I hear good things about where you are — not the place, but the condition. You've stopped moving around so much. You're staying with something rather than constantly reaching for the next thing. This is not a small achievement. Restlessness is easy to mistake for energy, and most people make that mistake their entire lives.
Here's what I want to say about reading, since I know you're doing a lot of it: more is not better. The person who has visited every author in a hurry has acquaintances everywhere and friends nowhere. The same thing that happens in travel happens in books — you end up with a surface impression of everything and a deep knowledge of nothing. Food eaten too fast passes through without nourishing. Medicine changed before it can work changes nothing. A plant moved constantly never takes root.
Everywhere means nowhere.
Read fewer things. Read them again. Let one author stay with you long enough that their thinking becomes part of your thinking — not something you remember reading, but something you find yourself reaching for when you need it. That's the test: not can you discuss it, but does it come to you unbidden when it's useful?
I've been reading in the enemy's camp lately — among the Epicureans, who disagree with us on enough that we should be opponents. But good ideas don't observe school boundaries, and I found one worth keeping.
Contented poverty is an honourable estate.
And then the sharper version underneath it: if you are contented, it is not poverty at all. Poverty is not about what you have. It is about the gap between what you have and what you crave. The rich man who wants more is poorer than the poor man who wants nothing beyond what he has. This is not a paradox. It is arithmetic.
The proper limit to wealth: first, what is necessary. Second, what is enough. There is no third category worth pursuing.
Take one thought today and digest it completely. Let everything else wait.
Yours,