✏️
in a world where it's too easy to be told what to think (scrolling) or get automated outputs to prove to others that we have thought (gpt), take some time to really wrestle with yourself! writing is an ongoing but worthy battle. put one thought down, add something contradictory a bit later, then figure out the blend of the two that will convey what you truly believe and mean. write to the bone!!!! it's hard stuff but i really believe we all need to do it....
May 30, 2025
Related Recs
🧩
the thing about essays that really frustrated me when i was in k-12 was that they were boring, hard, and no matter what i did there was always some feedback about how my ideas "weren't quite there" or were underdeveloped or how some of them were off-topic to the main point of the essay, etc. etc. etc. – when i got older i realized that the point of essay-writing is that it assesses critical thinking, something i was actively developing at the age i was being assigned those essays, which can't be taught directly and instead needs to be fostered; then, that critical thinking needed to be applied in a very specific way to a kind of writing that was really (maybe overly) structured, and that i was being assessed on both the ideas being presented and the writing communicating those ideas. the way i got over this (definitely over years and years, not all at once) was realizing that the point of an essay (and the kind of unspoken process of thinking critically) was:
1. deciding / finding what i actually think – usually starting with a question about the subject, and then trying to answer it myself (which meant picking a sufficiently interesting question)
2. proving / demonstrating what i actually think – this is the breaking down; what can i extract from a source that agrees or disagrees with my thoughts, what are some secondary sources that can further elaborate on or contextualize my thoughts, and laying all those pieces out
3. putting those pieces in order on the page so that the person reading them can follow the train of thought and (hopefully) arrive at the same conclusion – this is the putting back together
it can feel like other folks know what they're going for but really it's either knowing the audience (i.e. [teacher / reader] is probably looking for this kind of question or this kind of answer) and then applying that process, or they're just really in touch with their creative and critical faculties such that they can identify an interesting question and a thoughtful answer
that stuff comes with time (or at least it did for me) because critical thinking is an innate human quality; everyone has at one point or another asked a non-empirical question and arrived at their own conclusion to that question, but learning how to structure that thinking and write well enough to effectively express that perspective for a teacher, academic journal, etc. is something that requires you to practice at it and experience more life and have more thoughts that can feed into that process. and the fostering piece is so important because i feel like that requires extra care and investment on the part of the person educating you who at best is wildly under-resourced to do so and at worst has decided that's just not a part of their job description and therefore something they won't touch with a ten-foot pole
all this to say i do relate, i think that doesn't feel like it's the case for me anymore necessarily and i'm sure at some point it won't for you – and even if essays never end up being your bag, there are so many other forms and mediums to communicate complex ideas that can often be much more resonant and beautiful for people, essays are not the end-all-be-all way to communicate big thoughts
Feb 12, 2025
✍️
to speak is human
one of the most defiant ways that we can assert our power—our not-duplicable, non-algorithmic, dangerous, and history-altering power—is to write.
yes you can feed your prompts into a generative AI chatGPT butthole and it will produce a precise and perfect and appropriate piece of text — but that isn't you!
it isn't you to have apple intelligence or google fartelligence rewrite your emails or text messages or essays or love letters
It is you to drag your pen across paper, or cursor blinking on screen—to discover, question, argue alone, to know yourself.
It is you to write what you shouldn't write—what you aren't allowed to say. To consider the impossible, the illegal or immoral, to wrestle with those things that others would censor or suppress.
It is you to yearn, love, grieve through writing: to gift yourself, and maybe others too, that record of your pain and beauty and dynamism.
Oct 5, 2024
Writing… Ideas…
One minute it flows out of you wildly - forcefully vomited thoughts that can’t be contained so they must be spilled. Ink to paper, notes app paragraphs.
Other times it can feel like beating your head against a wall repeatedly and still never breaking through to the other side - blood trickling down your forehead and all.
I truly don’t think there is any solution for this. Whatever your creative pursuit, the process will always feel painstaking until miraculously one day it doesn’t.
Unfortunately you don't get to choose when inspiration hits you like an tonne of bricks and before you know it the feeling is long gone.
Sometimes I like to write all my thoughts down in a stream of consciousness. It doesn't have to make any sense, and it usually doesn’t.
If you’re lucky you may find something in that chain of unfiltered thoughts that makes a lot of sense when recontextualized.
Be messy, because you’re never going to be perfect. It doesn’t always work out, but what else are you going to do about it?
Just write.
May 16, 2025
Top Recs from @pratibha
the comfort in the ebb and flow, the cyclical nature of it all
Mar 5, 2024
🪄
it's like.... kind of insane that we (not me, of course) made the internet to be any other way. imagine if the real world were algorithmic... how kooky would that be?? you'd only ever talk to people who've already gotten a thumbs up from 10,000 other people that they're cool and worthy of being heard and it would be super weird and parasocial bc everybody else would be trying to get their attention too. and maybe you'd only be able to see people like in that episode of Black Mirror w Jon Hamm where some ppl are crystal clear in color and others are blurred out and grey and inaccessible to you. well, that's what an algorithmic internet feels like!!!! and it's terrible! i like being able to post on here whenever a thought softly lands in my head and know whoever happens to refresh their page or hop onto the app when i hit SHARE will be able to see it right away... it's the beauty of your words being seen at the right time with no filters or algorithms shoving u into a corner.....and being able to see others in the same way <3
Feb 6, 2024
🌚
i love that our seemingly high-tech phones still cannot do the job of capturing the moon‘s ethereal essence. it’s so humbling and vulnerable to attempt to take a photo of her and have it come out all ugly and orb-like. it’s literally none of ur business to see what she looks like anytime apart from the present moment!
(and please don’t tell me if samsung or google pixel have invented technology to do a better job of this. it wouldn’t sit right with me… like trying to sneakily undress a woman without her consent when she has explicitly stated she’d rather remain demurely clothed and mysterious)
Mar 17, 2024