I think about death a lot. Sometimes I imagine a doctor telling me the source of my migraines is a large, metastatic tumor. Other times I imagine someone pushing me in front of a train for no reason. Most often I concoct freak accidents in my head as I walk placidly down the street—a horrible slip on a wet sidewalk (“Who would have thought she could die from that?”); a perilous fall through a restaurant’s cellar door; head trauma from a hammer dropped haplessly through construction scaffolding by a worker who had to sneeze.
1. September Summer/End Date of Summer: I'm a public school teacher, so August 1 ushers in the "Sunday Night of Summer/Sunday Scaries" for most teachers that start school mid/late August. I'll even go as far to say that anyone involved in any school system (k-12/higher ed.) in ANY role (student, teacher, admin) - for us, summer ends when school/in-service days start. That's just the facts! Haha. Just had to give my two cents on that. The summer heat continues but the freedom of summer is long past.
2. I also think about death/scenarios of my own death (blame my ongoing existential crisis) - the headache/tumor is a classic. But I had to mention that your "hammer falling from a construction site" reminded me of the timely/untimely death of Kelseys' bf in Younger when he is flattened by a sheet of steel - just as he's about to out Liza on her age.
hi!! amazing newsletter. I always love reading it. Also, being only 19, I frickin love reading your thoughts and it is so comforting to know that it IS possible to be an adult and not melt into the work-sleep cycle but have more going on in life and head...!! (I do recognize this is a privilege, and an uncomfortable reality at times but still somehow inspiring to me??) Quick note on the ignoring of our instincts... (I know... a little bit of a technical one... but bare with me!) I looked up the definition of both intuition and instinct... I had a conversation about this with a friend of mine recently, mostly surrounding the fact that we had grown up kind of encouraged to disregard our instincts and that we barely knew what listening and acting on these instincts felt like. we didn't know when what we felt was instinct or fear of the ensuing consequences. And that's what I seemed to have understood from definition-reading online. Instinct is what you should be listening to - it's a biological reaction, a reaction (sometimes suuuuuper deeply hidden under layers of protection mechanisms and fear-inducing traumatic experiences) that occurs immediately as a response to any situation. intuition, on the other hand, is born from the accumulation of events you have lived through - emotions, fears, scars, etc. - they all build up a baggage that informs your intuition. and so asceticism, "life sapped of color" - as you called it - seems to be giving too much space to this accumulated fear. To me, my life sapped of color looked like living experiences in my head and quasi-studying all possible outcomes, instead of going for it in real life and learning from anything that arises afterward. trying, as best as possible, to move away from that; because just like you, a majority of my most-cherished experiences have resulted from noticing AND following my instincts.
Last week you really had me spinning on the question of "when is a good time to move in with a partner?" but now I feel like my head is back on straight. My boyfriend (now ex-boy) and I moved in together last fall and in my gut I knew it was not going to work. But I loved the apartment we found and decided it was okay to be reckless. It lasted three months, I asked him to move out, and a friend who had broken up with her boyfriend around the same time moved in. I can't imagine spending this summer in quarantine with anyone else. We have become enormously close and live so well together. Recklessness paid off, despite the pain of the breakup and the logistical nightmare of asking someone to leave and move out of an apartment they have only been in three months.
This was an illuminating argument, thanks. I've been wondering why I've been feeling more fearful than usual and the lack of opportunities for recklessness strikes me as an appropriate cause. I pride myself in being a risk taker, although I think it does me more harm than good, and the inability to live life in this way has been weighing on me. I think of death a lot too but it has never been a source of fear until now. When you can't focus on making the 'now' count because every day blends into one and it's equally futile to think of the future because there are fewer things to look forward to, the idea of it life ending becomes terrifying. This pandemic has clearly deprived my ADHD brain of the excitement of impulsiveness.
First off, thank you for your newsletter which 1) I love, and 2) makes me feel less alone in knowing that lots of the thoughts that I have are thoughts in the head of at least one other person, too.
I identified SO much with this one, particularly as I’ve always thought these weird little thoughts about death and dying since I was quite young, and also because, aside from having experienced the deaths of grandparents and other older relatives, I lost my dad when I was 17 (from an illness) and my best friend when I was 28 (in a tragic accident), so death feels like something I have a fairly intimate relationship with at this point. If anything, those experiences have made me really appreciate what a privilege it is to age, how tenuous life is, and also how important it is to be reckless and bold sometimes!! The pandemic and the long lockdown we’ve been in in Ireland have me similarly longing to do something big and crazy. Given that your own political leanings are very similar to mine, I think (if you haven’t already read it) that you might enjoy the Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund’s book ‘This Life’, which is on life, death, time, meaning, and Marx (disclaimer though, I’m only about a third of the way in right now, and it’s a teeeeny bit frustrating to read about time itself being the most valuable thing when it feels like due to pandemic/socio-economic stuff/etc it’s harder to ‘spend’ our limited time in the way that’s most valuable to us, though of course in some ways it’s a privilege to be able to say that!). Anyway again THANK YOU for your writing and the thought you put into these!
In terms of fear of death and hypochondriac tendencies, I used to be pretty tortured about it and think about it a lot. I recall having a realisation as a teenager, when my dad was driving the car, and he could be a pretty nihilistic guy (still can), and hearing him talk I realised I only about 98% trusted him not to drive us all off a cliff, I realised I had no control over it so I decided to just enjoy the ride.
Another thing I remember is in 2001, for the obvious reasons, for a while I was pretty intensely aware that you could basically get blown up at any moment, and shared this worry, maybe insensitively, with a friend who is a refugee from a war zone, and she basically told me "yup, one day you'll be walking along and it'll all blow up, deal with it".
With the way I tend to live, it's like I'm watching myself deliberately fuck up my life over and over again with very little control over it, even stuff I know I should or shouldn't be doing: though I'm never toying with death, I did toy with my health for ages, and don't even mention my finances. I think my dad is probably very similar (or vice versa) and deals with it with bloody-minded nihilism.
In terms of the pandemic, I just feel totally pragmatic and, maybe because the usual circumstances have been replaced with a new set of unfamiliar, scary circumstances, I'm able to function somehow, it's like the situation is adapted to my usual seat-of-the-pants functioning. Though I'm also (still) making myself late for work (and need to leave like five minutes ago).
Hey Haley- This newsletter has been one of my favorite things this summer and I look forward to reading it every Sunday. You always bring to life all the feelings and thoughts swirling around in my head that I have a hard time making sense of myself. So, thank you!!!
On recklessness and death- I think the pandemic has made me realize that life is fleeting and, well, we have this one life to live so we better make it f'ing awesome. I look back at my early 20s (I'm 26 now) and feel some regret over not taking more risks. I was so focused on getting the dream job after college and finding the perfect relationship, that I forgot to put my own interests first and just live a little. Now, both those things have proven to not be nearly as important or as fruitful as I had thought they would and I've started to look around and think "there has to be more." I've realized that what is really most important to me right now is my own immediate happiness and that in reality, most of the decisions that I would at one point have thought to be reckless--- finally getting that tattoo I've been thinking about forever, leaving a stable job-- are really not reckless at all because I know they are rooted in my desire to live a life that feels more authentically me. Basically, I'm all for some good-hearted recklessness (while still keeping others safe!)
There was a house with a conversation pit for sale in my hometown recently that I sent to my mum and I found out that we both look at real estate back home when we're feeling homesick (neither of us have lived there for about 10 years)
It’s so comforting to know that the death scenario thing is real with a name and all. I feel like it’s something I unconsciously do every day but have never thought to talk about it with other people so it’s nice to know others do the same. I also think about ways in which I could seriously injure my self and lose a limb or something and what I would do going forward in life should that every happen. It always felt wrong to think of this but maybe everyone does it in different ways. Thanks for talking about it :)
I think about this all the time! I narrowly avoided a bad wreck the other day while driving and thought wow, death is so close. Another great Sunday read. Thanks.
This is definitely my favourite newsletter so far! I am such a careful person in life, and I loved your delineation between not knowing the consequences and evaluating the consequences and simply not caring (even as a law student I hadn't made the connection myself!). One of the friends I most value in life is an unbelievably bold and oftentimes reckless person, and I think she inspires me sometimes to go against my careful judgment. It's certainly a case for surrounding yourself with people who have different traits you admire.
About conversation pits: there’s this Irish architect/design show that is SO good called Room To Improve. It’s awesome and was the best quarantine watch. Anyway, there’s an episode where these clients want to make a conversation pit in their house because I think one of the builders took them to see one, and the architect (Dermott❤️) is so upset about it. In a show that is mostly peaceful to watch and not very dramatic, it was a big deal. Highly recommend.
Just here to say you could absolutely make that squiggle pillow yourself!
Hi! Two thoughts:
1. September Summer/End Date of Summer: I'm a public school teacher, so August 1 ushers in the "Sunday Night of Summer/Sunday Scaries" for most teachers that start school mid/late August. I'll even go as far to say that anyone involved in any school system (k-12/higher ed.) in ANY role (student, teacher, admin) - for us, summer ends when school/in-service days start. That's just the facts! Haha. Just had to give my two cents on that. The summer heat continues but the freedom of summer is long past.
2. I also think about death/scenarios of my own death (blame my ongoing existential crisis) - the headache/tumor is a classic. But I had to mention that your "hammer falling from a construction site" reminded me of the timely/untimely death of Kelseys' bf in Younger when he is flattened by a sheet of steel - just as he's about to out Liza on her age.
hi!! amazing newsletter. I always love reading it. Also, being only 19, I frickin love reading your thoughts and it is so comforting to know that it IS possible to be an adult and not melt into the work-sleep cycle but have more going on in life and head...!! (I do recognize this is a privilege, and an uncomfortable reality at times but still somehow inspiring to me??) Quick note on the ignoring of our instincts... (I know... a little bit of a technical one... but bare with me!) I looked up the definition of both intuition and instinct... I had a conversation about this with a friend of mine recently, mostly surrounding the fact that we had grown up kind of encouraged to disregard our instincts and that we barely knew what listening and acting on these instincts felt like. we didn't know when what we felt was instinct or fear of the ensuing consequences. And that's what I seemed to have understood from definition-reading online. Instinct is what you should be listening to - it's a biological reaction, a reaction (sometimes suuuuuper deeply hidden under layers of protection mechanisms and fear-inducing traumatic experiences) that occurs immediately as a response to any situation. intuition, on the other hand, is born from the accumulation of events you have lived through - emotions, fears, scars, etc. - they all build up a baggage that informs your intuition. and so asceticism, "life sapped of color" - as you called it - seems to be giving too much space to this accumulated fear. To me, my life sapped of color looked like living experiences in my head and quasi-studying all possible outcomes, instead of going for it in real life and learning from anything that arises afterward. trying, as best as possible, to move away from that; because just like you, a majority of my most-cherished experiences have resulted from noticing AND following my instincts.
Thank you thank you for this read! <3
Last week you really had me spinning on the question of "when is a good time to move in with a partner?" but now I feel like my head is back on straight. My boyfriend (now ex-boy) and I moved in together last fall and in my gut I knew it was not going to work. But I loved the apartment we found and decided it was okay to be reckless. It lasted three months, I asked him to move out, and a friend who had broken up with her boyfriend around the same time moved in. I can't imagine spending this summer in quarantine with anyone else. We have become enormously close and live so well together. Recklessness paid off, despite the pain of the breakup and the logistical nightmare of asking someone to leave and move out of an apartment they have only been in three months.
This was an illuminating argument, thanks. I've been wondering why I've been feeling more fearful than usual and the lack of opportunities for recklessness strikes me as an appropriate cause. I pride myself in being a risk taker, although I think it does me more harm than good, and the inability to live life in this way has been weighing on me. I think of death a lot too but it has never been a source of fear until now. When you can't focus on making the 'now' count because every day blends into one and it's equally futile to think of the future because there are fewer things to look forward to, the idea of it life ending becomes terrifying. This pandemic has clearly deprived my ADHD brain of the excitement of impulsiveness.
Haley,
First off, thank you for your newsletter which 1) I love, and 2) makes me feel less alone in knowing that lots of the thoughts that I have are thoughts in the head of at least one other person, too.
I identified SO much with this one, particularly as I’ve always thought these weird little thoughts about death and dying since I was quite young, and also because, aside from having experienced the deaths of grandparents and other older relatives, I lost my dad when I was 17 (from an illness) and my best friend when I was 28 (in a tragic accident), so death feels like something I have a fairly intimate relationship with at this point. If anything, those experiences have made me really appreciate what a privilege it is to age, how tenuous life is, and also how important it is to be reckless and bold sometimes!! The pandemic and the long lockdown we’ve been in in Ireland have me similarly longing to do something big and crazy. Given that your own political leanings are very similar to mine, I think (if you haven’t already read it) that you might enjoy the Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund’s book ‘This Life’, which is on life, death, time, meaning, and Marx (disclaimer though, I’m only about a third of the way in right now, and it’s a teeeeny bit frustrating to read about time itself being the most valuable thing when it feels like due to pandemic/socio-economic stuff/etc it’s harder to ‘spend’ our limited time in the way that’s most valuable to us, though of course in some ways it’s a privilege to be able to say that!). Anyway again THANK YOU for your writing and the thought you put into these!
In terms of fear of death and hypochondriac tendencies, I used to be pretty tortured about it and think about it a lot. I recall having a realisation as a teenager, when my dad was driving the car, and he could be a pretty nihilistic guy (still can), and hearing him talk I realised I only about 98% trusted him not to drive us all off a cliff, I realised I had no control over it so I decided to just enjoy the ride.
Another thing I remember is in 2001, for the obvious reasons, for a while I was pretty intensely aware that you could basically get blown up at any moment, and shared this worry, maybe insensitively, with a friend who is a refugee from a war zone, and she basically told me "yup, one day you'll be walking along and it'll all blow up, deal with it".
With the way I tend to live, it's like I'm watching myself deliberately fuck up my life over and over again with very little control over it, even stuff I know I should or shouldn't be doing: though I'm never toying with death, I did toy with my health for ages, and don't even mention my finances. I think my dad is probably very similar (or vice versa) and deals with it with bloody-minded nihilism.
In terms of the pandemic, I just feel totally pragmatic and, maybe because the usual circumstances have been replaced with a new set of unfamiliar, scary circumstances, I'm able to function somehow, it's like the situation is adapted to my usual seat-of-the-pants functioning. Though I'm also (still) making myself late for work (and need to leave like five minutes ago).
Everyone's comments are so thoughtful and nice, but I felt like I *HAD* to mention that Harmony Korine directing a David Blaine video is not strange! It's part of one of the most bizarre and perfect cross section of pop culture, they're both in Leo Dicaprio's Pussy Posse (coined in a perfect article by Nancy Jo Sales, "Leo, Prince of the City: https://nymag.com/nymetro/movies/features/2793/ )- Nancy Jo Sales also being essential to another insane pop culture moment, the Bling Ring, https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/e9cc0cc3-dbf1-4fab-8367-5fc7c05608e6 leading of course (of course?) to flawless reality television https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIBz-fHELgI
Hey Haley- This newsletter has been one of my favorite things this summer and I look forward to reading it every Sunday. You always bring to life all the feelings and thoughts swirling around in my head that I have a hard time making sense of myself. So, thank you!!!
On recklessness and death- I think the pandemic has made me realize that life is fleeting and, well, we have this one life to live so we better make it f'ing awesome. I look back at my early 20s (I'm 26 now) and feel some regret over not taking more risks. I was so focused on getting the dream job after college and finding the perfect relationship, that I forgot to put my own interests first and just live a little. Now, both those things have proven to not be nearly as important or as fruitful as I had thought they would and I've started to look around and think "there has to be more." I've realized that what is really most important to me right now is my own immediate happiness and that in reality, most of the decisions that I would at one point have thought to be reckless--- finally getting that tattoo I've been thinking about forever, leaving a stable job-- are really not reckless at all because I know they are rooted in my desire to live a life that feels more authentically me. Basically, I'm all for some good-hearted recklessness (while still keeping others safe!)
There was a house with a conversation pit for sale in my hometown recently that I sent to my mum and I found out that we both look at real estate back home when we're feeling homesick (neither of us have lived there for about 10 years)
It’s so comforting to know that the death scenario thing is real with a name and all. I feel like it’s something I unconsciously do every day but have never thought to talk about it with other people so it’s nice to know others do the same. I also think about ways in which I could seriously injure my self and lose a limb or something and what I would do going forward in life should that every happen. It always felt wrong to think of this but maybe everyone does it in different ways. Thanks for talking about it :)
Appreciated the (literal) TED talk! One question: what do you mean by wishing for a "more socialist direction"?
I think about this all the time! I narrowly avoided a bad wreck the other day while driving and thought wow, death is so close. Another great Sunday read. Thanks.
This is definitely my favourite newsletter so far! I am such a careful person in life, and I loved your delineation between not knowing the consequences and evaluating the consequences and simply not caring (even as a law student I hadn't made the connection myself!). One of the friends I most value in life is an unbelievably bold and oftentimes reckless person, and I think she inspires me sometimes to go against my careful judgment. It's certainly a case for surrounding yourself with people who have different traits you admire.
Omg, that “2001: A Space Odyssey” reenactment is too good!!! Always love your list of consumptions (and newsletters, of course!).
About conversation pits: there’s this Irish architect/design show that is SO good called Room To Improve. It’s awesome and was the best quarantine watch. Anyway, there’s an episode where these clients want to make a conversation pit in their house because I think one of the builders took them to see one, and the architect (Dermott❤️) is so upset about it. In a show that is mostly peaceful to watch and not very dramatic, it was a big deal. Highly recommend.