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The Sociopaths, The Clueless, And The Losers
So, you’ve never heard of the “gaping void”? Hugh MacLeod? “Ignore Everybody“? Here’s a taste of Hugh’s work:
Of course, I fall into Hugh’s “Losers” category, but considering the alternatives I feel pretty good.
For you fellow software weenies, here’s what Grady Booch (in Masterminds Of Programming) has to say:
There’s a delightful site called Gaping Void. He’s basically a PR-type person and his claim to fame is he does art on the back of business cards. But he has this riff which has been very popular about how to be creative. You might point your readers to that one.
Uh, what are you waiting for? Scurry on over to Hugh’s site and sign up for his daily cartoon. You won’t be disappointed and you’ll feed your famished mind with some tasty food. Yum yum!
If You Want To Write
Brenda Ueland’s “If You Want To Write” is not just about learning how to write. As Guy Kawasaki has noted, it’s a moving tribute to the human spirit and the innate ability to create that resides in each of us.
If you’re not into spirituality, you won’t buy into what I’m going to say next. IYWTW impacted me like some of the best spiritual works that I’ve read; but without using explicit, spiritual terms like “enlightenment, awakening, surrender, non-duality, universal consciousness“, etc. The best spiritual works are hard to describe and summarize in words. They must be felt and experienced via graceful tingles and enveloping shivers down your spine. They can’t be understood by the rational mind. IYWTW is one such work.
If you want to explore spirituality from an unusual and different point of view, then you may want check out IYWTW because it contains much more than its title suggests. The book brought, if only for a few brief moments, “the peace that passeth all understanding” to me, and it may for you.
Sacrifice Or Enjoyment?
On the recommendation of Fred Brooks, I read Dorothy Sayers’s “The Mind Of The Maker” after finishing his delightful “The Design Of Design“. TMOTM explores the possible connections and similarities between human and divine creativity. This passage triggered a twinge of gratitude within me.
When a job is undertaken from necessity, or from a grim sense of disagreeable duty, the worker is self-consciously aware of the toils and pains he undergoes, and will say: “I have made such and such sacrifice for this.” But when the job is a labor of love, the sacrifices will present themselves to the worker – strange as it may seem – in the guise of enjoyment. – Dorothy Sayers
Why gratitude? Because I’ve been lucky, incredibly lucky, to have worked on enjoyable projects doing work I love for the vast majority of my career. Oh sure, there were temporary spikes of perceived “poor me” thinking on each and every one of those projects, but at end game, I felt like I contributed something of value while enjoying the work at the same time. I think, but am not sure, that most people can’t quite say that. Some people hate to go to their jobs every single day.
Sayers is an eloquent writer and there’s quite a bit of good stuff in TMOTM, but I felt my mind wandering often. I was too turned off by the religious-specific passages and references. Nevertheless, here are a few other gems that kept me reading till the end of the book:
Every thought is an inseparable trinity of memory, understanding, and will.
The stronger the creative pulse, the more powerful is the urge away from any identification of the ego with creation.
The artist does not see life as a problem to be solved, but as a medium for creation.
Throw It Away
I’m currently in the process of helping a friend write his fourth book by providing feedback on the sections that he writes. As part of the creation process, he’s been discarding big chunks of work after revisiting them and finding that they don’t support the message he’s trying to communicate.
I don’t know about you, but I find it tough to throw away any work that I do (source code, models, algorithm designs, blog posts) – even when I know that it’s not good. I interpret this behavior as an ego-centric flaw and that’s why I admire people who can detect and chuck their crap. As the Buddhists say “Attachment brings suffering“.
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak” – Hans Hofmann
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
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