loving the process

"I frequently worry that being productive is the surest way to lull ourselves into a trance of passivity and busyness the greatest distraction from living, as we coast through our lives day after day, showing up for our obligations but being absent from our selves, mistaking the doing for the being." — Maria Popova

He offers a thought experiment: what if the brief to design a new train connection was given to Disney instead of railway engineers? The latter immediately focuses on speed, time, distance and capacity. With Disney, the goal wouldn’t be to shave minutes off the journey. They may ask a different question: “How do we make the train journey so... See more

Not all questions seek answers, some seek journeys.

The better life you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own expectations. You live here. This is it.

I can chart the exact moments of inflection where I was being pushed to rise to a new level of worth and, instead, took what was on offer. Said yes when it didn’t feel right. Gave something valuable away because I didn’t even know it was valuable. Took whatever was offered to me instead of saying no, and demanding options. Being so impatient to... See more

One thought I’ve often had about success is this: none of it is solid or is guaranteed to last. A supposedly great book can be forgotten or become dated. Laurels fade pretty quickly. But the one thing that seems pretty resilient is the pleasure one takes while writing – the alteration of the mind that takes place as we work a thing up the ladder,... See more

Again, the idea of manifesting your own ideas of success, your reasons for life, plays a huge role here. It allows ego to be put to the side in favor of accomplishing a common goal, an idea that we can do it differently this time.

I don’t think that humans can really move forward into whatever’s coming for us next without facing what we’ve done to our home and each other. Such a reckoning includes the beauty, joy, and community found in crisis, as well as the pain. The sociologist Donna Haraway calls this “staying with the trouble.”