When I was a teenager, I spent my entire free time playing video games. Mostly League of Legends but also Call of Duty, Age of Empires, or Minecraft. This wasn’t a casual hobby. It was an obsession. I would come home from school, toss my backpack into the corner, boot up my computer, and play — often late into the night. School […]| Stephan Joppich
The premise of deliberate defeat is to embrace that you’ll never be fully prepared. And you know what? That’s excellent news.| Stephan Joppich
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse was a new operating system for my mind. It radically redefined how I see and navigate my life. Here's why.| Stephan Joppich
We’re already lonely, and we’ll always be lonely. Embracing this insight won't conjure a tsunami of loneliness but a smooth river of connection.| Stephan Joppich
The meaning of life needn't be found. It's already within you. The meaning of life is simply to be alive – everything else is extra.| Stephan Joppich
Ever since I stopped building good habits, I feel much better. I know, I know — it’s a controversial statement in a culture where habit-building is prized as the silver bullet of self-improvement. And, to be fair, I myself used to be a poster child for better habits. Back in the day, James Clear’s Atomic Habits sat enthroned on […] The post The Problem With Building Good Habits appeared first on Stephan Joppich.| Stephan Joppich
Since I started writing professionally three years ago, I’ve read dozens of books, style guides, and advice columns on how to write well. Out of all these, The Sense of Style is the only writing guide I can unreservedly recommend. It’s the one book that has actually made me a better writer. Reading it has paid me even […] The post How to Write Well: 4 Lessons From ‘The Sense of Style’ by Steven Pinker appeared first on Stephan Joppich.| Stephan Joppich
During my lowest period in New York, almost the only thing I found consoling was watching music videos on YouTube, curled on the sofa with my headphones on, listening again and again to the same voices finding the register for their distress. — Olivia Laing, The Lonely City I return to this quote often when thinking […] The post The Songs That Soothed My Loneliness appeared first on Stephan Joppich.| Stephan Joppich
What is it about Aftersun that makes us feel so deeply? Essentially, I think it's that we're being put directly into Sophie's shoes. We feel what she's feeling.| Stephan Joppich
