The Writing Life

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“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.

You open your safe and find ashes.”

Annie Dillard from The Writing Life

This Week’s Favorites 09.18.26

A happy Friday morning to you!

We are allegedly in for rain and cooler temps, after today. We’ll take it. So done with summer.

A closet sweep still awaits me.

The week has felt eternal (last week blurred into this week), the weather fluctuated wildly, and we have finally reached the culmination of it.

Florida v. Auburn, this weekend. (Legendary rivalries entering the chat). Hockey starts next week. The Paper is still certifiably hilarious.

This week, I was deep in the following book:

It still shocks me, on these trains, as I see men just sit while all the women stand. It really reveals something disturbing about today’s society.

I felt pretty spent this week, but despite my fatigued energy— here are some of the favorites that caught my attention. I hope you have a relaxing unwind to the week. Cooler weather is on the other side.

“The heart always follows the habit.” Justin Whitmel Earley

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Creativity is more than making things. It’s actually a way of meeting reality on its own terms. 

You look at what’s left. You resist the urge to call it failure. You stay curious. You ask what this strange stew of random events and accidental disappointments might be asking of you now. And then you make something from that.” Rainier Wylde

Jenna from Feeling Magazine! is lovely.

“Living life as an artist is a practice.” Rick Rubin

Early 2000s makeup.

This piece had some valid points: If Sexual Liberation Is Empowering, Why Is Everyone Mad at Sydney Sweeney?

“And sometimes true love comes later.” Pamela Kelley

What Exactly Do We Want a 60-Year-Old Female Movie Star to Look Like?

“Maybe freedom isn’t becoming someone new. Maybe it’s realizing how much of yourself was there all along, underneath everything you collected.” Alyssa Lynch

“Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.” Haruki Murakami

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway

“Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.” 
Fred Rogers

This week’s song (felt feisty this week):

(When I hear this song, I am 12 years old again with my church friends in a Pizza Hut parking lot on a Saturday night. Me rolling my eyes while they try to do parkour off cars like they are in the (at the time) new Jackass movie. We all felt like we were on top of the world).

Broadax

Annie Dillard.

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I was reading the piece on Annie Dillard’s life and recent death.

It made me think a lot about writing. About life. How many hours does any of us have left? We spend so much time in unconscious living; engaging in habits and actions we do on autopilot. How much conscious life do we have left? I heard a whole podcast about this, recently— the things that steal life away. Eeh!

I am also reading this book, Habits of a Household, about turning ordinary moments into liturgical moments. Turning habits into worship. Creating space for sacred moments.

The book I am 1/3 of the way through.

With all these thoughts swirling through my head and coming to me, repeatedly, in different ways, I then encountered the obit piece on Annie Dillard. (RIP)

I loved the quote in there, and you can apply it to just about anything you want to be in life. Doesn’t have to be writing.

She wrote:

“How many of you, I asked the people in my class, which of you want to give your lives and be writers? […]

And then I tried to tell them what the choice must mean: You can’t be anything else. You must go at your life with a broadax.”

There she goes quoting Walt Whitman; someone she was compared to for years.

What does it mean to go at life with a “broadax”?

Be bold, fierce, committed, present, and full throttle.

Nothing less, and always MAX.

Go at life with your broadax. Let’s do it.

Popped

People love to be helpless. People feel comfortable being assholes.

By: Gabriela Yareliz

People do a lot without consequence, now. People hide behind their delusions, phone screens, AI slop, and handles and screen names that lend anonymity. People sue others for the decisions they made and responsibility they share. People hate responsibility and ownership. They hate others, conveniently. They strive for false righteousness and superiority.

Perhaps the past is filled with hypocritical people who lived off of appearances, but let me tell you something— the people who pretended went to great lengths to do so. It took effort. Nothing takes effort anymore. People don’t even think for themselves.

In many ways, technology helps information spread like a wildfire. In other ways, it cloaks and deceives. It’s a double-edged sword that people are willing to surrender to if it means flinging their agency and intelligence off a cliff, and being able to abdicate their responsibility to one more thing.

I think we were better people back in the day when you had to face life and face someone to say something. Where saying something had consequences. Where your actions had consequences. You’d get popped in the mouth or feel its weight. (Some people out there haven’t been punched in the mouth, and it shows…)

How do we go back to moral clarity? Do people just start punching others? Kidding. But also, not?

How do we return decency to the human race? How do we return responsibility to where it belongs?

Last Week’s Favorites 09.13.26

Hello my fellow journey(wo)men,

It’s a rainy morning here in NYC after some hot temperatures this week. The sun was roasting. The rest of us were yearning for fall.

I am still wrapping up Nantucket Second Chances; you would have thought that with all of the brutal train delays this week I would have finished it. I did not.

I am plotting my closet clean out as we prepare to enter cooler days (I pray).

It was an emotional and somber 9/11, as it usually is. The week carried that weight throughout.

I am in my refinement era and very consistent with Ladder. I am on day six of the MAX series, and feeling the intensity of weight lifting these past 14 weeks.

Made the Gordon Ramsay rice, and I already know this will be a repeat-make this fall and winter. Along with GP’s congee. Is it odd that I find myself craving that Congee on certain days?

GP being a boss.

The Paper is back (and funnier than last season), and Dancing with the Stars and hockey are on the horizon.

It was a draining week filled with bright moments and lots of productivity (got so much done). Here were some of the favorites.

Let’s gooooo.

“The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Via the Law of Ambition

“He wasn’t really teaching us composition as much as he was teaching us how to pay attention, think independently, live honestly, and take responsibility for our words and our lives.” Liz Prather

Via Substack

“The most valuable math you can learn, is how to calculate the future cost of your current decisions.” Unknown

I hate a meeting.

“You just have to decide: are you going to keep going or are you not going to keep going? That’s really all there is.” Shea Serrano

“Increasingly, even non-muslim liberals hopped up on Zinn and Chomsky believe that 9/11 was justified, calling it “blowback” from the foreign entanglements of generations past. These people don’t see the objective reality that America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world, but worse…they see America as the islamic fundamentalists do: the great satan.” Spencer Pratt

Via Liz Plosser

“Primer pensamiento: sigue durmiendo, querida.” Patricia Benito

This homemade pop-tart recipe! I need to try making this.

Song of the week:

May this week be all we hope it to be.

We Remember

By: Gabriela Yareliz

It’s the 25th year marking the anniversary of 9/11/01.

We remember those on the planes who left those last voicemails and never landed at their destinations.

We remember the brave ones who fought back.

We remember those who went to the office and never came home.

We remember the heroes of all kinds who saw chaos and ran toward it.

We remember the service members who were deployed and those who served.

We remember those who immediately enlisted to serve.

We remember every spouse who lost the love of their life and raised a family alone.

We remember every child who grew up without a parent.

We remember every New Yorker who looked on in horror.

We remember those who ran through the streets to find safety.

We remember those who jumped and the ones who saw them.

We remember the weeks of hope and grief, as first responders tried to dig missing people out of the rubble.

We remember the taxi drivers who packed their cars and didn’t charge a cent for months.

We remember the ferry conductors and Port Authority who came back for people.

We remember the parents who experienced the chaos and didn’t know how they would reunite with their children.

We remember the generation who watched the attacks on live television.

We remember New York, Pennsylvania, D.C. and a grieving nation.

We remember our history and our people.

I never forget a woman that I met who told me her 9/11 story. She had her baby with her on the morning of September 11. When 9/11 was happening, she joined the many who were running up the West Side Highway on foot, running North covered in ash from the Financial District.

She said she would run and would have to stop in anguish because her baby was heavy. People noticed and helped her. She told me she never forgot the men and women, covered in soot, like angels, who would take the baby from her arms and run a leg, and then, pass the baby on to someone with fresh arms.

They were the ones who made it home. Even in the moments of anguish and darkness, we are not alone.

As we remember, we remember the victims of this horrific attack that is still so surreal and feels like yesterday. We remember that love is all that remains.

I am always in awe of the heroes. The ones who run toward the darkness. Their courage is the best of America and the best of the human spirit. May their legacies never be forgotten and may we strive for their virtue in every day we are gifted. Tomorrow isn’t promised. An ordinary morning can turn into tragedy quickly.

We remember.