David Pennington

@davidpennington

I write stuff. I’d like to write more stuff. Currently: reclaiming my brain.

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So far, 2024 isn’t giving me any joy.

Jenna Park • The moment I finally called myself a writer

Does the act of sitting in a park, patiently looking through a pair of binoculars and reading through field guides really deserve to be described with the same adjective usually reserved for angsty hardcore punk music, crusty anarchos and angry outcasts with ripped leather jackets?

If one considers punk as anything defiantly anti-capitalist, anti-es... See more

Alexi Gunner • idle gaze 067: slowpunk

Idleism

“Slowpunk”

Freud defined depression as anger turned inwards. There’s some truth to this for sure, but I think the great existential psychologist Rollo May defined it more accurately: “Depression is the inability to construct a future.”

Poetic Outlaws • The Comfortable Life Is Killing You

Reclaim The Brain

Myth and Metrics: How Social Media Robs Us of Ritual, and How to Revive It

Alexander Beiner beiner.substack.com

Internet Resident

We live in an age of lexical abundance. More words, more access, more content than at any time in human history. And yet something essential is slipping away. Not reading itself, but the kind of reading that once shaped minds and formed character: slow, immersive, reflective, and richly human. As Harold Bloom noted: “"We read deeply for varied reas... See more

Carl Hendrick • Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us

The New Romantics

I was supposed to be the example. I was supposed to be the good influence. It was only a matter of time until there was a division between “I should do this” and “I want to do that.” In my youth, there is the universal idea that my enjoyment always comes at the cost of someone else’s despair. How can you rest when your neighbor is working?

David T Pennington • The Audacity Doing Something You Might Enjoy.

A Good Life

It is a mistake and a misreading of nature to think that you, a living creature, will be flourishing all the days of your life.

I’m not languishing, I’m dormant - Austin Kleon

The New Romantics and

It is tempting, in moments of ambition, to think that we must change everything all at once, that the path to mastery or peace requires a sudden, dramatic shift. But this is rarely the case. In truth, most lasting changes come from small, deliberate actions. It is in the repetition of these small actions, over time, that we build strength, that we ... See more

Bill Wear • The Quiet Art of Attention