how to change your life, part 2: agnes callard's aspiration

It begins to feel as though you’re failing at life, in some indistinct way, if you’re not treating your time off as an investment in your future. Sometimes this pressure takes the form of the explicit argument that you ought to think of your leisure hours as an opportunity to become a better worker (“Relax! You’ll Be More Productive,” reads the hea... See more

Making things is hard and I feel like that’s the most useful thing to say about it. You have to try to be consistent, you have to practice constantly, you have to read, and you can’t make yourself be interested in topics you aren’t interested in. And you have to accept that it’s always going to be challenging. My friend said this about her work, wh... See more

It’s so embarrassing to try and be someone you’re not. It makes you a tryhard, a poseur, a pseud. The problem, of course, is that when you aspire to be better than you are, there’s no other way to do it except by starting. You’re always faking it at the start, always doing things badly. You’re pretending to appreciate things that you can only dimly... See more

If you think seriously about the good life and pursue it, you will probably fail in ways large and small. But an imperfect struggle to live well and love a world badly in need of repair is better than staying still because things are terrible, because you might look like a loser in the meritocratic game, because it’s easier.