My dear, History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. The pleasant lie wrapped in a still young science that we whisper to ourselves in the moments of a heart’s loneliness to calm it down. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be alright in the future, just look at the past,” we tell ourselves. History’s the myth we created with...

My dear, Do you realize just how many people try to stop you from doing good honest work in this world? The numbers are astounding! No matter how smart and how practically anything you do is they’ll always be a group of people waiting to tear your work down, tear you down, and they’ll try to put on a show doing it if they can. But you just have to keep on keeping on. Just keep on doing good honest work. It’s all worth it...

My dear, Life’s disappointments are harder to take when you don’t know any swear words. So go, hang with the miners, the scoundrels, the riff-raffs, and the up to no gooders; pick yourself up a vocabulary that’ll have your mom fainting in no time. Don’t worry, you don’t have to thank me. Falsely yours, William Boyd Watterson...

My dear, That thing you had at the end of last week (the thing you did on Saturday and Sunday), it wasn’t a weekend. You were working. Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless. Weekends don’t count unless everything you do within them has no way of improving your life. Weekends don’t count if they better you financially or career-wise. Do something pointless, make your weekend...