Posts tagged “creativity”
Ideas don't come from thinking alone, they're accidents born of conversation. The Bay Area's density of geeks means more collisions between clever people, more happy accidents. You don't need to be here to run a startup, but you probably need to be here to get the idea.
Today my brain wouldn't stop firing. A single Economist article on evolution sparked ideas about the Garden of Eden, Neanderthals undone by stupid-but-vicious Homo Sapiens, optimal village sizes as a social network concept, anti-aging diets as lifestyle choice, and whether cultural complexity has already exceeded our cognitive limits.
Working on this web2 project keeps flooding my brain with cool ideas. It's draining my notebook budget and my sleep.
Two old website designs I never used, but kind of wish I had. The yin yang one was totally impractical at over 1000 pixels wide, but I still have a soft spot for it.
Blogging every day makes it easier to find things worth blogging about. With a smaller sample size, something is always relatively more interesting than everything else in the period. The more you blog, the more you blog.
Longfellow on architecture helped me articulate why I prefer coding to consultancy. Powerpoint is painting on the roof; the code is the cathedral.
Every piece of art I encounter fills me with jealous rage that others created what I could not. My mission, above all else, is to create. I'll produce mountains of dross in every medium until I find the diamond buried within. I will create something that outlasts me.
Bloggers are like DJs, sampling and remixing the best of the web. Gibson thinks blogging is like boiling a kettle with the lid off, wasting creative steam. Both metaphors probably apply to me. Google suggests there's no shortage of ways to describe what we do here.
A poem about life's journey, using the metaphor of a leaf carried by a river. We can't control where life takes us, but we can control how we travel. So move fast, go far, and make your mark.
I'm furious at people who completely miss the point of art. Fifteen people on VH1 thought Alanis was being a slut in "Thank U" -- it's obviously about honesty and vulnerability. If meaning lives in the observer rather than the artist, what's even the point of creating anything?
I'm only creative when I'm unhappy. Stress and discomfort generate ideas; peace and quiet are just when I execute them. My best creative period was during depression. The problem: creating things makes me happy, which kills creativity. I need resistance to move, and I can't manufacture genuine opposition for myself.
