“Confidence is belief in yourself. Certainty is belief in your beliefs. Confidence is a bridge. Certainty is a barricade.”

-Kevin Ashton

Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is what is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or person who explained it to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larg

Changing the answer is evolution, Changing the question is revolution.

—Jorge Wagensberg

The fastest decisions I’ve ever made are ones where I was confident in my taste; the slowest decisions I’ve made (or have yet to make) are ones where I question it. (And the latter tends to be a symptom of trying to overintellectualize my taste, to compare it to others’ taste, to judge my own taste — which defeats its purpose.)

from Eileen Myles:

I hope there’s mystery and poetry in your life—not even poems, but patterns. I hope you can see them. Often these patterns will wake you up, and you will know that you are alive, again and again.

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise

“I don’t think we talk enough about the in betweens. The part when you know you want to change something but don’t yet know how, don’t yet feel strong enough, don’t yet know what your first step is. So to the people in the in betweens, don’t be disheartened, don’t give up. You’ve done the hard part. Now just take it one small step at a time.
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