(self) concept

“Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.”

Zadie Smith: “He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.”

I like sprinting through the city streets at midnight while listening to sad music because it makes my heart feel like it’s being put through the washing machine.

I’m at my most courageous on the page because interrogating my feelings with words feels justified and purposeful in the case that it helps someone else understand the mess of the human condition.

The one practice I kept was writing. It made the cut because I can’t deny how many good things in my life have come as a result of my putting words out into the world. It also felt like a respite: one area where I wasn’t skeptical of my identity. I’m at my most courageous on the page because interrogating my feelings with words feels justified and

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Being surrounded by reminders of your patterns and past means you never have to define it

asking identity-related questions such as “who am I?” creates a layer of abstraction between emotion and perception that is largely just a distraction from action. Instead, it works better to just do. As Giannis Antetokounmpo once said, “When I focus on the past, that's my ego. When I focus on the future, it's my pride. I try to focus on the moment

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I think the point of life is to feel deeply — mostly good stuff like love and pride, but also some bad stuff that broadens your spectrum of experience and allows you to better appreciate the good. For instance, I like sprinting through the city streets at midnight while listening to sad music because it makes my heart feel like it’s being put throu

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