Ashley @ashleydzhang Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

@jeetisnotunique

@FezzikSports

@GrauQuiles

@jhguard

@JadeAtrophis

@libertinexhib29

@megbasham

@_kab0j

@RFBWCF

@imu_imu02

@LoadsmanThe

@rose_tattoo_sun

@jandakembangstw

@CharleCumming

@agz_oficial

@Hairy256

@Nanafavor

@CMDRVALTHOR

@McLovin6Actual

@Jules31415

@ninguno0987

@LunarFloure

@LPostin53843

@onurnkalex

@nagutsuchi

@JeseniaWhyte

@WindowsDocs

@Ashenheimer_

@onurnkalex

@CanadianPolling

@WashInstitute

@Will_deButts

@BinorRaja

@annikasmethurst

@BinorRaja

@JinjinTicketing

Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

once we recognize that urban design is, at its core, the design of human relations, we begin to understand why Americans are suffering a crisis of loneliness and why our lack of beautiful, functional public spaces is an urgent matter of public health

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

yeah I’m into biohacking (walking 10k steps/day, sleeping 7-8 hours/night, drinking lots of water, eating whole foods, lounging in the sun, being in nature, spending time with people I love)

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

universities will claim to teach "critical thinking" and then try to indoctrinate you into the biggest groupthink scheme of your young adult life

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

we have a moral obligation to become as hot as possible and bring more beauty into the world

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

inside me are two wolves: one dreams of chasing grand ambitions that will be remembered long after I'm gone; the other yearns to live in modest, quiet repose and leave no trace behind

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

the intimate act of examining someone’s bookshelves for the first time and seeing the building blocks of their character and mind

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

are you lazy and undisciplined, or are you just exhausted from constantly coercing yourself into doing things that are misaligned with your true values and desires?

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

there's something so dehumanizing about "networking" solely for professional gain and encouraging people to think of others as mere instruments for career advancement

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

increasingly convinced that the world bends toward idealists who take bold action even when the odds are stacked against them rather than pragmatists who try to chart the best course before taking the first step

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

a lukewarm take that I’m often hesitant to share is that binge-watching shows is a modern anesthetic for a discontented life

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

this tweet is sponsored by the absolute hellscape of LA’s urban sprawl

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

every once in awhile you'll meet someone with a certain spark in their eye and know that they will one day bend the earth to their will

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

nothing more magical than rereading a book you thought you disliked and realizing that you just weren’t ready for it the first time

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

the most empowering mindset might actually just be "fuck it we ball"

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

the Kindle vs. physical book debate is just the inner tension between the freedom of a minimalist nomadic lifestyle vs. the stability of planting roots and building a home

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

doctors HATE her for discovering one weird trick to Feeling Good™

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

maybe ambition has become such a dirty word because it has been perverted into individualistic status-seeking rather than a collective endeavor towards excellence

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

no, I will not join your consulting club or sell my soul to a career advisor-recommended corporation or applaud you for performative emails about 'diversity and inclusion efforts' while disregarding flagrant administrative corruption but thanks for the certification I guess

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

hear me out: 24-hour bookstore café

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

praising children for being "emotionally mature" when they're really just overly agreeable creates adults who suppress their own discontent and struggle to acknowledge their needs because they equate maturity with passivity

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

strongly believe that “soulmates are made, not found” applies to every aspect of our lives — knowing that we have infinite options, yet choosing to commit to something time and time again

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

looking forward to the day we cancel-proof all writing until everything is the literary equivalent of unseasoned green beans the color and texture of mud

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

sorry for being MIA, just walked 250kms across Portugal and Spain

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

married folks: did you know your spouse was “The One” when you first met? if so, what was that feeling? if not, when did you realize they were the one you wanted to marry?

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

everything touched by the sun becomes divine

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

modern Walden is putting your phone on airplane mode and going for a walk around the block

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

people with good taste have a moral obligation to become as rich as they can so they can be patrons of the arts and Make Culture Great Again™

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

truly terrified by the number of Gen-Z/millennials who push the misanthropic narrative that humans have irreparably destroyed our planet and must stop reproducing to atone for it

eigenrobot

@eigenrobot

3 years

the idea that a society would die out by choice is strange and terrible

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

generally, I think we place too much emphasis on “personal development” and too little on finding/creating the optimal environment and community for the person we each aspire to become

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

in awe of what man can create with his mind and two hands (Italy, 2018)

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

not a criticism, but a gentle prodding (for myself as well): would you want to sit in front of a screen for hours on end if you were truly experiencing the full richness of life?

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

everything I do is in pursuit of two goals: attaining eudaimonia and abs

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

forever grateful to my early failures for disqualifying me from conventional status games and teaching me that the only way to win is to flourish on my own terms

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

for those who believe beauty is superficial and detached from the cultivation of inner virtues:

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

boys will literally imagine themselves happy while pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity instead of going to therapy and I think that's beautiful

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

believing more and more deeply that life's meaning is found in subordination to something greater, whether it's a vocation, a religion, a partnership, or a tribe — essentially, self-actualization is achieved not by focusing on the self, but by successfully transcending it

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

anti-Zoom U: rise with the sun, run in a forest or swim in a lake for three hours, read physical books filled with marginalia, have rowdy discussions where hand-raising is banned, write everything longhand on loose-leaf paper, renounce all digital devices

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

one of the great tragedies of the human condition is the impossibility of being fully understood — the self evades all attempts at being captured in its entirety, so there will always be a gap between who you are and who the world believes you to be

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

peak California experience is going to the sea, forest, lake, and mountains within the span of a week

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

in other words, we usually can’t reason our way through uncertainty — we can only hold onto Hope and run into the darkness

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

for sale: brain cells, never used

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

college was the first time I realized how many parents condition their children to fear anything vaguely unfamiliar or uncomfortable and encourage them to live small, insulated lives

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

too often we overlook growth in its intangible and unquantifiable forms: the quiet blossoming of the spirit and soul in a world that constantly demands palpable proof of progress

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

haha wouldn’t it be hilarious if we all worked relentlessly on our most terrifyingly ambitious aspirations and surrounded ourselves with people we love and made every year exponentially better than the last haha lol lmao rofl

Visakan Veerasamy

@visakanv

3 years

the stuff you joke about (even ironically or whatever) has a way of shaping your reality so be careful and deliberate with that stuff. a lot of people out here fumbling their own bags by joking about outcomes they don’t want. you might as well joke about the outcomes you do want

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

based Chinese herbal doctor took one look at my tongue and said that I just needed to eat more meat and sweets… best diagnosis of my life

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

get in loser, we’re going to intellectualize our problems on the internet to avoid resolving them in real life

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

realizing again and again that creativity is not a force that is trained but one that is surrendered to

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

we will remember this period as a cultural turning point in which those who were cast off of sinking institutional ships found that they could swim far faster and farther on their own

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

Why we love Žižek: Exhibit 1: @annakhachiyan 's perfect explanation from her interview with @Progrockfarmer Exhibit 2: Quotes like this

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

I think we'd all be kinder and braver if we read more poetry

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

a small superpower is being able to intuit whether someone actually wants actionable advice and philosophical prodding to resolve an inner conflict, or if they've already privately arrived at a conclusion and just desire simple reassurance

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

all I'm saying is we should stop calculating how we can benefit from each "connection" and just befriend people because we genuinely appreciate their personhood

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

one of the starkest ideological divides is between those who believe we are passive passengers of history chained to the cycles of the past and thrust toward an inevitable future, and those who believe we have the duty and ability to actively sculpt a better future for humanity

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

marveling at how lucky we are to live in this world together

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

my toxic trait is overloading myself for months on end until my brain is nearly burnt to a crisp while promising myself a long break once I get through it, then feeling fidgety after 1.5 days of rest and immediately throwing myself into another dozen projects

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

universities turn students into corporate cogs by preying on their fears and stifling what little is left of their curiosity and courage and humanity and I’m disgusted and furious and so, so tired

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

dreaming of a world not primarily oriented toward economic growth and material prosperity, but instead toward the cultivation of beauty, generosity, and mutual care

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

the noblest ambition is to create something that will outlast us all (art, knowledge, dynasties, institutions)

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

Sontag gets me

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

engaged in an eternal war against ego

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

technofuturist bf, luddite gf

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

effort shaming is so bizarre

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

on a mission to save college students’ souls (innocently asking them why they want to go into consulting/investment banking and whether they think can actually flourish as a human being if they spend 80 hours/week doing something they despise)

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

philosophers spend their entire lives trying to resolve the question of how we shall live when the answer is probably just chilling out and vibing

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

not sure why mediocrity terrifies me far more than utter failure and if I am conceited for admitting that

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

scheming to marry someone with divergent interests to build the most comprehensive home library known to man

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

I worry for the spiritual health of those who refuse to see the beauty of humanity

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

realizing that my desire for something is often directly proportional to how difficult it is to obtain, so I tend to devalue things that come easily to me even if it’s indicative of a natural fit

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

5 months

there’s always latent grief in desire, as desire can never be perfectly fulfilled — we either fail to attain our object of desire, or realize upon attaining it that it’s inevitably different from what we had imagined

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

1. this is not a condemnation of professors, many of whom I'm eternally grateful for and have affected me profoundly, but of a broken university system and culture 2. critiquing universities ≠ shunning education 3. it's impossible to capture all nuance in a 280-char tweet :)

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

every young, healthy dog being pushed in a stroller is evidence of civilizational enfeeblement

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

taking a break from twitter to figure out how to recalibrate my persona to appeal to tech twitter + poetry twitter + philosophy twitter + shitposting twitter + woo twitter + trad twitter + lib twitter + writing twitter + the four people I know irl who follow me here

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

is it possible to feel fulfilled by simple quotidian joys without becoming complacent, or must we remain perpetually dissatisfied with our current state in order to chase something greater?

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

marinating on this (anti-)career advice from @kevin2kelly in his interview with @Noahpinion : 1. work on something that no one has a word for 2. the less your 20s looks like success, the better it will serve as a foundation for an uncommon life

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

few institutions anger me more than our school system because I've seen far too many children extinguish what is most unique to themselves to fit the cookie-cutter image of a "good student," and then believe they're unintelligent and a failure if they don't perfectly fit the mold

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

used to believe that love and respect were more valuable if they were earned, but have since learned that life becomes much fuller when spent with people who appreciate your inherent worth rather than trying to win over people who only see your unrealized potential

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

not to be sickeningly sappy but I hope we all fall in love (with someone, something, someplace) this year

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

11 months

in many ways, living in SF right now feels like fiddling while Rome burns, feasting on cake during a famine. finding it difficult to celebrate incredible technological advances while recognizing that we fail to protect basic human dignity even within our city

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

it's that time of the year again: flowers blooming, birds chirping, the humanities student contemplating whether she should learn to code

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

the only way to future-proof ourselves in our brave new world of AI is to become more human — that is, to be creative, innovative, free-spirited agents rather than robots trained to regurgitate the “right answer”

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

shielding your child from any degree of mild discomfort and coddling them to the point where they can’t take care of their basic needs (cooking, doing laundry, maintaining a clean living environment, etc.) is actually the opposite of kind parenting

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

caught in the unbreakable cycle of sleeping poorly, then drinking coffee to get through the afternoon slump, then sleeping poorly because you drank coffee in the afternoon, then drinking coffee to get through the afternoon slump, then…

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

too many lives to live, too little time

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

a gentle reminder that if you’re wallowing in late-night self-loathing and regret, you should go to bed and all will be better in the morning 🤍

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

life is best lived at two poles: the heightening of self that comes with solitude, or the loss of self that comes with devotion

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

11 months

thinking a lot lately about aging, mortality, and what truly matters in the end. everything seems to point back to love.

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

identifying questions you're scared to ask yourself and figuring out why they make you uncomfortable is a good way to detect important truths you're trying to avoid

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

the title of “content creator” has always seemed a bit soulless to me — it seems to glorify the act of creating as intrinsically virtuous without questioning whether the “content” being churned out brings meaning and beauty into the world or detracts from it

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

starting to believe I’m not cut out for “knowledge work” if sitting and staring at a screen for more than two hours/day fills me with unbridled rage

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

modern academia is education stripped of its soul

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

scheming to marry someone with divergent interests to build the most comprehensive home library known to man

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

4 years

(also, please don't use this tweet to shame others. trying my best to remove unkind replies. "hotness"/beauty ≠ how closely you adhere to a narrow ideal, but simply striving to be the most vibrant version of yourself, internally and externally.)

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

recognizing that I have not yet faced any "real problems" — that my inner demons are self-manufactured and every setback I've encountered has not resulted in irrevocable loss — is both intensely liberating and dismaying

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

very difficult to make long term plans when you still feel like a spiritual embryo whose interests/inclinations/sense of self changes by the week

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

@claughlin good writing pokes at the reader and jolts them out of their comfortable certainties. nothing truly innovative can be universally inoffensive and trying to make it so renders it limp and lifeless

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

1 year

my discomfort with many of the narratives surrounding human progress lies in the fact that once material needs are met, much of what makes life good, meaningful, and worth living cannot be measured or quantified

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

2 years

the first time you fall ill away from loved ones and are left to nurse yourself back to health is when you realize how much you took for granted the tremendous healing powers of small acts of comfort and care

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

90% of mild garden-variety neuroses can probably be fixed by walking at least 10,000 steps every day

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

words of wisdom from a dear mentor that I offer to anyone who feels adrift: "You’re like a bundle of energy and good intentions seeking a worthy target. Until you find one, just keep building your base of talents and people."

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Ashley

@ashleydzhang

3 years

setting an intention to only create work that I am wholeheartedly proud of and befriend people with intoxicating visions and energy because life is too short and the world is too vast to do otherwise

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