making a life > making a living
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
— Annie Dillard, ’The Writing Life’, 1989
And suddenly I wonder: is it more of my bad luck to have been born when I was, at the beginning of this century and not be able to be young at its end? I look enviously at these kids and think about the lives they are living – and will live – and posit a kind of future for them. And then, almost immediately, I think what a futile regret that is. Yo
... See moreWilliam Boyd • Any Human Heart
“I know a lot of people who make things who don’t stand proudly by their stuff,” Tyler says. “I don’t know if they’re too cool or they don’t want to look thirsty, but they’ll put a song out once on their stories — and that’s it.
You went through something. You figured something out in a structured format. You recorded it. Not just one take. Parts and parts. You edited it. You mixed it. The label paid some kid to make an album cover and they made the cover. It’s a whole thing.
And then you mean to tell me that you’re going to be passive and just put it on your story once? Are you crazy, bro?
I’m still promoting an album that came out a year ago. I put too much time and energy into this finished project just to put it on Instagram and forget about it. No. Promote. Let people know. Be proud of what you made.”
— Tyler, The Creator
“What would be the most effective way to design your life so that you get to do more of that—assuming nothing about the shape of the solution and reasoning up from first principles?”
Instead of thinking “I want to be a musician (and that means having a label and making albums, and so on),” I suggest that we think about it as a design problem. The fi... See more
Instead of thinking “I want to be a musician (and that means having a label and making albums, and so on),” I suggest that we think about it as a design problem. The fi... See more
An essay in which my friend feels stuck and I suggest relaxing some constraints
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