
The moment I finally called myself a writer

Nine months into self-employment, I had landed four different projects and proved to myself that I could “make it” working on my own. But I had a problem: those projects were the same kind I had done in my consulting career, and as my financial anxiety diminished, I discovered that I didn’t actually want to build a life around this kind of work.
Paul Millerd • Good Work: Reclaiming Your Inner Ambition
The one practice I kept was writing. It made the cut because I can’t deny how many good things in my life have come as a result of my putting words out into the world. It also felt like a respite: one area where I wasn’t skeptical of my identity. I’m at my most courageous on the page because interrogating my feelings with words feels justified and
... See moreMolly Mielke • (self) concept

Like many — dare I say, most — people in their early 20s, I find it hard to shake the feeling that my life is a pinball machine of relationships and opportunities that I’m hurtling through headfirst, knocking over bystanders and crashing into obstacles, unable to stop for long enough to figure out what I’m doing wrong. It is tempting, in this world... See more