attic box

one unorthodox and unaccredited thing I made up that fundamentally increased my self-trust: I took six months where I stopped talking to friends about ‘my problems’ or ‘pending decisions’ and started recording voice memos to myself. 

turns out, I mostly needed a place to…

Some of your wildest dreams are on the other side of sending an email and a few follow ups. I kid you not.

I think I *just* understood Marriage Story, or how a relationship between people who once loved each other immensely can break apart so suddenly, brutally, confusingly. 

Over the course of the relationship, both people agree to contort themselves so as not to trigger the other…

Locking in needs no announcement, only proof.

You don’t need a vacation — you need 6 months of ambitious underemployment, of relaxed discipline, of productive exploration, of intentional meandering, … of hard leisure.

Over-intellectualizing feelings to avoid vulnerability might look like having an hour-long rational discussion about the overall deficit of hugs rather than just asking for a hug.

it’s sad that most people don’t have a community or friend group that makes them feel loved and safe

Years ago, someone asked me: if I could have any superpower I wanted, what would I choose? 

I said I’d choose the power to have people drop their masks and be real with me.

Turns out this is a real superpower anyone can cultivate. It starts by dropping your own mask.

best editing advice i ever heard was from walter murch when he says

when you find the moment you love the most b/c it's the *perfect* summation of everything you want to convey - take it out. & see how everything else around it fills that void in a newer, stronger way

Quit placing people high above you then reacting to your own invention with anger.   Jealousy is self-abandonment.  Have some dignity

something i see a lot is folks who start out very people-pleasey, taking too much accountability, blaming themselves for everything wrong in their relationships

and then they veer sharply to the other direction, (correctly) diagnosing all the ways other people can and should…

The test of a man isn't what you think he'll do. It's what he actually does.

There are places in the incentive landscape where the incentives are aligned with your values, and your job is to find them

chronic self-criticism is a way to feel like you're "doing something" about the perceived problem, without actually taking any action

it's your subconscious finding the perfect compromise between the desire to stay stuck (and therefore safe) and the desire to move forward

People fall out of love when they lose faith in the story the other person is writing. You wake up one day and think: why am I trapped inside this narrative? I don’t even like your prose.

me: let the time run out. who cares. the world is better off without me anyway…
jigsaw: heyyy nooo. cmo-(voice filter off) cmon man. you’re awesome

It is not that I’m some grumpy person who thinks that some people are great and others aren’t, in some predetermined way—I think you can to a large extent decide which kind you want to be. But if someone else isn’t measuring up, I have no idea how to convince them to do so. So I look for people who have already decided.

you ever notice how we reject what we consider to be woo until we hear an explanation we like? like, we’re happy to outright reject what’s before our eyes unless we have permission from the “story-maker” inside? refusing to even see the territory without a map?

i've spent many years– actually now two decades– circling around articulations of things that felt obvious to me that seemed to elude the people in my social reality. rn i'm feeling that at the core of a lot of it is "you can figure stuff out" and "you can talk to people"

If you don't let yourself have the satisfaction of completing a thing before moving onto the next thing, you miss out on a golden opportunity to reinforce the behavior you want.

Pleasure closes the loop. It can be a long/diffuse loop ("I'll let myself feel some abstract…

pay attention to those who have experienced the transformation you want to see in yourself

to change your stuck patterns requires much less force than you think 

in fact, it often requires the opposite: a gentle touch that allows the tension to loosen, making movement possible 

where are you adding tension when you could be creating relaxation?