What’s the last thing you read?

I’m re-reading The Inner Game of Tennis. I keep coming back to this quote: “Letting go of judgements, the art of creating images, and ‘letting it happen’ are three of the basic skills involved in the Inner Game.”

What do you want to read next?

I have You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again on my nightstand. A reco from Lena Dunham so I know it will be good.

What’s an image you can’t get out of your head?

My kids’ faces (and their long eyelashes) when they were babies.

A product of any kind you’ve been appreciating lately?

I love my Living Proof dry shampoo. Total time saver.

The funniest thing you’ve seen lately?

Robby Hoffman talking about potlucks.

Best gift you’ve ever given or received?

The best gifts are always things my kids hand make for me. My coworker got me a drawing of my family as Bob’s Burgers characters for Christmas which was thoughtful and hilarious.

What do you do in your alone time?

I needlepoint or read. This is the sign I’m making for our London store opening this fall.

What’s a movie or TV series you tell everyone to watch?

Motherland and Amandaland.

Any songs or albums on repeat?

I have notoriously terrible taste in music. These are the songs I’ve been listening to a lot this summer:

Les Temps Est Bon by Isabelle Pierre

American Teenager by Ethel Cain

You Never Can Tell by Chuck Berry

Don’t Come Home A Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind) by Loretta Lynn

Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby by Cigarettes After Sex

What’s the most interesting thing you screenshotted in recent weeks?

These crochet aprons with hens on them and the hens are little pockets for eggs.

What super specific thing are you obsessing over lately?

We had so much success with our Nantucket pop-up shop and all the special details we created for it. I’m thinking about how I’m going to top it with our next one!

Who do you really admire right now?

Juliana Ramirez always has cool inspos and recos.

What are you working on right now and why?

I’m working on getting all three of my kids packed up for school. I’m working on our Summer 2027 collections, our store opening in London and trying to improve my tennis game. ⚘

⚘

If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it? If you don’t share or accomplish something with your creativity, does it mean anything?

It doesn’t feel like enough to just love something anymore. You have to do something with the thing you love. To be a content creator, influencer, author, entrepreneur. As Celeste so aptly puts it: we have too many people wanting to be DJs, and nobody out on the floor dancing.

We all want a platform today, or feel that we should. If you like a thing, if you have a passion or practice, you feel compelled to grab the Instagram handle. You are then thrust into the cycle of “content creation,” in which you have to feed the audience and algorithm to stay relevant. At the risk of not being seen at all, you constantly need something to show. Part of the joy in creating is sharing it with people who connect with it. But now we feel compelled to share everything. To turn every small idea into a Story, Reel or side hustle.

Our best ideas come from all the half-baked ones that don’t see the light of day - the trial and errors, the messy process and pursuit of the thing for the thing itself. Yet all of that isn’t valued anymore. What is valued:

• Continuity, consistency

• Immediacy, payoff

• Easy digestibility

• Content already proven to perform well

• Whatever happens to please the algorithm that day

This has always been the artist’s plight, to some extent. Very few people could afford the luxury of just painting or writing all day for the pure fun of it. Your art was your profession, so you had to cater to dealers and galleries and patrons. But social media has taken this to new extremes: now you have to please a moody algorithm and distracted online audience to get anywhere with your creative work. An amorphous, mysterious blob is looking over your shoulder with every line you paint or write. Now, everything you do and every idea you have is potential content.

If we have an online presence or following of any kind and we’re not showing up every day for them, we are punished for it. The algorithm trains us to produce, produce, produce, to the point where our real ideas, the little glimmers of true inspiration, get abandoned, rushed or cheapened in our anxiety to make something concrete from them: new content, more followers, or just some translatable meaning.

Suddenly your creative work becomes more about your content calendar. You find yourself sharing your early ideas to keep your audience satiated. These ideas no longer have a chance to ferment and slosh around your mind for a bit, to take the form of many things, to just sit and wait for their right moment. Now you to defend or explain the unfinished idea to people you don’t even know. Even worse: You are now judging your own fragile thoughts and inspiration differently through the lens of what will perform well with your audience, effectively killing them on arrival.

It’s hard not to, when you’ve been raised in a world of sharing, liking, comment, engaging, going viral. Just look at the microcosm of Substack: Even as we encourage each other to get offline and embrace whimsy, we post pictures of ourselves doing it. We know this has affected our mental health for years now, but how does it affect our creative work? What happens when you can’t make anything without simultaneously imagining how it will be received?

This is why mymind is can be a confusing product to people. Where are the sharing features? How do I post this to my profile? Why can’t I see what’s in my friend’s mind? A private-first tool for your inspiration and ideas has no immediate or obvious payoff for the common “creator” today. But we need this space. We need the unfinished ideas that make sense to nobody but ourselves, and freedom to keep these things to ourselves. To create without expectations, to accept and even celebrate that some things will never be finished. To see the beauty in the messy contradictions.

This is how we arrive at good ideas with actual meaning. It’s the random little snippets and passing thoughts and half-disappeared dreams that make no sense to share, but later end up in your novel. The weird doodle in your notebook that hits you differently a year later when you flip to it. It’s the combination of that meme you screenshotted, that photo you took of the rainbow on the floor, the cool packaging on that bottled drink you bought the other day, the poem with that one line that struck you, that song you can’t get out of your head. It’s trusting all those things to be what they are, to not force them into shape just yet, and let them find their place on their own time. To see it all as compost rather than content.

Unfinished in this sense means un-optimized. Un-shareable, un-easily-explainable, maybe ultimately unsellable. It’s not a call for abandoning your ideas. Please, see them through. As a writer, this is the only way I learn. By staying with something I’ve been working on even when it gets boring and I feel stuck or tempted to jump to something new. It’s very easy to never finish anything by telling yourself it’s not ready, it’s not good enough, it needs more research, etc.

This is really just permission to create without an agenda: no audience watching, no metrics or measure of success in mind. To trust creativity as a fluid process, in which a thing may never be finished or perfectly optimized for the general public. Or as the writer and recipe developer Colu Henry said in my recent interview with her: to do it from love, not for love.

That it exists is the point. That you love something and do it at all. That you see an idea and nod to it, kneel down over it and admire it, pick it up or let it be carried back out into the sea. That you trust it will arrive on the shore later if it should, polished and sparkling or half-broken and perfect.

⚘

Please do follow Celeste on Substack and Instagram to see the story and video she created on this subject, and to appreciate all the other thoughtful and inspiring things she makes. And if you related to this essay, here are a couple others I think you’ll appreciate from me and Celeste:

Little Blue Life

Being alive is the meaning

Bonjour mon ami…

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18 days ago · 20 likes · 4 comments · Celeste Hartley

Little Blue Life

Pay attention to the things that light you up

Yesterday I went down to the beach at the end of the day. My feet melted into the pebbles as I made my way down toward the shore. Unstable, I almost slid down the steep bank, and as I did, my eyes were forced downward and locked on a pebble. All pebbles are unique, but this one was particularly special, with white grooves that gently curved over its sur…

Read more

4 months ago · 55 likes · 11 comments · Celeste Hartley

What’s the best compliment you received recently?

My friend Jessie was just visiting us in Nova Scotia and while we were sitting on the beach, she said “You’re an easy person to be friends with.” What a generous thing to say!

What’s the last thing you read?

I’m actually in the middle of reading an advance of Florence Fabricant’s memoir, Salty, Not Sweet and I’m riveted. She is a legend in my industry and it’s so fascinating to read about her life.

Simultaneously, I finished Forever by Judy Blume (printed in 1976!), because it was left at our cottage by the former owners and how could I not? It took about two hours.

What do you want to read next?

I just restarted Outline by Rachel Cusk. I left it here last summer and I firmly believe that books find you at the right time. I’m hoping the second time’s a charm.

A product of any kind you’ve been appreciating lately?

I was sent Flamingo Estate’s Salsa Matcha Chile Crisp and it’s incredible! I’ve been putting it on eggs, grilled meat, sandwiches, you name it. It’s obscenely delicious.

Best gift you’ve ever given or received?

I hope this isn’t controversial because I’m a married lady, but the best gift I’ve ever given was to an old boyfriend 25 years ago. He’s a Brit and was and I’m sure still is a very, very good dresser. He wore the same thing nearly every day. Tailored shirt, jeans, handmade loafers… His initials were R.R. (and will remain nameless! A true cad). I found this incredible vintage Richie Rich comic book from 1967 and had it framed for him. I went down a rabbit hole trying to find an image for you and cannot believe it’s worth as much as it is. He’s back in the UK and he better still have it.

What do you do in your alone time?

Read, read, read. It’s such a luxury. I also love romantic movies or a series, preferably period pieces, which my husband can live without, so I’ll often watch those. Over the weekend I rewatched Bridges of Madison County while he was playing tennis. What a gorgeous film. Meryl, man.

What’s a movie or TV series you tell everyone to watch?

Rivals! It’s sexy, hilarious and absolutely outrageous. How can you beat a plot with competing media franchises in the 1980s Cotswolds? You cannot. The first half of season two dropped in May, if you haven’t started, please get on it. The second half airs in the fall.

A quote that’s meaningful to you?

When I was struggling with my last manuscript, my therapist told me to “Write from love, not for love.” It blew my mind and completely opened me up to finish the book. I think it applies to everything we do in our lives that we care about. I tell anyone who will listen.

Any songs or albums on repeat?

Oddly enough, it’s Bach: The Goldberg Variations. I play it nearly every morning and while I’m driving. It’s very soothing.

What’s the most interesting thing you screenshotted in recent weeks?

I would never tell because usually I’m on a high-operative mission…

What are you working on right now and why?

In addition to writing cookbooks and a newsletter, etc., I run a small, but mighty wine and lifestyle PR business. I work with incredible producers; I love telling their stories across every platform I can. This next chapter is about scaling thoughtfully, without losing the intimacy and craft that made it work in the first place. ⚘

Inspiration strikes and you feel excited, certain you’re going to do something great. It’s intoxicating, like having a secret. Only you know that you have this idea in you. Just wait until you do it, just wait until they see it. You sit back and enjoy the rush of it, let the potential of your idea carry you away into a world of possibility.

You can ride this high an entire lifetime.

By thinking about our idea, we tell ourselves we’re doing something. Maybe we share our vision with our friends, or we daydream about it often, or we even scribble a few notes or doodles for it now and then. We satiate our creative appetite by luxuriating in the knowledge and thrill of our idea. We believe deep down, something big is coming.

We promise ourselves we’ll act on our idea when the timing is right. We’ll write that brilliant screenplay soon. We’ll pick up the paintbrush and create the masterpiece we’ve had in our head. We’ll act on that business idea in a future phase of life. Once things slows down, once we have room to breathe, once we have more time to really do it right. In the meantime, we go about our days. And our days turn into months, which turn into years. We don’t see it happening, because we are certain the right moment will come soon enough. Tomorrow, or next weekend, or next year.

Ultimately, it amounts to a passive life.

I picture it like that scene from “Minority Report.” The dreamers floating in the mysterious pool of water, eyes clouded over in some trance-like state. They are preserved for countless years in stasis, murmuring about something important happening in the future. They are in this world physically but not truly alive.

When we don’t claim our time, it’s claimed for us. We can fill an entire week with small errands and social obligations. We can feel productive day to day simply surviving – going to work, coming home, making dinner, watching a show and going to bed. We can forget or ignore the passing ideas and flickering moments of inspiration easily. Or maybe we acknowledge them. They may come to us daily like firecrackers. Yet just as quickly, they fizzle and fade.

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own...”

- Henry Miller

Our ideas are dangerous. They convince us of our genius, our unrecognized talent, our budding potential. Our ideas placate our inner creative spirit with cheap, temporary highs. They pat our yearning soul on the head and say “soon, soon.”

The difference between people who have done the thing we wish to do – wrote the book, created the art, pursued the business dream – is generally not talent or smarts or even luck. The difference is simply that they did it. They felt that initial high of an idea and knew it was short-lived and untrustworthy. They understood if they didn’t act immediately, the rush would pass. So they acted. Then they did it again the next day.

We resist this truth, or even feel offended by it, because we’re frightened or tired or bitter. We’ve got jobs, debts, obligations, chores, hangups, setbacks. We don’t have the time, the money or the opportunities. Everyone can find a number of these excuses within reach.

But if we accept that all that stands between us and realizing our idea is just doing it – well, we might actually, finally, do it.

What’s the best compliment you received recently?

Someone told me they love my brain. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It’s not the kind of compliment you forget.

What’s the last thing you read that really stuck with you?

Joan Didion’s essay “On Keeping a Notebook.” I keep coming back to the idea that we write things down not always because they are objectively important, but because they felt important to us at the time. I think that is such a beautiful way to understand journaling, memory and the private archive of being a person. Sometimes a note is not proof of what happened. It is proof of what you were paying attention to.

A product of any kind you’ve been appreciating lately?

Le Labo Lys 41. I’m very drawn to objects that feel like tiny rituals, and scent is one of those things that can make a normal day feel more intentional. Lys 41 feels soft but still memorable in this very intimate way, like a small private signature.

I love that perfume can become part of your memory without needing to announce itself too loudly. Not because it transforms you into someone else, but because it makes you feel a little more familiar to yourself.

What super specific thing are you obsessing over lately?

Intentional consumption, but in a very romantic way.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between buying something because you want the object and buying something because you want the version of yourself you think the object will create. Like the journal as discipline, the perfume as being remembered, the coat as a new identity. I don’t think wanting beautiful things is shallow, but I am trying to be more honest about whether something belongs to my actual life or just to the fantasy of who I want to be perceived as.

A quote that’s meaningful to you?

“The way you spend your days is the way you spend your life.”

I think about this one constantly. Especially on the days where I’m doing things that feel obligatory rather than chosen — the thesis, the emails, the admin. It’s not a comfortable quote. It’s the kind that makes you look at your Tuesday and ask whether it’s actually the life you want. I find it clarifying in the way that slightly terrifying things are clarifying.

Any songs or albums on repeat?

Justin Bieber, unironically. Specifically “Confident,” because sometimes you need a song that makes you feel like you’re walking into a room with far more attitude than you actually have. I’ve been on a full Bieber train lately and I think it’s because his music unlocks something so specific for me, this feeling of being younger, lighter and less burdened by needing everything to be meaningful.

Who do you really admire right now?

Erifili Gounari, who writes Crystal Clear on Substack. She built something real by writing with total confidence about the things she actually believes — no hedging, no performing uncertainty she doesn’t feel. There’s a directness to her work that I’m actively trying to learn from.

What are you working on right now and why?

I’m building still becoming, a Substack for women in their twenties who are figuring it out in real time, through personal essays that layer psychology and literature onto the specific feelings that don’t have names yet. I started it four months ago and it’s already at 24k subscribers, which tells me the in-between is a place a lot of people are living and not enough people are writing about honestly. ⚘

We may even consider ourselves independent thinkers. We choose new hobbies, consider new ideas, try new styles. But if we aggregated those interests on a pie chart, we’d see most of us are circling around the same things at the same time. We wear the brands everyone else is wearing, the same scents. We adopt a similar lifestyle as the people in our city. We travel to the vacation destinations we see on our friend’s Stories, read the books that rise to the bestseller list. Even our political affiliation and belief system are influenced by where we live and who we’re surrounded by. We believe these are our independent decisions, but if we traced their origins, we’d likely find they’re a result of the stimulus around us.

To some extent, that’s just how humans and culture work. We’re products of our environment. Which is fine and normal, until you realize everything you’re doing is being decided for you.

Real living is about seeking. Not responding.

I was talking with a friend’s husband the other day, and I asked what he’d been reading. He showed me a book about Gertrude Jekyll, a British horticulturist and garden designer known for her focus on color theory. He’d been assigned to oversee a new garden at his workplace, and he wanted to do it well, to respect the history of the place and create something unique. This guy has no background in gardening, no job title related to it. He just took a simple job assignment and went deep down a rabbit hole nobody asked him to go down. I was inspired. I had no idea color theory even existed in gardening, and now I wanted to make a garden that felt like a painting too. This is the effect of seeking. The deeper you go into anything, the more interesting life becomes.

Unfortunately, it’s much easier to skim the surface. Take the top results in your Google search or ChatGPT and move on. A passive, shallow life is our default setting now. We’ve lost our ability for going deep; we have no time or energy for sustained focus anymore. And we don’t see that we’re not living because everything seems acceptable. It’s how everyone else around us lives, after all. You don’t notice you’re being swept along by a tide until you look out and see you’re farther down the beach than you realized. Some of us never do.

Today, swimming against the tide means breaking out of the algorithms. Confuse your music app by listening to songs from other countries and genres you’ve never tried. Throw off YouTube by diving into a topic you’ve never learned about. Fake out Instagram by following people and brands far outside your usual circle. Bewilder Facebook by reading articles that oppose your typical point of view. Then, once the algorithm catches up, do it again.

When you discover something you’ve never heard or seen before, something that piques your interest, follow it as far as you can go. Read everything you can find on the subject. Watch the masters practice it. Try it yourself. Seek out opinions or ideas that contradict it. Make a study of whatever you’re interested in. Do it with dozens of things at the same time. No matter how weird or specific or unpopular the path may be, try going down it as far as you can. Never settle for the first result, the suggested “you might like this” post. Demand more for yourself. Demand deeper.

This is how artists find their niche. It’s how new discoveries are made. It’s how people question what the world wants for and from them, and discover a universe out there waiting for them. They’re aggressively curious. They’re paying attention enough to feel compelled.

What’s the last thing you read?

“The Paperboy’s Secret,” a Personal History essay by Peter Hessler that ran in The New Yorker. It was exquisite... and reading it, aside from the immense pleasure it gave me, it was like getting an MFA in biographical writing. So much to learn about structure, writing from memory, and most importantly, showing us how everyone’s life no matter how ordinary you think it is, imbues so much vividness and intensity. I loved it so much.

What do you want to read next?

Lena Dunham’s “Famesick.” I keep holding off until I have time to read it in one go... hopefully very soon.

What’s an image or piece of art you can’t get out of your head?

A drawing my friend Aya just did of our little 1960s doctor’s office that we will begin renovating next month. We’ve been living in it for six years in a very basic/no-nonsense way, like turning exam rooms into bedrooms and a reception area into a living room!!, and while I’m excited to start this project with my family, I’m also sad to lose this phase of our home.

A product of any kind you’ve been appreciating lately?

Fuji disposable cameras, which I’ve been getting processed at the Color House on Lafayette. It’s so much fun taking real pictures again. I suspect these are terrible for the environment so I also just shoot Fuji film on my Pentax K 1000, too.

I’m also really into this Kosas Revealer Concealer, which mimics a few extra hours of sleep.

The funniest thing you’ve seen lately?

I don’t usually go for the viral IG posts where everyone copies the same format, but I guess everyone is doing that “Preparing for my Netflix documentary on X” thing, and Rhianna’s, which popped into my feed last week, was: “Preparing for my Netflix documentary on why I’m always late” and the camera was just facing an empty chair. It still makes me laugh! I mean, that’s SO good.

Best gift you’ve ever given or received?

My husband got me a giant set of Ohuhu acrylic markers and they are just the most fun thing to escape reality with, notebook in hand.

What’s the best compliment you received recently?

It was last year and someone told me that they pulled over on the side of the road when they were driving, so they could stop and read one of my newsletters. That almost made me cry.

What do you do in your alone time?

Go thrifting.

What’s a movie or TV series you tell everyone to watch?

“The Gilded Age,” “Minx,” “I May Destroy You.” I’m still shattered about the final scene in “Mare of Easttown.” And my husband and I just started re-watching “The Americans.” Never was there a better pilot episode of ANYTHING.

Oh and “Industry.” I didn’t want to watch it but then I did and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, particularly how the world villainizes women who seek wealth or success... and get it.

A quote that’s meaningful to you?

“Nothing happens until something moves.”

- Einstein

Any songs or albums on repeat?

“All Things Must Pass” by George Harrison, and I just watched the Jeff Buckley documentary and that allowed me to listen to “Grace” in a new way, too.

Who do you really admire right now?

I love how Talia Mayden sees the world and her space. And I featured the interiors stylist Marshall Neve’s Lower East Side apartment in my newsletter recently. The way he chooses and places things in his home thrilled me to no end. I learned so much from him just by photographing corners of his apartment.

What are you working on right now and why?

A Tiny Apartment and my book proposal. I just signed with a new agent, so I’m kind of overhauling the whole framework. It’s hard but I’m excited about it. ⚘

Ask two people for their opinion and you may get conflicting feedback that prompts you to dig deeper and form your own conclusion.

Ask three people for their opinion and you may see a trend that confirms or invalidates a theory, swaying you in one direction or the other.

Ask four people their opinion and you have yourself a focus group, whose feedback can support your decisions or make you doubt them.

Ask five people, ten people, 20 people for their opinion and you will get answers across the board, sending you in every possible direction.

Ask enough people for their opinion and you’ll receive whatever answer you’re looking for – plus plenty more you didn’t want to hear. The feedback cancels itself out.

Getting feedback can be valuable, until it’s not. So we have to choose carefully when and how we get it. And realize that ultimately, our own opinion is what makes our work original.

Technology, machinery & factories, massive online retailers and artificial intelligence have made a society prioritizing efficiency and accessibility over quality. If you look closely, you can feel it: We are surrounded by poor quality things, acquired quickly and easily. We can get a fast food meal in minutes. We can furnish our entire home via Amazon next-day delivery. We can find solutions and express our ideas in seconds with the help of ChatGPT. We are becoming numb and accustomed to low quality, making it hard to recognize what’s actually good anymore. That is, if we’re even bothering to look.

But quality is still out there, thanks to the precious few still striving for it:

The passionate chef who, despite a McDonald’s on every corner, is dedicated to making the best gourmet burger in his city.

The master carpenter who knows she’s up against IKEA.

The watchmaker who, in a world of Apple watches & other cheap wearables, builds timepieces that outlive us, and even the generations after us.

Those who search for quality can still find it. And those who experience quality can still appreciate it.

We know good food by the signs our body gives us after eating it. We know a high-quality chair by the way it feels, the way it ages. We know good design because we can connect to it, understand it, use it.

We know good things innately, because we need them.

Striving for quality – as a consumer or creator – puts us up against a world designed for overconsumption, efficiency, disposability and speed. We must work harder to find it, sacrifice more to get it, and accept risk creating it. Today, making something of quality means not only providing something good to the world, but showing them what it means.

Creating and seeking quality affirms its value. It reminds people of the difference that quality can make. That quality food, furniture, music, design, films, art, writing, products, services, experiences, can be worth the wait and the price.

Quality is still out there, and the quest to create it is a noble and fulfilling one.

What’s an image or piece of art you can’t get out of your head?

I came across this artist named Egon Schiele. I find him really interesting because he only lived to be 28, but his work is particularly timeless in a way that is very interesting to me from someone who was putting out work over a hundred years ago. I think it really stands the test of time. I did a whole piece on him on Composition’s Instagram if you want to check it out.

A product of any kind you’ve been appreciating lately?

I just got a couple pieces from this brand Metalwood Studio. They make clothes for golfers. As someone who has never picked up a golf club in my life, I really appreciate the angle that they take their products. Never in my entire life would I ever think that I would buy clothes from a golf brand, but here I am.

What’s a movie or TV series you tell everyone to watch?

By far the most important season of television that exists from the past 20 years is True Detective Season 1, but only season 1. It is, in my opinion, the best season of TV ever created. Matthew McConaughey’s character in that season is such an insufferable person and he plays the character perfectly.

Any songs or albums on repeat? Or favorite of all time?

As a misunderstood wannabe Brooklyn cool guy who doesn’t live in Brooklyn, my default answer is the most recent album from The Hellp. They put an album this year that I just think is so good and I just keep listening to it over and over again. They’re really one of the only bands nowadays that is putting out work that feels very different than the standard output of most artists.

What super specific thing are you obsessing over lately?

I’ve been interested in the business of art and why some pieces sell for multi-millions of dollars, while other artists struggle selling their work for even $20. My team and I are working on a new piece around Jeff Koons and why he’s the most hated man in the art world. A lot of this frustration comes from the fact that his work isn’t particularly moving, but he sells his pieces for tens of millions of dollars. When you look into it, it’s actually because he used to work on Wall Street. He ended up leaving Wall Street to become an artist as a career move, which is so backwards from how you would assume any artist begins their career. The story is super interesting, and you can read more about that here.

What are you working on right now and why?

Right now I’m focusing a lot of my energy on turning Composition’s newsletter, Compositionally Inclined, into a media empire. I’m really excited about building a platform for emerging artists to get more eyes on their work. It’s been really fulfilling going through the submissions from our members and finding ways to creatively feature their work to an audience that would otherwise never see it. ⚘

You see the launched product. Not the dozens of failed ones that never saw the light of day.

You see a shark attack in the headlines. Not the thousands of people who swam safely in those waters.

A perfect, enviable couple. Not the bitter disputes at home.

An award-winning novel. Not the years of rejected submissions.

A successful competitor. Not the looming debts to investors.

You see what’s presented to you: The final results. The exceptions. The carefully painted pictures. The headlines that get the most clicks.

There’s usually more than meets the eye.

Image from John Berger’s 1971 series, “Ways of Seeing.” Worth a watch.

What’s the last thing you read?

I’m on the last fifty pages of “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt. I am enthralled by this book. Perhaps I’m biased because I have a penchant for dark academia and unlikeable characters (and the book feels not too dissimilar from my own college experience), but I simultaneously can’t put this book down and don’t want it to end.

A quote from the book I underlined: “Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

What do you want to read next?

Multiple people have told me to read “Lost Lambs” by Madeline Cash. So that’s up next.

What do you do in your alone time?

God, so much. I love my alone time. Typically I’ll wander art galleries or museums, find a tree to sit under, or a sidewalk seat at a natural wine bar with a book. I also really enjoy going to the theatre alone.

What’s the most interesting thing you screenshotted in recent weeks?

A documentary someone recommended to me: “Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig.” It’s about New York City nightlife in the ‘90s. I just interviewed a club kid on my Substack, and a friend recommended I watch this documentary. He said it is “maybe the most insane documentary I’ve ever seen.”

What super specific thing are you obsessing over lately?

I’m currently obsessed with the mythology of Lilith, a figure from Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology. In Jewish folklore, Lilith is said to be Adam’s first wife before Eve. Lilith refused to submit to Adam, claiming to be his equal. She fled the Garden of Eden and became this exiled she-demon rumored to haunt Eden. I’m so obsessed with the Lilith archetype — this empowered feminine spirit that refuses to submit, and is therefore cast away by society. Sounds familiar, no?

I just read “The Book of Lilith” by Barbara Black Koltuv, a Jungian psychoanalyst. Koltuv gives a thorough telling of the story of Lilith, while also tying it to the psychological integration of a woman’s individuation.

What are you working on right now and why?

I’m currently working on the second draft of my first novel. Why? Because something in me tells me I have to. But in the meantime, find me on Substack!

You say you stand for something? Well, what about this thing you posted in 2012 that says otherwise?

You want to build a following? Choose a niche and stick to it, or your audience and the algorithm may turn against you.

You want a healthy relationship? You’d better fit into the box the internet has drawn for what defines a good partner.

In an increasingly homogenized world where we’re all watching the same Reels and TikTok videos, we’ve started defining ourselves by viral trends and reductive concepts. When the reality is: nobody is consistently any one thing. Everyone is a mess of contradictions.

We may try to curate a certain mood online, build our brand on Instagram, define ourselves by a job, a cause, a style or specific personality traits, and we may succeed to a certain extent. But we are never consistently any of those things. And by trying to be, we corner ourselves. An actor takes a different kind of role, a politician changes their mind on an issue, a musician tries a different style, and everyone has something to say about it. People like you to be something they understand. Or as Steinbeck puts it: “People like you to be something, preferably what they are.”

Our real lives are inextricably linked with our online lives now, and online platforms reward consistency too. The algo working behind the scenes bullies you toward it, to the point where you get nervous to do anything that might displease it. Inevitably, between the algorithm, the virtue signalers and morality police, the interesting bumps and grooves and unexpected turns in a person get smoothed out. We subconsciously learn to meet expectations.

Which I find so, so boring. Uninspiring! A waste!

Who are we flattening ourselves for, anyway? A bunch of distracted, half-asleep people who don’t know us. A prediction machine designed to make money.

We have to carve out a space, so to speak, where we don’t have to smooth. Where we can be our messy, contradicting selves with all our rough edges, which is so much more interesting and life-giving. In the real world offline, this is hard - it means finding friends or communities who understand and appreciate you in all your inconsistencies, who lean toward curiosity over judgment. Online, it’s getting much harder, which is why we made mymind.

mymind is private, meaning no audience is watching, nobody’s liking or commenting, nothing’s guiding your attention or stealing it, no algorithm overlord is standing over you. Which allows you to stop curating and suppressing and cramming yourself into a box, and just be.

The things I save in mymind only make sense to me. Like: 90s interiors with overstuffed striped couches, but also y2k spaces with translucent walls and glowy blue lights. Like: articles about living a vegan lifestyle beside recipes for lamb ragu. Like: a prairie dress and a men’s Japanese-designed blazer. Like: a guide to vibe coding beside a personal manifesto against AI. None of these things fit one version of me. None of them work on a curated Instagram grid. The algorithm would glitch trying to make sense of it all. And that’s the beauty in it. I am free to be my most contradicting, nonsensical, real self. And somewhere between it all, because of it all, I find new ideas. Inspiration from the contrasts, new versions of me.

Our real minds and personalities aren’t perfect mood boards. mymind isn’t either. In mymind I am ironic and sincere, an intellectual and a philistine, a lover of Didion and dad jokes, a dreamer and a cynic.

Whether you use mymind or not, find a place where you can be beautifully chaotic and messy and contradictory, where you can follow your own interests without the need to perform for anybody or explain yourself. In a world where everything else is highly curated and streamlined for attention, everyone should have a digital and physical space like this.

Please, I beg of you: Embrace the weirdness inside you.

Play this while reading, one of Alya’s favorite Chopin nocturnes:

What’s an image of a piece of art you can’t get out of your head?

“Marilina in a Tiled Room” by Cooper & Gorfer. I saw it at Fotografiska Stockholm in 2017 by nearly complete accident. My friend and I were running late to the airport and decided to skip the exhibition to save money, and instead just browse the gift shop. I somehow ended up chatting with the curator, who couldn’t believe two architecture students had blown past the show. She pulled us in for a personal five-minute tour and this was the first image she showed us.

I was stunned. The way the figure’s dress dissolves into a tiled landscape, the ornament in the tiles in the background, the figure’s striking gaze. There’s a clear lineage to Klimt, and through him to Byzantine tile work and architectural forms. I think about this piece at least once a week and the exhibition book has a permanent place on my coffee table.

What do you do in your alone time?

Too many things! I am a serial hobbyist and get restless without something to work toward. At any given moment you can find me on a run (I’m running the Philly marathon this fall!), at the pottery studio, practicing piano, or in my kitchen cooking where I am in my sourdough era. I am also just now learning to swim as an adult. And of course, I love working on my substack. :)

A quote that’s meaningful to you?

Whenever my mom and I were stressed, my Sito (grandmother) would say “May this be the worst thing that happens to you.” Hearing this phrase immediately brings me back down to Earth, and it’s become a mantra of mine. It’s a reminder that it is a privilege to be stressed about work or to have a bad day. I am very lucky to have these as the worst of my problems.

Any songs or albums on repeat?

Classical music has a chokehold on me. I grew up playing and competing in classical piano, so classical music is less of a preference and a little more part of who I am. Chopin is consistently in my top 5 artists and his nocturnes, specifically, have a special place in my heart. Nothing else compares to them.

What super specific thing are you obsessing over lately?

My boyfriend and I recently traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico and ever since I’ve become obsessed with fun drinks served in handmade pitchers. Think agua frescas, agua de chocolate, and horchatas served in the most beautiful pitchers hand crafted by local artisans. We now keep homemade hibiscus agua fresca in the fridge, and I’ve been spending any free time in the pottery studio building out our pitcher collection.

What are you working on right now and why?

I’m currently neck deep preparing for the next rotunda show at the Guggenheim: Taryn Simon, opening September 18. Outside of my 9-5, I’ve been reading a lot about one of the great art world muses for a Substack essay I can’t wait to publish. ⚘

Tara Selter can’t escape November 18, and neither can you as the reader – to the point, at least for me, of near tedium. But then something interesting happens. That day starts opening up for Tara as she learns to move forward in her new, extremely limited world. And looking through her lens, so did the everyday for me.

I finished the book one evening and took my dog on a walk, my head still wrapped up in the world of the novel, and looked around my street. What if I was stuck in this one day forever? What hidden portals could I find within the seemingly mundane? Were there details I’d overlooked, anything I hadn’t noticed on this route I’d walked countless times?

And I saw more than I had before: tiny stained glass windows, gargoyles leering playfully from their perches, trees with strangely shaped trunks, a funny name gouged into the sidewalk. My neighbor’s gait became charming. I noted the softness of the air, the pink-gray-blue clouds in the dimming sky. Imagining that evening as though I was stuck in it for infinity, my little block gained more texture.

This is, ideally, how I’d live my finite little life. And yet I’m not usually noticing and appreciating with such intention. I’m typically walking around looking at the ground, lost in thought about money, or about something embarrassing I said last night at dinner, or about all the useless errands I need to run. The moments of my life ticking down while I rush through it forgetting: attention is all I have.

What we pay attention to opens up. Stare at an ant for an hour and you’ll be enthralled. Dive deep into a subject and you’ll become obsessed. Really tune into a conversation and it will expand. Look around your world and you’ll notice beauty and detail you walked by a thousand times before.

This is the kind of intentionality we’re trying to encourage with mymind. We want it to be a tool that doesn’t steal your attention, but rather sharpens it. It should encourage you to look closer at things and consider their meaning vs. blindly scrolling and accepting whatever the algorithm serves you. To navigate the internet with the same mindfulness I felt walking down my block after finishing my book.

Our co-founders had that vision from the start, and one of them (Tobias) told me about a moment that touched him the other day. There’s a motorcycle shop next door to our office, and he passed through on his way in that morning. The guy who runs the shop had all his tools set out, and the sun was coming through the very dirty, milky windows at an angle, dust sparkling. Tobias said “hey Mark,” and immediately turned around, grabbed his camera and took a photo.

Afterward, Mark looked around the shop and said, “I’ve been here for years. People are constantly coming and going, and nobody’s ever looked at the room the way you just did. But now that you point it out, I can see it. It’s really beautiful.”

Noticing is a gift. It’s also a skill you can hone.

Our lives are what we pay attention to, and we miss so many things. But when you set out to look closer, it all sharpens into focus: the sweet little moment when two strangers smile at each other through a deli window. The way the tulips in your neighbor’s garden droop over in the rain. The endearing way your partner’s eyebrows twitch when they’re reading a book.

Maybe we shouldn’t be living every day like it’s our last, but more like it’s the only day we get to live, over and over and over and over again.

Look around! Look closer! What have you missed?

Cover art titled “A Revelation” by George Underwood

What’s the last thing you read?

I’m reading the first volume of Anaïs Nin’s diaries alongside a friend and loving it. Just before, I finished Nin’s short novel, Collages, and the way she described characters and scenes had me floating!

What do you want to read next?

I pre-ordered Deborah Levy’s My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein and can’t wait for my copy to arrive in June. People have been enthusiastically calling it “genre bending” because it creatively overlaps a fictional story with the life of one of the world’s most talked about novelist-turned-art collectors, Gertrude Stein.

What’s an image or piece of art you can’t get out of your head?

Speaking of floating, two of my favorite artworks are of people levitating. I adore Marc Chagall’s romantic painting, The Birthday, which he painted of himself with his first wife, Bella.

The other is an aluminum sculpture with all sorts of finesse: Isamu Noguchi’s Miss Expanding Universe (1932). I like to think of her as my art patroness saint, guiding me into the most frivolously wonderful version of my life!

A product of any kind you’ve been appreciating lately?

I just published an article about Georgia O’Keeffe and had to sneak in a little mention of the nail color I’ve been wearing for the last few months: J. Hannah’s Ghost Ranch, which is a nod to the artist’s New Mexican desert landscapes.

What’s the most interesting thing you screenshotted in recent weeks?

My absolute favorite clothing brand is Vuokko, named after its creator, Vuokko Nurmesniemi. She was one of Marimekko’s primary textile designers during its most prolific decades. She passed away a couple of weeks ago, and I screenshotted photos of her home (which I’m also obsessed with!) as a reminder – because the story has been in my drafts for too many months!

What super specific thing are you obsessing over lately?

I went to Salone del Mobile AKA “Design Week” in Milan for work recently and filled my trip with sneaking into as many 1930-40s Italian historic villas as humanly possible. I adore historic architecture and design, and have had specific Italian homes on my must-visit list for years. Some of them are rarely (or never) open to the public, so I can’t tell you how giddy I was to finally be inside them. Villa Borsani, especially!

Skipping through that city with friends, coworkers, strangers, and on my own made me even more obsessed with 1930s Italian design—and risotto alla Milanese!

Also! I saw this Italian retro-futurist dress made from mirrors and PVC pipe by Monica Bolzoni at the Triennale di Milano and – wow.

What are you working on right now and why?

An online dictionary of modern art, surveying 26 fascinating artists or movements that you totally must know from the era, and updating my driving tour of modern homes all around Los Angeles.

For the past year, I’ve been writing the first draft of my very own non-fiction book about a group of artists. This dream has been swirling inside of me for a decade or more and is finally being realized! ⚘

The word comes from the Latin cura meaning care, concern or guardianship, or curare meaning “to care for.” So a curator was someone entrusted with oversight or care: a guardian or caretaker of collections, institutions or someone’s affairs. As a curator, you were essentially a careful steward of something.

Now we curate feeds, playlists, wardrobes, grids, aesthetics, newsletters, boards. The word has expanded to imply discernment, taste or the framing of something. We associate curation less with collecting and care, and more with performing or arranging something for an audience.

And yet, we still have quiet curators everywhere.

Like the original curator, these are the people who are diligently, thoughtfully, even obsessively caring about something. You know them by their work or their ideas, not their collections. But I promise you they have they them:

the filmmaker with their studies of light and shadow

the chef with a personal library of colors

the architect who saves his favorite paintings

the writer who collects sounds

The most interesting people you know share one thing: a private world of references, obsessions and curiosities they quietly build over many years, for no immediate purpose and no audience but themselves. They do it because, like you did with your collection of rocks or dolls as a kid, they simply care. These things fascinate them or feel important to them in some way. They’re drawn to them, so they save them.

These private collections become the wellspring of their work. It’s where their ideas come from, where their taste comes from.

Which is the whole idea behind mymind (the tool I work on). It’s a private collection for just yourself, filled with bookmarks, screenshots, images, notes, articles, highlights, quotes, books, movies, everything. Not because you’re building a brand or performing taste for someone else, but simply because you care enough to keep them.

A collection is honest. You gather what fascinates you, what you love or what speaks to you without any coherent reason, aesthetic consistency or concern for what it says about you. You keep the strange, ugly thing that moves you. The thing that doesn’t fit the grid. The object or idea or visual that would ruin your aesthetic if you were curating in today’s sense of the word.

Because it’s private, it becomes a true collection. Not a display shelf in IKEA with matching spines and crowd-pleasing titles. More like a library stuffed with mismatched themes and worn covers. No obvious thread among them, just the idiosyncratic result of someone following their curiosity.

The things you collect may not have any direct connection with your work or current projects, at least not immediately. But much like compost, they eventually break down, ferment and become something useful. Just keep collecting what genuinely interests you, revisit these things often and give it time.

Whether they’re using mymind or not, the people you admire are building these collections. It may all be in their head, some other tool or a chaotic folder on their desktop. Wherever it lives, they draw upon these private collections constantly, connecting seemingly unrelated ideas and shaping them into something new. Not from a desire to impress, but from an inner drive, a deep caring, that feels as natural and necessary as tapping your foot to a beat. They are curators in the truer sense of the word.

If you’re curious about using mymind for this purpose and have questions about it, my DMs are open. It’s free to sign up though, so you can try it out and see if it feels like the right fit for you. Whether it is or not, I hope you’ll find a private space to curate for just yourself. It makes your mind and your experience richer. It gives your work depth and texture.

More reading on this, if you’re interested:

Or maybe this is all people. We are an increasingly self-aware species. Every day we’re fed new concepts and advice online that attempts to contain and optimize the human experience – some of it helpful, a lot of it not. The algorithm reflects a warped view of ourselves back to us, sending us into a mirror-maze of self-obsession.

But long before I was chronically online, I tended to think about my experiences and decisions from every angle. Did I do it right? How could I have changed the outcome? Was that misunderstanding avoidable? Was it my fault or theirs? Could I have achieved a different result if I did X or Y instead?

And I’ve come to the same conclusion we all do in those extremely brief moments of clarity: This is a fruitless pursuit. What’s done is done. What’s more, my rumination is poisoning my experience now, the only reality that actually matters.

In my mental toolbox I keep a memory of this time I painted my kitchen with a friend. We had a ball going to the hardware store and picking out paint chips. Eventually we settled on a sky blue color for the walls and light pink for the ceilings (this was probably a decade ago, before walls everywhere became beige and white). We spent the entire afternoon on this project, painting well into the evening. When we finished, we stepped back to admire our work and immediately agreed we hated it.

I of course became despondent and regretful. We should have known this pink was too pink. We should have researched online, mocked it up, tried out swatches. But my friend said something I’ve applied to many situations since then:

“We wouldn’t have done anything other than what we did.”

And it’s true. We made our decisions based on who we were, how we felt and the information we had at the time. It’s true for jobs taken and left, relationships started and ended, mistakes considered and made. We wouldn’t have done anything other than what we did. Obsessively thinking about it and replaying it in our heads like a football coach watching game tapes accomplishes nothing, and ultimately robs us of the present moment – the only time or place where we actually have control over the outcome.

Mary Oliver is one of those artists who clearly dealt with a ruminating mind. Many of her poems touch on it, including this one I’ve committed to memory:

The Gardener

Have I lived enough?

Have I loved enough?

Have I considered Right Action enough, have I

come to any conclusions?

Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?

Have I endured loneliness with grace?

I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it.

Actually, I probably think too much.

Then I step out into the garden,

where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man,

is tending his children, the roses.

We could be like the football coach, or we could be like the gardener: present, content, attuned to the beauty in front of him. Less overthinking, more dreaming and doing. Less overanalyzing and overcomplicating and ruminating, more tending to the roses.

Erifili Gounari has a lightness about her that feels unexpected from someone who’s an entrepreneur, writer, Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and founder of a global creative agency. It may come from the inner peace / joy of literally just doing the things she dreams about doing, a life philosophy she shares on her Substack and Instagram. Erifili’s writing often inspires me, so I was happy she agreed to share this look into her mind.

What’s the last thing you read?

I’m currently reading “The Master and Margarita,” a book that has been on my list for so many years because I knew that it’s one I would absolutely love. And it is. It’s one of those books I just don’t want to put down – so unique in the best way!

What do you want to read next?

I usually alternate between fiction and nonfiction. Next up, I’m planning on reading two nonfiction books that I’m really excited about: “The Light Eaters” by Zoë Schlanger, which is a book about the intelligence of plants and trees; and “The Underworld” by Susan Casey, a book about the depths of the ocean! Both are topics that I’m so interested in.

What’s an image or piece of art you can’t get out of your head?

One thing about me that you won’t find on my Substack is that I really, really love whales.

I saved this in mymind the other day:

A product of any kind you’ve been appreciating lately?

I’m a huge fan of Paper Republic journals. I love how they make my daily ritual of journaling feel more enjoyable, because it allows me to be more present in it. I love how you can just keep replacing the notebooks inside so they last forever. I’m really loving my Grand Voyageur XL, and they just very kindly gifted me a Le Portfolio journal, a writer’s dream, so I’m super excited to use it :)

Best gift you’ve ever given and received?

Ohhhh, I love this question. The best gift I’ve ever received was a short film created for me by my boyfriend, full of my favorite things and footage from my life. The best one I’ve given (that I’m proudest of) is when I created a very personalized choose-your-own-adventure online game for a friend of mine, with three different adventure storylines that you could play through.

What do you do in your alone time?

Lots of reading, writing, yoga, pilates, trying to get strong enough to effortlessly do a yoga headstand… practicing getting better at doing creative things that have no purpose beyond just being creative. Right now I’m working on a 1000-piece puzzle of a pretty whimsical, fairytale-like scene.

A quote that’s meaningful to you?

“You are exactly where you are meant to be.”

It brings me comfort whenever I need it, and it always turns out being true.

Any songs or albums on repeat? Or your top favorite of all time?

My top album of all time is definitely “I Want You” by Marvin Gaye. No matter how many times I listen to it, I will never, ever skip. Pure art. Also listen to Turn on Some Music, it is so good.

I kind of have the music taste of a 65-year old man who used to go to the disco a lot, if he also listened to Sade, Tame Impala and Laufey…

What are you working on right now and why?

I’m very excited as I’m currently working on bringing the next phase of my creative work to life, an ecosystem of work that reflects my current most authentic expression as best as I can. Part of that is that I’m very dedicated to my Substack, Crystal Clear, and the beautiful community of readers around it. ⚘

For the right time, when we’re “ready” or “qualified,” as if there’s some authority out there handing out permissions and approval.

But good things only happen when someone actually makes them happen. They create without permission, because they’re too stubborn or naive or desperate to wait around for validation. They have an idea, a perspective and the guts to do it, even badly, even imperfectly, even knowing it might not work.

Creating something is a way of manifesting what you want to see in the world. Not in some mystical way, but practically. If you don’t make it, nobody else will. Or worse, someone eventually will, and you’ll know it could have been you.

The same goes for everything in life:

That city you want to visit? Don’t wait for the dream partner to plan the trip with you. Go alone. Go with a friend. Just go.

The relationship you want to deepen or fix? Be the first one to reach out.

The wobbly desk chair or loose cabinet or creaky door that keeps bothering you? Watch a YouTube video and fix it yourself.

Life is so much more rewarding when we act on our ideas instead of hoping they’ll magically happen for us in some distant future. You might fail, you might succeed. But something is guaranteed to happen. And if you do it again, and again, and again, things will keep happening.

It seems obvious, but most of us aren’t living like this. The people you admire are. And they’re no different from you. They’re just doing things.

I finally took this to heart a couple years ago. I’d always wanted to write, but mostly sat around thinking about writing, imagining some future where I was a writer. Finally, I decided to spend more mornings and evenings actually writing. Nothing crazy, no big life change. Just a few hours a week listening and acting on my creative impulses and passing ideas. Eventually, I had a handful of stories and essays. I started quietly submitting some of them to different publications. Suddenly, the waiting had a purpose. Even the (many) rejections I received were exciting. They meant I was doing something. I was giving the world something to respond to. Simple cause and effect. Eventually, acceptance letters came in. And from there, invitations to new creative projects. Which brought me into an entirely new creative community that gave me more ideas, more inspiration, more opportunities. The more I did, the more the results compounded. By just quietly doing these little things at the beginning, I’d unwittingly made a different kind of life for myself. One I’d been dreaming about having for years before that.

Do it and you might succeed. Or you might fail. Do it again, and again, and again, and you’ll be surprised by how differently your life starts to look. Either way, at least you’ll be doing something.