To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool.

a writer is a writer, no matter what sort of work she’s doing, as long as she is thinking, still, like a writer: observing and mentally composing and watching the world with curiosity. Writing is a lovely, life-affirming thing to do, even if the world never rewards us for it, or never rewards us enough to allow us to make it the main thing in our l... See more

I think a lot of people want to be but they don’t want to do . They want to have written a book, but they don’t want to write the book. They want to be fit, but they don’t want the tedium of working out. They’re ashamed of rejection and they’re ashamed of imperfection. I might want lots of people to subscribe to this Substack, but do I want to work... See more