sparks

I have a theory about nostalgia : It happens because the best survival strategy in an uncertain world is to overworry. When you look back, you forget about all the things you worried about that never came true. So life appears better in the past because in hindsight there wasn’t as much to worry about as you were actually worrying about at the... See more

One thing I have been thinking about since I gave birth is the range of spiritual qualities that are implicit in physical pain — the way it enforces a sort of presence that melts down the world around you. And the irony of how its sibling sensation, emotional pain, persuades (at least in my experience) just the opposite: an evacuation from the... See more

don’t know how else to explain it except to say that when I make time to read, my capacity to deal with my own life — and my own bullshit — expands . My natural tendency to be tightly wound loosens its grip.

If you tell a friend they can now instantly create any app, they’ll probably say “Cool! Now I need to think of an idea.” Then they will forget about it, and never build a thing. The problem is not that your friend is horribly uncreative. It’s that most people’s problems are not software-shaped, and most won’t notice even when they are.

A lot of people believe they’re “principled” when they’re actually just rigid. And the rigidity is making them boring as fuck .

And I don’t mean boring in the harmless way, like “prefers routine” or “goes to bed early” boring. I mean boring in the spiritually stale way, where talking to them feels like interacting with a pull-string doll from the... See more

Find something important only you can build, he said, which would not exist without you. It’s inspiring enough advice on its face, which is how it’s generally taken, and how I always took it myself. But the advice requires an important, rarely considered step: introspection.

Do you even know what you’re good at? Do you even know what you believe... See more

Like me, she was very good in a crisis and very bad on a typical weekday; I believe it was she who introduced me to Walker Percy, even taking me to Covington to see where he lived, and he was well-aware of this reality: “It is easier to survive a category five hurricane than it is to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.” My mother was... See more