Leela R Sinha

Later, I sit myself down and pretend I’m the therapist.

“What will you have when this puzzle is finished?” the pretend-therapist asks.

“Something that looks like a life,” I blurt. “Something that feels like I lived. It’s not about pride, fame, or success. I just want to complete something—a task, a sentence, to let a train of thought run all the way

But mostly changing the world is a matter of luck, not effort or brilliance or ambition.

Mette Marie Ivie in her substack Kicking and Screaming:

https://open.substack.com/pub/metteh/p/i-was-going-to-change-the-world?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1ny8v

I wish I had realized that I don’t need to force myself to try to change or resist what I thought of as negative habits. That all my so called problems and difficulties are actually gifts that have allowed me to learn and grow.

Trevor Warmedahl quoted in Leyla Kazim’s substack here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/leylakazim/p/trevor-warmedahl-intervie

What am I expecting, then, when I hoist myself back up and try again with the whole singing thing? Why keep at it at all, given everything?

The more I do it the less it hurts. The less it hurts, the more I am able to do it. The more I am able to do it, the more I learn about how to do it. The more I learn about how to do it, this primal and elementa

I gravitate towards writers who want something better for themselves and the world

https://open.substack.com/pub/aplaceforwriters/p/navel-gazing-a-space-for-outsiders

My primary aim as a human is intertwined with my aims as a writer: I want the truth. I want to be ruthlessly honest with myself as a human and with my readers as a writer. I want to accept myself fully as I am in any moment while also working to unearth and expose the ways I’ve learned to survive, in order to find new ways to trust myself and the w

In her book Create Dangerously, Edwidge Danticat writes of the “floating homeland” of the diaspora.

https://open.substack.com/pub/aplaceforwriters/p/navel-gazing-a-space-for-outsiders

Are we idealists or pragmatists? Do we have principles we hold dear, and a vision for the future we want to create? Or are we fumbling along, tinkering, finding what works, and forever allowing contact with reality to rearrange our mental furniture, make a mess on our conceptual floor, and occasionally punch so many holes in the walls that need to

If you have ideals but you don't take responsibility for making a change in the world, you are working on your self-image, not a product for other people. If all you have is pragmatism, then you have speed but not a direction and the purpose of your work will get set by default to, at best, the same conventional things that everyone else is chasing