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#46 Maybe we're not supposed to be making sense of all this
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#46 Maybe we're not supposed to be making sense of all this

“A society of anecdotes without a narrative”

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Holly Whitaker
Mar 01, 2023
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#46 Maybe we're not supposed to be making sense of all this
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A few months ago I went to meet a friend at a bookstore. I was early so I walked up to a display shelf to browse the staff recommendations. The first book I picked up was about work as tyranny and the second one I picked up was about how to fix burnout and the third one was about forming habits to excel at work and the rest were the same kinds of book, either post-modern commentaries on the institutions out to get us or some guide on how to win at the institutions out to get us1. My friend walked in a few minutes later and I started waving one of the books around like a maniac and I said something dramatic, such as: I simply cannot examine the fucking things I’m supposed to be upset about anymore. She laughed, but mostly because she doesn’t read self-help or post-modern critique, and doesn’t know the particular kind of hell those of us that do can live in.

This was November maybe, definitely around the time I diagnosed formally for ADHD, which means this was around the time I’d purchas…

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