Without my overdeveloped and misdirected skills of critique, my life would be easier.

My friend Jason once said “I like to LIKE things”.

We studied architecture together, and he made this bold and provocative statement upon returning to our university after a four-month term spent living and working San Francisco.

In design school, you can’t simply like things, you must have a philosophical-artistic-conceptual reason for liking them. You must be ready to justify your loves, defend them in a critique, be able to pull out your folio of creative and poetic and well-considered reasons.

Half a life past those days, I find myself still caught up with this desire to have a defence prepared in advance. I want to choose and love those things that some imaginary people with taste and artistic refinement will agree are the ‘good things’ in life. But fuck me does this make it hard to choose a set of bathroom towels.

Who, now, here, is weighing and measuring my every choice?