Building Something
It’s a real mind fuck and it makes me feel complicit in something terrible that hurts people. It makes me feel complicit in the thing that hurt ME. It’s like I morph into an avatar for the very thing I spend my entire career and life fighting against. Like, while I’m trying to detox, I’m actively poisoning other people.
“aliveness is so central to meaningful human experience that there’ll always be a market for those who can cultivate it, embed it in what they create, foster it in institutions and organisations, and bring people together to experience it”
Oliver Burkeman
"Tradition is about passing the flame not keeping the ash". That's from superstar chef Massimo Bottura.
From one of my favorite Hacker News comments ever, by @Jonathan_Blow: https://t.co/uJgib4x6El
Even now, when I’m lucky enough to be able to write exactly what I want to write with very few external constraints, writing often feels difficult for me in the same way it did when I was pumping out listicles — slow, sticky, clunky, painful, humiliating. I wonder if this, too, is part of the appeal of AI: it is so often humiliating to push up... See more
“What if there were two versions of the landing page and you could toggle between them? One side would be the SaaS version—features, pricing, the practical stuff. The other side would be the soul of Sublime—the why, the feel, the philosophy.”
At any given time, you’re either pre–heavy thing or post–heavy thing. You’ve either made something weighty already, or you haven’t. Pre–heavy thing people are still searching, experimenting, iterating. Post–heavy thing people have crossed the threshold, and it shows. They’ve made something substantial—something that commands respect, inspires... See more
This isn't about lowering our ambitions - it's about elevating them. Trading the superficial for the substantial, rigidity for resilience, and the exhausting pursuit of "crushing it" for the satisfaction of building something meaningful. Because perhaps true success isn't measured in inbox zeros, but in creating a life that doesn't feel like... See more
When writing, separate the “creator” and the “editor”. The “creator” just writes, and doesn’t worry about quality; the goal is words on the page. Later, you can be the “editor” and shape it into something good