Leela R Sinha

Are we idealists or pragmatists? Do we have principles we hold dear, and a vision for the future we want to create? Or are we fumbling along, tinkering, finding what works, and forever allowing contact with reality to rearrange our mental furniture, make a mess on our conceptual floor, and occasionally punch so many holes in the walls that need to

What am I expecting, then, when I hoist myself back up and try again with the whole singing thing? Why keep at it at all, given everything?

The more I do it the less it hurts. The less it hurts, the more I am able to do it. The more I am able to do it, the more I learn about how to do it. The more I learn about how to do it, this primal and elementa

In her book Create Dangerously, Edwidge Danticat writes of the “floating homeland” of the diaspora.

https://open.substack.com/pub/aplaceforwriters/p/navel-gazing-a-space-for-outsiders

I gravitate towards writers who want something better for themselves and the world

https://open.substack.com/pub/aplaceforwriters/p/navel-gazing-a-space-for-outsiders

But mostly changing the world is a matter of luck, not effort or brilliance or ambition.

Mette Marie Ivie in her substack Kicking and Screaming:

https://open.substack.com/pub/metteh/p/i-was-going-to-change-the-world?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1ny8v

I want digital things mostly for the efficiently of space, not time. Space and thought. My handwriting is a mess because I'm trying to keep up with what I'm thinking. I want to be legible and I don't want to lose everything.

But that's also why I fear digitizing. I fear the ephemerality of it all.

Leela Sinha

Later, I sit myself down and pretend I’m the therapist.

“What will you have when this puzzle is finished?” the pretend-therapist asks.

“Something that looks like a life,” I blurt. “Something that feels like I lived. It’s not about pride, fame, or success. I just want to complete something—a task, a sentence, to let a train of thought run all the way

My primary aim as a human is intertwined with my aims as a writer: I want the truth. I want to be ruthlessly honest with myself as a human and with my readers as a writer. I want to accept myself fully as I am in any moment while also working to unearth and expose the ways I’ve learned to survive, in order to find new ways to trust myself and the w

If you have ideals but you don't take responsibility for making a change in the world, you are working on your self-image, not a product for other people. If all you have is pragmatism, then you have speed but not a direction and the purpose of your work will get set by default to, at best, the same conventional things that everyone else is chasing