Category: creativity
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farmers, pirates, and Anthony Bourdain
I went to see Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain this weekend. Twice. Perhaps it’s the season of life in which I find myself, but Bourdain’s story resonated with me on a level that summoned a deep discomfort. The film paints a portrait of Bourdain as a contradictory…
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let it be awful
I’ve been playing around with paint recently. I’m not good at painting, but that’s the whole point. Allowing the work to be terrible to a joyful kind of letting go. Without the pressure of trying to meet anyone expectations (including my own), there’s a freedom to play, to wonder, to…
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“Take Your Time”
Art is theft. Sometimes, we quote other people because they put an idea into words better than we ever could. Such is the case with Seth Godin’s recent reflection on taking your time: [Taking your time] means two very different things. When a person or a marketer takes your time,…
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back to the well
I’ve always been fascinated with the art of playing politics. I’m not talking the madness going on in Washington at the moment so much as the shrewd tactics used to maneuver against competitio; things like the classic Mad Men episode, “The Chrysanthemum and The Sword.” This of course had led…
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“when did life get so real?”
Some of the defining moments of my life took place almost exactly ten years ago. It’s amazing how this both feels like yesterday and a million years ago at once. I was nineteen and was stupid, but had no idea how stupid I was. I knew so little and was…
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you are not replaceable
You are not a cog and this is not a machine. If you’re doing the work in a meaningful way, in a way that’s of service, there’s not anyone else who can do what you do, the way you do it.
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ditching the paywall
I recently removed my fiction on Medium from behind the paywall. When I posted these stories originally, I thought, “Amazing! I can get paid for my writing!” In two years, I’ve made $4.44. Not exactly a windfall. Seth Godin defines art as “a human act, a generous contribution, something that…
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for sale
In a recent interview on The Hollywood Report’s Awards Chatter, Fran Lebowitz has a few things to say about the idea of “selling out” as a writer: “No one pays you for no reason. They’re buying something…What do you think “sell” means? Sell means you don’t own it anymore. It’s…
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sharing what you have
I just published two new stories on my Medium page, where I keep all my fiction. One is the story of two childhood friends who suffer the pains of outgrowing one another and the other the story of a suburban teenager who learns the housewife he pines for isn’t what…
joshua chamberlain 