Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say, “I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”
~ Steven Pressfield
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Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.
~ William G. Simms
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Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
~ Pablo Picasso
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Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes.
~ Peter Koestenbaum
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“Do you have any ideas in mind?”
I was talking with someone recently, and they asked me what ideas I had in mind. I described a visual that had recently come to mind for me, and I then, as a followup to that visual, I added a few ideas as single words.
(I’m very intentionally, not being specific here…)
When I finished—it all took but a few moments—it struck me…
Dude, those single words really are the ideas I want to convey…
But that imagery? It’s exactly the opposite of those ideas. That visual is a terrible idea…
Let’s set aside the confusion I may have caused to my friend. (Although, I did point out that I saw the contradiction.)
It seems to me it’s really rare to have a moment of such clarity around something important: If I hadn’t been explaining it to another person, I might have hung onto that visual imagery.
Where are you hanging on to the wrong details?
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[…] fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Where is the space where you hang out with other people doing whatever it is you do? I’ve mentioned this idea before, for example, Setting and scene. This is something I come back to often because it is really important to me.
And by “space” I mean a physical space, like the proverbial 19th century café with writers talking and drinking coffee. Third places are clear candidates for our scene.
What about virtual third places? All of us know each other virtually, including through various video calls over the years. But a virtual space has to be very special to be a true “scene.” In fact, I’m not sure just how special, and I’m not sure what exactly the features it needs to have…
That’s what I’m thinking about this morning:
What are the special feature of a virtual space that make it into a scene?
Here’s a few I’ve come up with so far…
:) obviously. We need to know others are there (I see “likes” or a head-count in the video call).What else comes to mind?
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Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; Not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life.
~ Charles Eastman
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But when I do, it usually because of some deeply nerdy, cutting snark. Like this:
As someone who has read thousands of academic papers, I’ll answer those questions as calmly as possible.
NO.
~ “dynomight“, from Please show lots of digits
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…and then it goes on, CAPSLOCKed, for several paragraphs. The only thing better than math-nerds, is when a math-nerd who is also a reason-nerd stomps on the vanilla-variety math-nerds. This stuff? This stuff makes the world a better place.
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