From Sarah Ruhl, “100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write”

From Sarah Ruhl, “100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write” June 9, 2015

There were times when it felt as though my children were annihilating me. Finally I came to the thought, All right, then, annihilate me; that other self was a fiction anyhow. And then I could breathe. I could investigate the pauses. I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.

–which I found via this essay, though unsurprisingly the essay overall is a mixed bag to me. Love the “clock made of blood and bone” stuff though. Anyway this quote seems to resonate with one of the wisest pieces of life advice I’ve ever read: “Adulthood means thinking less about your identity and more about your life.”


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