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lqb2weekly · Nov 4, 2025

lqb2weekly #210 (4 nov 2025)

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lawrence barriner ii · lqb2weekly

i write to you on a plane above the grand canyon omw back to boston from LA. and i write with a big feeling of shame/disbelief regarding how long it’s been since i published a last newsletter (JULY). several of you have asked what’s up and one person even said that they were hunting in their inbox, worried that they’d they missed. it’s been such a beautiful/wild summer and early fall and now it’s mid-fall and i can hardly believe that. on that tip, two simple but somehow increasingly profound lines about time from dear friends of mine lately:

  • “what i’ve learned is: time passes.” — kendra

  • “time is not a joke.” — katherine

they were very different contexts but these days i have been having a similar sentiment (🫴🏾🦋is this my mid 30s?). watching babies go from squish to less squish, watching the leaves fall, watching parents age, watching my own body’s diminishing capacity to heal with ease… phew child. time passes and it is not a joke.

(sidenote: in the 48h since drafting this, two other time lines have come up:

  • time is THICK right now. — rachel

  • time is a pest. — jesse

seems like time is on the mind/body these days…)

since i last wrote yall, i have been in paris, southeast of france, berlin, cape cod, martha’s vineyard, nyc, new haven, western mass, the top of mt monadnock, ipswich, vermont (x3), san diego, and LA. before the year is out, i’ll be in nyc, atlanta, hawai’i, and fl. what’s wild is that i also almost was in kenya. i swear to goddess, in 2026 i’m going to travel less.

over these past months, i’ve had so many different thoughts/insights i was going to put in this newsletter intro but in the intervening months, some of them are sadly no longer relevant. the next few paragraphs are the few that do feel still at least somewhat relevant:

  1. globally and in the u.s., we are experiencing fascism continue to deepen. the historical thread that’s most interesting to me is this: fascism seems to surface and grow when people(s) live into a time of disruption where the things that used to make the world(s) they inhabited make sense stop making sense. authoritarians take power in the space when one world is dying and some new world(s) is/are being born. they take power by offering clear (but wrong) answers and offering them loudly with their whole chest. and the people who follow them are often so desperately looking for someone/something to make sense of their world that they’ll ignore the glaring issues with the autocrats. the people would rather have a world that makes sense than bear the discomfort and pain of living in a world that doesn’t make sense.

    that’s one side of the rubix cube that this moment is.

    another side i’m seeing emerge is existential questioning at the level of the individual. the number of people i’m seeing have existential quandaries grows seemingly week after week. folks are asking, in a bunch of different ways, what am i doing here? why am i doing what i’m doing? does what i’m doing matter? how do i want to spend these days? what do i want to put my energy towards in this very particular historical moment? overall, i think it’s really good wrestling. the moment we’re in is deeply destabilizing. asking big questions in times these feels wise. my personal experience of it is in my physical body: anxiety, outsized and somewhat uncontrollable concern, random ass injuries (likely from being disembodied and then overextending some part of my body), shifting sleep patterns, etc. i’m working on developing my own new skills and support systems to be in this moment.

    but as the economy unshapes and reshapes (which i suspect is happening more intensely than we know or will know for a while because dictators love to control or fire the people who report on that sort of thing), i think there’s going to be a lot of woe. the unshaping is happening in the nonprofit sector, the for profit sector, and government. i hear folks in different sectors imagining that things are better in another (govt folks imagining they’re going to go private sector, nonprofit folks imagining they’re going to go private sector, private sector folks imagining this is the time to join the nonprofit sector). i’d love to be wrong, but i think moving sector isn’t going to save anyone from the falling apart.

    anyway, i say all this really to say that if you're asking yourself existential questions about what you’re doing and why, it seems very normal and i hope you find what you’re looking for but i also hope you don’t go looking in places that the answer isn’t.

  2. how are you?

    i have been ranting about this question again lately. the other day i went to look for some past writing i’d done about this and when i found what i was looking for i realized i have been writing about this question for almost ten years.

  3. d’angelo is on the other side! that is nuts. 😢 lots of people have been grieving lately and i have been, too. but, i realized a little bit ago that i feel both connected and disconnected from the grieving folks have been doing. and it relates to how i related to him.

    there’s probably another whole blog post in here but the my realization about his pass is sad for a probably non-standard reason: he was so hot. and therefore, as a little closeted black boy in the south, that was scary (like existentially terrifyingly scary – i could lose my belonging in my community which is my survival/existence). i was so into him but i couldn’t have his CDs (specfically voodoo, which came out while i in my early peak CD buying days) because what would that imply?! he was like always shirtless and no way could i admit i liked him or his music. i have been going back through his albums these days and enjoying them and fondly remembering the hits. but sadly i don’t have the same connection lots of folks around me seem to have. def grieving but maybe a diff type sad than some other folks.

  4. helen whybrow, my friend, had her book, the salt stones, be a finalist for national book award. when i draft this, we didn’t know she didn’t win. now we know she didn’t. but like… what a WILD honor. i know i’ve said this before but like… read the book! it’s so so good.

ok. some non-updatey things:

my friend, danielle, is running holistic vision again! it’s been a while and if you’re one of those folks in an existential place, i HIGHLY recommend it. it runs from 9 nov until 7 dec.

Holistic Vision is a framework to bring you in touch with what you most desire, how to hack time constraints, and why aligning actions with your deepest values delivers long-term returns beyond your present imagination.

i last did it in 2019 (vision statement over here) and it was an incredible life upgrade. honestly, it’s time for me to do a new one but this round i can’t make it work (it’s past no new things day). i hope to do a future one but it’s such a powerful space to shape your own compass for life and then figure out how to live by it.

sign up for infinite growth

on palestine:

ok one final thing: an upcoming event!

Decarcerating Care at 5 years: What’s changed since 2020?

Next Wednesday, November 5 from 6-8 pm ET, we’ll gather for Lessons in Transforming Crisis Response.

This panel will reflect on what has (and hasn’t) changed since the 2020 uprisings, offering concrete insights for resisting coercive care and advancing liberatory, community-based alternatives in the current political landscape. A panel of survivors, activists, organizers, and practitioners will discuss the ongoing movement to remove police from mental health crisis response, as well as the community-based alternatives that have taken shape since 2020.

(see more details below in the upcoming events section)

phewwwwwww. this is what happens every time i don’t send one of these out in a while. overloadddddd. anyways, don’t drown. if it feels overwhelming, do a quick skim, trust what your eye lands on, and then keep it moving. life’s too short to be stressed out by trying to consume everything in this newsletter.

on to the things!

(!!) pick of the pack

some things i’ve written since the last newsletter:

there is nothing new under the sun. also, full transparency, many of these quotes come from james clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter (which i love).

Books are the nearest thing to a time machine humans have ever made. — James Clear

Don’t let a title become a trap.
“I have to be a doctor.”
“I need to get into that school.”
“I can’t quit this job—it’s Google.”
There are many ways to live an amazing life. Stop thinking about the status of this particular title and focus on the substance of what you want. You’ll often find there are many ways to get similar amounts of joy, purpose, or freedom.
If you attach your happiness to a single path, you’ll become blind to other wonderful opportunities around you. And many of them might be a better fit for you or deliver a similar result with less struggle. — James Clear

I heard in a sermon once that the definition of self-control was to choose the important over the urgent.
Often, I’ve wished that I could’ve had quicker success, greater financial security, more respect, et cetera, as a writer. For nearly twelve years now since leaving the law, I have often felt ashamed for wanting to be a writer and doubtful of my talents.
What helped in these moments was to consider what was important, rather than the urgent feelings of embarrassment and helplessness. What was important is still important now: to learn to write better in order to better complete the vision one holds in one’s head and to enjoy the writing, because the work has to be the best part — Min Jin Lee

There is an enormous difference between working hard on something that is a grind and working hard on something that comes easily to you.
Exceptional results almost exclusively happen when you work hard on an area where you have some natural aptitude. Play to your strengths — James Clear

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you. — Saint Augustine

Relationships are usually the most important thing.
If you want to achieve more, there is some relationship that can unlock better results. If you want to make a meaningful contribution, helping others is a great way to do it. If you simply want to be a little happier, life is often more fun when shared with someone.
Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, relationships are probably the key to getting there. Take this idea seriously and spend a little time thinking about which relationships you need to build or invest in. — James Clear

Think of yourself in a concert hall listening to the strains of the sweetest music when you suddenly remember that you forgot to lock your car. You are anxious about the car, you cannot walk out of the hall and you cannot enjoy the music. There you have a perfect image of life as it is lived by most human beings. — Anthony de Mello

I slept, and dreamed that life was joy;
I woke, and found that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy. — Ellen Sturgis Hooper

some things i’ve read since the last newsletter:

  • a friend is looking for someone to sublet their room

    Seeking a 4 - 8 week sublet in the range of November 25th - January 18th. Timing flexible. Room comes fully furnished, on the top floor of a beautiful communal home in Jamaica Plain. Sliding scale $2,000 - 3,000 for full 8 weeks. Pricing negotiable based on time spent. Only open to women, femmes, and queers. No pets. Full details here.

co-hosted by my dear friend, nadav david!

  • Man Up, Speak Out: Real Talk About Men’s Mental Health | Thursday, November 6, 12pm-1pm ET | Online

  • Decarcerating Care at 5 years: What’s changed since 2020?

    During a time of rising fascism, escalating state-sanctioned violence against mad, disabled, and unhoused communities, and a nationwide push to expand involuntary commitment and restrict bodily autonomy, we’re being called -- again -- to imagine and build crisis care that supports us, rather than controls us.

    Five years after the first Decarcerating Care panel, IDHA is returning to the question at the heart of that original gathering: What will it take to take police out of mental health crisis response and advance true community-based care?

    Wednesday, November 5 from 6-8 pm ET, we’ll gather for Lessons in Transforming Crisis Response. This panel will reflect on what has (and hasn’t) changed since the 2020 uprisings, offering concrete insights for resisting coercive care and advancing liberatory, community-based alternatives in the current political landscape. A panel of survivors, activists, organizers, and practitioners will discuss the ongoing movement to remove police from mental health crisis response, as well as the community-based alternatives that have taken shape since 2020.

    We hope to be joined by those working across movements for mental health liberation, healing justice, abolition, and beyond. It would be so meaningful to have you join us; if you can’t attend live, we’ll share the recording, transcript, and resources with all registrants after.

about how different my 2026 might look than my 2025.

(i did it. i finally watched kpop demon hunters. thanks, bernice, max, and sky.)

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