while I created it to serve Tarsnap’s needs, it would be a stretch to place such a general-purpose open-source tool under the narrow umbrella of “working on backups.” In short, academic institutions systemically promote exactly the sort of short-term optimization of which, ironically, the private sector is often accused. Is entrepreneurship a trap? No; right now, it's one of the only ways to avoid being trapped.
A good founder is capable of anticipating which turns lead to treasure and which lead to certain death. A bad founder is just running to the entrance of the maze without any sense for the history of the industry, the players in the maze, the casualties of the past, and the technologies that are likely to move walls and change assumptions. Some of these theories come from academia, but increasingly they come from investors and entrepreneurs on blogs.
If students don’t like what’s been pushed onto them, they’ll go around it. The only way to help students is to build for them, and the only way to do that is to watch them try to learn.
It should be plain to anyone that for every concern that is duly handled, another emerges to replace it. Yet we are so prone to looking at our list of worldly concerns as if it is something finite that we can conquer. I suppose it is finite, but do you really want to be done with it? Strangely, the more I’m okay with everything being not quite okay, the better I am at moving the little things along to a place where they do feel okay.
A thing from art school that helped my drawing and comics practice a lot is I took a ceramics course. It taught me a lot about disposability. I was completely out of my depth being in a 2D brain in a 3D class, but also because I came in lacking the chill that the ceramics department all… …seemed to have? I learned that partly this was bc in ceramics there’s so many steps where things can go wrong, out of your control. One nudge into wet clay and your project is dead. When you let it dry it’s so brittle that you or anyone else in the studio might break it. When you glaze it, it might turn a colour you didn’t mean for it to be. When you fire it, a bubble in yours or anyone else's piece might… …explode and everything in the kiln gets fucked. Ceramics students were so chill bc they understood this and at some point they accepted. If pieces got ruined, usually the person who accidentally did it felt worse than the person whose work was ruined. But your skill, practice, … …vision still stays in your hands and your mind and you just quietly make another one, faster and usually better than the one that broke. It basically taught me that I should just not give too many shits about individual things I was making and learn to just keep moving. I’m not like, a making-machine or anything, other things stall me. But ceramics class taught me that nothing is sure, permanent, a big deal. If something is not good you just make another. Anyways I tell this story a lot because I’m old and repeat myself constantly now lol.
Dr. Aisha Ahmad’s thread on the 6 month mark of sustained crises
Of course, there are things we have to do. Work. Teach. Cook. Exercise. But just don’t expect to be sparklingly happy or wildly creative in the middle of your wall. Right now, if you can meet you obligations and be kind to your loved ones, you get an A+.
There were weeks where New York City felt like a quiet, burning city. Dying and silent, except for the 24 hour sirens. I have a video on my phone of ambulance lights through my bedroom curtain, the ambulance lighting the room like the world’s saddest disco ball.
That’s the value of person-to-person teaching that’s irreplaceable in textbooks and MOOCs – the human ability to recognize a problem someone doesn’t even know they have.
People have the wrong idea about what's wrong with compulsive behavior in the first place, which produces wrong ideas about the fixes. Instead, the problem is that compulsive behaviors are not freely and deliberately chosen. Take a moment to imagine the alternatives. Do any of them attend to your emotional and other needs better than what you're currently doing?
Pamela J. Hobart’s response to Scott Young’s “What’s Beyond Self-Improvement?”
[Issues] must be resolved in their own ways, with a psychological-philosophical toolbox that's never too full. Some of them are never really resolved, so the task becomes living alongside [them].
If you think you can’t step away, do it anyway for one day to see how much trouble it causes. That’s useful information. Dump your brain on to a sheet of paper—every single thing you could hope to do in the next 3 to 4 months. Then, look at your task list. Have the author sign each one. Did you write it, or was it fear, that nasty tyrant in your head? Cross off anything written out of fear. Listen: some drudgery is unavoidable, but you’re living your one and only life. You get to drive
This week, I handed Holloway's CEO reins over to my co-founder, Josh Levy. As we built Holloway over the last four years, I got the chance to explore the depths of my love for research, writing, and sharing stories. My belief in the purpose and mission of this company hasn’t wavered, but over the last six months I found myself wishing I could be a full-time independent creator. And at the end of July Josh and I came up with a way for me to do that.
anyway, a cute vestigial remnant of this whole process is that I still announce what I'm about to do before I do it. It's like a little ritual I have for myself. Every time I do what I say, I build trust in myself, I build self-respect
anyway, a cute vestigial remnant of this whole process is that I still announce what I'm about to do before I do it. It's like a little ritual I have for myself. Every time I do what I say, I build trust in myself, I build self-respect (which I didn't have until... 25? 27?)— Visa’s Fluorescent Foibles (@visakanv) August 11, 2020
Having that utopian vision of the world is important though. And being optimistic about making enormous change is important, too. But I’m learning that the truly wise folks hold that vision in their minds whilst making tiny incremental progress in that direction every single day. Tiny steps is how you solve everything; from a bad design, to a confusing codebase, to a dysfunctional society.
I agree with him: [envy] will eat you alive if you keep it inside. I think one thing you can do is spit it out, cut it out, or get it out by whatever means available — write it down or draw it out on paper — and take a hard look at it so it might actually teach you something.
I considered that for a minute, then tentatively asked, “Which wolf will win?” Sparks danced towards the stars as the old man stared into the glare of the flames and replied, “Whichever one you feed.” I’ve been feeding the wrong wolf. Without a clear intention to feed the right wolf, I’ve been letting envy and greed and these negative emotions fester.
Because we aren’t committing to a roadmap, we aren’t setting expectations. And because we don’t set expectations, we don’t feel guilty when that great idea never gets any build time because we decided something else was more important.
The momentum can’t build if it’s constantly derailed at the start. The climate crisis […] can essentially be what brings us all together to work towards a common and greater goal.
That last line is worth repeating: “Blogging is an essential tool toward meditating over an extended period of time on a subject you consider to be important.”
What Stan needs to realize is that a disciplined approach to making things is just one part of the puzzle. The other part is about simply living his life, and having the freedom to explore his surroundings and interests.
