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A Thousand Ways - by Michael Dempsey - On My Mind

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Sally Mann’s seventh chapter in her latest book Art Work is titled “A Thousand Ways.” She leads with a quote from Elizabeth Strout you can see above. I woke up this morning, the first morning of 2026, wanting to write about writing. This strange desire, because too many people write about writing, comes at a time in which I have put words to paper more over the past few weeks than any other time in my life. I often find these sparks of inspiration come from decompressing, introspecting, and sometimes from reading something that rearranges a variety of things in your worldview that you thought you knew or understood. Words that make you smile as you repeat them out loud. Ideas that pain you to just be internalizing now. I’ve been fortunate enough to have that happen multiple times recently and since we’re not quite done reading Brené Brown, I’ll point instead to Sally’s jarring (for me) statement from her book: “Regardless of our medium, we all tell our own story, the story we care abou

A Thousand Ways On the story we keep telling for our entire life Michael Dempsey Jan 01, 2026 41 9 Share Sally Mann’s seventh chapter in her latest book Art Work is titled “A Thousand Ways.” She leads with a quote from Elizabeth Strout you can see above. I woke up this morning, the first morning of 2026, wanting to write about writing. This strange desire, because too many people write about writing, comes at a time in which I have put words to paper more over the past few weeks than any other time in my life. I often find these sparks of inspiration come from decompressing, introspecting, and

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