Start Here
A reading guide for new visitors
Most of what lives here started as something analog — a note in a small blue journal, a thought I kept turning over on long walks, something a stranger wrote that I couldn't shake for weeks.
I keep it public for two reasons. First, accountability: things written down and shared have a weight that private notes don't. Second, because the words of people I've never met have shaped how I think more than most people I've known in person. That debt is real, and this is one way I try to repay it.
If you're new here, start with these:
Meditations — A living list of aphorisms and lessons I keep returning to, updated over years. The closest thing on this site to a summary of how I actually try to think and live.
Hopelessness Kills — My most personal essay. Starts with a man in the rain losing his belongings and ends somewhere I didn't expect when I began writing it.
The Difficulty Is the Point — On why I've stopped trying to route around hard things.
On Costs, Words, and the Digital Age — On attention as the real currency, and what it means that words are now free to produce.
Future — What I actually believe, as of right now. Unhedged.
Everything else is in Writing — essays going back to 2015, shorter memos, and a few things that don't fit any other category.
If something here resonates, or if you have a reaction worth sharing, I'm at ali@janusny.com. I try to respond to everything.