On: “I've been freaking out about it, I can't think about anything else.”
Thot: You are naturally a disciplined and focused person, despite what you may tell yourself in moments of doubt, and it makes perfect sense that you are thinking about it all the time! Let the freak out moments drive your enthusiasm and drive. Over time, once you do the damn thing, you will quite literally flip the script and all of a sudden, you’ll freak out less the next time. And then less after that. And then. You’ll freak out about something else because you’ve raised the bar. Embrace the freak out and let it guide your motivation. It’s such a thrill. And I hate to say it again... Dopamine inducing.
On: Well, that's not true - I also think about how a better writer would have solved this by now.
Thot: Okay, stick with me here as we move into the woo woo quantum shit, but there is NO ONE ELSE on the PLANET but you who can, in this moment, so the exact task in front of you. This was meant for you, and it was a decision agreed upon by both parties. This. Is. Yours. Take that shit and run with it.
It’s the things we hear most often that we need to pay the closest attention to. Which is super convenient because we’re not biologically hardwired to pursue novelty oh wait
Sleep is good. I’ll never forget the day in college I was so stuck trying to get a cs project working. I went to sleep and woke up knowing the fix. And it worked! It was magic.
Wright and Rong 👌 Also raw-dogging the questions lol 😆😆😆 Rilke is so good and also had some questionable relationships to relationship which I love because human life is fascinating 🐓 finally, Robert living the questions! Yes please 🫶🏽
Precarity, rent, and whether my book deal will close next week.
Do you like Rilke? Who else is like Rilke, aka Rilke-like wow.
Very much, especially his schtick about partners being the guardians of each other's solitude. And there's this new book I'm reading: RILKE THE LAST INWARD MAN by Lesley Chamberlain. High rec. The Wasband was like Rilke. Lauren Groff is a female Rilke.
Fridays am I right? More like friedeggs anyone hearing me in the back i’m not getting any response or feedback from y’all at all?
Friday was cryday... I don't know if it was an equinox thing. Something cosmic. Not the gym. The gym always makes me cry. (*titters, grim)
Robert the dog living the questions! And those little fox feeties. ❤️
The question I’m most living right now is, Will this leap I’m taking toward a writing career I’ve long dreamed of be successful in the sundry ways I’m hoping for? If I can live more and more into the truth that, with every step into it, I feel more me be enough, will that open up even more doors? Oh and there’s always, Will I find a partnership that is bloom and balm and magic and work? So, you know, just little things. 🤣
Thanks for the reminder to not get hung up on the answers. And best with the script! Write it sans the answer? You got this.
Here’s my brain’s scary fun-house of uncertainty. I got married this past spring. to the smartest kindest favorites person I know. Weee, all uncertainty about love and happiness is gone forever! My brain: Hold on little doggy, this is way too perfect: it HAS TO END. He’ll die in a car crash or that pain in your neck is definitely terminal because you better just be ready for it all to end because you don’t deserve this level of happiness, you idiot. Keep inventing new ways this will all blow up so you won’t be surprised when it does.
I mentioned my fears to my husband in bed last night and he laughed and said, “But what if it all works out? What if you could change your thinking to all the good things that could happen in our lives? Also you need to go to sleep.”Dammit.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. How to create just *what it is*, and what you can make *as you are*, rather than _trying_ to make something brilliant. It’s the trying that’s the problem, isn’t it? I had my big breakthrough in the MA I just did (in children’s book illustration) when I was feeling all the things I was *not* and pretty despairing about it. And I remember having this moment of, well, I can just be myself, even if I think it’s rubbish most of the time. I sort of leaned into where I was and who I was. And it was after that that i produced some of my best work! Every time I am feeling the most stuck, it’s because I am holding myself to a standard that is not even too high, but too different to who I actually am. Anyhoo...
Ugh. But what if one thrives in uncertainty and is frustrated with certainty? Does that mean I’m a commitment-phobe?
The forgetting is all too real though. Relearning lessons can really be an art form of torture. Or maybe a way to slowly chip away new ways of living through the same problem...
I just gotta say it feels damn good be so certain that it’s all so uncertain. Thanks for your reminders, as always: the consistency of your inconsistency is award winningly helpful.
Love this: A perfect encapsulation of my inability to handle uncertainty of any kind along with an antidote, a solution that exists inside the very question being asked, a solution that IS the question by which of course I am repeating Rilke but not as poet-ly: Live the muthafukin questions bb!!
what if we didn't need the answers???
Hi!!! My thots:
On: “I've been freaking out about it, I can't think about anything else.”
Thot: You are naturally a disciplined and focused person, despite what you may tell yourself in moments of doubt, and it makes perfect sense that you are thinking about it all the time! Let the freak out moments drive your enthusiasm and drive. Over time, once you do the damn thing, you will quite literally flip the script and all of a sudden, you’ll freak out less the next time. And then less after that. And then. You’ll freak out about something else because you’ve raised the bar. Embrace the freak out and let it guide your motivation. It’s such a thrill. And I hate to say it again... Dopamine inducing.
On: Well, that's not true - I also think about how a better writer would have solved this by now.
Thot: Okay, stick with me here as we move into the woo woo quantum shit, but there is NO ONE ELSE on the PLANET but you who can, in this moment, so the exact task in front of you. This was meant for you, and it was a decision agreed upon by both parties. This. Is. Yours. Take that shit and run with it.
Kimia
John Keats is pretty Rilke-like if you ask me.
His secret to creativity?
Negative Capability
“that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
The world is an uncertain place, the best artist allow themselves to see it that way, instead of chokeholding it into an imagined “reason”
It’s the things we hear most often that we need to pay the closest attention to. Which is super convenient because we’re not biologically hardwired to pursue novelty oh wait
Sleep is good. I’ll never forget the day in college I was so stuck trying to get a cs project working. I went to sleep and woke up knowing the fix. And it worked! It was magic.
Wright and Rong 👌 Also raw-dogging the questions lol 😆😆😆 Rilke is so good and also had some questionable relationships to relationship which I love because human life is fascinating 🐓 finally, Robert living the questions! Yes please 🫶🏽
Man I thought I was hardcore for putting that Rilke quote in my Substack about page but the tattoo is next level. I love it.
The script is gonna be awesome, dude, as is the fact that you get to write it!
What question are you living right now?
Precarity, rent, and whether my book deal will close next week.
Do you like Rilke? Who else is like Rilke, aka Rilke-like wow.
Very much, especially his schtick about partners being the guardians of each other's solitude. And there's this new book I'm reading: RILKE THE LAST INWARD MAN by Lesley Chamberlain. High rec. The Wasband was like Rilke. Lauren Groff is a female Rilke.
Fridays am I right? More like friedeggs anyone hearing me in the back i’m not getting any response or feedback from y’all at all?
Friday was cryday... I don't know if it was an equinox thing. Something cosmic. Not the gym. The gym always makes me cry. (*titters, grim)
Robert the dog living the questions! And those little fox feeties. ❤️
The question I’m most living right now is, Will this leap I’m taking toward a writing career I’ve long dreamed of be successful in the sundry ways I’m hoping for? If I can live more and more into the truth that, with every step into it, I feel more me be enough, will that open up even more doors? Oh and there’s always, Will I find a partnership that is bloom and balm and magic and work? So, you know, just little things. 🤣
Thanks for the reminder to not get hung up on the answers. And best with the script! Write it sans the answer? You got this.
Such a great essay. And so funny!
Here’s my brain’s scary fun-house of uncertainty. I got married this past spring. to the smartest kindest favorites person I know. Weee, all uncertainty about love and happiness is gone forever! My brain: Hold on little doggy, this is way too perfect: it HAS TO END. He’ll die in a car crash or that pain in your neck is definitely terminal because you better just be ready for it all to end because you don’t deserve this level of happiness, you idiot. Keep inventing new ways this will all blow up so you won’t be surprised when it does.
I mentioned my fears to my husband in bed last night and he laughed and said, “But what if it all works out? What if you could change your thinking to all the good things that could happen in our lives? Also you need to go to sleep.”Dammit.
Loving your writing, "gulping down a stew of self-loathing", and Robert's cuteness.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. How to create just *what it is*, and what you can make *as you are*, rather than _trying_ to make something brilliant. It’s the trying that’s the problem, isn’t it? I had my big breakthrough in the MA I just did (in children’s book illustration) when I was feeling all the things I was *not* and pretty despairing about it. And I remember having this moment of, well, I can just be myself, even if I think it’s rubbish most of the time. I sort of leaned into where I was and who I was. And it was after that that i produced some of my best work! Every time I am feeling the most stuck, it’s because I am holding myself to a standard that is not even too high, but too different to who I actually am. Anyhoo...
Ugh. But what if one thrives in uncertainty and is frustrated with certainty? Does that mean I’m a commitment-phobe?
The forgetting is all too real though. Relearning lessons can really be an art form of torture. Or maybe a way to slowly chip away new ways of living through the same problem...
I just gotta say it feels damn good be so certain that it’s all so uncertain. Thanks for your reminders, as always: the consistency of your inconsistency is award winningly helpful.
wtf!!! after reading THIS just put myself in concussion protocol and a call to animal rescue to come for the dog poronto heh
Love this: A perfect encapsulation of my inability to handle uncertainty of any kind along with an antidote, a solution that exists inside the very question being asked, a solution that IS the question by which of course I am repeating Rilke but not as poet-ly: Live the muthafukin questions bb!!
dear alex,
thank you for these questions! and non-questions!
here are some answers to your questions which may or not be tricks!
(you've heard of trick questions. have you heard of trick ANSWERS?)
1) What question are you living right now?
good question! the question i'm living right now is "what question are you living right now?"
also "what is home?" (just moved into a new place)
also "how to live?" (am alive)
2) Do you like Rilke? Who else is like Rilke, aka Rilke-like wow.
i do! i don't know if anyone is like Rilke, but here are some people i like that i think of now:
byron katie
david whyte
ursula k le guin
george saunders
sophie lucido johnson
5) Fridays am I right?
today is sunday actually
love you! thank you!
myq