I prefer real life
Words
the fastest way to kill motivation is to make your identity depend on the outcome. it’s called ego involvement. when failing becomes failing as a person, your brain starts avoiding the whole thing. not because you don’t care, but because you care too much.
If I look at things that have turned out well in my life the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding. Put simply: I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people to find me, and then I hung out with them. We did projects together. I kept iterating—paying attention to the context, removing things that frustrated me, and expanding things that made me feel alive. Eventually, I looked up and noticed that my life was nothing like I imagined it would be. But it fit me.
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If I consider my life honestly, I see that it is governed by a certain very small number of patterns of events which I take part in over and over again. Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with my friends, going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant, having a drink at a friend’s house, driving on the freeway, going to bed again. There are a few more. There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any one person’s way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen. Look at your own life and you will find the same. It is shocking at first, to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me. Not that I want more of them. But when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these few patterns are good for me, I can life well. If they are bad for me, I can’t. ⚘ Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, pp. 67-68.
"I have no preparation for this moment, except my entire life."
To overcome imposter syndrome, have confidence in your depth of curiosity rather than your expertise.
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives" Annie Dillard in 'The Writing Life'
marriage is “never 50/50. Sometimes someone carries the other person more and that it’ll inevitably flip later on
Liminal spaces are in-between places that exist as means to an end, to be travelled through but not lingered in: stairwells, roads, corridors, hotels.
But at some point, I realized I could not longer be both cautious and live a worthwhile life.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. — Ira Glass
does a gardener only water their flowers after they've bloomed? does a farmer only tend to their crops once they've shown fruit? so why do you believe you should only write once you've got something to say? why do you only draw once you've got an idea? if you really want to grow your craft, tend to it faithfully, and not just when you've got the inspiration or motivation to do so. just as a flower only grows after it's been watered, the words you want to say will arrive after you start writing, the idea will arrive after you start drawing—inspiration will arrive after you start working.
