I finished it, here you go!
when I did nothing but search myself and steep in each minute of the deepening indigo sky, I suddenly had somewhere everywhere to be…
Sarah Avenir
Sarah’s home, home on the web.
Latest posts
There is no cure for hot and cold
The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face. When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we could meet…
What mankind cannot live without
“And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without…
It's like what we imagine knowledge to be
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter, then briny, then surely burn your tongue. It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark…
The great reluctance
As I’ve been working on my prototype for the path of Action in The Self-Taught Life, I’ve noticed something strange. Or rather, it’s not…
The world is verbs
“As J.J. Gibson’s psychological school at Cornell University maintained, the world affords nesting and sheltering, nourishing and quenching…
Introducing something new
All day I think about it, then at night I say it, Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from…
What I can't get used to here
What I can’t get used to here (I’ll tell you While we hide together, you faceless in shadow) is the smallness. I didn’t look for only cream…
It's life that matters
“It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, not the discovery itself, at all. But what’s the use of talking? I…
Love note to: The Futurological Congress
c/o Stanisław Lem Dear The Futurological Congress, Have you ever met someone who made you laugh so hard while you were with them, but then…
Love note to: The Day on Fire
c/o James Ramsay Ullman Dear The Day on Fire, There is so much I want to say to you, I don’t know where to begin. First, I thank you (and…
What trees?
Or: Why I don’t do things anymore I don’t know if it’s getting older or the experience of running businesses and having to make all of these…
Love note to: The Creative Act
c/o Rick Rubin Dear The Creative Act, The time we spent together has been transformative. What’s it like being an instruction manual for the…
Fiction vs. non-fiction
WHO WILL WIN THE EPIC BATTLE OF OUR TIMES? Recently, one of my Internet follows wrote about how Sylvia Plath really wanted to be a prose…
Love note to: Daybook
c/o Anne Truitt Dear Daybook, First, an apology. During our time together, I didn’t say much. You shared generously about your life as an…
Love note to: The Left Hand of Darkness
c/o Ursula K. Le Guin Dear The Left Hand of Darkness, Is it too much to say you changed my life, and are changing it still? I don’t think it…
Love note to: All the Light We Cannot See
c/o Anthony Doerr Dear All the Light We Cannot See, I was so excited to read you. Having read Doerr’s Memory Wall and Four Seasons in Rome…
Love note to: Orlando
c/o Virginia Woolf Dear Orlando, I’ve been wanting to write you for a while to tell you how much I enjoyed getting to know you. It’s been a…
Love note to: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
c/o Victor Hugo Dear Hunchback of Notre Dame, Forgive me for using your English name. I know you prefer the original French Notre-Dame de…
Love note to: A Writer's Diary
c/o Virginia Woolf Dear A Writer’s Diary When we first met, it was kismet. Let me explain. I’ve experienced a transformative shift in the…
Love note to: Meridian
c/o Alice Walker Dear Meridian, Hoo boy, you are captivating. Even though I’d heard you were a heart breaker and I didn’t know if I wanted…
Love note to: The Blue Flower
c/o Penelope Fitzgerald Dear The Blue Flower, I cried when we said goodbye. I don’t know why exactly, it’s so hard to explain. Isn’t love…
Love note to: The Price of Salt
c/o Patricia Highsmith Dear The Price of Salt, I ached when I read you. I am aching still, thinking about it. Was it really just a few days…
Love note to: A Year In Provence
c/o Peter Mayle Dear A Year in Provence, I know we said our goodbyes last week, but I wanted to tell you how special our time together was…
Only pointless things, please
Well then: it’s a pointless task, and that’s exactly why I need to do it. I’m sick of going after things that have points; for too long now…
Grieve everything
My brother died two weeks ago. I keep looking at that sentence, thinking, “That’s a shocking thing to say; it feels sensationalist. Do I…
How to build a fractal, nourishing system of practice, in business & in life
Part one: A story about productivity systems, personal growth, and discovering alternatives to both I was on a podcast the other day, and…
Deep Work
“To leave the distracted masses to join the focused few…is a transformative experience.”
The question we’re afraid to ask
During the pandemic, David Whyte (one of my favorite poets and thinkers) has been offering online seminars. I highly recommend them; they’ve…
Ann Veronica
”I’ve been thinking, you know—I’m not sure that primarily the perception of beauty isn’t just intensity of feeling free from pain; intensity…
The Mere Wife
”You don’t really own anything. Nothing is yours forever, not your body, not your youth, not even your mind.”
Demand-Side Sales
”If the push and the pull are not greater than the anxiety and the habit, they’re not going to move. In business school, we are taught to…
The Tombs of Atuan
“’You have set us both free,’ he said. ‘Alone, no one wins freedom.’”
Dune Messiah
”Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made…
Weird is practical
As the season of the weirdo at &yet is coming to a close, I wrote this piece to make a business case for weirdness. “It may seem counter…
Dune
”Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and…
You Belong
“Not belonging can manifest in different degrees of intensity. It can be momentary or subtle, like feeling slightly out of place at a party…
How to Be Idle
“Joyful chaos, working in tune with the seasons, telling the time by the sun, variety, change, self-direction; all this was replaced with a…
Where the weirdos roam
I wrote this piece for &yet’s Find Your Weirdos project. “It’s easy to create a “customer persona” or a “user journey” to inform your…
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
“She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and…
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
“The key to warrior ship is not being afraid of who you are.”
This is how we grow
“Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being split asunder, the clarity of their vision alongside an ability to…
A Generous Orthodoxy
“All these years of thinking ended up like this: in front of all this beauty, understanding nothing.” —Bruce Cockburn
Arbitrary Stupid Goal
“When they came back from vacation, they felt really good. It was easily the best vacation of their lives, and they wondered why. My father…
Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community
“The right scale in work gives power to affection. When one works beyond the reach of one’s love for the place one is working in and for the…
The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
“Nature is, above all, profligate. Don’t believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the…
Eastern Body Western Mind
“We either get success or lessons. If we learn our lessons successfully, we get both.”
Conjure Women
“Ain’t every woman’s daughter made from the death of the mama, somehow or another?”
Our Riches
“They were used to waiting for orders and being told how to live. Now they decided to live as they pleased, simply, not listening to anyone…
Feminism: A Key Idea for Business and Society
“Feminism has a plan to transform the magic circle, to embrace the interests of every living creature and to promote a vision of flourishing…