I’ve lived in some remarkable houses, most of them characters in their own right. The house I’m in today could double as an art gallery — canvases of clouds and seascapes splash across the walls, nautical charts point the way upstairs. One of my housemates is an artist-engineer, and his functional-modular woodworking hangs from the ceilings and lights our stairwell. Our home is filled with beautiful things I can’t make or imagine on my own, and I love it for that — together, our collective gifts hang in balance.

When you live with others, it can become hard to know exactly where you end and others begin. Each new combination of residents gives rise to its own aesthetics of space and unique spirit; it’s rarely up to any individual to set the terms of behavior, but everyone notices the shift when any one resident leaves. There’s a messy, magic art to living together, especially when hierarchies are not clear: conflict becomes unavoidable, a facility with communication and relationship management becomes a top skill. But so does creativity: you each find yourself doing things you’d never imagined, meeting and befriending people from other worlds; and slowly, together, this becomes the Sort of Group you are. Not every combination is good, or even viable, of course — group living only works when everyone involved takes a bare minimum interest in each other’s life and wellbeing. But as long

This week, I reached out to some artistic friends, asking them to help me imagine and create things I can use in my space. I issued open invites to culinary friends, asking them to teach me how to cook their favorite dinner and bring their favorite pot; or the recipe for their favorite cocktail, with a new glass or two. I want to see how, in bringing friends and their art and craft into my space, a life in domestic solitude can still live in creative response to others.

Coming from a lifetime of full houses, shared experience as much as shared stuff, I wonder: How much of me is inextricably tied up with (is created from!) the spark of all of you? How much of me will go quiet, without others around to coax these parts out of me? What will I now have to tell with my space and my stuff, where before I could just show?

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” ― Winston Churchill

@HopeForTheBetterFuture

@HopeForTheBetterFuture

People don't have to like you.
Even if the reason they don't
like you is unreasonable.

Even if you've done nothing
wrong. Your life is not a
popularity contest.
You don't have to justify your existence by being liked by
others.

You can just be here, and that's okay. No one is keeping score.
No one is noting down how many friends you have or don't have. You're no longer that kid with no one to sit with at lunch, knowing people will laugh about it.

Try to let go of that hurt.