Writer's Diary
1/21/26
Tonight I had to write an article on a topic I didn’t know much about. I took a lot of pleasure in doing the learning necessary to strategically manufacture a thought that might, in turn, be useful to other people when they read it.
Because I myself struggle to take any pleasure in any writing on the internet these days because there seems to be so much, too much. Let me think about what I write, how I write, and why I write, or that I have to play the chess match with my own psyche further into the game in order to even begin to distinguish what I write from the tidal flow of Opinionated Slop.
The redemptive thing about love is that it unmasks you and forces you to walk about the world as yourself.
flash subscription sale:
https://matthewgasda.substack.com/0fd7170e
Maturity basically means changing your expectation that every day you’ll discover something or create something that no one has ever discovered or created before to the hope that you might be lucky enough to participate in the same humble procession, the same fascinating ordinariness, that others have taken before you.
Even though there are too many Substacks and too little time to read them, especially relative to all the good books that deserve to be read, I am nevertheless always offended when someone unsubscribes from my Substack and gives the reason, “time.” The unsubscriber is someone who has found you wanting, has found you not worth their time, who has passed over your soul with indifference.1
We have an easy time understanding God’s wrath, but a difficult time understanding his mirth.
There’s a pleasure in living in ignorance of what everyone else is doing, and that pleasure comes from having something to do yourself and something to live for.
There’s a kind of sexless Redditor point of view which looks at any kind of passion or tendency as a pathology, and any kind of aspiration as a frantic, weird game.