Jen

On trains I watch faces written in the script of their errands and think: each of us is being auditioned by reality for the role of ourselves. Most days we get the part. On the days we don’t, the world is generous and miscasts us as somebody kinder or braver or more foolish than we planned

There is a river through the city no one photographs, a river no one cares about. It is a strip of water too honest for postcards. I take it as my teacher. The river is a champion of mixed metaphors: the glitter of oil, a shopping cart tenderly rusting into coral, a heron like a thought that decided to happen later. I walk beside it until the day’s... See more

e don’t try to be important. We try not to become scenery to each other. Once a month we do a civic tenderness: we return a rogue shopping cart to a corral, sweep a stoop that isn’t ours, carry a stranger’s catastrophe for twelve minutes and set it down without advice. I am a liar. I don’t have any friends. But I like to believe I have and,... See more

Death starts visiting like a polite accountant. We talk monthly. I write a two-sentence obituary for myself with no achievements in it; I throw out a box of things that were supposed to prove I had lived: lanyards, plastic, a faded wristband that believed in me for forty-eight hours. I clean a drawer with the calm of someone who knows the coroner... See more

if anyone asks what your five-year plan is, say something honest: to still be curious. because curiosity will take you farther than ambition ever could. curiosity asks questions even when it has no answers. curiosity keeps you humble when the world insists you have a direction. curiosity — not control — is what actually keeps you moving.

that care is genuine, but underneath it sits a truth no amount of thinking can undo. the point of life isn’t to make the perfect decision. it’s simply to make one. period. to trust your gut and act from the rawest place inside you. to move before you’ve thought it over for ten hours, made three lists, and consulted every available source.

every time... See more

just fuck around and find out.”

i pause. and then i start laughing. because she’s right.

running a scenario to death in my head doesn’t serve me at all. it’ll never tell me how something is actually going to unfold. that version isn’t real, it’s just imagination disguised as preparation. and the more i think about doing something, the more i’m not... See more

the urge to optimize is stronger than we think

when i say i did nothing, i mean i tried to. but even in stillness, my brain started turning it into a project. i found myself wondering if i was resting correctly; if i should light a candle, make a face mask, or journal about how nice it felt to rest. it’s absurd, the way we turn even our leisure into... See more

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that if I’m avoiding a task, I can usually work up the momentum I need to approach it if I first spend time doing what I actually want to do.