Archive for 2010

“Not being racist is not some default starting position. You don’t simply get to say you’re not a racist; not being racist — or a sexist or a homophobe — is a constant, arduous process of unlearning, of being uncomfortable, of eating crow and being humbled and re-evaluating.” ~ G.D. of Postbourgie

You know what’s hard? Being good.

Doing the right thing and choosing the ‘right’ path is extremely hard. And it doesn’t get any easier with time (sorry to disappoint).

The only thing that changes with time is your reaction to the struggles in your life. Overtime, as you continue to pick the right, but difficult, choice it’ll become a habit. You’ll come to realize that the choice in which you struggle the most is most likely the best one. Sure, now and again you’ll pick the one with the least amount of struggling on your end – but you usually realize that you chose wrong (I know I have). Moving on from that in itself is a struggle. (Ask any ex-smoker, each slip up made it that much harder to quit, but they had to continue trying to quit.)

Unbeknownst to most is that we’re actually faced with tons of choices every day that require us to make a choice between the path of least resistance (struggle) and the path of most: Continue Reading →

A while back I ran across a post by Frank Chimero in which he described how he kept a text playlist:

“[O]ne made of the best writing on the web I come across. I take this list and revisit and reread it every 4 to 8 weeks. You could almost consider it a playlist of text: it’s very select (I artificially limit it to 10-15 articles), I typically read them all in one sitting, and the order and pacing is very purposeful. Most revolve around what it’s like to be making things in 2010, and a lot of the people that I respect the most have pieces in it. It’s almost a pep talk in text form. I visit it when I’m down, when I’m lazy, when I’m feeling the inertia take over.”

Wow, I was at a lose for words. A pep talk in text form – so brilliantly simple!

Not one to stand still when something catches my interest, I feverishly spent the next couple of hours rounding up all of my favorite writings, talks, poems, and speeches, etc.. And from that I picked my top 5 (which was most difficult to do) in order to make it a list that I could review in full once a month quickly (in an hour or less) without loosing any of the ‘pep talk’ effect.

I should have talked about this earlier, but I didn’t want to talk about my “Good Life Playlist” until I had spent at least two months finding out for myself how well it worked. And boy, does it work.

This short playlist consisting of poetry, talks, writing, and photography has for the past two months helped me in ways I couldn’t begin to describe. It’s helped me remember over and over why I chose to be different, why I chose to make my own future rather than hand it to someone else, and why I am on this path even when the easiest (conforming to the status quo) was the most pleasant path in most situations. My playlist reminds me of why I do what I do; in order to lead a good life.

My “Good Life Playlist” currently consists of:

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As I said in Part 1, dance is synonymous with life. And thus, one can learn countless things about life by examining dance. For the first five life lessons learnt through dance check part one of this two part series. For now, I’m going to jump straight to where I left off.

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If you haven’t heard, I’m a dancer. In the literal sense, and in the sense of a dancer being someone who enjoys the movement of life in an artistic sort of way.

I never started dancing thinking I would learn any big life lessons (it was just something cool at the time). Yet here I am, writing about what dance taught me about life. Why?

Well, because dance and life are synonymous in a lot of ways. They both consist of movement and motion, of trying to grasp something beyond yourself (this can be spiritual, artistic, etc.- anything that makes you feel alive, outer-body, and lifted), and of enjoying yourself in the process of grasping that which is bigger than yourself.

And since there aren’t many bloggers out there who dance professionally and write about improving the self at the same time, I might as well do so since I find myself overqualified in both areas. So… let’s begin.

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Do less and do better.

There are countless things you could be doing with your time. Some things deserve your attention, and some things don’t. Your family deserves your attention. Reality television doesn’t. Your health deserves your attention. Your neighbors income doesn’t. Continue Reading →

Search for eHow online and you’ll be bombarded with tons of How To’s and a thriving website. But try that with eWhy and you get a practically non-existent website.

How come there are no Why To’s on the web? And yet so many How To’s?

I do get it from a certain mindset –  the world is a scary place and it’s getting more and more complicated by the day. How To’s make it easier for us to do the things we want to do.

We want to bake a cake for our soon to arrive guests yet we don’t know how, we search “How to bake a cake”; we want to pick our own locks because we’re trapped outside with no key, we search “How to pick a lock”; we want to make money online because our jobs suck, we search “How to make money online”; And on, and on, and on. (Surprisingly one of the top hits for “How to” is “How to shower”.) How To’s help us in a moment of crisis, How To’s help us learn things we weren’t taught in school, and How To’s help us help ourselves.

But isn’t WHY as, if not more, important as how?

Shouldn’t we slow down a little and ask ourselves why we’re doing so and so? Why am I baking this cake? Why am I picking my own lock? Why am I working at a job I hate? Continue Reading →

People are the beauty in everyday life.

There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story. // Mary Lou Kownacki

I think the most beautiful pieces of art I’ve ever seen are people. People in themselves. People alone. People in groups. I guess that’s why I stare. Everytime I find myself looking at another person, truly looking at them, I find myself admiring them more than I ever could the Mona Lisa. I don’t know why but in that brief moment I see more than the exterior… it’s the little details that get to me.

I see the cleaning lady changing the trash and I notice. I notice the texture of her hands, leathery, like they grew up too fast, too hard. I notice the cracked nail paint and I start thinking that maybe she takes care of everyone around her so much, her husband and daughter perhaps, that she doesn’t have time to take care of herself that much. I notice the wisps of grey in her hair, and I start thinking that maybe she’s getting too old. Pretty soon she won’t be the cleaning lady anymore. But then I notice the smile. And realize, maybe, just maybe, she’s happy. For some reason her smile tells me that although she cleans other people’s trash for a living, although she barely has time to pamper herself, and although she’s getting older; in this one moment, while she’s cleaning, she’s happy… For some reason I smile too.

It’s Saturday. I see the party girl at the club and I notice. I notice her high heels and tight mini-dress; tonight’s the one night this week she’s allowed to look like this, like she’s easy, and get away with it. I notice her sway, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth… mesmerizing. I presume she’s on drugs. I notice how, out of nowhere, she screams loudly. She isn’t being attacked, she’s just that happy right now. Her scream sounds so carefree, as if she’s throwing herself to the winds this one time, before she has to head out; after tomorrow is Monday afterall, back to the rat race. There’s a guy beside her, brooding and tall, probably her jerk of a boyfriend. And I imagine him to be a jerk, I don’t think she’d be here if he wasn’t a jerk, it doesn’t seem like her birthday. I imagine that she’s clung to him, clung to her dragon, waiting for Prince Charming to come save her. But I don’t think he’ll come. I don’t think Prince Charming goes to clubs. He always seemed like the shy type to me. Then she flings her hair back and looks at me… Wow, her smile is so fucking carefree. Like she’s in her one moment of freedom in this cruel world of ours. I hope she gets home free. I think she wants love. Someone to truly hold her. I hope she finds that person. I hope it’s me, but I have no ambitions to be that person at the moment, even if I briefly lied and said I did. I’m young and I’m a guy; I’m horny. I think I’d just want sex. For some reason, I see me in her. Maybe it’s because we’re both here, escaping reality for a brief second together. Maybe it’s because I too am looking for love… Maybe I’m just over-thinking this, but nonetheless I notice myself in her.

I sit at a local diner and I notice him. He’s eating his food. Not rushing, not slowly, at a normal pace. As you would at a proper family table, those that only exist in movies and in rare, rare real-life households. He looks like he’s been alone for a long time. Not in a he’s a loner sense, but in a he’s had to look out for himself for a long time sort of way. As if he has friends, but none of them live the life he lives after they finish hanging out and part ways for the day. As if he’s either too old and they’re too young, or he’s too young and they’re too old. I can’t quiet tell but I go with him being older. He has regret in his eyes – That comes with age. His clothes don’t look new or comfortable, so I don’t think he’s where he wanted to be in life. Maybe that’s the regret. Some past mistake, a childish mistake, a stupid mistake, an honest mistake, that ruined his life. I imagine he was foolhardy as a teen, I imagine that if he had a time machine and could go back in time to warn himself, his younger self wouldn’t listen, being that foolhardy. I imagine he knows this too by now; there’s no way, time machine or not, that he could have been prepared for this. He looks up. Up at me. Yes, that’s definitely regret. But mixed with a kind of sad endurance. As if he knows he can endure more, but it saddens him, that he has to endure at all. That he has to endure watching his peers, people the same age as him, do better in life, when he had more potential than them. I briefly take in the rest of him. I see tattoos, a mohawk… Crap, I have to leave. I see too much of me in him.

There are people you look at in life and you just see the hardness of them. Like they’ve been roughed up, tossed and turned; like a karate master’s hands. They look normal, but when you touch them, feel them, you realize the hardness of them. They’ve hit so many boards that they’ve just gotten hard, as a safety mechanism, in order to survive all the beating. And then there are those that you envy. The one’s who look soft, inside not outside. As if life’s been easy for them. But sometimes you feel sad for them, for they’re usually young, and you know that life will throw boards at them, and they too will have to get hard in order to survive, or die trying. We’re all mostly hard after a certain age. Only a rare few of us stay soft when we grow up. I think when you look at people you see them through you. By this I mean your experiences help you see certain aspects of them. Your experiences in life highlight and dimmer certain aspect of someone because it’s easier to see that which you’ve also felt. We’re all rounded characters. But the happy person will see the happy in you first. And the sad person will recognize the sadness first. For they are seeing you through them. Through the looking glass that is their eyes; tinted pink, or blue. I think a person is the most beautiful masterpiece I’ve ever seen. And I don’t think that can be replaced with a photo or painting of them (few artists, I think, have captured this). I don’t think a photo or painting can ever correctly capture the brush stroke called experience… A video camera, maybe, but there’s still something to being in that person’s presence that can’t be compared.

Stock and flow is something you learn about in economics.

To simplify it all there are two kinds of quantities in the world; stock and flow. Stock is a static value (the in-rest value): the money in your bank, and the houses on a block. Flow is the rate of change (the in-movement value): the money you make per month, or how many hairs you lose as you get older.

Economics should in no way interest you (it interests me, but I’m weird), but what should interest you is how Robin Sloan applied it to media.

In his own words:

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.

Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.

Robin goes on to talk about how with the ever growing ease of communication we have with one another (thank you technology) the more we focus on flow and neglect stock. Robin emphasis a balance between the two. That we do both.

And I agree with Robin. Stock and flow are both necessities. We need to stop, hide in our caves for a bit, and build the truly great things while remembering to come out once in a while to connect with people and let them know we’re still alive.

Yet why do so many of us focus on only one and not on both at the same time? Is it because we haven’t become aware of stock and flow yet? I don’t think so.
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Yesterday, as I sat down for one of my thinking sessions, I came to a realization that, for lack of a better word, astounded me. That realization was that we are all selfish. And not just at a minimum; entirely selfish.

None of us are selfless.

This doesn’t have to be a downer though (I’m not saying this just to ruin your day), there are many positives that come out of us being selfish. First of, the good news is that we are not intentionally selfish (which is a good thing); We are selfish as a by-product.

We are selfish as a by-product of us having feelings.

I’ll start from there.

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So, even if I haven’t truly conquered it yet, I find it only fitting that I (finally) share my own.

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