Be hard on yourself.

If you have ever felt the overwhelming urge to tie cinderblocks around your ankles and jump into the ocean when forced to endure long bouts of small talk (notice the emphasis, please) about how so and sos cat died the other day, …

I think of Kerouac often. The youth read him and want to be him, but they miss his point for the stories of the wild beat, the ramblin’ man of vice and excess — sounds fun, I suppose, when one is young.

Often a disciplined life is perceived from the outside as ever-painful. The good person, it is thought, faces both the pain of lacking bad pleasures – i.e., he has “no fun” – and the pain of having to do good – “how miserable it must be to be sober all the time, to wake up early and exercise with intensity, to eat salads, to practice honesty,” and so on. But that is wrong.

Thirty four years as a speck of dust upon one larger. ‘Round and ‘round we go. But this one feels different. It already is different — here is overcoming; here is valuable change; here, I can say with absolute confidence, is momentum.

Every morning, I awake and sing hymns of praise to the day, or at least this is my modus operandi.

It is useful to remind oneself occasionally that the world is not as it ought to be.

The dogs are barking.

Culture, what is common, is generally opposed to both genuine authenticity and self-knowledge.

Whether to choose one or to indulge and play within the cycle, I do not know.

At 33, my questions are simpler.

A serious man is hard to find.

“ I think modern man can practice the spiritual exercises of antiquity, at the same time separating them from the philosophical or mythic discourse which came along with them. “

We are, in fact, quite dumb.

One who wants to better himself is ipso facto not that to which he aspires.

I have given up drinking for good, if not for all.

Memento mori — be hard on yourself. The reaper is on your heels…