• “I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”

    —Rainer Maria Rilke

  • “Very few people can resist saying malicious things about their acquaintances, and even on occasion about their friends; yet when people hear that anything has been said against themselves, they are filled with indignant amazement.”

    —Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

  • A.E. McAdam said it this way:  “No praying man or woman accomplishes so much with so little expenditure of time as when he or she is praying.”

    WHICH IS HARDER: PRAYER OR WORK?

  • If your brother does not wish to live peaceably with you, nevertheless guard yourself against hatred, praying for him sincerely and not abusing him to anybody.

    —St Maximos the Confessor

  • Strive as hard as you can to love every man. If you cannot yet do this, at least do not hate anybody.

    —St Maximos the Confessor

  • “If you have all pleasure, then life is miserable. If you have no pleasure, life is miserable.”

    —Ryan Nicodemus

  • I was thinking about these two characters from Jojo Rabbit and how much I wished the whole movie was just about them, and I remembered Errol Morris saying:

    I believe that there are no good movies, no good books, no good music compositions just great scenes, great passages, great moments.

    THERE ARE NO GOOD MOVIES

  • Quiet your thoughts and listen to your feelings instead. Decision fatigue is exhausting because it’s a side effect of living inside your thoughts. Circular thoughts are caused by the deep-seated belief that there is ONE RIGHT ANSWER. You want to know the correct course of action. Naps, good or bad? Exercise, good or bad? Food, good or bad? Booze, good or bad? Every action is a binary moral toggle.

    Feel your way forward instead. Sometimes a nap is delicious. Other times, a nap is a way to avoid exercise or work. Sometimes work is delicious. Sometimes not working is not only necessary but sublime. If you work too much when you’re really, truly not feeling it, that can slow your productivity down a lot. You rebel against your own edict.

    Yesterday, I woke up at 2 am and walked 7 miles on my treadmill desk while writing a new chapter of my book. I took at nap at 11 am. The day before that, I walked 8 miles, worked 12 hours, and finished the draft of huge chapter of my book. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to write for that long before, but it just kept coming. The week before that, I had been struggling to even look at either my treadmill or my book, but my writing (and my entire body maybe?) fell into a hallucinatory wormhole and I went with it.

    ASK MOLLY | Glory – Maybe you want some for yourself.

  • The way I live can look manic or bipolar or narcissistic or self-indulgent or self-abnegating depending on who’s looking. But I’m not depressed or anxious and I’ve never been more productive or happier, because I follow my body and my mind catches up. Or my mind leaps in and my body follows.

    ASK MOLLY | Glory – Maybe you want some for yourself.

  • it’s easy for a depressed person to look like he’s not working when just lying in bed can feel like work for him.

    ASK MOLLY | Hungry!