2026-03 | I wanted to say something to Molly
The busier things are and the more tired I am, the more useful calm focus would be, and simultaneously the harder it is to find, and, annoyingly, the
more important it is to make a go of it. It feels like I'm always trying to (re)learn how to make space for sustained attention -- probably a lifelong project.
I'm trying to get better at not ducking when whatever I'm supposed to be doing is hard (lately, scientific writing, which I have probably gotten
at least a bit better at but which still doesn't feel anything close to easy). I have a tendency to context-switch compulsively, opening new tabs mentally
and sometimes literally, going and doing something else that's easier but still feels productive. Instead, I'm trying to write first thing in the morning,
and to (again/still) sit with the weirdly-phrased paragraph or the confusing piece of analysis.
If nothing comes, just keep sitting still and stare at the page/monitor/whatever. Write a bad sentence, you can always change it later.
(Sometimes, of course, bashing yourself against the same problem/situation/feeling (especially) stops making sense.
I've generally been garbage at finding that point.)
Meanwhile it's spring out: light early, baby ducks at the nursery along with the baby people, things like that. Feels nice.
We accidentally saw a small band from Vancouver here in Norwich: WUT, on their big tour of small UK basements.
Strange and wonderful familiarity in talking to someone about Fraser and
18th, here in the land of big skies. Long live the Holloway.
Predictably, Charlotte Cornfield's new record is an absolute banger. 10 perfect vignettes.
Hurts like hell
is a bracing, musically envigorating portrait of somewhere we've all been, while
Squiddd contains one of the most memorable declarations of friendship[/love/some amorphous
combination of the two]:
I wanna share files with you.
When I was a teen on the World Wide Web, I happened to find the obscure website of a girl a bit older than me,
that she was clearly just coding for fun, full of small short stories/jokes/film scans/ observations.
It only lives in the entrails of web.archive now, but bits of it stayed with me in txt files on various computers and also
in
my
head
. It's pithy, but in infinite-scroll world, it felt special carrying someone's words with me like this for the better part
of 15 years, when they were never meant for a big audience.
Anyway, this month I found out that she wrote a book, a novel based on her time in
an intentional Christian community like the Bruderhof. I haven't read it yet, but I enjoyed
this interview.
Molly: Do you have writing advice? You've always been one of the best writers I've known,
though you’re not someone who has ever identified as a writer.
Kate: I think this will embarrass you, but I wouldn't have written anything if I didn't have
somebody worth writing to. You are one of the few people for whom it was worth being as smart
and funny as I could possibly be. What I would say to anybody who wants to write—that’s a much
more propulsive force than career ambition. I didn't want to be a writer. It seems a really
punitive and vulnerable lifestyle. But I wanted to communicate something to Molly.
It is like that, isn't it?