Journal
On remembering
that you will die.
Short essays on the Stoic practice of memento mori — counting the weeks, writing reminders that land, and keeping the end in view without letting it darken the days.
Practice · 6 min read
A reminder you can dismiss isn't a reminder
The poster stops working in a fortnight and the notification stops working in three weeks. The reason is the same, and it is not a failure of discipline.
22 August 2026
Giving this as a gift without it being weird
7 min readA reminder of mortality is a good gift for the right person on the right occasion, and a bad one otherwise. Here is how to tell which.
Guides · 22 August 2026
You get about 4,000 weeks
7 min readThe average life is around 4,000 weeks. Here's the arithmetic, how many you've already spent, and why the number alone changes nothing.
Practice · 22 August 2026
The 90-minute life audit
8 min readSix questions, ninety minutes, one sheet of paper. A structured way to find out where your remaining time is actually going.
Practice · 22 August 2026
Memento mori: what it actually means
8 min readThe phrase is Latin for 'remember you must die'. Its history is stranger than the version you have heard, and the practice is more specific.
Philosophy · 22 August 2026
Five ways to practise daily, ranked
8 min readPoster, ring, journal, phone reminder, scheduled message. An honest ranking of what survives contact with an ordinary week, including the free options.
Guides · 21 August 2026
Death anxiety and memento mori are opposites
7 min readOne is an intrusive fear you did not choose. The other is a brief, deliberate practice. Confusing them is why people avoid something that would help them.
Philosophy · 20 August 2026
Why Memento Mori Still Matters
4 min readTwo thousand years ago a slave-turned-philosopher wrote that you could take away his possessions, his body, even his life — but never his mind. This is the root of memento mori.
Philosophy · 12 August 2026
Counting the Weeks, Not the Days
6 min readDays are too small a unit to feel the weight of a life. Years are too large. The week — four thousand of them for a full life — is the scale that makes time visible.
Practice · 5 August 2026
The Art of the Daily Reminder
5 min readA single line, arriving once a day, can reframe an entire week. How to write reminders that pull you back to what matters instead of just nagging.
Practice · 28 July 2026
Epictetus on What You Can and Cannot Control
7 min readSome things are up to us — our judgments, our effort, our desires. Everything else is not. The Stoic dichotomy of control, in plain language.
Philosophy · 20 July 2026
Printing Your Grid: A Wall That Reminds You
3 min readA printed life-in-weeks grid, hung where you pass it every morning, does what no app notification can: it makes the count unavoidable.
Guides · 14 July 2026
Marcus Aurelius and the Shortness of Time
8 min read"You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think." The emperor-philosopher on living as if each day were the last.
Philosophy · 8 July 2026