real

We are all Frankenstein monsters—patchwork quilts of past experiences—trying to pass ourselves off as whole and cohesive things.

“Like every other woman in the world who has ever been told to calm down, Rachel had no idea how to behave.”

― Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is in Trouble

This is choice paralysis. Previous generations didn’t have many options so they stuck together through hard times and made it work. Now, abundance (or its illusion) has led people to feel less satisfied. People are now more anxious about making a choice and less certain that the one they made was correct.

Meanwhile, some of the most serious people I know do their serious thing gratis and make their loot somewhere else. My dad, whose photographs sit at the top of every Experimental History post, quit his job at the newspaper and went to work as a postal carrier instead. Why? As he puts it: “I could afford better lenses delivering mail than I could ta... See more