Chapter 23 - Life is a Shitty First Draft — You Only Get Rewrites if You’re Buddhist
Personal notes on living with and writing through depression
Søren Kierkegaard said: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
I’ve thought about that a lot lately for a number of reasons both personal and philosophical.
What stories do you tell yourself about your life?
If your life was a book, written by someone you’ve read, who’d be the author?
Would anyone care to read it? Will your life make more sense when you’re dead? And what’s the best way to live forwards?
Life’s a shitty first draft — you only get rewrites if you’re Buddhist.
Constant roadkill
Life is a journey. Time is a truck. We are roadkill.
Let go of everything but the moment for the moment is all that you have.
Death falls away from you at different speeds.
Sudden death and you get parted from your illusions real fast.
Slow death and you’re forced to hurt and contemplate every day.
Which is how this feels. And how you should write.
Aim for the page, not the words
“Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write fo…
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