Clippings 01

These are excerpts from cool things I’ve read around the web. Thank you for checking this out. I love sharing your great ideas. Originally posted on my blog on April 25, 2025.

213. Who am I really?

from marblethoughts

Personality tests and typologies can be fun - they can give you a language to describe yourself and help you recognize patterns in your behavior. But they’re not a destination. They’re not a definitive answer to the question of “Who am I?” because that question isn’t something you can answer once and be done with. It’s an ongoing, evolving thing. And when people cling too hard to their “type,” sometimes it can feel like they’re boxing themselves in rather than expanding.

I think the beauty of being human is that we’re allowed to outgrow old versions of ourselves. We’re allowed to change our minds. We’re allowed to surprise ourselves. And sometimes, the most growth happens when we stop looking for a neat little box to fit into and just live, experience, and let time shape us in ways we can’t predict.

how long do you keep the body?

from anna's blog

Think of the objects that serve as the body of your memories.

Now, I want you to think back to your beloved object. Maybe it is a machine, maybe it is a piece of clothing — it could be anything and it could be everything. Imagine the one that holds all the memory you need to store outside of your body and in the vessel of another. Whether these objects remain in use or at rest, they hold the weight of the past and delicacy that is the present.

I’ve Spent a Lifetime Making Myself Smaller and I HAVE to Stop Before I Disappear (or “How Buying an Oversized ‘Everyday’ Bag Was a Revolutionary Act of Space-Taking Defiance”)

from Emily Moran Barwick

it's not that I've never considered why I fear my own excess—why I worry about being seen carrying more things with me than is necessary. Carrying, bringing, being TOO MUCH.

I've spent a lifetime making myself smaller for everyone. Making myself the version of me that was most useful and comfortable for everyone around me. The version of me that served their needs. The version of me that had no needs of my own.

I received the message very early in life that there was no space for my needs. There was no space for me.

I needed to make myself as small as possible. Because no one could ever truly have the capacity for the whole of me.

I was (I am) TOO MUCH.

Nothing sticks with you quite like the messages you receive as a child. They take root deeper, parasitically entangling themselves in any beliefs that may try to grow in the future—sometimes choking them out entirely.

And this message (I am TOO MUCH) has woven its tendrils through the very core of me.

The brutal vigilance of a broken, terrified child.

But, I've also long-ago integrated the messages from my formative years—and society at large—that many of the ways in which I meet my needs for self-regulation are "unacceptable." That much of who I am is unacceptable. That I am not allowed to take up space. That I am TOO MUCH.

It was me scooping up and embracing that broken, terrified child, and telling her what I wish she'd been told back then:

You are allowed to feel safe

You are allowed to be all of yourself

You are allowed to take up space.

Friction is a feature

from tangiblelife.net

Friction is what refines us in the same way that a smooth edge on a beautiful piece of furniture had the splinters and sharpness massaged away with sandpaper and movement. Friction means doing hard things to get good at doing hard things. Friction means not shying away from conversations and people that stretch you. Friction transforms energy from form to form, and the idea that we should remove all of the friction from our lives leaves us small, empty, and unnecessarily fragile. We lack, ironically, what that sandpaper has… grit.

Life is going to inevitably throw some friction at you at the most inopportune time. While it may be unfortunate, the most unfortunate thing is when someone has allowed the grit muscles in their brain, body, and spirit to atrophy to the degree that any unexpected friction feels insurmountable. If you look at the people in your life that seem to take life in stride, my bet is on those same people having an attitude that friction isn’t the enemy.

We'll always need junior programmers

from David Heinemeier Hansson

However good AI gets, we're always going to need people who know the ins and outs of what the machine comes up with. Maybe not as many, maybe not in the same roles, but it's truly utopian thinking that mankind won't need people capable of vetting the work done by AI in five minutes.

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