Cautionary tales for kids that are too creative

Want to teach your children not to make the terrible* life choices I have made (i.e. making career choices that involve magazine publishing and freelancing)?

For your ambitious, cultured daughters: All the Young Girls by Mary H.K. Choi
(/via @chantalbraganza)

"Being a new girl here is a lot to process. Your dopamine receptors are haywire from so much of what feels like the right kind of attention and you preen out of paranoia. Sometimes you tap-dance about books, music, movies, food and politics for complete strangers. For hours. You mind-meld with people you hope to never see again because they scare you a little. You get sick from the options and the sleep deprivation and the vodka."

And for your talented, confident--even cocksure--sons: Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or, How To Make Vitamin Soup by Richard Morgan
(/via Michelle)

"Just this past Friday, I got an email at 3:38 a.m. from a Pulitzer-winning friend who wanted my help with a New Yorker assignment; I called their cell at 3:39. I never wanted to be one of those broken, bitter people. Why would anyone want to lose friends and alienate people? I was particularly struck-and maybe scared-by a story a friend told me after he snagged a great job at Condé Nast. He talked about how he shared his apartment with a married couple and their cat, and that the couple was on vacation and there he was, in his bathroom, trying to take a dump, and this cat was lonely and pawing at the gap under the door, and all he could think is that he had this glamorous job at this stylish magazine and he couldn't even manage a life where he could take a dump in peace."

*Actually, fantastic but limiting in terms of financing food and shelter