Many of us spend our lives pursuing private acceptance through external success. But no matter the award or honor, our inner doubts will remain. True acceptance comes from inside us. It takes asking ourselves challenging questions like: What do I want from my work? What’s most important about it to me ? How would I create my work differently if I... See more

I didn’t understand that seeking a reader for my story meant handing over my work in the same way I sold my car on Craigslist: it’s gone from me, fully, bodily, finally. Or, as Marx says, alienated. I hated that advice to keep writing, because if I wrote another book, I’d have to go through the cycle again: slap my self on the scale like a pair of... See more

as I spend more time away from the internet– being with my family, being in nature, reflecting on my childhood– it’s become clearer to me that lots of my frenetic online poasting over the years was a coping mechanism, a response to feeling fragmented, disconnected, unlovable