Neil Strauss on Writer’s Block
“Writer’s block is the equivalent of impotence. It’s the performance pressure you put on yourself that keeps you from doing something you naturally should be able to do.”
Some of the Better Things I’ve Written
A friend is interviewing me for his podcast. He wanted to immerse himself in things I’ve written to prep. I wondered what I’d tell him.
So I looked through the analytics, ran my favorite engagement report, and collected the most engaged with stuff. Here’s that list, with a few other bits and bobs.
Some of the most engaged with posts at IceToTheBrim.com:
- 5 Lessons In 5 Years Of Marriage
- 6 Lessons in my 6th year of marriage
- Matterful Archives – Ice To The Brim
- The Focus Factor™
- How to mindfulness meditation
- 2 Months Since Rowan
- The Third Tier
- Thoughts on Scaffolding, Completed Work & The Creative Process
- My iPhone Home Screen on MacSparky
- How To Innovate
- The Relationship Of Happiness & Ambition: huge study, short report.
- A brief intro to EDM music (and trancey productivity)
My posts at The Sparkline & Fizzle:
The two biggies from Medium.com
- Hopeful Perspectives 1 Year After My Son’s Birth/Death — Medium
- 36 Things To Do For Those In Grief — Medium
Rowan stuff at the Tumblr:
However, my life’s work will probably be the marginalia found in the descriptions here:
You DID say “immerse.”
Frederick Buechner on The Fearsome Blessing of Hard Times
“The fearsome blessing of that hard time continues to work itself out in my life in the same way we’re told the universe is still hurtling through outer space under impact of the great cosmic explosion that brought it into being in the first place. I think grace sometimes explodes into our lives like that—sending our pain, terror, astonishment hurtling through inner space until by grace they become Orion, Cassiopeia, Polaris, to give us our bearings, to bring us into something like full being at last.”
Maya Anglou on Legacy
Oprah: What will my legacy be?
Maya Angelou: You don’t get to decide what your legacy is. That’s not up to you. So do your work.
Recounted by Tom Shadyack
David Foster Wallace on the Value of Education
“[…] this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.”
Thelonious on Genius
“A genius is the one most like himself.”
Joie de Vivre
“Joie de vivre: a cheerful enjoyment of life; an exultation of spirit. […] may be seen as a joy of everything, a comprehensive joy, a philosophy of life.”
And more from an excerpt in Carl Rogers’ book On Becoming a Person:
Mrs. Oak illustrates this trend rather nicely in her thirty-third interview. Is it significant that this follows by ten days the interview where she could for the first time admit to herself that the therapist cared? Whatever our speculations on this point, this fragment in-dicates very well the quiet joy in being one’s self, together with the apologetic attitude which, in our culture, one feels it is necessary to take toward such an experience. In the last few minutes of the inter-view, knowing her time is nearly up she says:
C: One thing worries me and I’ll hurry because I can always go back to it – a feeling that occasionally I can’t turn out. A feeling of being quite pleased with myself. Again the Q technique, I walked out of here one time, and impulsively I threw my first card, “I am an attractive personality”; looked at it sort of aghast but left it there, I mean, because honestly, I mean, that is exactly how it felt – a well, that bothered me and I catch that now.
Carl Rogers in On Becoming a Person, emphasis mine
Maya Angelou on Anger + Bitterness
“You should be angry. But you must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”
Maya Angelou (to Dave Chappell)
If you haven’t seen the Maya Angelou and Dave Chappell episode of Iconoclasts, schedule time for it. A light cocktail and 3-4pm tomorrow would be perfect for you. It’s wonderful.
Here’s another couple quotes I liked:
This is why it’s dangerous to make any person seem larger than life. Because a young person coming up sees this larger than life figure, this outrageously gigantic personality, and has to say, “I can never do that. I can never be that.” You see? When the truth is those men and those women were in the right place at the right time and got hold of something and something caught hold of them.
It’s important if not, in fact, imperative that each knows that there is a line beyond which you will not go. When lots of money is dangled in front of people’s eyes, many times they will tell you ‘yes’ when they mean ‘no!’ Because it’s dangling before their eyes. And they will say, ‘Damn, jack, I’m giving this up? I’m not making this money now because you aren’t.’
But the thing is that you have some place that nobody, kith nor kin, can take you beyond. Somewhere in the bend of your elbow. Nobody.
Play, Rules & Important Work
The sons of Hermes love to play,
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn’t;
Apollo’s children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.W. H. Auden, Under Which Lyre
The Genius of Brian Eno: Scenius
“The genius of Eno is in removing the idea of genius. His work is rooted in the power of collaboration within systems: instructions, rules, and self-imposed limits. His methods are a rebuke to the assumption that a project can be powered by one person’s intent, or that intent is even worth worrying about. To this end, Eno has come up with words like “scenius,” which describes the power generated by a group of artists who gather in one place at one time.”