Category: Thoughts

I am the guiltiest of guilty when it comes to this. I have, and have been consistently for most of my life, overencumbered by things that I have accepted upon myself to do.

Quite often without the commensurate income that I should expect with those heapings of responsibilities.

Even now, as I wade through employment, a stack of creative projects (my own), the consultations on others’ or co-owned creative projects, the daily, systematic routines I attempt to adhere to (mostly in vain), and the dozen or so long-ranging goals I’ve set for myself, I think:

WTF.

Things need doing. This is as true now as it’s ever been.

Everyone wants an immediate response. Everyone feels that their query is the most important thing.

For them, that might be true. Maybe for some, it actually is true.

But in all likelihood, that email that just came in – probably not up there. No matter what they want you to believe.

If I’m honest, I sometimes long for a simpler time. I love – looovvveee – the conveniences of the modern world. Online shopping? Yes please. International flights? You betcha! AI? Bring it on.

But, there had to be an unrivaled enjoyment to a day of labor in the sun; a family dinner; a book read by candlelight.

I understand that maybe not everyone would have the privilege. But, there are certain dreams each of us have that maybe not everyone understands.

I’ve started (again) trying to handle less, while simultaneously finishing more. one big thing, three medium things, and five little things daily.

My big things the past few days have been dealing with tasks that should have been dealt with weeks ago, if not months…

The medium things are things that are pressing, but have only recently come in. The five little things are quite easy and manageable.

The trick is to not do the five little tasks, and maybe add more, rather than doing the large one.

It’s okay to have bad ideas. I wish I could say that no idea is a bad one. But that’s just not true. A number of ideas are absolutely terrible.

And that’s okay. That’s what we have to learn.

In the pursuit of making something meaningful, you might come up with a thousand ideas that are complete trash.

In the ideating stage, just thinking up something should be fun. Otherwise, you could discouraged.

Don’t think about whether it’s possible to pull off, or whether it will make money.

I took a course on innovation – a long time ago. And one of the first activities was to come up with ten non-traditional uses for a paperclip.

Didn’t have to be good. Didn’t have to be practical. Just ten uses that weren’t clipping paper.

Getting your brain to shift gears allows you to think of things that might change the world.

Partly I’m still thinking of Hadestown. Partly, I read a passage from Mark Twain’s On Writing and Publishing, and I’ve been thinking of language.

Here: “There had been no death before the case of Cornelius Lean which had arisen and terminated in death since the special rules had been drawn up.”

I know every single one of those words. I understand their meaning. In their totality, though, it’s as if I’m staring at a blank wall.

Now Twain,I think, felt the same way. He had read that in a morning paper, and went on to say, “By the context I know what it means, but you are without that light and will be sure to get out of it a meaning which the writer of it was not intending to convey.”

Nope, Mark, I got no meaning out of it at all. My only guess is that a century ago, the meaning would have been much less obtuse.

And I was thinking that, as language changes, how much of a writer’s meaning do we lose?

There can be modern translations, sure, but then we also find ourselves at the mercy of the translator. Not that we should need English translated, mind you, but give Shakespeare a cold reading, and if your not familiar with the poetry, you’ll be probably end up lost.