Benjamín Labutat’s WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD is both fiction and non-fiction, both wave and particle, both history and imagination, and somehow, something else entirely. I loved it. https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world
Trying to gather up a reading list for a big project and realizing how much this exercise is like Borges’ map—it will only be complete when it becomes equivalent to the project itself.
“Websites have always been tiny mutinies.” https://robinrendle.com/notes/coming-home/
Molly White on the POSSE philosophy, with notes on both the present benefits and limitations; the latter are numerous but not insurmountable from a technical perspective. (The cultural/political/economical perspective is another matter.) https://www.citationneeded.news/posse/
Resilience is collective, not individual: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/resilience-is-collective/
“Social life is anything but scarce and people are anything but reasonable.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/what-are-we-making-together
Next time you’re struggling to write, you can blame the gods: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/battle-with-the-gods
To be creative “requires that we be able to retire from a world that is ‘too much with us,’ that we be able to be quiet, that we let the solitude work for us and in us.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/unconscious-machine
God I love Le Guin so much and hope her blog has been backed up a hundred times over.
“Who ‘we,’ white man?” https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/54-le-guins-hypothesis
“If this is where being a good girl gets you, I recommend being bad.” YES. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/being-bad/
With Q4 pressure building, a reminder that the amount of work that is asked of you will always & forever exceed what you can do. You are already making choices about what to get done and what to leave on the floor—make them count: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/too-much-and-not-enough/
“We cannot build a strong, democratic country without ending the occupation.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/20/holocaust-survivor-veronica-cohen-80th-birthday-protest-israeli-prison
I’ve been chasing some unnameable quality in my writing for a few years, and it feels like it’s finally within my grasp—and I can’t separate that fact from the choice (and the grief) to distance myself from the platforms. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
A website is, among other things, a container. The shape of that container both constrains and makes possible what goes within it. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
Zadie Smith: “the humans I know and love, this machinery is not worthy of them.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-zadie-smith.html
“We have to learn what we can, but remain mindful that our knowledge not close the circle…so that we forget that what we do not know remains boundless, without limit or bottom.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/what-we-do-not-know
Noticing how the backlash against DEIJ work is starting to show up in my client’s stories, the way it’s changing their expectations and plans. Can’t tell yet in what ways it will play out, but things are happening. The fight for equality doesn’t end, but the tools have to adapt to the times.
“Certain forms of escapist entertainment aside, leisure in itself is worthless without direction or content, and creative work can be more rewarding and fulfilling than many kinds of leisure.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/the-value-of-work
“Creative work readies us for material work, by offering a space to try out strategies, think through contradictions, remind us of our own agency.” https://proteanmag.com/2023/12/08/notes-on-craft-writing-in-the-hour-of-genocide/
“This is where life could happen; we are here because this is where we could be.” https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars