Worth reading

It’s cool to try harder now, but what you choose to try harder at matters, and you should always also not give a fuck. It’s cool to try harder not to make any more shitty art, for example, which takes not giving a fuck about letting people see your shitty art along the way so that you can get their feedback and learn to make it better. It’s cool to try harder to love people who mean a lot to you, which takes not giving a fuck about…all of the other embarrassments that come with being known.”

Dillard reflects on a surprising encounter with a weasel, using it to delve into themes of instinct, necessity, and the purity of living fully in the present moment. “The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.”

Phenomenal

Wes Yang is one of the great chroniclers of how everything has changed in the past decade. This piece is before all that. It’s about him reconciling own alienation from his culture, and inquiring whether to adjust himself to the world or adjust the world to him. Recommended by Erik Torenberg.