Essays
On perception, judgment, and the way a life actually gets lived.
Short pieces and long arguments — politics, work, the interior life. New work lands here first and goes out to the list as it’s published.
Newest
An essayFriendship: Its Evolution from 100 BCE to Today — An Analysis
On Cicero — and a country losing the ability to be friends across a line.
Read the essay →The essays
A Clockwork Orange
A book report — the space between what happens to you and what you do about it.
Misunderstood
Give a character enough backstory and they turn human. An essay in the key of television.
C’est la vie
Marcus Aurelius on not giving a damn about your bad reputation.
What Stoicism Actually Is
Not the costume. The thing underneath it.
The book
EYESEE
Five essays on Marcus Aurelius and the diseased eye — the refusal to genuinely receive what’s in front of you before judging it. Written as one argument, read in sequence.
- 01Eyes Wide Shut
- 02Taming Unconscious Empathy
- 03Nature of the Beast
- 04Good is Good
- 05Just Happy to be Included
Prefer to listen? Episode 1 is an audioessay, narrated and read along on the page.
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New work goes out to the list as it’s published.
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Evan Gillissie — evangillissie.com
Set in Fraunces, Spectral & IBM Plex Mono
Catalogued by hand
@EGillissie on Substack