It's only in the past couple of years that I've started to understand what I believe in. Before I had all these ideas and aspirations that I just absorbed from the culture around me. But culture, as Terrence McKenna says, is not your friend. To say that I was liberal or conservat … | Continue reading
I’ve been telling friends lately that the three most lucrative things you can be obsessed with are people, technology and money. You can be interested in all three, but you can really only be truly obsessed with one. For me, it’s always been people. When I was a kid I could barel … | Continue reading
My mom was the one who taught me how to be insistent. When I was a kid and she was trying to change a flight reservation or persuade someone to do something she would spend literal hours on the phone—she’d just keep calling back until she found someone who would do it. At the tim … | Continue reading
For years I felt stuck in a holding pattern, unable to make meaningful progress. I always had a clear sense of what I was interested in, but the actual next steps were opaque to me. I remember being in college and asking my poetry professor how I could improve my poetry. And he s … | Continue reading
This is the first post in a series where I explore how love hurts and why. | Continue reading
I’ve been thinking about this tweet since I first saw it. When I examine my current and past relationships, it really does come down to this: all the good things are about the ability to communicate. All the bad things come down to the inability to bridge the gaps between us. | Continue reading
The most important realization I got from psychedelics was the understanding that everything was okay. | Continue reading
I read 187 books this year. You can see the books I recommended in 2020 here. | Continue reading
I’m preparing an application that requires me to compile pictures from the past two years, and it’s made me realize that 1) I have a really nice life and 2) I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as I should because I’m a perfectionist who likes to be in control. Historically, I’ve alwa … | Continue reading
I think a lot about the fluctuations of belief—the inevitable up and downs of maintaining engagement with something over long periods of time. Most people seem to think that love is unchanging versus merely | Continue reading
My desire to write is part of an enduring search for autonomy. By “autonomy” I mean the freedom to make work that I think is good on my own terms. The thing that holds me back is my need for certainty. This conflict is within all of us: longing for independence is always shadowed … | Continue reading
by Richard Diebenkorn It’s said all the time that boundaries are essential to self-esteem and emotional health. What’s not said as often is that constructing good boundaries requires sufficient knowledge of self: who you are, what you want, and what you’re willing or not willing … | Continue reading
by Gerhard Richter I’ve been traveling too much lately. Right now I’m pretty bad at maintaining my daily routine when I’m away from home—my sleep schedule gets messed up, I eat out and go to too many bars, I meet a flood of new people. When I travel I’m always reminded of how vas … | Continue reading
by Manet Years ago I had a good friend who always had crushes on unavailable women. Specifically, unavailable in this tantalizing way where they seemed like they were almost about to reciprocate his feelings, almost ready for a committed relationship. One day he was telling me ab … | Continue reading
By Lee Krasner True story: I’m writing this in the gym locker room because it’s raining outside and I don’t feel like walking to my coworking space. True story: all my weekdays are exactly the same. I wake up, get coffee, type on my laptop for a few hours, go to the gym/go for a … | Continue reading
Every woman I know grew up in the shadow of a female cultural ideal that seemed both achievable and totally impossible. Tina Fey and Gillian Flynn have articulated it better than I can, but it goes something like this: you should have the body of a Kardashian, the brain of a nucl … | Continue reading
A few nights ago a friend and I were talking about the moment when someone shows you their texts with their crush and asks you to analyze it with them, i.e. “Do you think that he/she likes me?” I always offer the best analysis I can because I believe it is a sacred duty to indulg … | Continue reading
I grew up subsisting on stories. During all of elementary school I kept a book on my lap and read while the teacher talked. If I wasn’t consuming narratives I was creating them—daydreaming intensely, making up elaborate stories in my head. For a long time I would default to a kin … | Continue reading
I posted a question on Twitter about unrealistic fantasies. Some of the answers were flippant. Some were funny (“life of crime,” “girl walking around the office in a pencil skirt”). But a lot of the answers I got seemed to be all about love. As in: love of bookstores, cafes, film … | Continue reading
I know we don’t like Louis C.K. anymore, but one of the most important moments of my life was when I watched his tribute to George Carlin. It was filmed at the New York Public Library in 2010. In his speech Louis C.K. talked about how Carlin was the first comedian to make him lau … | Continue reading
People like to say that lives on social media look unattainable and perfect, but whenever I see something that’s beautifully curated all I can see is the sweat: the money expended, the surgery and fillers, the workouts, the interior designers, the carefully selected objects, the … | Continue reading