i am obsessed with the concept of collapsing timelines. like what do you mean your entire life can change in 6 months because of one decision, one person, one opportunity, one random yes??? you are literally one plot twist away from a completely different life.
One of the fastest ways to change your life is to increase the speed at which you resolve tension.
Return the call. Send the email. Have the conversation. Resolve faster. Watch your life speed up.
Keep your problems smaller than your life. A flat tire is a flat tire. A bad meeting is a bad meeting. A canceled flight is just an extra two hours. These things become catastrophes when you let them. But they stay manageable when you remember the depth of your real life- the people you love, the work you care about, the beautiful years still ahead. Zoom out. Fit your reaction to the size of the problem.
I entered UCLA as a freshman at 46 and graduated with a computer science and digital media management degree at 50. In the ten years since, I’ve made three feature films, two film shorts, established a film festival, written for numerous publications, and published two books (third one on the way). You’re either alive or dead. Those are the only two ages.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Emma by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Everything by Charles Dickens
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
Père Goriot (Old Goriot) by Honoré de Balzac
Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac
The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) by Alessandro Manzoni
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
Ulysses by James Joyce
In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (and his short stories)
Short Stories by Stephen Crane
Short Stories by Saki
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Collected Works by William Shakespeare
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
And so much more and also more poetry in general...
I think one of the most heartfelt experiences in life is discovering that someone genuinely enjoys your presence. Not what you provide, Not your accomplishments. Just you, your thoughts, your energy, your existence.
My mother embodies this to a fault. Growing up, we’d pray for God to bring oppressive co-workers to repentance, for people who owed her and refused to pay or even answer her calls and so on during family devotions.
The profile was like a business page. Food pictures and prompts. Then I started swiping and when they swipe back I ask them if they want to buy food 🤷♀️
My therapist once told me: Imagine being bitten by a snake and, instead of treating the bite, you waste time chasing the snake to understand why it bit you and prove you didn't deserve it.