Reading Seneca in the original is hard. Not the ideas — the distance. The syllogisms, the references that meant something in Rome and nothing now, the sense that you need a classics degree just to get to the point. I wanted the point.
So I started transforming each letter myself, with AI as a collaborator, not a machine doing it for me. Every letter I read several times, edited by hand, and sat with — and each pass taught me something I’d missed the time before. This isn’t a batch process. It’s closer to translation as a way of understanding something well enough to say it in your own words.
I think a lot of people hit the same wall I did. This project is my attempt to get past it.
These letters do two things. Reading one is a small act of self-care — a few minutes that leave you slightly more clear-headed than you were. And I send them to people I care about, instead of a “thinking of you” text that says less than it means. It’s a more honest way of staying in touch — actual thought, handed to someone, instead of a check-in that costs nothing to send.