and philosophers-speak about the process of production and problem solving. Ghiselin (1952) has collected into one volume a number of essays on the creative pro-cess by a variety of creative workers from Poincare to Picasso. As Ghiselin... See more

“The American dream was Every man gets his castle ,” Todd Gannon, the head of architecture at Ohio State University's Knowlton School, told me. Above all else, the suburban life is one of independence, a self-contained homestead where the American family can realize its desire and potential, unperturbed by others. Even the family car gets its own... See more

I feel as though I am in one such moment in my inner life, where it feels like seeds I have been nurturing for some time are coming to life, and I am now beginning to understand what the labour I faithfully put in was for. I’m also aware that this phase is not permanent. I can see and appreciate the moment I am in as a moment . Something about that... See more