How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve? – Neil Postman
Nerdy but fun, this option in Wikipedia that leads you to random wikipedia articles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The link will get you to a random articles every time you follow it.
A healthy alternative to doom-scrolling.
Convenience Store Woman (Buurtsupermens) is about an Asperger-like girl in her thirties who works as a substitute worker in a typical small Japanese neighborhood supermarket from the age of 18.
She has excellent powers of observation.
The neighborhood supermarket is a place that is completely normalized, and recovery will soon come for you, too.
Life at the neighborhood supermarket is entirely predictable for Keiko, and she loves it. However, she meets deadbeat Shiraha, and he changes her life. Shiraha’s arrival throws her structured life into disarray and turns it into chaos.
Just in time, she realizes that she was born a Convenience Store Woman, and that is where she finds happiness.
It is a strange story about fitting into society by not fitting in, which seems to be a theme in Sayuku Murata’s work, as Earthlings (Aardbewoners) has a similar theme. However, that book is way more grim than the light-hearted style of Convenience Store Woman.
In Tanizaki’s The Key (Dutch: De sleutel), an elderly couple live somewhat detached lives from each other. Both keep a secret diary. They write about their lives from their perspectives, speculating about the other’s motivations. Both know from each other that the other keeps a diary. They both suspect each other of reading the other’s diary and leave messages in their diaries intended for the other to read. But both write they do not read each other’s diary. But only the reader knows that.
They lead a bizarre sex life with each other, with the man more or less voluntarily drugging the woman, and only in that situation can they genuinely make passionate love. After the man dies (during the act), the woman starts reading his diary (she writes in her diary). She continues her diary, and a bizarre spin ensues, where the truth turns out to be quite different.
The woman’s diary is reminiscent of Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book.
In I am a Cat (Ik ben een kat in Dutch), a rather headstrong and intelligent observant cat moves into a teacher’s home. The book follows the cat’s observations and interactions with the teacher and his circle of friends, providing an interesting perspective on human behavior.
The cat, with a critical eye, narrates his master’s inflated behavior, revealing the human tendency to feign superiority and the struggle between habits and customs. In a humorous twist, he exposes the triviality that surrounds his master.
Good taste, to me, is liking what you see and knowing why you like it.
Seth Godin writes in The Practice:
… the ability to know what your audience or clients are going to want before they do.
… watch what the market does and learn from that.
To me, that is too much of a market-oriented view of taste. The second statement also disagrees somewhat with the first.
I don’t think you learn about good taste by observing the market. You only learn what is out there and what the people with the most enormous mouths say about what they like.
Good taste is about appreciation for the specific. The market is about appreciation for the average.
Encouragement for the creative mind.
Reassurance is futile. Attitude is a skill. Produce with intent. The work is too important to be left to how we feel. Instead, trust the process and do the work.
Change your actions first. We become what we do.
Peculiar means specific. The standard narrative pushes us to fit in, but through specificity and peculiarity, we stand out. Change comes from idiosyncratic voices. Be more specific and less generic.
Attachment to status, outcome, and opinions brings nothing. There is no such thing as a foundation. The process of engaging with the genre, the audience, the change ís the foundation. Become unattached.
The practice is about doing it, more than once, regularly, until it becomes… practice.
Ship on a schedule.
Credentials are just a piece of paper. Instead, create a body of work that shows you have insight, experience, and concern.
The work is an infinite game. No winners, no losers. (The reward for work is more work, said Tom Sachs.)
Determination counts (versus inspiration).
Chop wood, carry water.
Mise en place is preparation. The muse shows up when we do the work.
Seek desirable difficulty to seek improvement. Be uncomfortable.
Genre states your idiosyncratic work. Generic is a trap. Learning a skill is attitude and cohort.
Constraints feed creativity.
Be paranoid about mediocrity.
Many, many quotable sentences. A companion to The War of Art and Do The Work.
Last week, my first wisdom tooth was pulled.
It wasn’t that bad—fifteen minutes of prying. And I have two more.
Forgot to ask for the molar. So, no picture.
