At the risk of being the out-of-touch, crotchety “get off my lawn” guy, I think social media hasn’t been helpful in regard to our current cultural predicament (see Capitol, rioting).
My friend Phil sent me a link to this PBS Frontline documentary:
I watched the program a couple of nights ago. Pretty chilling.
What really stuck in my head was when one of the experts being interviewed said that in pre-social media times, a person who believed in a conspiracy theory was usually a “lone wolf” crackpot. But through the “magic” of the interwebs, they could now not only find like-addle-minded folks, but also amplify their beliefs in the social media echo chamber.
It’s like the old saying “A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on” – only now that lie isn’t galloping, it’s rocketing.
Did you notice, in the footage and photos of the Capitol coup attempt, how many of the rioters had their phones out, livestreaming their seditious acts or “doin’ it for the ‘gram”?
Seth Godin (yes, I know, I’m a fanboy) totally understands the rules of the game.
Seth’s entire post is here. Well worth a read. His wrap-up is something I hope the Zucks and Jacks of the world take heed of:
Amen, Brother Seth! It won’t solve all the problems that America has, but it’ll tone down the rhetoric and the lies that are designed to garner attention.
The pandemic has been a boon for my reading habits. I don’t watch a lot of TV — although I did plow through all four seasons of The Good Place and loved it — so I had plenty of spare time to curl up with a good book. Or eBook.
I like to zig when everyone else zags, so while I did get a eReader, it’s not a Kindle. (Take that Bezos! I’m sure losing my business might sink your whole operation.) I bought a Kobo. I said “Kobo” not Koko!
Not only was my Kobo Clara HD cheaper than a comparable Kindle, but it has two features I really love:
Any books I borrow from the Cincinnati Public Library via Overdrive are automagically added to my Kobo.
Any web articles I save via the Pocket brower add-on (and I save a lot of articles this way) also are added automagically.
So I’m never short of free reading material. (Speaking of free, this is not a paid endorsement of Kobo readers… but I AM open to a bit of “influencer” cash… Kobo, ring me up!)
I also set up a Goodreads account recently, to start tracking the books I’ve read. Here’s my most recent half-dozen:
That’s a pretty good cross-section of my tastes, which definitely lean toward band biographies, “light” fiction/memoirs and humorous essays. I’m not a book snob by any means. Any book someone enjoys reading is a “good book” in my book.
Ray Bradbury, an all-time great
Tamara Shopsin’s book on the list above was good, but I thought her book Stupid, Arbitrary Goal was fantastic. David Rakoff’s essays are great. And better still, my friend Jay got a shout-out in the acknowledgements of Fraud (or maybe it was in Don’t Get Too Comfortable… I’ve been reading a lot of Rakoff.) Here’s what Jay said about him:
David was a great writer—really funny and poignant in equal measure. And just a wonderful guy. I edited him when I worked at Outside. It was very kind of him to give me a shout-out. I miss his voice and I miss him. He was taken from us much, much too soon.
I agree 100% with Jay’s “funny and poignant in equal measure” assessment. And yes, he left us way too soon.
Pandemic lockdown has been a real bummer in many ways, but it’s created more time for reading, and that’s certainly a plus.
As someone who prides himself on knowing a little bit about a lot of subjects (some serious, most not-so-serious), this quote really rang true to me:
“You can’t just be you. You have to double yourself. You have to read books on subjects you know nothing about. You have to travel to places you never thought of traveling. You have to meet every kind of person and endlessly stretch what you know.”
Mary Wells Lawrence, advertising exec in the 60s and the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company
Ms. Wells Lawrence made her mark in the ad world (“plop, plop, fizz, fizz” ring a bell?), but her quote about how to exercise your creative muscles is certainly applicable well beyond the realm of advertising. I think it’s sound advice for any career field… and for life in general. Our brains need stimuli to grow, our souls need enrichment to thrive.
One of my favorite words (yes, I’m a certified WordNerd™) is “polymath.”
I’m more of a poly-dabbler, but you have to start somewhere, right? And I do think learning about new and different things makes it easier to find connections and solve problems.
The world seems more polarized today. Us vs. them. But how much do you really know about “them” when you’re trapped in your own bubble? By reading more, by engaging with more people across the spectrum, we all can grow not just our creativity, but also our empathy.
HT to the Gaping Void blog for putting the Mary Wells Lawrence quote on my radar. If you’re looking for some creative stimulus on a regular basis, that blog is a great way to start to “double yourself.”
Hugh MacLeod gets it. He (and others like him – Austin Kleon, Seth Godin, et al.) do their best to bring out the best in us. Hugh’s 2009 book Ignore Everybody (And 39 Other Keys to Creativity) is quite inspiring. His blog, which features a sketch of his and some musings on life, is highly recommended. Sign up and each post will go directly to your email inbox.
This Monday’s post was an excerpt from Ignore Everybody. It’s about how each of us is born creative, but our creativity can be stifled over time.
Reconnecting with that “wee voice” as Hugh calls it, can add color (colors, actually) to your life. It’s not a “nice-to-have” — it’s a “need-to-have” for your soul.
The wee voice didn’t show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. There’s something you haven’t said, something you haven’t done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now.
Hugh MacLeod, in Ignore Everybody
“Don’t let them take away your crayons” is a message we need to hear over and over. Because so many of our societal “norms” (including our education system) are designed to steal them away from us, and because our “adult” brain is very good at trying to overrule our inner creative child.
They’re only crayons. You didn’t fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?
I’ve heard (and read) many writing pros who say “writing is editing.”
This piece by Meaghan O’Connell in The Cut vividly brings the concept of multiple revisions to life. Here’s a quick excerpt:
Imagine taking the very sharpest thought you had each day for two years and then adding it to a pile. If someone walked by and looked at your pile of best thoughts, they’d think you were a genius. They might see your thoughts and feel things. It might be an encounter with the sublime. This is the promise of revision and the good news. The bad news is that to get there, you have to start by rereading your own work.
I totally understand what she’s saying, and have no doubt that all great writing has been reviewed and revised to achieve that greatness.
On the other hand, I’m a bit of a Seth Godin disciple, and he’s a big fan of “ship your work.” If you keep waiting (and editing) for your words to be perfect, you’ll never actually deliver a finished piece. (Seth’s “one blog post a day for a week” challenge a few years ago was the kick in the trousers I needed to actually start “shipping” some writing of my own, after having set up a WordPress blog a couple of years earlier and then being afraid to actually post anything.)
The two concepts — polished prose and printed pieces — aren’t mutually exclusive. But I think too many aspiring writers spend way too much time agonizing over the edits, and not enough time “shipping” more of their work out into the world. Writing is tough enough as it is… if you ponder the multiple rounds of edits that await you after your “shitty first draft” (as Anne Lamott calls it), you may find the process even more daunting, and you might never put pen to paper.
I understand and respect the editing process… in fact, I love it. But this is a tiny little speck of a blog, it ain’t no Great American Novel. (It ain’t even grammatically correct sometimes.) I’d rather err on the side of “done” — and I do think that shipping a greater quantity has actually helped improve the quality over the years as well. [You, faithful reader (singular), may beg to differ.]
In other words, if you came looking for the “pile of great thoughts” that Ms. O’Connell mentions, you’ll be sorely disappointed. But if you’re OK with a pile of… er, stuff… then this is just the blog for you!
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