Joyful Persistence: My Talk for the UBC School of Creative Writing Graduation

My entire philosophy of how I organize myself as a working painter can be summed up by something George Carlin said: “Just keep movin’ straight ahead. Every now and then you find yourself in a different place.”

You hear a lot in art school about how painters must continue to “grow” and “evolve”—but I think those are such bullshit words. There is gre... See more

Making things is hard and I feel like that’s the most useful thing to say about it. You have to try to be consistent, you have to practice constantly, you have to read, and you can’t make yourself be interested in topics you aren’t interested in. And you have to accept that it’s always going to be challenging. My friend said this about her work, wh... See more

I’m drawn to the idea of an art of living much more so than to the compulsive search for life hacks, regimens of self-improvement, or self-optimization schemes. These too often feel like a doubling down on the insistence that we can always do more if only we apply the right technique. They also suggest that the path to happiness involves the discov... See more

Having pored over a lot of writers’ and artists’ diaries and letters for my  Daily Rituals  research, I can say that most of them never felt that their work fulfilled their ambitions. Or, if they did feel that way, it was only in brief surges of confidence, which could be tremendously satisfying and productive—but which never lasted as lo

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