ISABEL PASSOS SACHS

Michel de Montaigne may be the most influential essayist in history—even Shakespeare borrowed from his work (taking some passages almost verbatim). But if Montaigne were alive today, this famous essayist might be mistaken for just another slacker living in his parents’ basement.

Okay, let’s be fair. He actually lived in the family castle. But it

For artists, side hustles have a much woollier lineage. Generally speaking they know what they want to be doing, whether it’s writing sonnets, painting still lifes or composing operas. What they don’t know, often, is how to pay for all the time, trial, error and experimentation such work inevitably entails. As a result, their hustles have a much

I thought I had to figure out how being a writer would “work” before I could start. What I realize now is that creative careers rarely “work” in this sense. You can’t game it out in advance, like you might with a more conventional career. It’s always a gamble, and no one but you is going to give you permission to take that risk.

What kind of permission do you feel you need to pursue your dreams, creative or otherwise? 

If you’re overwhelmed by the feeling that the world is falling apart – or just overwhelmed by your to-do list, or stuck in any kind of rut – there’s a solid chance you’d benefit from reorienting your life in the direction of what you actually want to be doing with it, instead of how you think you ought to be living it.

“Boy, nothing real can be threatened”

–Beyonce

Taste is a word for how we measure culture and judge our relationship to it. If something suits our taste, we feel close to it and identify with it, as well as form relationships with other people based on it, the way customers commune over clothing labels (either loving or hating a particular brand). Intentionally bad taste might be just as