Viewing Category: Inspiration
I've been in a period of enforced solitude, which is hard for me to bear because my summer was socially excellent. I was out in the sun almost every day, forming connections with the people at the local Starbucks and marveling at the variety of life experience that had opened to me. Then a few weeks ago, it got cold, and the economy started sinking into the mire; as a result a lot of us are hunkering down for a tough winter. My mood has not been helped by the nature of the computer programming work I'm doing either, as it demands such intense concentration that my personality essentially fades away. I've developed a bad case of programmer-face, which is that impassive, mask-like expression with deadened eyes. Friends have actually stopped to ask if I'm OK, because they're not used to seeing me like this.
solitude: the inside vantage point
On the bright side, an interesting thing about this period of solitude is that with the absence of the social pleasantries has come a recognition that I need to re-establish my self-reliance in facing certain life questions. Since no one else is around, I'm the only one available to address the following awful truths:
- I'm bored with the immediate life possibilities.
- I'm not really fulfilled by the kind of work I'm doing.
- I'm still lonely despite having lots of great friends. Lots!
It's only been in the quiet of my isolated state that I could even hear these questions echo around the inside my head. The summer, fraught with pleasant distractions, kept me from worrying too much about them.
In a past life, I would have been kind of mad about being distracted from tackling those big life questions. Being somewhat mellower now, I recognize that these "distractions" are actually the aspect of living that I value most. I've been so serious, speculatively concerned, and too darn anxious about not getting things right. It's easy to develop this kind of tunnel vision, I think, when one allows external expectations (social, cultural, or otherwise) to out-weigh the importance of letting life happen around you. I'm sure that for many people this is a pretty obvious observation, but I think some of my fellow procrastinators and perfectionists might understand what I'm saying.
the corrective action
There are two forces that normally battle within me: the desire for taking control of my life and the desire for inspiration and calling. The former is a rational/control-based desire, and the latter is more about feelings and emotions. The desire to steer my life in a self-beneficial manner is all about control and reason, while the desire for inspiration is more like that summery feeling blowing me to wherever it might take me. I can see that I really want to integrate them together.
The first step that comes to mind is to reframe both desires as one principle: Inspiration and hope can come from anywhere, but answers and action have to come from inside of me. This leads to the following line of reasoning:
- I'm bored? Do something to create new possibilities to break the cycle of ennui.
- My work feels lacking? Make bolder choices about the kind of work I believe will be fulfilling.
- I feel isolated? Make an effort to be involved in people's lives.
This is a simple and concrete diagnosis, but it's much easier said than done.
taking on motivation
For me, the main obstacle is the lack of motivation. For example, I've been feeling really blah for the past couple of weeks, and it was really affecting my mood at the few social events I've attended that should have been a lot of fun. I spent a good chunk of a day sitting on a giant warm sunny rock in the mountains with some of my best friends enjoying wine, aged artisan cheeses and gourmet fruit tarts. And that very same day, 100 miles south, I was in Harvard Square with my awesome sister in a beautiful church listening to Sarah Vowell read from her latest book, followed by yummy pan-asian food at Wagamama and a taste of fresh yogurt and berries from Berryline. It should have been a perfect day, yet it was not. And what sucked even more was that I didn't know why I felt that way.
A few days later, reflecting on this sad turn of events, I impulsively indulged in some self-pity and lamented out loud, I am so lame. The very next instant, the truthfulness of the statement stuck: I was being lame, and I had subconsciously known this for weeks.
This was very liberating, and here's why: I have a very strong aversion to the mediocre, which is something that I'd forgotten until recently. Being lame is a form of mediocrity, or perhaps more accurately mediocrity as a value promotes lameness. I'm being a little loose with the definition here, but what I'm saying is that I believe I was withdrawing from the world because I intuitively knew I was being lame, and therefore was not doing anything to raise the level of "interesting" around me. I had found the bottom of my well of personal values, and having landed, I could now look up and see how far I had to climb to get out.
There are two familiar motivation-killers that stand in the way of getting out of my well of lameness: uncertainty and fear. I don't want to waste my time doing something that I don't know will pay off, and that uncertainty leads to anxiety. I also don't want to lose what I already have, so that creates timidity and more hesitation. This all manifests as a kind of low-level fear and desire to cling to people. And this is preventing me from changing my life, charging ahead to try something really different that could very well lead to a more interesting life.
forging two new rules
While I could self-prescribe a number of concrete "action items" to manage my way out of the doldrums, I know it won't work for me because this is a form of deferral. Next actions, while immediately doable, are just steps along the way to a larger goal in the future. This is a delayed reward, and I just am not wired to appreciate small steps despite their proven effectiveness. And if I'm not wired for this, a plan comprised of next actions serve as a very poor motivator when it comes to a team consisting of me, myself, and I.
Fortunately, I happen to also know that I am strongly value and character driven. So the answer to my conundrum of being bored and lonely will come from following this simple rule:
Face down those fears every day by daring to do something that creates something new and positive.
This is a value that I believe in, and by facing fear I am building up own character. That's pretty cool! And to acknowledge that small steps eventually yield great rewards, I can face small fears: helping out an acquaintance despite some imagined inconvenience, for example. It could also be writing a blog post, or replying to an email. Maybe it's planting a flower, or giving someone an idea that they make their own. The only criterion I have is that whatever it is, it should leaves a tangible mark or impression--large or small--on the real world. That is worth doing, and it is a role I want to play.
The second simple rule is possibly even more important:
Lighten up, don't be so serious, and remember most things are not of dire importance.
If I'm following this rule right, then what I do will be uplifting and fun for everyone around me. This is the feeling of a warm summer sun, lunching on a big rock in the mountains, celebrating and promoting those moments of life that make it really worth while.
So that's where I'm at right now, and I'm pretty danged sure that this is the right way to go.
I am kind of a sucker for interesting marketing and creativity, so when I got a note from Marketing Fresh Peel about their creativity contest, I was curious enough to check it out. The idea is to take a photo that represents creativity and stick it up on Flickr; the details for submission are on the website.
That's already pretty cool, but the icing on the cake was the prize: a Metamemes ThinkCube. I was not familiar with this product at all, but here's what the website says:
ThinkCube is a complete solution that provides you with all of the tools you need to innovate. It represents the culmination of 10 years of research in creative thinking and synthesizes today's leading creativity tools, techniques, and processes. Whether you use it alone or in a group, ThinkCube trains your brain and lets you exercise your creative muscles.
That's interesting, but what really got me was what it looks like:
Creativity pr0n! I am all over that :-)
There's a really slick Flash demo that explains the process, and it's fabulous. I can't really speak to the process itself as I was too busy ogling the production values on the website to read through it, but any creativity methodology is likely to have benefit. And this product does seem to exceed my threshold of excitement on first glance, which doesn't happen that often. I also read that it's the fruit of a husband and wife team collaboration, which just makes it all that much cooler.
I am listening to The Art of Acting, an hour-long interview on On Point with Tom Ashbrook with acting coach Susan Batson. The popular media calls her "The Oscar Coach" because she works with lots of A-list actors who have gone so far to thank her in their acceptance speeches.
I was expecting something kind of salesy, but I was pleasantly surprised at how down-to-earth and genuine she sounded. Batson has a book out now, Truth, Personas, Needs, and Flaws, for which actor Nicole Kidman wrote a heartfelt introduction (emphasis below is mine):
I can't create unless I have truth--I have to feel it. Susan helps me to find the truth in myself and use its purity, intimacy, and honesty to make my work real. She's helped me to nurture and protect truth in myself and in the characters that I've played. What I've learned from Susan is how to keep the truth alive no matter what. There's so much more to acting than just creative success. It runs thicker and deeper than that. It has to--it's in my blood, it beats through me. I know that it's in Susan's blood, too. I feel like we've been together my whole life.
I think there is an emotional amplification that happens with great acting, and that this has parallels to what I try to do with information graphics. In my work, I strive to uncover the essential ideas behind the problem, then present the entire solution with clarity. It is, in essence, the search for truth. And I'm not talking just about the veracity of facts; I'm also talking about truthfulness in our action and our communication, which is all about acknowledging that we are human. If you do not address that in your design work, at best you've created style. At worst, you've created an undeployable solution that will not stick.
At the 27:40 mark, Ashbrook asks Batson about her "trade secrets", which she apparently describes in the book. She tells a story about how she had to create a "walking, talking human being" as a character for a director, and came up with the idea that every real person has a need, deeply planted by the time you're like 5 years old. But since the world is a harsh place, we create a persona to cover the need, the "mask" that protects the vulnerability. When the need and the persona are in opposition, things get "jammed up" and what emerges is (and remember we're talking about acting) the tragic flaw, which adds depth and subtlety to the character. She gave some interesting examples (from her book, which I haven't read yet):
In the movie The Aviator, Leonardo di Caprio's Howard Hughes had a "need to be mothered", but he created a persona that was the opposite of being a "momma's boy", knowing no limits of adventure, to cover it up. However, the tragic flaw that emerges is that he goes crazy.
In Monster's Ball, Halle Berry's character has the need to "be loved". The persona she develops is to push everyone away, "to be the porcupine". The tragic flaw: she becomes a victim.
In Lost in Translation, Bill Murray's character has the need to be "pure and honorable". The persona he developed: "to be a hustler". The tragic flaw is that he loathes himself.
Batson says that in these performances, there is a very deep, connective thing that happens, creating dimensionality and personality. It goes beyond mere acting. It's very real, empathetic, and authentically draws from the great actor's experience.
I couldn't help but wonder how Batson's model of need, persona, and tragic flaw could be applied to my own struggles. After all, I'm a real person too! In science, models are very useful for clarifying a situation and outlining possibilities. Because I've been interested in applying storytelling to my design work, this is a fruitful line of inquiry. And frankly, I still have to work out a lot of things for myself, just like other real people. Having the strength to "go there" and confront those basic embarrassing needs is very hard, but I think it's a necessary part of working through my motivation to live my own life in alignment with my values. Perhaps my writing here is the "expression of my art"; since I can't paint or write music, writing about my experiences, anxieties, and solutions to deal with them is my way of facing them. My solution: If I can do it, so can other people, and then so can I. It's circular logic, but that's how it works for me :-)
So give a listen to Susan Batson's interview. I found it quite enjoyable.
I have a paypal account that I use as my "research" fund, and the latest purchase is these Mini Cards from Moo. They were all the rage last year, when Moo was offering free sets of 10 for a limited time. Since I have a bunch of pictures now in my Flickr account, I thought I'd give the service a try.
Moo is based in the U.K., so my $20 order of 100 cards took a few days to get here via Royal Mail. The cards themselves are quite small, 2 3/4" by 1 1/8" inches, or about the size of a squattish stick of gum. They're nice and stiff, coated with that nice matte finish...very nice. They all come packaged in a sturdy plastic box.
I printed these via the Flickr photo sharing service. The Moo printing option allows you to pick 100 different pictures so they're all different. Since SXSW is coming up, I thought I'd have a bunch of these on hand to give to people in case they needed my mobile number; the conference was kind of nuts last year with all the people running around, and I've been thinking of ways to make it a little easier to keep track of everything. This year I plan to be prepared!
The flip side of the card has some customizable contact information, and a URL to the actual photo. They're a bit pricey at 20 cents per card. It would have been cheaper to get some custom printed business cards of comparable quality online (it's shocking how cheap this is now), but I wouldn't have been able to get a different photo on each card on such nice paper stock. Plus, the experience of picking a card itself will become part of the fun. When faced with a selection, how will people decide what to pick? What will that say about them? If I were to break up the 100 cards into 10 groups of 10 photos, I might be able to make some kind of psycho-analytical tool, maybe create a mini card game of some kind. These mini cards have a powerful totemic presence that's very tempting to apply in a creative business context.
Anyway, the Moo Minicards get a thumbs-up for me! I believe they're only available with Flickr photos, so you'll need an account (free ones are available). You can browse my flickr account to see what I've been doing over there, if you haven't clicked on the photos in the sidebar before.
A buddy IM'd me just now, faced with the unenviable position of having to pick a favorite website out of zillions. I figured I would be just as screwed, but then something popped into my head, and I realized I truly did have a favorite!
It's HybridWorks, the website of some kind of graphic design studio in Japan.
Why is it my favorite out of many more, um, useful and perhaps informative sites? Well...this is the site that has absolutely the most masterful use of color I've even seen online anywhere. There's not one sour note, colorwise, that I've been able to find. I love the boldness of the illustration, and again the use of color gradients is simply outstanding. The artist or artists have a keen grasp of subtle color complements, accents, tone, proportion, and form. And if that isn't enough, the interaction is crisp and to-the-point, well-sequenced, and mesmerizing to watch. The level of pixel craftsmanship is also very very high.
There are a lot of sites like that, so I think what puts it over the top for me is its baffling and mysterious nature. I find myself drawn into it in a way that is kind of hard to explain, so I'll just give up and say I just like it unconditionally; that's a rare and wonderful thing. The site may speak a secret language that only my innermost subconscious thoughts can understand. Take, for example, The iCorn Movie...what the heck is that about? Every time I watch it, though, I am a little bit changed for the better.
Weird!
