We’re All Free Agents Now

“The Macro Change is a switch from being part of an organization (I hesitate to say “community,” though that’s probably the effective emotional term)-General Motors, Apple, the army, Harvard or State U.-to being Just Ourselves. But it’s not just being part of, it’s thinking like a part of.

Is it necessary to have an actual “job?” A salary? A boss? I’m speaking emotionally, not financially. Is our mental setup such that we are dependent for our inner well-being upon an externally-imposed structure? Are we capable of acting without external motivation or validation or reinforcement?

Today you’re a free agent and so am I. Even in long-term jobs, we must think like entrepreneurs. Our 401-Ks are gone with the wind, along with Tower Records, Borders, and the steel industry.”

Steven Pressfield

David Foster Wallace & A Brilliant Film

So good on so many levels… the writing, the animations, the film and lighting and setup, the emotion of the music, the fact that the author committed suicide a few years after delivering this commencement speech.

“The only thing that’s capital ‘T’ true is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.”

Stick to True & Good

“We all want to do our best work; that’s the goal. But it’s ok to ship something decent; better than nothing. Stick to True and Good and let the history professors decide what was ‘best.’”

Your’s Truly

John Gruber on Monetizing Blogging

“No one gets into something like this without an obsession, but if your obsession is with the money, and your revenue is directly correlated to page views, then rather than write or produce anything with any actual merit or integrity, you’ll dance like a monkey and split your articles across multiple “pages” and spend more time ginning up sensational Digg-bait headlines than writing the articles themselves. It’s thievery — not of money, but of readers’ attention.”

What’s so great, so amazing, about this racket is that it doesn’t have to be that way. You can obsess over your work, build an audience based on deep mutual respect, and eventually opportunities to earn money from it will present themselves. I don’t know how it works, I only know that it does. […]

There is an easy formula for doing it wrong: publish attention-getting bullshit and pull stunts to generate mindless traffic. The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient.

John Gruber