“I beg you: don’t buy society’s definition of success. Because it’s not working for anyone. It’s not working for women, it’s not working for men, it’s not working for polar bears, it’s not working for the cicadas that are apparently about to emerge and swarm us. It’s only truly working for those who make pharmaceuticals for stress, sleeplessness and high blood pressure.”- Arrianna Huffington commencement speech.”
—http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50882/30-bits-commencement-wisdom-class-2013
June 2013
2 posts
April 2013
5 posts
“The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.”
—Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, gives a commencement speech about life (and cartoons)
“What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”
—This actually was sourced from this article about removing the news from your life but it pretty much describes how we interpret new information according to past experiences. It also shows how 2 people can come up with some very different conclusions even though they are reading the same thing.
“We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there.”
— Ben Okri
March 2013
6 posts
“That’s my advice to young people: change your name to something absurd and live up to it.”
—Thor Harris (the Swans)
“The cat sat on the mat” is not a story. “The cat sat on the dog’s mat” is a story.”
—John le Carré (via austinkleon)
“I never got a college degree. But I employ a lot of people who did- Charles Barkely”
—I think this should resonate with a lot of entrepreneurs.
“How a book was perceived to have done and how a book actually did can be violently at odds.” →
avclub.com
There’s an interview with Neal Pollack over at the AV Club where he reveals the sales numbers for his books (as he summarizes, “Ten thousand copies appears to be my threshold”) and talks openly and honestly about his career, and how “celebrity” and buzz don’t automatically translate into sales or money. Everyone who aspires to a career writing books (particularly fiction) should read it.
I was trying to turn Alternadad into some massive multimedia empire. And it failed! [Laughs.] I totally fucking failed! Instead of doing what I did well, which was write, I was trying to cash in big time and become some mogul… In the end, I was kind of dizzy because I wasn’t doing what I set out to do, what I dreamed of doing, which was be a writer. Instead, I was just a salesman trying to sell some ill-conceived idea of a lifestyle.
The piece is part of the AVClub’s “Money Matters” column, where “creative people discuss what they’re not supposed to: the intersection of entertainment and commerce, as well as moments in their lives and careers when they bottomed out financially and/or professionally.”
It all reminds me of Lynda Barry’s advice: “The key to eternal happiness is low overhead and no debt.”
“
I flew the Atlantic because I wanted to. If that be what they call ‘a woman’s reason,’ make the most of it. It isn’t, I think, a reason to be apologized for by man or woman… .
Whether you are flying the Atlantic or selling sausages or building a skyscraper or driving a truck, your greatest power comes from the fact that you want tremendously to do that very thing, and do it well.
” —-Amelia EarhartFebruary 2013
5 posts
“
When you write from your gut and let the stuff stay flawed and don’t let anybody tell you to make it better, it can end up looking like nothing else.
Louis CK
” —http://splitsider.com/2013/02/the-annotated-wisdom-of-louis-c-k/
Play
“A tool is an object used to shorten the distance between a vision and its realization.”
—Kourosh Dini (via smarterthaniam)
January 2013
11 posts
“You’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.” – David Foster Wallace”
—Awesome quote and something to totally take to heart when you are worried about people watching you at the gym struggle doing pull-ups or simply doing what you do.
“1. Complex heroes must suffer.
2. Complex heroes are rewarded for their suffering.
3. Complex heroes fail.
4. Complex heroes have fatal flaws.
5. Complex heroes are ordinary people.” —
2. Complex heroes are rewarded for their suffering.
3. Complex heroes fail.
4. Complex heroes have fatal flaws.
5. Complex heroes are ordinary people.” —
Roger Colby synthesizes J. R. R. Tolkien’s 5 tips for creating complex heroes, based on the writer’s letters.
Pair with Tolkien’s little-known original drawings for the first edition of The Hobbit.
(via explore-blog)
“Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think every thing you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned- Tyler”
—From the Fight Club.
“I have no faith in the ‘justice’ system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this situation, and this is my only way to regain control.”
…
“Remember,” he wrote, “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether I win or lose, and sitting in jail for 20, 10, or even 5 years for a crime I didn’t commit is not me winning. I die free.” — the suicide note of Jonathon James, who was the first juvenile to be put into confinement for a federal cybercrime case.
…
“Remember,” he wrote, “it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether I win or lose, and sitting in jail for 20, 10, or even 5 years for a crime I didn’t commit is not me winning. I die free.” — the suicide note of Jonathon James, who was the first juvenile to be put into confinement for a federal cybercrime case.
“Whether you’re a startup or a writer or whatever industry you choose, the more you can lean toward what your passion is, what you feel like doing the most, the better it is - Dave Pell @ nextdraft”
—I have heard the argument against doing things based on passion in terms of making money and I agree…BUT…most of the time when you actually get what you want doing something you hate or detest, there is a void. Maybe instead of making choices based on money, you should make your choices based on other things first…just saying.
“Ideas, in a sense, are overrated. Of course, you need good ones, but at this point in our supersaturated culture, precious few are so novel that nobody else has ever thought of them before. It’s really about where you take the idea, and how committed you are to solving the endless problems that come up in the execution.”
—Simply lovely. In Be Wrong as Fast as You Can, New York Times magazine editor Hugo Lindgren lays it all out on the line, in a first-person confessional with a moral for us all. Now, please excuse me but I must stop procrastinating and reading Everything On The Web and get back to it. (via thoughtyoushouldseethis)
“The moment there is suspicion about someone’s motives everything becomes tainted…” -Gandhi”
—http://wilreynolds.com/post/39312383467/the-lesson-of-the-year-never-stop-building-trust
“
I’m not committed to any specific endeavor. Not a family or a cause or a field of enterprise. Not an ideal of service or sacrifice, not an art, not a people or a calling…..
Is an acorn committed to becoming an oak? An acorn can only respond to the imperative of life within it.
” —http://www.stevenpressfield.com/2013/01/committed-to-what/
“Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope it flows in the right way. - Apollo Robbins”
—
This is in reference to an incredible article found in the New Yorker called the A Pickpocket’s Tale in which Apollo talks about his method of stealing things and how much it relies on not only his expertise but the momentum shifts of the victim itself. It could be symbolic of the attention economy and how information flows as well.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/07/130107fa_fact_green?currentPage=all&src=longreads
December 2012
2 posts
“Sometimes the hardest things to help others understand are the things that come so easily to us. Perhaps this is because we lack the ability to truly empathize in this area. We have never had to learn or struggle with the process. That maybe it is best not to learn from the master of a thing but, instead, seek the advice of a more advanced student. -Patrick R Hone”
—http://patrickrhone.com/2012/12/29/outliner/
“He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”
—Noel Gallagher on his brother, Liam (via austinkleon)
November 2012
1 post
October 2012
2 posts
“If you’re a soup cracker, you don’t stand up to a sand blaster.”
—Moral: Learn to pick the fights that you could win and blow off the ones that you won’t.
“The more we get away from a positive source of energy the more we are consumed by the negative. People have been deluded and blinded towards what’s positive and except the negative as if it’s the only and best option. It’s like we prefer the diseased infested animals dead carcass over the healthy life filled apple. We accept incomplete inaccurate medical and scientific thesis supporting that we should ingest the dead animal yet later tell us we can’t digest it. The same also goes with the people we look up to versus the ones we shun. In the hood we looked up to the gangster and shunned the nerd, in business we chose the crooks over the honest man. In life we chose pursuing wealth over health. We praise evil men and we crucify the righteous and we have the audacity to think we shall never be chastised for our foolish folly. This sway to negative ways is so strong that even the elite is tempted to go astray. How can we achieve the ideas we are founded on as a nation we are becoming that which we sought to escape. Is it all just words man myths and magic? Take this post as food for thought.”
—
RZA (via rzaironfists)
There’s a lot to unpack there. And it’s not a bit surprising that RZA is right, or that he’s capable of that depth.
What was Wu-Tang if not an observation on, and indictment of, life in America?
(via justinmwhitaker)
September 2012
3 posts
“I’m not here to sell things. That’s what other people do, I’m creating them. If it doesn’t work out, I’m sorry; I’m just doing what I do. You hired me to do what I do, not what you do. As long as people don’t tell me what to do, there will be no problem.”
—Neil Young’s response to Geffen Records after they accused him of making unrepresentative music.
“
“I have learned an important principle: simple things work, often to our dumbfounded surprise, for we tend to distrust the simple and strive for the complex. “
— Richard Cracroft, Our Trek Through the Wilderness
” —August 2012
7 posts
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery — isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
—Back when I was in college, we used to drive by Bukowski’s house. He lived in Lawrence, KS and would often sit on his front porch with a shotgun. He was a kooky old man.
“The great fun of writing or painting or shooting film or starting a business is in this process of discovery. These surprises that pop out of nowhere and that we gleefully take credit for, even though in our hearts we know we didn’t create them, we just stumbled onto them.”
—This is by Steven Pressfield and I think that it harps on something that writers already know about when creating. The joy of creating, whether it is something artistic or something business in nature has everything to do with the discovery process. Marketers call it the thrill of the kill. But really, the reason why we do things has everything to do with journey and not as much to do with the result.
“We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.” ~ Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn”
—
“We all live so close to that line and so far from satisfaction” -Joni Mitchell”
—
This is a line from a song for sharon by Joni Mitchell. I am not sure what Joni meant when she wrote this but the context I read it was on Bob Lefsetz’s blog and was about the most recent suicide by the director of Top Gun (he jumped off a bridge).
The line can mean so many things depending on where your frame of mind is atm (relationship, jobs, life, marriage).
Not Just Another ScLoHo: It Begins With A Question →
scloho.tumblr.com
Justin brings up a point here that I find myself asking clients when they are asking me to do something for them (whether it is web design, seo or marketing). And what I’ve found is that by asking that question (why?) several times, I can peel the onion enough to get to the real reason why they want to do something.
And sometimes, what they want me to do isn’t going to accomplish what they think it is going to accomplish.
Sometime after we learn to talk, we learn to question.
Why?
No, I’m not asking why,
I’m telling you that the question we all ask is:
Why?
As parents we’ve been driven to near-tears by the persistent toddler who wants an answer to: Why?…..
Anyone that has gone through the “Why?” stage with their toddler knows the power of this simple, three letter word.
And yet, we soon abandon the use of that word once we hear “Because that’s the way it is!” enough.
I think Scott Howard is on to something. All too often, we forget to ask why we are doing something, or why something is important, all to secure in the knowledge that once we’ve obtained the who, what, where, and when, that they why is implied.
I’m no longer sure it is.
We do an awful lot of busywork because someone asked us to, or because of where we sit in the bureaucracy, or because a deadline is looming…busywork that I am pretty certain would not withstand the scrutiny of a toddler armed with the persistence of WHY?
Maybe if we started asking this question again, really asking it, digging our heels in and pushing back on the becauses with our whys, we might get beyond the busy work, and on to the real, vital, and lasting work?
“Never use three words when one will do. Be concise. Don’t fall in love with the gentle trilling of your mellifluous sentences. Learn how to “kill your darlings…”
—Colson Whitehead quote regarding How to Write. And anyone who blogs struggles with their “darlings” on a daily basis.
July 2012
19 posts
“
Our words are just words. Our stories are just stories. Maybe they transcend their form. Maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter. Repeat after me: it doesn’t matter. Care less. Fuck it. Fuck it. Write like you don’t give a damn. Write like there’s no expected outcome except a finished story. Write the story that sings in your heart, not the one that whispers in your brain. You’re not curing cancer. You’re not saving the whales.
You’re writing.
One word after the other. No wants, no needs, no fears.
Only words.
” —The reason why I love Chuck Wendig are quotes like this one. We tend to take everything in our lives that we consider important (especially art) as something to transcend. But when push comes to shove, we just need to keep on keeping on and see where the dominos fall down the road.
On a side note, the rated G version of this is Jeff Goins here.
Creative Something: Imagining glass doors where there are none. →
creativesomething.net
Have you seen this video of a dog that imagines a glass door where there is none?
In your creative work there are glass doors, and then there are door frames. Sometimes we imagine that there are glass doors in those frames that stand before us, keeping us from our true work, from…
“Artists and salespeople are fundamentally different people. It’s the nature of being an artist to be always consumed with doubt. That’s the nature that fuels your exploration. And it’s the nature of the salesperson to suppress all doubt and to speak in exclamation points. Now those functions have to exist in the same person.”
—William Deresiewicz in his Creative Mornings talk on “Generation sell.” There’s some truth in this, but it underestimates the ability of us all to play multiple roles — especially if those two roles are delegated to different spaces (studio/office) and times (morning/afternoon.) As John Waters says, “I make stuff up in the morning and I sell it in the afternoon.” (via austinkleon)
“IT’S IMPORTANT THAT WE ALL TAKE A BREATH, LOOK DOWN AND REALIZE THAT THE CLAY IS IN OUR HANDS.
WE CAN MAKE IT WHAT WE WANT. NOT JUST THE WORK,
BUT OUR FUTURE”
– ANDREW KELLER” —
WE CAN MAKE IT WHAT WE WANT. NOT JUST THE WORK,
BUT OUR FUTURE”
– ANDREW KELLER” —
