Jessica

the creative process typically involves three steps:

1. Collecting: Gathering interesting ideas


2. Connecting: Drawing connections and organizing materials


3. Creating: Producing something new

When you are your weirdest, truest self with people and they respond to it and show you their weird true selves, they become your people. You’re bound in a different way.

Remember, the creative act is all about long term progression. The only way to improve is through the consistent completion, and release of work. So learn what you can from your current project, click publish, and then start again.

Talking about love is one of the grand traditions of being alive: what it means to fall in and out of it, how to keep it, how to grieve it, how to live for ourselves and toward another .1

Someone’s best qualities, through a squint, are just their flaws.

I heard someone say "don't cross oceans for people who wouldn't cross a puddle for you." Which I thought was good advice. But then someone else spoke up and said "No. Do it. Do cross oceans for people. Love all people. No conditions attached. No wondering whether or not they are worthy. Cross oceans, climb mountains. Life and love isn't about what ... See more

Just as someone with iron deficiency anemia craves ice (“pica”), I crave texture .

I yearn to feel the coarseness of sketch paper and the silky fibers of a floor rug more than ever before. I’m sitting at my laptop typing this essay, and what do I feel? I feel the base of my palm resting against the slight cold of my MacBook’s sturdy silver gray bas... See more

A big project of mine over the next year will be writing about cultural scripts and expectations in friendship. Friendship is vastly undertheorized as compared to romantic relationships, but they’re just as important: they affect our quality of life in the most fundamental ways. Friendship is an entry point to everything: work, romance, sense of se... See more

The thing I’ve learned over time is that friendships are not fungible—no two people are the same, obviously, but also you can’t replicate the experience of someone knowing you through a particular era of your life. You can never go back to that period of your life; you can never replace the people who witnessed you and supported you. To me, relinqu... See more

1. It’s Good.


2. It Can be Better.

It’s a little trite, but try it out next time you’re feeling hard on yourself. If you’ve gotten some way into a creative project, the odds are it’s not terrible. It’s probably not where you want it to be or where you’ve imagined it can be, but it’s hopefully at least decent. And it can be better.