Happy birthday! That's so cool!

-- creative projects, helping others, studying what they love. All of these require hard work, but an "easier" life where one abandons these activities is rarely a better life. It isn't that nobody wants to work. It is that nobody wants to feel like their every moment is meaningless.

from their loved ones (or prevents them from having any loved ones at all), and never moves them any closer to a life they want, is not laziness. Whether or not the work itself is difficult is not the key factor at play. Often, people find meaning in pouring immense energy into what they value

In my experience, when people complain about work being utterly draining, the issue is not that the work is difficult but that the work feels meaningless. Complaining that one has to devote every waking minute to rote labour that doesn't align with their values, that separates them

apologies if this is dense, but what does lobotomize refer to in this context? glad you're doing better.

🔁

Looking forward to reading this! Really enjoyed The Tender Between and your poems in haiku journals :)

👉 This from the brilliant review/interview/essay by @effervescentvoid.bsky.social on Stephanie Bolster's «Long Exposure», just published at mRb...

mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviews/long...

Thanks for sharing, Carlos!

The blatant dismissal of the concerns of women, immigrants, racialized people, and people with disabilities, in order to appeal to the supposed majority is... really something. As if most of the population doesn't fall into at least one of those categories.

Criticize the status quo but don't scare people by implying you want to change anything about it.

so stunning I was too stunned to spell "stunning," apparently.

Honestly, anyone who has treated me as a person. And not in the sense that I'm grateful for scraps; like everyone else, writers are overworked and trained by capitalism to see everyone as rivals. It takes effort and integrity to offer your time to an early-career writer without expecting a reward.