Rob Tourtelot

Around 2019, my focus shifted from asking “who’s fucking with me?” to asking “how do I continue to fuck with myself?” Once you finally break away from seeing other people your most important puzzle to solve, then I think you can move on to more interesting puzzles, and eventually you put the puzzles on a high shelf, breathe in the air, and savor... See more

from the great Hanif Kureishi —

"One falls in love, and then learns, for the duration, that one is at the mercy of someone else's childhood."

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived. My number one criteria in evaluating a piece of writing is not whether it solved my problems, but whether it opened me up to dive deeper into the mystery.

Maybe “what have you done for the world” isn’t even the right question. It assumes an acting upon, separate from-ness. What if the good stuff happens less when you act upon the world and more when you become one with it? Part of it.

intimacy with others necessarily includes facing yourself, reckoning with what you truly desire, humbling yourself, noticing your bad habits, and observing your defense mechanisms. You have to be able to admit the many, many ways you fuck up and blame others and distance yourself every day in order to be a good friend to another flawed human being.... See more

Creative work is hard. And we constantly beat ourselves up for not producing high quantities of high-quality stuff. It’s easy to forget that we’re trying to make this work at a time when we’re oversaturated with connections, and constant, flashing demands. Boring old boundaries have never been more vital. Going into the cave will feel a little cold... See more

No matter how seriously sick one may be, for example, one’s life is still 100% life. Even if we are dying, our life is still 100% life. Even if we are in prison, our life is still 100% life. There is no such thing as a 50% life or a 70% life. Each moment is all of our life.