It was not fun to walk around with my ghosts, despite what my positive memories wanted me to believe. I think this is because inherent in “revisiting” is the palpable reality that everything ends, the reminder that soon the way you are experiencing your present moment will be the past; it too will end.

We love to convince ourselves that things are circumstantial. Like, I love painting, but I don’t paint anymore because I’m too bus y. Like, I’m not really happy with my suburban life, but I’m trapped in it indefinitely . But what if these things aren’t circumstantial? Instead of blaming the external world, imagine believing that some part of me wan... See more

I recently had a friend drop by to pick up her Girl Scout cookies and my house was A.MESS. Four loads of laundry on the couch including my underwear (clean) and a box containing our cats ashes on the coffee table because it had been under the Christmas tree because she liked trees and my daughter thought it was fitting.

Anyway my friend just brushe... See more

“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatsoever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got a hold of for the momen... See more

Michael Lewis on how your narrative crafts your character: If you listen to people, if you just sit around and listen, you’ll find there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves. Some people are always the victim. Some people always get unlucky. Some people are always in the middle of some impossible project. Some people are always hav... See more

Through my work, I present all my dreams, my fears, my ego, my insecurity, and it takes a level of being OK with being “seen” like that to really create work that speaks to the human condition. I laugh thinking back on an example I can give — I have a dress from one of my first collections that has my nightmares printed on it from when I was a chil... See more

The monotony of life contains a reservoir of ways to find relief, if we can only muster the courage and energy to dive in instead of opting out. If today you find yourself bored with your work—perhaps surfing around and reading some random essay on happiness—you may have just gotten a signal from the universe that it’s time for your spirit to evolv... See more

Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, said the main motivation of his life was, “To be a good ancestor.”