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Overidentification
It really isn’t always your responsibility. Timing won’t always work out right away. It won’t always feel like this. People don’t ignore or reject you, they’re living their own lives. Things will not always turn out as you prefer or expect. It doesn’t always get worse. Things are constantly changing. Just trying is enough. P.S.,…
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A trick to consistency…
One of the challenges to getting anything related to creativity done is time and motivation. A solution here is to have an operation that you can do in mere seconds, so you can call your creative work complete for the day. I write in Creative Doing: The goal here is to simplify your creative operation,…
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Don’t do it for the awards
Willem Dafoe, Leo, Will Smith, Diane Warren, are just the top of a much longer list.
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Two sides of the same coin
Reality is skewed by perspective. You choose where you look. By accepting reality, and truth—every part of it, the saddest, most empty, hopeless, despairing truths—and not resisting it, you’ll start the journey to finding whatever it is you’re meant to seek.
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Come for the creativity, stay for the expertise
One of the gripes I’ve heard about people wanting a career as a creator is, it’s pretty much just foolishness. Dancing, attention seeking, and comedy. I can’t say it’s untrue, but it’s also an incredibly surface impression. What’s less obvious is creators that don’t develop their careers come and go; sure, some people experience immense…
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Creative hangovers
In Creative Doing, I write about the judge vs. the madman; in short, you and I have two sides to us. There’s the madman, who produces and revels in chaotic energy, and the judge, who protects us and acts as a filter. For many of us, the judge gets stronger throughout the years and the…
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The energy edge
When you express something, you’re transferring energy (or vibes) to someone else. When you record these expressions—either through writing, music, product features and software, visual art, or film—you are creating media and content. It’s incredibly subtle, and subjective too. So practicing how to accurately communicate what you want to communicate is always worth it, so…
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Quantity as an unblocking and organizing force
You don’t think to write, you write to think. If you’re stuck on coming up with a through-line for your work, a driving force that organizes it, just try writing 100 of them. You may stop at four, or ten, or whatever—when you realize you’ve come across the right one—and you’ll get unblocked. That happened…
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100 different offers
People don’t reject you, they reject your offer. This applies to pitches, demos, job interviews, and pretty much every other thing that requires collaboration. The solution here is to change the offer. If you’re what you’re offering, change what you bring to the table and learn a new skill. If you don’t think it’s a…
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Less force, more fun
One rainy night, a couple of years ago, I stayed up late playing Pokemon. If you must know, I was grinding and gaining experience points, motivated by a streak of catches and an increasing multiplier. I knew better than that, because the video game was interrupting valuable sleep and sleep hygiene. Still, I felt like…