my birthday gift to myself is the certainty that I have what it takes to start over if I need to. It’s a gift I’ve been working on for the better part of this decade.

The deeper into this you go, the weirder and more inexplicable it gets. Many experiences literally transcend or obviate language in their nature. After a certain point of undeniably real inexplicable absurdity, you give up trying to come up with "rational explanations" for things, and go with the flow. Part of the beauty of all of the woo-sploratio... See more

This is all to say: it’s worth listening when a place calls to you. It’s worth thinking about whether the place you live enables your goals or stands in their way. And it’s worth noticing what surroundings speak of enchantment, cultivate the conditions you feel at home in, and aim toward them. Life is more malleable than we think. It’s a surprise t... See more

Your job is not to lock the doors and chisel at yourself like a marble statue in the darkness until you feel quantifiably worthy of the world outside. Your job, really, is to find people who love you for reasons you hardly understand, and to love them back, and to try as hard as you can to make it all easier for each other.

I’m open to writing about heavy things but want to deliver them gracefully.

Tract

By William Carlos Williams

I will teach you my townspeople

how to perform a funeral —

for you have it over a troop

of artists—

unless one should scour the world —

you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.

I begin with a design for a hearse.

For Christ's sake not black —

nor white either — and not polished!

Let it be weathere... See more

When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly ge... See more