vision statement

Short

My top-level values are love, justice, and community. My other values are self-determination, equity, and freedom.

on making your art, doing the stuff that only you can do, freedom, and being fully human

some person, podcast, or hyperlink in an article told me to listen to this graduation speech by neil gaiman so i did. it was pretty great and this chunk felt pretty relevant to me and also to the work i want to do in the world. 

“…make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do.

The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.

The things I’ve done that worked the best were the things I was the least certain about, the stories where I was sure they would either work, or more likely be the kinds of embarrassing failures people would gather together and talk about until the end of time. They always had that in common: looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes. While I was doing them, I had no idea.

I still don’t. And where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?

And sometimes the things I did really didn’t work. There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted. Some of them never even left the house. But I learned as much from them as I did from the things that worked.” — neil gaiman

at first, my takeaways were personal:

1. no one else has my voice, mind, story, vision, or experiences. that means that there actually are things that only i can produce.
2. starting out copying is fine, normal even. we find our own voices by copying others. like, literally that’s how we learn to speak. so the fact that it’s the same in terms of creating work is actually unsurprising; maybe even obvious.
3. just put out work. in hindsight, people will call it good, bad, whatever. but people can only call it something if it’s out there. 
4. this line: “…Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family, who attended Universities, were cured of long ago.”

then i started to connect that first point to the systemic. when i think about the fundamental ways we need to shift our thinking about work, it seems increasingly clear to me that individuality is the solution. automation and overconsumption (both of which are driven by blind capitalism) will destroy us if we don’t get out of these crazy hedonistic cycles.

by recognizing that my experiences create a unique vantage point, it’s clear that there is work only i can produce. then, if i create or find for myself systems that support my livelihood while also allowing me to do the work that only i can do, i will never be made obsolete. this replicated at societal scale means that all people have value and need to be supported to do their work. the type of work only one person can do is likely to be highly complex, connected, humanity-centered, and experiential. we could then really let the machines do all the boring stuff and be totally freed up to live life well and be fully human.

i’m still not totally sure what it means to be fully human, but it’s a question i’m increasingly interested in.

writing: 15:51
​spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 7:41

making progress, slowly but surely

i started this year with a commitment to myself. i called it constrained creativity:

“…everyday. fewer than 200 words. 10 minutes or less (including editing, not including research). whatever is on my mind. public. (mostly) not fact checked.”

i mostly started it to get over my writing anxiety. eventually, i realized it was helpful to have my thoughts in a sharable format. now i spend 20-30 minutes writing and lightly editing posts every day. it’s been a journey, but i’m doing it and now it feels strange to not! habit built.

a few weeks ago, my friend miriam told me she used my blog post about the safety pin backlash to have a conversation with a friend. the first thought when i heard that was “wow! this is great and also fucking terrifying.”

neither of them agreed (fully) with me, but she said having a piece of content neither of them created helped them walk through each of their issues related to the subject matter. they used it as a foundation on which to discuss about their own thoughts.

honestly (truly), one part of me is freaking out about this. i’ve heard of a few other stories like this from other friends and it’s insane. people are reading my thoughts and then sharing them with other friends. what??!?!?!?!!

part of the thinking behind writing in a public place was so that i could share it. but it also means that if other people want to share it and discuss it, they can. at the beginning of this year i couldn’t even hit publish more than once a week and now here we are.

monthly post numbers:

jan: 12
feb: 3
mar: 4
apr: 3
may: 9
june: 16
july: 21
aug: 29
sept: 36
oct: 26
nov: 29
dec: 36 (including this post)

i don’t really have any plans on stopping and listening to this interview with ezra klein on the podcast longform is really inspiring me (thanks for the tip ac valdez from show about race).

anyway, all that to say… i guess we’re doing this. here’s to 2017!

writing: 10:01
​spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 22:56

on moving from objects and people that have served their purpose in your life

i’ve seen some pretty harsh critiques of marie kondo’s ‘life-changing magic of tidying up,’ but i really enjoyed it. as 2016 winds down, i’m thinking a lot about one of her more poignant lessons. to paraphrase (longer passage excerpt below): everything you ever own need not be used for its full lifetime. not every item of clothing needs to be worn threadbare by you and not every object you possess needs to be kept until it no longer functions. some things are good for an instant, a season or two, years, or forever. it’s important to be able to know when that function has been served and then be able to let that thing go.

in a strange twist, she also applied that general thinking to people in our lives. with people it seems like the “usefulness” is more about teaching lessons. and, just like objects, sometimes the lessons are learned quickly and others they’re learned over longer stretches of time.

but with both objects and people, they’re good for a time, and then the time comes to move on. in my view, this is natural. in our consumerist society, this truth is paradoxical. on one hand, we have little problem gathering and disposing of things, but on the other we hoard things that are borderline useless and for entirely too long.

i really believe that to truly cherish what’s important, you must move on from things that have outlived their purpose. as i’m planning out my personal retreat, i’m carrying this thought in with me and seeing what unfolds. who knows where that’ll lead me…

When you come across something that’s hard to discard, consider carefully why you have that specific item in the first place. When did you get it and what meaning did it have for you then? Reassess the role it plays in your life. If, for example, you have some clothes that you bought but never wear, examine them one at a time. Where did you buy that particular outfit and why? If you bought it because you thought it looked cool in the shop, it has fulfilled the function of giving you a thrill when you bought it. Then why did you never wear it? Was it because you realized that it didn’t suit you when you tried it on at home? If so, and if you no longer buy clothes of the same style or color, it has fulfilled another important function—it has taught you what doesn’t suit you. In fact, that particular article of clothing has already completed its role in your life, and you are free to say, “Thank you for giving me joy when I bought you,” or “Thank you for teaching me what doesn’t suit me,” and let it go.

Every object has a different role to play. Not all clothes have come to you to be worn threadbare. It is the same with people. Not every person you meet in life will become a close friend or lover. Some you will find hard to get along with or impossible to like. But these people, too, teach you the precious lesson of who you do like, so that you will appreciate those special people even more.

When you come across something that you cannot part with, think carefully about its true purpose in your life. You’ll be surprised at how many of the things you possess have already fulfilled their role. By acknowledging their contribution and letting them go wth gratitude, you will be able to truly put the things you own, and you life, in order. In the end, all that will remain are the things that you really treasure.

To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose. To get rid of what you no longer need is neither wasteful nor shameful. Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deeply in a close or drawer that you have forgotten its existence? … Let them go, with gratitude. Not  only you, but your things as well, will feel clear and refreshed when you are done tidying.

—Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, pages 60-61

final thoughts from seneca: figure out what you need and shape your life based on that

“When the spirit has prepared itself beforehand, it is not so clear just how much real strength it possesses; the surest indications are the ones it gives on the spur of the moment, when it views annoyances in amateur not merely unruffled but serene, when it refrains from flying into a fit of tempter or picking a quarrel with someone, when it sees to everything it requires by refraining from hankering after this and that… Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them to cause we need them but because we had them. Look at the number of things we buy because others have bought them or because they’re most people’s houses. One of the causes of the troubles that beset us is the way our lives are guided by the example of others; instead of being set to rights by reason we’re seduced by convention. There are things that we shouldn’t wish to initiate if they were done by only a few, but when a lot of people have started doing them we follow along, as though a practice became more respectable by becoming more common. One they have become general, mistaken ways acquire in our minds the status of correct ones…

These are the people who pass on vices, transmitting them from one character to another. One used to think that the type of person who spreads tales was as bad as any: but there are persons who spread vices. And association with them does a lot of damage. For even if its success is not immediate, it leaves a seed in the mind, and even after we’ve said goodbye to them the evil follows us, to rear its head at some time or other in the future…” — seneca, letter cxxiii (123)

this passage had a lot of gems for me.

1. the fact that the work of “preparing the spirit beforehand” doesn’t show up immediately just resonated with me for some reason. i think that’s related to what i wrote the other day about seneca’s thoughts on how living virtuously takes practice. that type of effort/work doesn’t show up instantly like some other work does. but those moments when the effort pays off are important (like refraining to fly off into a temper).
2. ​so much of what we live with these days is unnecessary, but we use it because we have it. until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. i’m pretty interested in how consciously choosing to have less can teach us to need less. i wrote the other day about seneca’s thoughts on essentials vs luxuries and now i’m thinking of marie kondo’s work, too…
3. ​avoid spending time with people who are vice-spreaders. it’s harder to shed the influence of their thoughts than one would think. definitely taking that thinking with me into 2017. and a related point…
4. one of the causes of our troubles is that we guide our lives based on the lives of others. this is just generally a problematic reality. when few people have done something, we’re fine to not follow. but as things grow in popularity we follow along as if things get more respectable the more common they are. but that just isn’t always a causal pathway. lots of people can collectively be into some fucked up shit just as easily as they can be into good things. but i always have been and will likely always be someone who tries to be critical of all things in that lane. stopping to ask why and whether or not that thing is good for me is super important. i think about this with television and binge watching series’ all the time. do i really need to be caught up on game of thrones because everyone else is?

the big point behind this passage for me, and really all of seneca’s writing (this is the last seneca post i think), is this: figure out what you need and shape your life based on that; not what others say they need. the process of defining what you as an individual needs is one that i don’t actually see people being supported to do. school doesn’t do it and society does it in the worst, back-handed, implicit, and generally oppressive ways. i really like alain de botton’s school of life and now i’m wondering if there’s some way to have something like that here in the states…

hm!

writing: 16:18
​spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 7:18