Substack archives are hard to search, which makes me sad because my old posts are full of incredible bangers. Here’s a list of every post and article I’ve written since 2022 which I choose to acknowledge the existence of and which is potentially interesting to posterity (i.e. not linkposts).
Flowchart of solution-focused brief therapy. I love the part where it’s like “if they have no hopes, and the problem always happens, and they don’t have any coping strategies, and they haven’t succeed at anything, try giving them a compliment!”
When I first considered doing life coaching, a therapist friend suggested I look into solution-focused brief therapy.1 I read about it and really liked it. I also discovered that many of the techniques hadn’t seeped into the water supply yet. So I figured I would write up a post with the points I found most insightful, so that people could read it and apply it to their own problems and put me out of a job.
Think About What You’re Good At
When we’re trying to solve problems, there’s a natural tendency to focus on, well, the problem. After all, that’s what you’re worried about!
But often the solution to your problem comes from your strengths. If you’re good at something, you’re much more likely to be able to use it to resolve a problem than if you suck at it.
So when you’re trying to solve a problem, ask yourself what you’re good at, what you like doing, and how you learned those things. Brainstorm ideas, even if they don’t seem very related to the problem at hand. Be sure to list off both specific skills and personality traits.
Then look through your list and see if there’s something you can use creatively to resolve your problem. For example, if you’re a fun person who’s always up for a game, maybe you can try playing a game with your kid to get her to brush her teeth. (Both pretend to be robots! Brush your hair with the toothbrush and make her tell you how to brush your teeth properly!) Conversely, if you know you’re a strong-willed person who doesn’t give in to tantrums, you can strictly enforce that no storytime will happen until teeth are brushed.
Similarly, if you can’t find a romantic partner and you’re a good artist, maybe you could sell paintings at an art show and meet people there. On the other hand, if you are witty and have good takes, maybe you could slide into people’s DMs on X. If you have no merits other than sheer bloody-minded determination, maybe you can approach strangers on the street until you find one that wants to go out with you.
Sometimes you might be mystified about what talents you have. If that’s the case, try thinking about what talents other people might say you have: your friends, your boss, your coworkers, your teachers (present or past). You might also try going through specific areas of your life. What subjects were you good at at school? What skills do you use at your job? What hobbies do you have, and what good traits do they show? Is there anything you accomplished in the past that you’re proud of? Have you made any self-improvements that you’re really happy about?
Think About When The Problem Doesn’t Happen
Almost no problem happens literally 100% of the time. If you have insomnia, sometimes you manage to sleep through the night. If your kid throws tantrums, sometimes you have a fun and pleasant afternoon together. If you keep fighting with your girlfriend, sometimes you ask her for something and she says “not now, but I’ll do it in a couple hours?” and no one screams at each other even a little bit. If you’re miserable all the time, sometimes you manage to feel a moment (however fleeting) of joy.
Even some problems that seem like they happen 100% of the time have exceptions. For example, most people who are single have had a romantic partner at some point. Most unemployed people have had a job at some point. Even people who are always sick have some days that are better (even a little bit).
Therefore, from a certain perspective, you have already solved your problem. The difficulty is figuring out how to solve it consistently.
This should give you some hope. It isn’t an impossible situation. You have already made some progress before you even started.
The key question to ask yourself: what’s different when the problem doesn’t happen?
Maybe you sleep through the night when your room is a nice temperature, or when you haven’t been too stressed at work, or when you’re absolutely exhausted.2 Maybe your kid is fun to interact with when she has a big lunch, or you went to the park together and got her wiggles out, or you aren’t rushing out the door. Maybe you and your girlfriend can resolve conflicts easily when she’s not too busy, or when you’ve thanked her for the stuff she’s already done for you. Maybe you feel joy when you go for a walk or drink a cup of tea or play a favorite video game.
You might not know right away what the difference is, especially if you aren’t an especially observant or self-aware person. It can help to keep a journal where you track when the problem could happen but doesn’t.
Once you know what causes the problem not to happen, you have some strong candidates for what to change to keep it from happening the rest of the time.
Think Concretely About What A Solution Would Look Like
The miracle question, in solution-focused brief therapy, goes something like this:
One night, a fairy stopped by and waved a magic wand and solved your problem. But because you’re asleep, you didn’t know that this happened. What would be the first thing you’d notice that would let you know that your problem was solved?
People always answer this with “I’ll have ten million dollars” or “my chronic fatigue would be cured” or “I won’t be depressed anymore.” But you wouldn’t be able to notice any of those things as soon as you wake up.3 What would you see?
Maybe you’d wake up and see the sleeping face of someone you love very much. Maybe your kids would get out of bed on their own and dress themselves and make themselves breakfast. Maybe you’d feel well-rested and energetic. Maybe you’d look forward to seeing a concert in the evening. Maybe your room would be neat and tidy, with furniture you love and pictures on the wall and three houseplants.
Now, several of these you might need a fairy’s help with: you can’t Simply Just fall in love with someone who loves you back, or feel well-rested every morning. But several of these are completely possible without magic. You can in fact keep your room clean or get your children to make their own breakfast—even without the intervention of helpful fairies. And buying concert tickets or wall art is trivial.
Continue over the course of your day, thinking in very concrete detail about what you’d notice if your problem was solved. How would your commute go? What would your work be like? What would you have for lunch or dinner? What would your evening plans be? What time would you go to sleep? What about the weekend—what would you do then?
By the time this exercise is done, you’ll have a list of concrete improvements. Some of them will be nearly impossible. Some of them will be doable with hard work and a bit of creativity. And some of them you can just do right now in your ordinary life, and it isn’t even that hard.
Why is the miracle question effective?
First, people who seem to have the same problem may want very different things.
Three people might all want to “get fit,” but one might want to be more sexually attractive, one might want to be able to carry her toddler, and one might want to feel strong and energetic in everyday life.
Three people might all want to “be less lonely,” but one wants to host events twice a week, one wants a girlfriend who loves her, and one wants someone who is willing to talk to her about her favorite TV shows.
Three people might all want to “stop being depressed,” but one wants to go out to exciting events and have a wide circle of friends, one wants to sit at home reading a book, and one wants to learn a variety of obsolete skills like artisanal cheesemaking.
Three people might all want to “be more successful,” but one wants to save enough money that she isn’t worried about losing her job, one wants her father to approve of her, and one wants to make a groundbreaking scientific discovery.
These are different goals, which suggest different plans. A fitness plan designed to help you carry your toddler might not be ideal for being sexually attractive. No amount of wild parties will cure your depression if your soul cries out for artisanal cheese. And sometimes the solution isn’t even related to the apparent problem: maybe, instead of trying to reach your father’s standards, you need to have a hard conversation with him about how you’re happy just the way you are and he needs to accept that.
Second, many people tend to fall into all-or-nothing thinking. Either we have a perfect solution to our problems right now—with the ten million dollars and the chronic fatigue cure and the soulmate and the kids straight out of a Hallmark movie—or nothing can ever get better even a little bit. By making the solution concrete and discrete, the miracle question lets you see what parts of a solution you can have. By beginning with the easiest parts of the solution, we can gradually work our way to the parts of the solution that seem difficult, or even like they might require magic.
Third, quite often people respond to the miracle question by going “I have no idea what a solution to my problem would look like.” I think this is particularly common for depressed people: you know that you want to stop hurting, but you don’t know what “not hurting” would look like. But if you don’t know what you want, you can’t get it. You now know what you need to work on.
Solutions Aren’t Necessarily Related To Problems
Consider the following situations:
Your wife dies, so you feel sad and lonely. You take up gardening, which distracts you, gives you pleasure, and brings you into a community of fellow gardeners. You still grieve your wife, but you no longer dread waking up in the morning.
You were parentified as a child, which means you feel worthless unless you’re taking care of someone. You become a nurse and work long hours taking care of patients, which gives you a sense of satisfaction and self-esteem.
You struggle to find a romantic partner. You build strong and supportive friendships, regularly babysit your friends’ kids, and snuggle your pet dog when you feel touch-starved. You still idly wish you had a partner, but you feel happy.
Does gardening solve the problem of your wife’s death? Does being a nurse fix your parentification? Are good friendships basically a kind of romance? No, no, and no.
Some people say that the solution has to be related to the problem. As long as your childhood trauma is unresolved and you don’t have a girlfriend, you’ll feel some deep dissatisfaction, a fundamental kind of emptiness, that only going to the root of your problem can resolve.
This belief is a conspiracy by Big Therapy to sell more therapy.
To be sure, solutions are sometimes related to problems. I’m not sitting here going “no one ever works through their childhood trauma and it is impossible to solve your romantic loneliness by getting a girlfriend.” And I’m not saying that you have to settle for inadequate solutions. If you have strong friendships and still long for a partner, or work long hours to numb your feelings and then feel a wave of inadequacy hit you as soon as you sit down, then the problem still exists. It’s always up to you to decide whether your problem is adequately solved.
However, sometimes solutions have nothing to do with problems. If you’re acting out a pattern you learned in your abusive childhood, and you’re a happy functional member of society, that’s… fine? Who cares? If a situation in your life sucks, but you’ve figured out how to work around it and have a decent life anyway, then hooray! Victory!
It is particularly helpful to consider solutions unrelated to your problem if:
Your problem is impossible for you to fix: death, aging, idiopathic chronic illness, the fundamental personalities of your loved ones, the immensity of suffering in the universe, humanity’s imminent demise due to [insert favorite apocalypse here], Donald Trump.
You have put in a good-faith effort to fix your problem and it didn’t help.
It feels impossible to make any progress on your actual problem. You feel dread or overwhelm even thinking about it.
You have gotten by just fine without solving your problem in the past and think you can return to the status quo.
People Are Different
A common theme you might have noticed is that people are very different from each other.
People often propose one-size-fits-all solutions to problems. The secret to getting your baby to sleep through the night. The evidence-based, science-backed cure for depression. The exercise routine that will make anyone get their best body. The top twelve tips that will get YOU a harem of adoring and eager-to-please 10/10s.
But those solutions don’t work for everyone. People have different skills, personalities, and life advantages. People have different needs, limits, and constraints on what the situation can look like. And—even if two people seem to have the same problem—their goals can be completely different.
You can’t give the same baby sleep cure for a stay-at-home parent as for a working parent. For someone with infinite patience for soothing children to sleep as for someone who easily tolerates crying. For someone who needs eight hours of uninterrupted sleep as for someone who just needs the schedule to be predictable. For someone who is basically on top of things as for someone who is already underwater and sinking deeper every day. And sometimes you need to take a step back and go “maybe we don’t need to fix the baby’s sleep. Maybe your spouse needs to take the night wakeups instead.”
There is no one single cure for any complicated life problem. But there are a bunch of ways of thinking about problems that can help you figure out something that will work for you.4
Despite the name, solution-focused brief therapy was intended to be practiced by both therapists and many non-therapists, such as school guidance counselors or probation officers. Or life coaches.
an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks
the scarlet ibis
marigolds
the diamond necklace
the monkey’s paw
the open boat
the lady and the tiger
the minister’s black veil
an occurrence at owl creek bridge
a rose for emily
(I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)
the cask of amontillado
the yellow wallpaper
the most dangerous game
a good man is hard to find
some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15
add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed
The Tell-Tale Heart, The Gift of the Magi, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County, Thank You Ma'am
the box social by james reaney. i remember we all had to silently read it in class, and you would hear the moment everyone reached the Part because some people would audibly go “what”
wHat did I just put my eyes on
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury
Not quite a short story, but read in class: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” from The Twilight Zone
Harrison Bergeron, Cat and the Coffee Drinkers
“Where are you going and where have you been” by Joyce carol oates
“The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury
the lottery by shirley jackson
i can’t believe Roald Dahl’s “The Landlady” wasn’t already mentioned
and also it’s not so much unsettling as more absurdist but “The Leader” by Eugene Ionesco definitely made me go wtf
Ett halvt ark papper. I cried so much.
Ночь у мазара, А. Шалимов
A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury
Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby, by Donald Barthelme
I read Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer In A Day” in seventh grade (it wasn’t assigned, I was just going through my textbook for new stuff to read) and as a bullied kid with SAD, it Fucked Me Up.
An Ordinary Day with Peanuts, by Shirley Jackson
Eh, this was more like community college, but The Star by Arthur C. Clarke
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
and this story that I can’t remember the name of and can’t find, though it might be by O. Henry? it’s about a bunch of demons who want to stop Santa Claus from going through with Christmas, and he must travel through the mountains they inhabit to escape their vices? (good christ I can’t remember the name for the life of me)
Ok but the laughing man and a good day for bananafish but j.d. Salinger
The City (195) Ray Bradbury. An intense commentary on colonialism and space exploration. I read it for a sci fi survey class.
Another short story I read in that sci fi class was Vaster than Empires and More Slow (1971) by Ursula K. Le Guin. A commentary on humanity and how human we believe ourselves to be. Also, an interesting commentary on mental health.
In the Woods Beneath the Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom, written in 1947 by Ango Sakaguchi. It made my skin crawl the first time I read it.
For the third day in a row, Arctic sky watchers are reporting a widespread outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds. "The colors are spectacular," says Ramune Sapailaite, who photographed the display over Gran, Norway..."The clouds were visible in the sky all day, but the colors really exploded just before sunset," says Sapailaite. "I took these pictures using my cellphone."
Widely considered to be the most beautiful clouds on Earth, polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are rare. Earth's stratosphere is very dry and, normally, it has no clouds at all. PSCs form when the temperature in the Arctic stratosphere drops to a staggeringly-low -85 C. Then, and only then, can widely-spaced water molecules begin to coalesce into tiny ice crystals. High-altitude sunlight shining through the crystals creates intense iridescent colors that rival auroras.
“A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way way opened to it?
I’ve seen this passed around a few times, and I have one thing to say:
It’s online. The book was carefully and wonderfully recreated online by hand. You can find it here. The entire book is this easy.
Polynesians did also rely on a form of a physical map called a stick chart, illustrating the specific wave and swell patterns surrounding different island chains. These were particularly helpful during cloudy conditions when the sun and stars were less useful. To navigate the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese represented ocean swell patterns using parts of coconut fronds and shells as islands. Like a subway map, they don’t so much represent distances as they do relationships. The complex and decorative stick charts were often only understood by the person who made them. They were memorised before a voyage by the pilot who would lie on the floor of a canoe to get a sense of swell movement and often lead a squadron of 15 or more boats.
sometimes I am just amazed at how my ancestors managed to navigate the entire Pacific Ocean with these. knowledge that was nearly lost and is being re-learned.
AH! I’d heard of these, but this is the first time I’ve come across pictures.
Alfonso stumbles from the corpse of the soldier. The townspeople are cheering, elated, pounding him on the back. Those who climbed the trees to watch applaud from the branches. Momma Galya shouts about pigs, pigs clean as men.
At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?
Picture the ocean. No. Picture the entire thing, all at once. You are not doing it. It’s okay. One day something terrible will happen, and I will not be prepared.
Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast terrible shadows, that each of the so-called senseless acts has its thread looping back through the world and into a human heart. And meanwhile the gold-trimmed thunder wanders the sky; the river may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town. Cyclone, fire, and their merry cousins bring us to grief — but these are the hours with the old wooden-god faces; we lift them to our shoulders like so many black coffins, we continue walking into the future. I don’t mean there are no bodies in the river, or bones broken by the wind. I mean everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar of the tornado swears there was no mention ever of any person, or reason — I mean the waters rise without any plot upon history, or even geography. Whatever power of the earth rampages, we turn to it dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever the name of the catastrophe, it is never the opposite of love.
If I had three lives, I’d marry you in two. The other? Perhaps that life over there at Starbucks, sitting alone, writing – a memoir, maybe a novel or this poem. No kids, probably, a small apartment with a view of the river, and books – lots of books, and time to read. Friends to laugh with, and a man sometimes, for a weekend, to remember what skin feels like when it’s alive. I’d be thinner in that life, vegan, practice yoga. I’d go to art films, farmers markets, drink martinis in swingy skirts and big jewelry. I’d vacation on the Maine coast and wear a flannel shirt weekend guy left behind, loving the smell of sweat and aftershave more than I did him. I’d walk the beach at sunrise, find perfect shell spirals and study pockmarks water makes in sand. And I’d wonder sometimes if I’d ever find you.
may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that
I wish Americans fucked with more foreign music. You don’t have to know the language to appreciate a good record. Folks in other countries listen to our music and don’t speak a lick of english. Music needs no translator
you’ll get an endless streaming of songs (ad free!).
I personally found myself loving 1970s Ghana, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire!
Also 1920s and 1970s Japan for sure! Cambodian music:
spectacular. Love Armenia and Mali as well. I’ve been told 70s Germany is weird and 30s
Algeria is cool but I haven’t gotten around to those yet.
Italy’s 1960s is bomb ofc but I’m biased ;)
Sunrise. The thin pocked sheets are being washed. The city’s old but new to me, and therefore strange, and therefore fresh. Everything’s clear, but flat– even the oculist’s dingy eyes, even the butcher’s, with its painted horse, its tray of watery entrails and slabs of darkening flesh.
I walk along, looking at everything equally. I’ve got all I own in this bag.
I’ve cut myself off. I can feel the place where I used to be attached. It’s raw, as when you grate your finger. It’s a shredded mess of images. It hurts. But where exactly on me is this torn-off stem? Now here, now there.
Meanwhile, the other girl, the one with the memory, is coming nearer and nearer. She’s catching up to me, trailing behind her, like red smoke, the rope we share.
The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never anymore the dead. The verses in it say and say: The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay. So sure of death the marbles rhyme, Yet can’t help marking all the time How no one dead will seem to come. What is it men are shrinking from? It would be easy to be clever And tell the stones: Men hate to die And have stopped dying now forever. I think they would believe the lie.
Last Saturday’s referendum to alter Australia’s constitution to recognize the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice failed to pass. It is, I feel, a devastating and profoundly sad outcome that cuts to the very soul of the nation. Indigenous leaders have called for a week of silence to mourn the result, a result that can only be viewed as Australia's latest rejection of our First Peoples’ rightful place within their country, and I want to honor this request by not posting an Australian poet today.
Rather, I would like to pay my respects to the great Louise Glück. “Parable” is the opening poem of Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014), a favorite collection of mine. The poem captures the state of futility we too often experience in our shared existence, a condition that can be overwhelming at times like these, when shadows appear to be falling upon all corners of the world.
Parable
First divesting ourselves of worldly goods, as St. Francis teaches,
in order that our souls not be distracted
by gain and loss, and in order also
that our bodies be free to move
easily at the mountain passes, we had then to discuss
whither or where we might travel, with the second question being
should we have a purpose, against which
many of us argued fiercely that such purpose
corresponded to worldly goods, meaning a limitation or constriction,
whereas others said it was by this word we were consecrated
pilgrims rather than wanderers: in our minds, the word translated as
a dream, a something-sought, so that by concentrating we might see it
glimmering among the stones, and not
pass blindly by; each
further issue we debated equally fully, the arguments going back and forth,
so that we grew, some said, less flexible and more resigned,
like soldiers in a useless war. And snow fell upon us, and wind blew,
which in time abated — where the snow had been, many flowers appeared,
and where the stars had shone, the sun rose over the tree line
so that we had shadows again; many times this happened.
Also rain, also flooding sometimes, also avalanches, in which
some of us were lost, and periodically we would seem
to have achieved an agreement; our canteens
hoisted upon our shoulders, but always that moment passed, so
(after many years) we were still at that first stage, still
preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;
we could see this in one another; we had changed although
we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling
from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed
in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose
believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free
in order to encounter truth, felt it had been revealed.
Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field to thicket as the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea. Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon. And you no longer look with love on me. This have I known always: Love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails. Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore. Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales: Pity me that the heart is slow to learn What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
ALT
