Keely Adler

Any lesson, even a necessary one, can be learned too well. There is a comfort in being disabused, a pride in turning up the lights and puncturing illusions that induces a different kind of blindness that needs to be challenged.

Often, our first tactic for making change is information. To improve diets, we tell kids about the links between donuts, soda, obesity, and diabetes. To improve efficiency, we inform staff about new procedures or values. These educational interventions draw upon the power of authoritative information to change minds and behavior. While this tactic

One way I’ve learned to break the Demon of Judgment’s curse—at least momentarily—is to actively shift my attention from what I call low frequency concerns to high frequency intentions. It’s normal to desire things like approval, critical success, money, and praise, and there’s nothing wrong with entertaining those material, lower vibration urges in

It’s not always easy to wade into wonder, to merge with mystery. It is tempting to overthink, overcomplicate, to distance, to hedge, to hesitate. But the unknown is the only destination for any maker, and one must pursue it with faith and enchanted abandon.

Suffering reduces. Negativity is the enemy of creativity. It’s common sense. If someone is depressed, they say they don’t even feel like getting out of bed, let alone working. If you’re sad, or if you’re filled with bitter anger, that occupies the mind. Maybe you do angry paintings, so what? You can do angry paintings but be happy in the doing.

Sometimes when my Demon of Perfectionism is making me fret about how woolly my words are or how far away my “perfect” final product seems to be, I utter this mantra: “All I can do is my best with the resources that I’ve been given.”

Wabi-sabi is the antidote to all things symmetrical, mass-produced, or generated by AI. It has been crafted by humans and oxygen and seasons and the cycles of life.

Wabi-sabi is the antidote to all things symmetrical, mass-produced, or generated by AI. It has been crafted by humans and oxygen and seasons and the cycles of life.