Advice::how to be creative | Gapingvoid

This was an excellent list do yourself the favor of reading the whole list. These aren’t even the best insights he writes!!!!!

23. Worr­ying about “Com­mer­cial vs. Artis­tic” is a com­plete waste of time.
You can argue about “the sha­me­ful state of Ame­ri­can Let­ters” till the cows come home. They were kvetching about it in 1950, they’ll be kvetching about it in 2050.
It’s a path well-trodden, and not a place where one is going to come up with many new, earth-shattering insights.
(more…)
24. Don�t worry about fin­ding ins­pi­ra­tion. It comes even­tually.
Ins­pi­ra­tion pre­ce­des the desire to create, not the other way around.
(more…)
25. You have to find your own sch­tick.
A Picasso always looks like Pic­casso pain­ted it. Heming­way always sounds like Heming­way. A Beetho­ven Symphony always sounds like a Beethoven’s Syynphony. Part of being a mas­ter is lear­ning how to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own.
(more…)
26. Write from the heart.
There is no sil­ver bullet. There is only the love God gave you.
(more…)
27. The best way to get appro­val is not to need it.
This is equally true in art and busi­ness. And love. And sex. And just about everything else worth having.
(more…)
via how to be creative | Gapingvoid.

Quote::pillar management | Gapingvoid

There’s no corre­la­tion bet­ween crea­ti­vity and equip­ment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.
Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more suc­cess­ful, his num­ber of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expen­ding men­tal energy on stuff was­tes time. He’s a man on a mis­sion. He’s got a dead­line. He’s got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks lear­ning how to use a rou­ter drill if he doesn’t need to.
A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind.
Which is why there are so many second-rate art direc­tors with state-of-the-art Maci­notsh com­pu­ters.
via pillar management | Gapingvoid.

This post was prompted by the fact that I’m getting frustrated with the specs of my pc. The post was a good read!

rePost::The Good Fight « Paulo Coelho’s Blog

The Good Fight
Published on January 3, 2010 in News. 92 Comments
In 1986, I went for the first and only time on the pilgrimage known as the Way to Santiago, an experience I described in my first book. We had just finished walking up a small hill, a village appeared on the horizon, and it was then that my guide, whom I shall call Petrus (although that was not his name), said to me:
– We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body. Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming. If we don’t, our soul dies
‘The Good Fight is the one we Fight because our heart asks it of us.The Good Fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams. When we are young our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to Fight. With great effort, we learn how to Fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat. So we turn against ourselves and do battle within. We become our own worst enemy. We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result or our not having known enough about life. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to Fight the Good Fight.
“The first symptom of the process of killing our dreams is lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The Truth is, they are afraid to Fight the Good Fight…
“The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are Fighting the Good Fight.
“And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams-we have refused to Fight the Good Fight.
“When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves.
“What we sought to avoid in combat-disappointment and defeat-came upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breath, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from out certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of Sunday afternoons.”
in “The Pilgrimage”(1987)
via The Good Fight « Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

I’ll keep on posting this til I’m in the think of The Good Fight!

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inspiring::Woman abandoned in Fairfax as a baby finds her rescuers – washingtonpost.com

It was Sept. 6, 1989. They discovered the newborn wrapped in towels at the front door of a townhouse in their Fairfax County complex and took the infant to Emily’s, where her stepfather called police.
The whole thing was over pretty quickly. The authorities took the baby girl, who was later adopted. Chris and Emily, both 15, went on with their lives, although Emily often cried when she told people the story, and the two called each other every Sept. 6.
Twenty years passed.
Then, on Dec. 2, a college student named Mia Fleming sent them both a message via Facebook: Might they be the same Chris and Emily who had once found a baby left at a stranger’s door?
If so, she just wanted to say thanks.
After all these years, the little girl they had found had found them.
via Woman abandoned in Fairfax as a baby finds her rescuers – washingtonpost.com.

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Inspiring::Salman Khan, math master of the Internet

Salman Khan, math master of the Internet
James Temple, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, December 14, 2009
During the years Salman Khan spent scrutinizing financials for hedge funds, he rationalized the profit-obsessed work by telling himself he would one day quit and use his market winnings to open a free school.
Salman Khan, the creator of Kahn Academy.Salman Khan, the creator of Kahn Academy, records “A Form…Salman Khan in his home studio in Mountain View is surrou… View More Images
Instead, he started one almost by accident.
It began with long-distance tutoring in late 2004. He agreed to help his niece Nadia, then a seventh-grader struggling with unit conversion, by providing math lessons over Yahoo‘s interactive notepad, Doodle, and the phone.
Nephews and family friends soon followed. But scheduling conflicts and repeated lectures prompted him to post instructional videos on YouTube that his proliferating pupils could watch when they had the time.
They did – and before long, so did thousands of others. Today, the Mountain View resident’s 800-plus videos are viewed about 35,000 times a day, forming a virtual classroom that dwarfs any brick and mortar school he might have imagined. By using the reach of the Internet, he’s helped bring education to the information-hungry around the world who can’t afford private tutors or Kaplan prep courses.
“With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time,” Khan, 33, said. “I can't imagine a better use of my time.”
via Salman Khan, math master of the Internet.

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Inspiring::iSteam for iPhone earns a bunch of 22-year olds $100,000

iSteam features an incredible graphics engine that renders foggy, wet overlays on top of any image from your iPhone’s library with astounding realism. But it isn’t just the graphics itself, it’s the clever use of iPhon’s user interface and sensors that earned this application such a huge following.
The iSteam application is for sale for just 99cent and has been bought over 1 million times since its launch last week! ISteam has currently experienced more than 14% daily growth, with estimated monthly revenues of $100,000 – all this just 8 days after iSteam was first released. Since the launch of iSteam other top iPhone applications such as iFart and iBeer have seen a drop in sales for the first time since they launched.
This was all done by a bunch of 22 year olds, it just shows that young entrepreneurs know where it is at! iSteam managed to show up some well established Apps backed by millionaires in under 2 weeks! I wonder what would happen if we give them a month.
Good job iSteam!
via iSteam for iPhone earns a bunch of 22-year olds $100,000.

Posting this to inspire us.