Robert Breen

@robertbreen.com

321 Followers 38 Following

Former finance exec, now reading, writing, and traveling. I write essays about family, retirement, and the books that help make sense of it all. #Sober. robertbreen.com.

A comparison of privacy labels for three apps, showing Day One with various data linked to the user, Bear with diagnostics data not linked to the user, and Obsidian with no data collected.
A backyard scene at night features a glowing fire pit in the foreground withA backyard scene at night features a glowing fire pit in the foreground with people relaxing by a brightly lit swimming pool. people relaxing by a brightly lit swimming pool.
An iPhone screen displays the "Display & Text Size" settings menu, with options for bold text, larger text, button shapes, on/off labels, transparency reduction, contrast increase, and color differentiation.
A city intersection in The East Vollage of NYC features pedestrians crossing the street, surrounded by historic and modern buildings under a clear sky.
Park Avenue looking south in Manhattan on a Sunday morning.
A photo of 15 "Best American Essays" books.
Auto-generated description: A bustling city street scene features a white SUV driving through an intersection, with people on the sidewalks and tall buildings reflecting sunlight in the background.
A quote by Wallace Stegner from "Crossing to Safety" reflects on the fragility of plans and intentions.
Big Idea Design Dual Side Click Pen
Book Cover: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Reading queues for Reader (left), Instapaper (middle) and Matter (right)
Screenshot from Amazon telling customers that downloading Kindle books will no longer be an option after February 26, 2025.
Patrick O'Brian from Post Captain: "Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for imbecility or a heart of stone. All under sentence of death, often ignominious, frequently agonizing: and then the unspeakable levity with which the faint chance of happiness is thrown away for some jealousy, tiff, sullenness, private vanity, mistaken sense of honour, that deadly, weak and silly notion."
Anne Lamott - You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly — that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
Quote from Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks: "Storytellers end their stories in the most advantageous place possible. They omit the endings that offer neat little bows and happily-ever-afters. The best stories are a little messy at the end. They offer small steps, marginal progress, questionable results."
Screeshots of the new Readwise app showing new AI chat feature.
Photo of a paper book book: Fallen Leaves by Will Durant
Connor Breen
Quote from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday: "The more things we desire and the more we have to do to earn or attain those achievements, the less we actually enjoy our lives—and the less free we are."
Picture of Jimmy Buffett at the help of a sailboat
Library shelves with sleeping dog.
Sometimes the only cure for homesickness is to enlarge the definition of home.
"By the time Professor Richard Lovell found his way through Canton’s narrow alleys to the faded address in his diary, the boy was the only one in the house left alive."
Example Note - Index Card Organizer
Front Cover - Index Card Organizer
Home library with reading chair and sleeping dog
Book cover - Somehow by Anne Lamott
"Do not," said I, "welcome me thus; try to be more calm, that I may not be absolutely miserable the moment I enter my father's house after so long an absence. But, tell me, how does my father support his misfortunes? and how is my poor Elizabeth?"