Doing difficult stuff, and finishing

Most of these self-help books are okay-ish. Yet many are superfluous encouragements.

We all know what is essential. Self-help feels like procrastination. We often read these books to avoid doing the real things.

However, explaining to people how to do difficult things is easier than doing the difficult stuff themselves.

Teaching people how to make their art is easier than the work of making art itself.

And to finish it.

Derek Sivers in How To Live:

Calling yourself creative doesn’t make it true. All that matters is what you’ve launched. Make finishing your top priority.

Seth Godin: Ship It!

A habit of weird

Kevin Kelly’s Advice for Living is full of these:

Prescription for popular success: do something strange. Make a habit of your weird.

Do more of what looks like work to others but is play for you.

And more selective ignorance:

Ignore what others may be thinking of you because they aren’t thinking of you.

Chris Killip and Ian Dury

I visited the Chris Killip retrospective in the Hague at the Fotomuseum Den Haag a few months ago. It was a fantastic show at the Fotomuseum Den Haag.

The Sunday after visiting the show, I attended a second-hand album festival. I was browsing through the record bins and found an interesting record from Ian Dury, Laughter, the album released in 1980. I bought the record. Later, I listened to the record and read the album cover. Chris Killip made the photos on the record cover,

Chris Killip was commissioned to make photos for the cover of Laughter, the album released in 1980 by Ian Dury and the Blockheads.

I can not find any information on the background of this collaboration. Even the AIs remain silent.


Portland, no coincidences

Steel Bridge Portland

I went to this conference in Portland, Oregon. I had never been to Portland. The most impressive thing about Portland during this short visit, I found, is its Steel Bridge (A rabbit hole on itself. By the looks of it, you would suppose it is a relic from an industrial past, but actually it is still in use. It has its own Wikipedia page). The Japanese Gardens of Portland seem great, but I did not have enough time to visit them. And not giving it priority, having seen the real thing in Japan itself.

On the plane back home, I finished reading my book (The Invisible Gorillaby Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons) and randomly took the next book from the stack on my e-reader: Aimee Bender’s The Butterfly Lampshade.

A girl with a mentally ill mother gets to live with her aunt and uncle… In Portland. When she visits them, she takes that same Red Line from the airport to the City Center to her aunt’s house, as I had been on that week.

There is no coincidence.

The book starts with a brilliant and moving phone conversation between the mother, the aunt, and the little girl.

View from the Portland Steel Bridge