flâneur

Bridget Coady

3 followers · 5 following · 282 views

on the atlas — 5

highlights — 10

  • But this actually, mercifully, seems closer to my Livejournal days. The place where I learned how to write essays, and how to write for strangers. It felt like every day handed me a bit of clay and all I had to do was figure out where to put it. I’d give anything for it to feel that easy again.
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • I thought I was going to die in May. I kept thinking: I have so much I want to write and so many things I want to do and now I just have to update my will and fucking pray. And here I am in July, distinctly alive and in a beautiful place with all the carrot sticks I can eat and all the time in the world, and yet I feel paralyzed. And then guilty that I’m paralyzed. And then paralyzed even more completely.
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • Every time I’m in the presence of someone I care about, I think: what if I lose them, to death or circumstance? What if this is the last time I ever get to hold them or kiss them or talk to them? Every time I write a story, or an essay, or a book, I think: what if that was the last one?
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • I worry my brain isn’t working anymore. I worry I’m wasting something precious and I’ll never get it again.
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • Each thing feels hard but manageable on its own. But put together I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I am depressed. My appetite is weird. My attention span is shot to hell. I am struggling to get out of bed in the morning because sleep feels easier than anything else. The easiest way to sum it up, I guess, is that I know people care about me, but I don’t care about me. I just have this deep urge to lie down in the grass and not get up.
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • I’m in the process of moving to Brooklyn—just for now, just to get my head on straight—and I’m scared. I feel like I’m 22 again. Just absolutely and utterly lost.
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • Of course, 2020—well, happened. And 2021. Now I’m here, in the very place where all of these preferences came together six years ago, and I am fucking struggling. In my defense, there’s a lot happening in my life right now. Chief among which is, I’m in the process of separating from my wife. It’s been such a slow and tender and loving process that I only realized about two hours into the drive here that—between coming up here, and her travel plans, and my moving plans—we will probably never share a bed again. I cried at a rest stop somewhere in New Jersey.
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • It was lots of little things, but it added up to something perfect: the joy of creative community and fellowship and the satisfaction of getting to devote yourself to creative practice in a world that made that incredibly difficult. So many times I thought, this is exactly the sort of life I’ve always wanted to live. Look at the life I’m about to live. Look at the life I’m living.
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • We were a motley crew of writers and visual artists and composers at every level of career and age. It was autumn, my favorite season. It snowed just before Halloween. The group was talented and funny and kind, and I loved gathering together in the evenings to drink wine and talk and gossip and complain about our projects.
    Things I'm Bad At: Residencies - by Carmen Maria Machado
  • [at a young age] he’s read everything that he could find about business. Th
    Curius / Onboarding