… o shit

Sometimes, you are telling your story so confidently. How elegantly you solved that solution. Then you get that one question that silences you for a couple of seconds, and all you can say is “… o shit”.

We can become so blind to the omissions in our stories that we overlook the most obvious shortcoming, that question that we overlooked and we should have an answer for.

Today was one of these days. We worked on this for a year and a half, and then this person in the audience asked, “And what if this XYZ widget in your thing here fails?”

… Silence … o shit!

Compliant by nature

From Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls:

Zijn moeder was van nature meegaand en ze rekende het tot haar voornaamste plicht om geen moeilijkheden te veroorzaken.

His mother was compliant by nature, and she considered it her first duty not to cause trouble.

Such a Murakami sentence.

The convenience of a vegetarian diet

Haloumi burger
Haloumi burger

More than a year ago, I became a vegetarian. In fact, I am a pescatarian; I do eat fish, although I try to limit that, too.

Sometimes, it’s hard to eat vegetarian. When visiting people who are not prepared for it, for example, and also at home, when the rest of the family does want to eat meat. (And I’m not the evangelical type; they have to decide for themselves.)

But it also has advantages. In a restaurant, a vegetarian diet pleasantly limits the choices to no more than a handful of options. Easy, no choice, stress.

Sometimes the choice is limited to a bare pasta, but then you’re in the wrong restaurant anyway.

Advice by Kevin Kelly for the photographer

A very enjoyable book: Excellent Advice for Living. The advice applies to photographers, too.

To move through a place you may not be permitted, act like you belong there.

Don’t create things to make money; make money so you can create things. The reward for good work is more work.

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