Presence, not pursuit.
94 posts, oldest first
Nobody ever takes note of [my advice], because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear is, “Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script,” … but I always say, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.'”
~ Steve Martin
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It has to be territorial, not hierarchical. Meaning real success comes from the inside out, not the outside in. Real success is the process, not the product. It’s what we would do if there were nobody else in the world, yet it depends in the end on everyone else in the world. The essential expression of our art is that of a gift. We draw from that which is most ourselves–and then offer that essence to our fellow travelers on this planet, to help them, entertain them, show them they’re not alone … asking nothing in return (well, maybe enough to pay the rent, we hope.)
~ Steven Pressfield
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Creating anything of consequence or magnitude requires deliberate, incremental and consistent work. At the beginning, these efforts might not look like they are amounting to much. But with time, they accumulate and then compound on each other. Whether it’s a book or a business or an anthill or a stalagmite, from humble beginnings come impressive outcomes.
~ Ryan Holiday
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Decisions are good even if the outcomes aren’t. The same is true for the process of generous creativity. The process is a smart one even if the particular work doesn’t resonate, even if the art doesn’t sell, even if you aren’t happy with the reaction from the critics. That’s because what we seek and how we create aren’t the same thing.
~ Seth Godin
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You can’t really decide to paint a masterpiece. You just have to think hard, work hard, and try to make a painting that you care about. Then, if you’re lucky, your work will find an audience for whom it’s meaningful.
~ Susan Kare
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The idea of the painter and the sculptor is undoubtedly that perfect and excellent example of the mind, by imitation of which imagined form all things are represented which fall under human sight.
~ John Dryden
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Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in Nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms.
~ Victor Cousin
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It can be easy to look at great geniuses like Newton and imagine that their ideas and work came solely out of their minds, that they spun it from their own thoughts—that they were true originals. But that is rarely the case.
~ Shane Parrish from, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
There’s a perennial discussion around creativity that gets described various ways: “Steal like an artist.” “Repurpose what’s been done before.” “Creating new from the old.” I like Parrish’s point, (in the article but not the quote above,) that “geniuses” first mastered the best that others had to offer. Then they go onward and farther to create something new.
If the only thing someone has ever done is sample and remix others’ work… meh. But if someone has mastered some field—art, math, music, whatever—and then recombines and extends, (or pares down or transmogrifies)… then, ok. My distinction feels very close to the, No true Scotsman, logic fallacy, and yet I think it’s a useful distinction.
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The sculptor must paint with his chisel: Half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of ight, or a spot of darkness.
~ John Ruskin
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Sculpture is more divine, and more like nature,
~ Longfellow
that fashions all her works in high relief,
and that is sculpture. This vast ball, the Earth,
was moulded out of clay, and baked in fire;
Men, women, and all animals that breath
are statues, and not paintings.
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You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us—because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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If someone were to ask me to identify the single primary quality that an artist or entrepreneur should cultivate in himself, I would say depth of commitment. Because depth of commitment either embodies all the other virtues or establishes the fertile field in which they can take root and grow. Depth of commitment presupposes courage, passion, recklessness, capacity for self-discipline, and the ability to have fun. It implies perseverance.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Skill is earned. It’s learned and practiced and hard-won. It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.
~ Seth Godin
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So I make it really simple. I’d say art is: “That which you have no choice but to do, because your soul demands it”.
~ Hugh MacLeod
Yes, it’s a fairly flawed definition. But it illustrates something that most people don’t get about artists or entrepreneurs. We do it, because if we don’t, life feels empty. The downside being, it doesn’t exactly come with an easy life.
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Stone isn’t naturally malleable, and yet, Japanese artist Hirotoshi Ito (previously) carves his sculptures to make the material appear as if it can be unzipped or sliced with a butter knife.
~ Grace Ebert from, Deceptive Stone Sculptures by Hirotoshi Ito Unzip to Reveal Surreal Scenes in Miniature — Colossal
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I’ve only just recently learned of This is Colossal. Only a few weeks into following them—RSS for the win!—and they are definitely living up to their self-assessment.
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It’s pretty safe to say, that when you finally come up with your million-dollar idea, nobody is going to understand it at first. They many not laugh in your face outright, but they’ll probably scratch their heads, at least.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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Quit your yakkin’ and get busy. Quit wasting time obsessing about pimping your ass and checking your stats. Instead, MAKE stuff. Make AMAZING stuff. Make stuff that is so good that people have no choice but to find out about it. Otherwise, you REALLY are just wasting your time. This game is already TOO hard and TOO BIG a time suck to fritter away on what is, for the most part, a big ol’ distraction.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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What we seek out is someone who sees us and consistently keeps their promises to bring us the magic we were hoping for. Someone who has committed to rhyming with what they did yesterday. When you trust yourself enough to turn pro, You’re entering into a covenant with those you seek to serve. You promise to design with intention, and they agree to engage with the work you promised to bring them.
~ Seth Godin
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To create art we make choices. We do it with intent, seeking to make a change for certain people. When we find that our choices didn’t succeed, vulnerability with lots of personal angst is an available choice. The alternative is to learn from what didn’t resonate. Was it our choices in how we did the work, or did we bring this work to the wrong audience? You are not your work. Your work is a series of choices made with generous intent to cause something to happen. We can always learn to make better choices.
~ Seth Godin
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You cannot sell your talent, your genius; as soon as you do, you are a prostitute. You can sell your work, but not your soul.
~ John Ruskin
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To be a successful creator, you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, clients, or fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only 1,000 true fans.
~ Kevin Kelly
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Most people to this day think of [the sciences and the arts] as so radically different from each other. But I want to posit a different way to look at it. It comes from what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of art on the part of most people. Because they think of art as learning to draw or learning a certain kind of self-expression. But in fact, what artists do is they learn to see.
~ Ed Catmull
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It is essential to get lost and jam up your plans every now and then. It’s a source of creativity and perspective. The danger of maps, capable assistants, and planning is that you may end up living your life as planned. If you do, your potential cannot possibly exceed your expectations.
~ Scott Belsky
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So people are getting what they asked for. Autonomy. Responsibility instead of authority. The chance to speak up and be heard. Most of all, the opportunity to be on the hook.
Not surprisingly, some people, particularly if they’ve been indoctrinated into the industrial mindset, don’t like this.
They can’t ask, “just tell me what to do.” The search for an A, the hope to be picked by someone in charge, the desire for perfect–it’s gone. So is the deniability that comes with following instructions.
~ Seth Godin from, The post-industrial collision | Seth’s Blog
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I don’t know if what Godin points out is a common problem. I’m wondering if those who can’t make the shift mentioned by Godin are simply surrendering too soon. Modern life is complicated—the most clever thing the devil ever did was convince people the Internet was easy! The more time you spend knee-deep in technology the sooner you learn that you have to be able to throw your arms up and tap-out. That’s useful in some situations (all of life that touches technology) but would look exactly like idunnoitis in a business setting.
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From this experience I learned what legendary writers call ‘killing your darlings’—the plot points and characters that detract from a novel. Sometimes you need to stop doing things you love in order to nurture the one thing that matters most.
~ Scott Belsky
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To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.
~ Viggo Mortensen
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In the wrong environment, your creativity is compromised. At 30, I assumed my strengths would always be with me regardless of where I applied them. I was wrong. Truth is, your environment matters.
~ Scott Belsky
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If culture is sufficient to establish what we eat, how we speak, and ten thousand other societal norms, why isn’t it able to teach us a process to make art? Isn’t it possible for the culture to normalize goal setting and passion and curiosity and the ability to persuade? It can. And you don’t have to wait for it to happen. You can begin now.
~ Seth Godin
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The world is filled with overconfident people. Overconfidence leads to malpractice, to fraud, and to broken promises. Overconfidence is arrogance. You don’t want an overconfident surgeon or even an overconfident bus driver. By definition, overconfidence leads to risky behavior and inadequate preparation. But the practice requires us to do our work without becoming attached to the outcome. It’s not overconfidence, it’s a practice of experiments that respect the pitfalls of hubris.
~ Seth Godin
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The Wrights’ story shows something more common than we realize: There’s often a big gap between changing the world and convincing people that you changed the world.
~ Morgan Housel, from When You Change the World and No One Notices
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On one hand, we could simply define “changed the world” to be when people have actually noticed, or when the change is wide-spread. On the other hand, it’d be much more interesting to acknowledge that the change happens at the moment of the advance—the moment the Wright Brothers figured out controlled, powered flight. (It’s the “controlled” part that really made them first.) The challenge for us creatives… for those of us out trying to change the world… is how do we act during the gap. Do we keep working, quietly changing the world further? Do we stop working and start marketing? Or… something else? To quote William Gibson: “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”
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People – especially really smart people – have a tendency to attempt solving big problems (like earning a profit) without first solving more basic ones (like how you’ll get there). This is why the “Step 1, Step 3” joke resonates. And it’s why understanding the hierarchy of earning profit is so important.
~ Morgan Housel, from The Hierarchy of Earning Profit
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Oh, crikey! That’d be me. I too–frequently get frustrated when my “awesome idea” isn’t received the way I’d like it to be. I think it’s exactly the same step–two problem that Housel points out. I’m jumping over step 2. But in cases where I try to figure out step 2… *crickets* It occurs to me that there’s another way to address the issue: Stop chasing ideas that solve a problem that I have, and instead try to chase an idea that solves a problem someone else has.
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I think people want things that are really passionate, and often, the best version they could be is not for everybody… The best art divides the audience. If you put out a record, and half the people who hear it absolutely love it, and half the people who hear it absolutely hate it, you’ve done well, because it’s pushing that boundary.
~ Rick Rubin
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So much of the job is more emotion and ‘heart work’ than it is ‘head work.’ The head comes in after, to look at what the heart has presented and to organize it. But the initial inspiration comes from a different place, and it’s not the head, and it’s not an intellectual activity.
~ Rick Rubin
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Marty is a death camp survivor. He’s got the tattoo. He never speaks about the experience directly (I only know through my friend Pablo, who originally introduced me to Marty) but he’ll make remarks from time to time whose gist is, “Appreciate life. Never complain. Work hard and do your best.”
Marty has one other mantra: “Talent is bullshit.”
~ Steven Pressfield from, “Talent is B.S.”
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It’s worth reading simply because Pressfield wrote it; He doesn’t write that much on his blog and so I make time to read it all. Marty (who is a fictionalized version of a real person Pressfield knew) consuls a tidy, four points. I was gut-punched to realize that while I excel at the last two, “Work hard and do your best,” and I suck at the first two, “Appreciate life. Never complain.” The complaining bit I have made reasonable progress on. These days I don’t often complain, and when I do complain I am able to see it’s ridiculous indignation at its core. But that first one, “Appreciate life,”… yikes! I seriously suck at that.
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A great deal of talent is lost in this world for the want of a little courage.
~ Sydney Smith
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Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
~ Pablo Picasso
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Creating something that can be turned down takes discipline and courage, so there’s reason to feel pride for each rejection.
~ Rhaina Cohen
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In fact, now I’m wondering if that’s one way you know something is great? When you say: “How does this even exist?”
~ Austin Kleon from, The making of Lilo & Stitch
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Yes, that’s definitely one way.
In about ten weeks I’m making my annual journey to Boston and neighboring Somerville for a parkour event. Much has changed over the years I’ve been going. It’s moved from Septembers to Junes. The size has waxed and waned. A few of the same people are usually there, and there is an endless banquet of new forever-friends.
If you get into doing this thing, and you start going to play and train with others, you soon have a very unusual problem: The more you run into a particular someone, the more it happens in different places. You start to have this precious view of who this person is separated from where that person normally is. Sometimes you know someone well, but have no idea where you know them from. It’s weird. It’s awesome. How does this even exist?
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What focus means is saying no to something that you, with every bone in your body, you think is a phenomenal idea and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you’re focusing on something else.
~ Jonny Ive from, The Ultimate Productivity Hack is Focus
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I have a lot of ideas. (Perhaps your experience is similar?) For most of my life I thought all of my ideas where good ones. Sure, there were some insane bicycle accidents and spectacular snow-tubing disasters, but in the minutes following an incident, I still thought it was a good idea. Poorly planned, poorly executed, or both, sure. But life seemed to be an endless parade of good ideas each affording an opportunity to grab life by the choose-your-own-metaphor. In hindsight, I think it was all simply poor—or, if I’m honest, a complete absence of—impulse control.
In recent years it has become apparent my time on Earth is limited. (Perhaps your experience is similar?) These days that stream of ideas continues. What if I installed a motion-activated auto-targeting water sprinkler filled with Capsaicin-laced water to keep the squirrels away? (Yes, really.) …and okay, well, the ideas don’t all seem like good ideas anymore. Fine. I’m cool with having limited time, limited resources, and possibly some added social awareness.
But every once in a while, I have an idea which is blindingly awesome. Even if I have one such idea only once in a while, that still means I have more than I can try, and then I have to choose. I have to choose some, and say no to others.
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What makes the difference between an outstandingly creative person and a less creative one is not any special power, but greater knowledge (in the form of practiced expertise) and the motivation to acquire and use it. This motivation endures for long periods, perhaps shaping and inspiring a whole lifetime.
~ Margaret A. Boden
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To create a meaningful work of art or to make a discovery or invention requires great discipline, self-control, and emotional stability. It requires mastering the forms of your field. […] When you look at the exceptionally creative work of Masters, you must not ignore the years of practice, the endless routines, the hours of doubt, and the tenacious overcoming of obstacles these people endured.
~ Robert Greene
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Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.
~ Marcel Proust
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It’s a choice. The choice between being the linchpin (the one people can’t live without) and the cog (who does what she’s told). The choice between doing art (and forging your own path, on your own terms, and owning what happens) and merely doing your job (which pushes all the power and all the responsibility to someone else).
The good news is that it’s your choice, no one else’s.
~ Seth Godin
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Artists never stop looking for the disturbing truth behind the facade. When reality arrives, they won’t be surprised, because they saw it coming. Sometimes they even encouraged it to come.
~ Seth Godin
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I’m often paused, even paralyzed, by uncertainty. My hope is that this is a sign that I’ve developed some (originally absent, apparently) humility. I swing wildly between feeling confident in simply doing “the work” simply for the sake of experiencing the process, and panicking in the face of self-criticism for wasting my talents and resources. Literally, the only thing which saves me is the knowledge that it takes a significant amount of self-awareness to even think to write a paragraph such as this.
Never play to the gallery… Always remember that the reason that you initially started working is that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations — they generally produce their worst work when they do that.
~ David Bowie from, David Bowie on Creativity and His Advice to Artists – The Marginalian
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I’m not sure it’s terribly dangerous. But it’s certain that I get twitchy and restless if I go searching for others’ approval. It feels far better to sit down, shut up, and start. Actually, it’s really a double-negative: It feels far less worse to sit down, shut up, and start than it does to seek others’ approval for whatever it is I have the urge to work on.
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On any project I can quickly get to the doing. Nearly as quickly I start thinking about how to improve whatever it is I’m doing. Sometimes whatever-it-is has a clear end; I can spend many hours (thank you ADHD) laser-focused on an immense number of trivial steps knowing it will mean I can remove something from a to-should list. But with open-ended stuff, like “publish conversations as podcasts”, it doesn’t take long for my urge to fiddle to get the better of me.
I recently went to a Picasso exhibition. What impressed me the most was not any individual piece of art, but rather his remarkably prolific output. Researchers have catalogued 26,075 pieces of art created by Picasso and some people believe the total number is closer to 50,000.
~ James Clear from, The Shadow Side of Greatness: When Success Leads to Failure
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I think it comes down to motivation. (And I find reading about others’ huge accomplishments to be crushingly de-motivating.) If I have the intrinsic motivation, then the iteration happens; only by great effort could the iteration not happen! Clear points out that Picasso had a very dark side which presented in his interpersonal relationships. I don’t think that dark side—anyone’s dark side—motivates iteration. And a dark side is not a necessary feature either. I really believe one can be a decent human being and be motivated and get great stuff done.
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While you can still avoid shame by hiding, you won’t find happiness or even stability that way. The thing is, shame is a choice. It’s worth repeating: Shame can’t be forced on you; it must be accepted. The artist, then, combines courage with a fierce willingness to refuse to accept shame. Blame, sure. Shame, never. Where is the shame in using our best intent to make art for those we care about?
~ Seth Godin
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If you want these crazy ideas and these crazy stages, this crazy music, and this crazy way of thinking, there’s a chance it might come from a crazy person.
~ Kayne West
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The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
~ Amos Tversky
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When the resistance shows up, I know that I’m winning. Not my fight against it, but my fight to make art. […] The resistance is a symptom that you’re on the right track. The resistance is not something to be avoided; it’s something to seek out.
~ Seth Godin
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…we see what we believe, not the other way around. Rarely do we see the world as it is. Most of the time we are so busy compartmentalizing, judging, and ignoring what we can’t abide that we see almost nothing. We don’t see opportunities. We fail to see pain. And most of all, we refuse to see the danger in doing nothing. If you can’t see, you will never make art successfully.
~ Seth Godin
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If you have decided that you can’t do art until you quiet the voice of resistance, you will never do art. Art is the act of doing work that matters while dancing with the voice in your head that screams for you to stop. We can befriend the lizard, lull it into stupor, or merely face it down, but it’s there, always. As soon as you embrace the lizard (not merely tolerate it but engage it as a partner in your art), then you are free.
~ Seth Godin
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Effort isn’t the point, impact is. If you solve the problem in three seconds but have the guts to share it with me, it’s still art. And if you move ten thousand pounds of granite but the result doesn’t connect with me, I’m sorry for your calluses, but you haven’t made art, at least not art for me.
~ Seth Godin
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Vulnerable is the only way we can feel when we truly share the art we’ve made. When we share it, when we connect, we have shifted the power and made ourselves naked in front of the person we’ve given the gift of our art to. We have no excuses, no manual to point to, no standard operating procedures to protect us. And that is part of our gift.
~ Seth Godin
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At this point I’m resigned to my nature being unchangeable. I need structure to work within, and I cannot suffer long stretches of boredom. I’m comfortable knowing that at least some of what I do makes the world a better place; I’m comfy with my internal validation. I also know that if I start to focus too much on making money I lose my spark. What I’m left wondering is wether there is some thing focused enough that people could dig in and follow (in the sense of deeply understanding the thing, my motivations, and my goal.) I’m certain however, that without that clear thing I must continue to explore and satisfy my curiosity, and not focus overly on monetization.
If you’re thinking about running a membership program, you’re probably a bit wacky. Everything I write about membership programs should be filtered through the lens that: I live a somewhat uncommon, sometimes extremely wacky life. It’s good to keep that in mind. My work is mostly, inherently, non-commercial. Or less commercial than it might be “optimized” for. When people ask me: Who are you? What do you do? And I tell them — I walk, I write, I photograph, I make books, I run a membership program. Their suspicion is plainly visible: No, but what do you do to survive? As if the soul itself wasn’t a thing to be nourished. This is survival, I want to say.
~ Craig Mod from, Running a Membership Program: Four Years In — by Craig Mod
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I’ve tried several times to create membership systems around passion projects. The core problem I encounter is that bolting on a membership system creates in- and out-groups. Any passion project I’ve had feeds that passion through my connections to the other people who engage. The in-group has always been too small to sustain my passion. If you wish you can support my work. But for the foreseeable future, I’m focusing on the passion and not the monetization.
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A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All this happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may sharpen our art.
~ Jorge Luis Borges
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Passion creates, addiction consumes.
~ Gabor Maté
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The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
~ Mary Oliver
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Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It’s impossible to please everyone. The question is whether you’re disappointing the right people.
~ Adam Grant
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It matters that I start something. I don’t have to start everything; That’d be tragic. I don’t have to start many things, nor even more than one thing. But it matters that I start something. The knowledge is in the doing of that something. It matters that I go through contemplation (choosing just the right something), then into commitment, and then… that’s where I often struggle.
I’d like to propose a different view: that struggle is the place of growth, learning, curiosity, love, creativity. Struggle is an incredible opportunity for being creative.
~ Leo Babauta from, Turn Struggle into Creativity
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I struggle when there’s a huge gap between the know-naught starting point, and my being one of those effortless creatives who get stuff done. Those who get stuff done well and demonstrate craftsmanship and care and pride and joy! (Gazing at the horizon,) there’s the thing. I know what it can be. I see how to begin, but I see hills and I know there will be challenges. Don’t turn away. (Gazing at the horizon,) if there’s somewhere I want to be, I need to start walking.
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The highest form of creativity is found by improvising within a set of restrictions.
~ Christopher Nolan
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Am I too often seeking the sense of safety or control? (And it is indeed only a sense-of. It is only an illusion.) What happened to the simple feeling of joy in being?
What this means, as I understand it, is that when we let go of all attachment to the outcome of our novel publication/album release/opening of our Thai Fusion restaurant … we shift the locus of our enterprise from the ego to the Self (or the soul if you prefer.)
The Muse likes this. Heaven likes this.
We are now operating on the plane of the soul, not the plane of the ego.
~ Steven Pressfield from, “Start the next one today”
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Sometimes an outcome is important; the measurements, the color, the specific dimensions. When the idea began with the intention of trading the outcome with another. But not every waking moment. Too much of that is obviously an imbalance.
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Be sure that you’ve first fully assimilated the idea of ‘no’, above. For if you don’t, you risk the mistake I make of reflexively saying ‘yes’ to the next thing that comes up.
We do it because to stop (or pause) after Project number-1 means we are one-hit wonders. We are dabbling. We are amateurs.
To continue, on the other hand, means we are pursuing our calling as a practice.
~ Steven Pressfield from, Having a Practice
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We do, in fact, want to—we must—say ‘yes’ to some next thing.
First, master the wonderful, short, complete sentence: No. Second, immediately say yes to the correct, next thing.
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[But ultimately acting makes you happy?] Yeah, I think. It is also about balance and finding the balance between the very cerebral part of your brain and the much more impulsive creativity that can come from chaos. So for me it is very much about that balance. The cerebral part of acting and the perfectionism can be exhausting, but the spontaneity can be very joyful. So it’s about managing these two sides of the experience. But yes it’s fun. I mean, there is no point in doing a movie if you’re not having fun.
~ Edward Norton from, Edward Norton – The Talks
Elsewhere, this is 4uteie3. — slipbox
Norton isn’t talking at all about podcasting, but the dance of getting the balance right is equally applicable to any field.
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The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
~ Robert Hughes
Elsewhere, this is 4a1432. — slipbox
The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
~ Annie Dillard
Elsewhere, this is 4a1433. — slipbox
[How do you know if something will last or not?] Well, you don’t! That’s a form of arrogance! I think that if you can somehow tell some kind of truth or at least get to some sense of truth… Then it will last. Because then you’ve reached some kind of primal understanding of something that will transport you over time. But I don’t sit here and say, “Is this going to be great and last?” I don’t think so. I just try to make it something that has a sense of something that matters, you know, that makes it of value.
~ Eric Roth, from Eric Roth
Elsewhere, this is 4uteie5. — slipbox
Eric Roth wrote the screenplay for Forrest Gump, an adaptation of the book.
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As a filmmaker, you have a way of seeing things that is inherent in any telling of a story. You read a book, and images form in your mind, and as a director, you explain those images to the crew members. That’s what directing is, that’s what they mean when they say explaining your vision. So for me, it’s really not about any conscious desire to imprint a style. It’s simply: here’s how I see it. This is my understanding of the material. This is what affected me, here’s when I cried, we need to make sure that this moment is real, we need to make sure that your your heart is broken like I felt when I read the script. It’s about communicating exactly what you feel. And that’s the art of directing.
~ Sam Rami, from Sam Raimi – The Talks
Elsewhere, this is 4uteie14. — slipbox
I find I’m often confused by having too many options. I can get far into the weeds exploring all the possible way to do something. Instead, I truly believe that after enough time practicing some creative endeavor, it’s more important to simply follow your own feeling. Follow your own inspiration. “This is what I feel I want to do,” becomes the correct compass to follow. It’s simply: Here’s how I see it.
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Sit at your desk and listen.
~ Franz Kafka
Elsewhere, this is 4a1460. — slipbox
The most important work we do is to make decisions. Decisions don’t seem effortful (turn left or right, say yes or no) but the apparent risk and emotional labor is real. Hard decisions are hard because of the story we tell ourselves about repercussions and responsibility.
~ Seth Godin, from Decisions as effort
Elsewhere, this is 4usede1. — slipbox
To make a decision is an act of creation.
I’m not sure when I fully integrated the idea that making decisions is a creative act. But it definitely is a creative act. Making a decision is not simply choosing among options. Making a decision is not simply saying ‘yes’ to something. (And I’m not referring to the obvious corollary that a ‘yes’ to something is a ‘no’ to other things.) Making a decision creates a connection between the before and the after. Those were two things, and through our decision we create a connection; We create something greater than the simple sum of those two “parts.” The connection itself is something wholly new.
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The sudden flashes of insight we have in states of meditative distraction—showering, pulling weeds in the garden, driving home from work—often elude our conscious mind precisely because they require its disengagement. When we’re too actively engaged in conscious thought—exercising our intelligence, so to speak—our creativity and inspiration suffer. “The great Tao fades away.”
~ Josh Jones, from Why You Do Your Best Thinking In The Shower
Elsewhere, this is 4uoewy1. — slipbox
I really dislike Open Culture’s web site—modal dialogs, moving thinguses, distracting whatsits… but then, that’s what Reader Mode is for. :) Meanwhile, this was an interesting read just for the nugget of: It’s the distraction, stupid. As I read the bits about the Tao, I realized that—if I had read the Tao—I would not have read into the Tao sufficiently to get this point. (And of course, I’m presuming that Jones’s interpretation—or his reporting thereof, at least—is correct.)
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We all struggle with this. No matter what our art is, there are always those bits that everyone sees and those bits that are covered up. And we face the question of how much effort to put into these various parts. It’s easy enough if it’s a hobby and you have all the time in the world. But you need to ship if you’re making a living off your art.
~ David Sparks, from Lessons From an Ancient Craftsman
Elsewhere, this is 4umabo5. — slipbox
It’s always good when, as above, I can get any sense of commiseration with other creatives. I had a hard time ever coming to understand I am a creative, and the imposter syndrome for me is eternal. (Also, apparently a shared experience.) Great piece from Sparks about exactly what that quote suggests.
Meanwhile, I’m reminded of something I say often, which comes from my paternal grandfather: When asked his opinion on something, (ala, “How’s that look?”) he’d reply, “A blind man in Idaho would be happy to see it.” This makes no sense, in several dimensions. I have no idea where he got that from. The Idaho bit in particular always made me wonder. He and I were generally in Pennsylvania, so Idaho is a long way away, but oddly specific, while still oddly vague. Where in Idaho? And why Idaho? Maybe Idaho was some Depression-era fake-magical place pushed by con-men and became a stand in for “anyone in Idaho must be really well off.” Because the whole point of the joke is that a blind person would be delighted to see anything. I dunno… maybe it’s a humorous construct because the Idaho part is so extraneous, it feels like it must be important? Really, does that reply mean it looks good, or it’s bad and I don’t want to tell you? I mean, the reply literally does nothing but dodge the question. Or, maybe I’ve just over thought this… for 40 years?
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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
Elsewhere, this is 4a1487. — slipbox
Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes.
~ Peter Koestenbaum
Elsewhere, this is 4a1489. — slipbox
The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
~ Stephen Nachmanovitch
Elsewhere, this is 4a1493. — slipbox
I have written about this before and it is something I wish to emphasize repeatedly: efficiency and clarity are necessary elements, but are not the goal. There needs to be space for how things feel. I wrote this as it relates to cooking and cars and onscreen buttons, and it is still something worth pursuing each and every time we create anything.
~ Nick Heer, from Delicious Wabi-Sabi
Elsewhere, this is 4upobo3. — slipbox
Yes, “efficiency and clarity are necessary elements, but are not the goal. There needs to be space for how things feel.” Hear! Hear!
There are at least three reasons to read Heer’s points. Retro-digital photography is really a thing; the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi (appreciating beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete); A bit of hist wondering about software.
It’s the wabi-sabi that got me thinking about podcasting. I’m well-known for cutting the corner when it comes to editing the conversations I record. I’ve always looked at that as a necessity: If I tried to raise the level of quality by editing, I’d not be able to put the episodes out (or at least not as many.)
After reading Heer’s thoughts, now I’m wondering if I’m also—perhaps even more so?—drawn to the wabi-sabi of the conversations with all their blemishes, false-starts, uhm-and-ahs in place.
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To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
Elsewhere, this is 4a1498. — slipbox
Spending time in solitude with your artist child is essential to self-nurturing. A long country walk, a solitary expedition to the beach for a sunrise or sunset, a sortie out to strange church to hear gospel music, to an ethnic neighborhood to taste foreign sights and sounds—your artist might enjoy any of these. Or your artist might like bowling.
~ Julia Cameron
Elsewhere, this is 4a1499. — slipbox
The Fourth Rule of the Artist’s Journey is: It’s for life.
~ Steven Pressfield, from The Artist’s Journey Is a Lifetime Engagement
Elsewhere, this is 4usete19. — slipbox
Because that means there’s not going to be an end, so I better get my stuff sorted.
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The creative mind gets poisoned with the idea that your great work will be the result of getting serious. So many of my good ideas come from what looks like goofing off, wasting time. Art is play. There’s no way to tell what’s deep or shallow until you play with the idea.
~ Austin Kleon
Elsewhere, this is 4a1524. — slipbox
These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed. That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.
~ Steven Pressfield
Elsewhere, this is 4a1527. — slipbox
You just have to use what you have, and have great cohorts. I have people that I’ve played with a very long time. We are connected by our common understanding of what we’re doing, all the experiences we’ve had over the years… And most of all, there’s a friendship between us which allows us to do it without having to explain everything with a huge long manifesto. It has a lot to do with the trust I’m able to place in them to do our work.
~ Elvis Costello, from Elvis Costello – The Talks
Elsewhere, this is 4uteie26. — slipbox
Time after time I hear creatives talk about that. How they have an inside circle of peers. Of people who are also friends. Creatives need to have a group of people which somehow form a scene; They have access to a place where others like them freely associate.
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But if you only paid attention to television and social media, you would think that all we’re supposed to do is make as much money as possible, and buy as many retail goods as possible. I’ve found that making a life with one’s hands and spending your time with loved ones pays less dollars but makes your life much more rich. I feel like the American Dream has been a bit hijacked by consumerism… And I learned the hard way that that’s actually quite empty and depressing as a lifestyle.
~ Nick Offerman, from Nick Offerman – The Talks
Elsewhere, this is 4uteie31. — slipbox
Maybe don’t follow Offerman’s path. But I think it’s worth following his advice. Yes, it’s difficult to balance exploring what makes me unique, with simply doing what everyone is doing. The balance you choose is part of the journey of self-creation. That’s a feature, not a flaw.
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Remember we employed a visual to help us understand this. We said that the Dream is like a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow. The tree casts a shadow.
~ Steven Pressfield, from Writing Wednesdays: Gotta Do It
Elsewhere, this is 4usego2. — slipbox
I find Pressfield’s metaphor to be striking. The tree in the meadow casts a real shadow. I was struck by the layers in this metaphor: light and darkness, the singular clarity of lone tree in an open space as a symbol of a life’s purpose, the proportional relationship of the larger the tree the larger and darker the shadow, and that one’s ability to avoid or at least escape the shadow is a choice we make.
By extension then, if one attempts to nurture multiple callings, visions or projects, one has multiple big trees. That’s at least a copse of trees whose shadows merge together creating something much more significant to avoid or escape from.
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You stand back and in a way, the reason it’s interesting is because it stands out, it doesn’t fit in, it doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen. But this is not really my position — generally. There might be moments where such a performance is necessary but we like to find a stronger relationship between the familiar and the unfamiliar. My feeling is that when a building is too self-referential, the audience is distanced; architecture becomes something that you look at. [Like in a cathedral or a monument?] Right, it’s a spectacle — whereas I think for 99% of the time, architecture is something that you should be inside and absorbed by. It’s something which convinces you by experience more than impresses you by image.
~ David Chipperfield, from David Chipperfield – The Talks
I think that tension exists in any creative endeavor. Perhaps, the existence of that tension is what defines something as being creative?
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As someone who writes a lot about knowledge work in the digital age, I’m fascinated by this model of cooking, which I define as follows: a workflow designed to enable someone with a high-return skill to spend most of their time applying that skill, without distraction.
~ Cal Newport, from Let Brandon Cook
Elsewhere, this is 4ucale1. — slipbox
For a decade I’ve been aware of this point. I’m, basically, a one-person creative process. If one leans into this way of thinking, then you immediately want to start figuring out how to not do all the other things. Which is fine if I were a one-person business process. But I am not. I’m not only a creator of valuable (in some sense other than money) work. I’m also the person who is nourished, enabling said creative work, by the random other parts. Whichever way you think of it though, Newport makes interesting points.
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I think part of being a designer is to fail every day, to try things that don’t work out. In a way, every project fails every day until it succeeds! That’s what the iterative process of design is about. The projects that don’t launch, this is sometimes due to the fact that they’re too early but that doesn’t mean they don’t come back a few years later as ideas integrated in different projects. Timing in many ways is key.
~ Yves Béhar, from Yves Béhar – The Talks
Elsewhere, this is 4uteie53. — slipbox
I’m reminded of the idea of one’s discard pile. Béhar’s work can fail (the idea of success versus failure in trading with others is baked into the way we use the word “work”), so he’s aware of “failure” as a salient feature of his creative efforts. Here on the ‘ol blog, this isn’t about “work” so it’s not possible for it to “fail.” But I do often think about the discard pile: I don’t actually create blog posts and then discard them rather than post them. But I do often read and find things, imagine what I could post about them… and then I don’t post it.
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Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
~ Steven Pressfield, from Writing Wednesdays: The Unlived Life
Elsewhere, this is 4usete24. — slipbox
For me there’s a huge tension between those two. I see so many things that I want to do—and I don’t mean binge-watch TV shows. I imagine something I’d like to write—for example, a weekly, emailed publication for paying subscribers—and the complexity of creating it overwhelms me. The writing is the easy part; Or, am I deluding myself? The only salve I’ve found is to remind myself over and over and over that I consistently overestimate what I can get done in a day, and underestimate what I can get done in a lifetime.
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Because what makes anyone’s work worth having isn’t the ability to recognise quality in what already exists – it’s what they generate themselves. How their mind moves. What they reach for before anyone else knows it’s there. The idea that forms before it becomes a thing anyone can judge. That’s what’s always been of value. But it’s something we rarely, if ever, examine.
~ Zoe Scaman, from The Whetstone
This would also be what would be of value from a cogitant. It’s not “how” the trick is done, it’s the effect… the outcome that matters.
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Ask yourself what perfect looks like. What are the specific elements? What’s on the checklist?
Procrustes will never have an answer to this question, but always a response along the lines of “I’ll know it when I see it.” That’s not good enough. He has no idea what perfection means! He’s exposed. He cannot meet his own standards. He’s in his bed. You know what to do. Grab your creative tools and get to work.
~ Boston Blake, from Perfectionism
I’ve long agreed with the sentiment that “I’ll know it when I see it” is bullshit. I’ve long thought that was because if one doesn’t know “what it should look like” then one doesn’t actually understand whatever it is we’re talking about judging. My thinking was focused on identifying whether or not I (or whomever) was capable of judging.
But this insight from Blake got me thinking about a more fundamental layer of judgement: If I (or whomever) is not capable of judging (as evidenced by espoused sheep dip like “I’ll know it when I see it”) then I shouldn’t even be involved in the judging. Which is also a powerful way to banish my own internal critic.
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I’ve been blogging since 2011. Movers Mindset started 2015. Open + Curious in 2024 with a different shape. Podtalk started in there too. Each project has its own arc, and it’s own specific thing that draws me to keep creating. After all this time, I can now see there’s a question I never paid attention to which lies underneath all of them: What does it take to keep making something in public, for years?
The pieces below are about the practice of showing up — what permission feels like, what resistance is, how cumulative invisible work pays off, and what “uphill” writing means. A couple are distilled from Podtalk conversations with people who arrived at hard truths and put them into words. This thread is sequenced for someone who’s making something in public and wondering how to keep at it without burning out, quitting, or going sideways into something they didn’t set out to do.
Permission to continue
7 for Sunday — March 2025
Open with the inheritance. Someone who modeled the practice for me dies, and I realized the permission they gave wasn’t theirs to give. I already had it. Jack London’s club it — go after what you want with force — turns out to be the most generous instruction possible, because it gives you permission to commit even when the outcome is uncertain.
Sit down
constantine.name — November 2024
The Pressfield line that does the most work for me: “It’s not the writing that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is resistance.” Cling to that for everything you’re trying to keep making — it’s not the doing that’s hard. It’s the showing up that’s hard. Really hard.
The illogical thing
Podtalk Field Note — with Cassian Bellino
Cassian got laid off and immediately built everything nobody asked for — courses, communities, funnels. By any reasonable measure it was a mistake. But: “my emotions wouldn’t have settled had I tried the logical thing.” Sometimes what in hindsight is clearly the wrong path, is actually the only way to reach the destination, and the flailing is how some creators process toward clarity.
Bifocals
constantine.name — January 2026
My bifocal attention: solving today’s problem while simultaneously noticing the friction I can’t leave alone. I’ll stop in the middle of the task to write the script, the alias, the doc, the template — not because I’m procrastinating but because that is the real work. The payoff is cumulative and mostly invisible, which is what makes it hard to commit to.
100 issues of my “7 for Sunday” email
constantine.name — August 2024
At the 100-issue mark of 7 for Sunday — three years of weekly issues — what mattered wasn’t the number. It was that I’d kept going through stretches when simply knowing that readers existed was what got me through. The life preserver that saves you is necessarily thrown by another. External validation isn’t ideal, but sometimes it’s what keeps you in the boat.
Writing uphill
7 for Sunday — December 2024
Downhill writing is what you want to say; uphill writing is what you need to say — the thing you’re afraid of, the thing you think nobody wants to hear. The best writing is almost always uphill. The discomfort is usually the sign you’re onto something real.
When a Podcast Is Finished
Podtalk Field Note — with Alasdair Plambeck
Closing on the hardest part: knowing when to stop. Not failed, not abandoned — finished. Alasdair ended his podcast after four-and-a-half years because the work was complete. The skill isn’t just keeping going; it’s also recognizing when keeping going has quietly become a different act than what you set out to do.
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