I want to start with a confession and a profanity: I’ve got a private Twitter list named “DICKHEADS”. This is the place I go to when I feel I’m holding on too dearly to life, becoming too attached to it. I dive in this list once or twice a week and it feels like falling into a septic tank. I come out feeling sick, dirty, tired, covered in excrement from head to toe, questioning the meaning of life. You might think I’m a masochist but there is a logic behind this: I’ve turned forty-six this year and I’m statistically more dead than alive; hence it is important for me to start thinking about my own demise. So that it doesn’t catch me by surprise but also — should it happen in old age as I hope — so that it feels like part of a natural process, a process to which I slowly become accustomed. Life needs to wear you out so that you can give up on it without feeling you were robbed.
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