Harris Sockel

I like running in circles inside my apartment.

How To Think Like A Freshman And Make Your Dreams Come True

This is not Your Life. It’s just life. Not really yours. Stop thinking you can control things and make everything just so and accept that this will end, the leaves will get brown and fall, and you’ll step on them and get the flecks on your feet.

I Bought A $685 Gucci Sweater

I walked into a glass box on Fifth Avenue & 56th Street and paid $685 for a piece of waffled wool. A sweater, the color of black top.

Here’s Why Writers Are Ugly

Yes, writers’ headshots are beautiful and carefully curated, but when you see these people called Writers in person, they’re not the most attractive. I know I’m not. My pores = face constellations.

How You Know Your Life Is About To Change

When everything becomes a metaphor. Walking down a long sidewalk becomes a big juicy Choice that makes you stand there in the middle of the sidewalk with your eyes watering.

Leaving Your Office Job Will Be Harder Than You Thought

You never find out how large of a hole you’re going to leave until you keep hearing the word “transition” as a verb and the subject is you, and someone asks you to give them all your knowledge and you do it through a series of e-mails forwarded with the subject “FYI” or “thx.”

I’m A Jew, Goddammit

In 2013, I shouldn’t feel ashamed to be Jewish, but I do, especially when that part of me announces itself in a thick Yiddish accent on my Mac.

This Is What It Feels Like To Be Adopted

Who would I have been if it weren’t for that house of paperwork? Would I pray to Jesus everyday? Would I be a famous entrepreneur-singer-writer-everything I want? Or that white kid with brown teeth you see on your way to work, holding his dog and the cardboard sign and the can?

Should You Always Say ‘Yes’ In Your 20s?

I don’t want to “like” everything, don’t want to go to business school, don’t want to go to the new restaurant in Williamsburg where they bake olive oil shortbread daily, on the premises.

When I Was Eight I Sang Alone In Restaurants

Song is lazy. Instinctive and cerebellar rather than cerebral. It’s in your larynx, a kind of no man’s land between your heart and head, and it’s basically unalterable. Singers are born with a singing-shaped larynx just like you and I are born with a head and a brain.