defining the self, designing the life

I think life is a kind of laboratory where you can try anything.

Deborah Treisman • The Underground Worlds of Haruki Murakami

A life, teeming with creation, not wanting to be confined to Just The One Thing, no matter how good you are at it, no matter how easily it comes to you or how much people want you to keep doing it.

Hanif Abdurraqib • Andre 3000 is at Peace (For Now)

Any finite life—even the best one you could possibly imagine—is therefore a matter of ceaselessly waving goodbye to possibility.

Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Life isn’t about finding yourself but about creating yourself.

David C. Baker • The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth

When life and existence is seen as an experience, we also drop many of the scripted expectations we have of life and suddenly life becomes this constant unfolding, everything is new and everything is a journey.

Naida • Ten Ways to Breathe Meaning into Existence

The definition of insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. There is nothing sadder than a person who can’t grow, who cannot turn over a new leaf, who cannot take a leap of faith forward, into the dark.

You Have to Be Willing to Change

For those of us struggling and aching to say something different, to be distinctly our own, to reject the stifling rationality of the world around us in favor of the symbolic, the creative, and the divine, creating a world is our path.

Yancey Strickler • Worldbuilding is creative resilience

“There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

— Christopher Morley

Farnam Street • Apprenticeship

The ability to choose what we think and so direct our thoughts is a creative act of volition of enormous significance.