Inspiration

The Latin word for Inspiration is Inspirare which means to breathe in or blow out.

Most people like to think of inspiration that comes to us like the air we breathe. I much prefer the image of breathing life into something.

Inspiration isn’t this mystical entity that decides to bless us with its presence. In fact, inspiration doesn’t precede the work. More often than not, it is the other way around. We do the work and then the inspiration comes.

To doubt our work is to doubt ourselves

It’s one thing to worry about the joke you wrote isn’t very good.

It’s another thing to say, “I can’t tell a good joke.”

Doubt will always be present in any creative endeavor.

We can doubt the work (in which we may be too close to even objectively see it) but we don’t need to doubt ourselves.

Data is beautiful

Most people understand that there are now 8 billion people that occupy Earth but it is so hard for each of us to wrap our brain around it. Human beings struggle to comprehend 8 billion of anything, much less infinity. A great storyteller, however, can use that data and show us something we all know but have never actually seen.

HT Alasdair Rae for creating a masterpiece. I highly recommend clicking the link to scroll through the different maps he created.

Seven years and 360,000 words later

Yesterday marked seven years of consecutive blog posts totaling 360,000 words.

I could go back and rewrite so many of these posts differently. Perhaps, even better. But other than the day of corrections, they stay as is. Regardless of how my mind has changed (and it has dramatically since starting this blog). Because this is a process, an evolution of ideas to be shared.

Indeed, whatever you decide to put yourself into, you get.

Missing ingredients

It’s hard to bake a cake without eggs. Not much available to substitute if you didn’t already plan ahead for it.

How can you be expected to follow through on your art without all the ingredients in hand?

Substitutions are difficult to come by. Having enough to begin is the key.

Stepping up

Every time we pick up our phones, there is evidence that our world is deteriorating. Everything is chalked up to society’s problems: climate change, destabilization of democracy, the threat of nuclear war, the economy…

It’s a miracle how things hold together. And the fear of it falling apart is always looming in the back of our minds. No one wants to go back to the way things were, and yet at the same time, most are dissatisfied with the way things are. It can become a toxic relationship to open up your phone and see things not getting better.

Progress is hard to measure day-to-day. We often don’t see it in ourselves much less in the world around us. Which means we need to find a different way to measure. Progress at the macroscale can be seen in the micro. The school teacher goes the extra mile to help a student understand the value of algebra or the person stops by their neighbors just to check in. Millions upon millions of these small kind acts happen every day.

Perhaps the way we can measure progress is not to wait for someone in the world to step up but instead, we can step up to the world around us.

Paying for choice architecture

A mistake people often make about mental health professionals, gurus, coaches, and spiritual leaders is that you can’t pay them to solve your problems like you would a plumber.

Plumbing problems are defined and set at a market rate to complete a job. The pipe was broken and now it is fixed. This is vastly different when talking to someone about what direction you want to move your life, whether or not you should quit a job or how to resolve trauma from the past. You are often paying for something different–clarity. To help make sense of what has happened and where you want to go.

In the end, you still need to have the guts to make a decision about what you want to do with your life (even if you found someone you trust enough to give you an answer). It is still up to you.