Narrative

How will our loved ones remember us when we’re gone?

It’s something that has been on my mind lately. A lot.

Money? Nah. We won’t be remembered for now much cash we made.

Time spent working? Nope. That time was lost to those we love.

Home? A bit. But the memories we made together, not market price.

Accolades? Not really. Loved ones won’t care what the others thought.

Writing? Totally. It captures our minds, so loved ones can still experience us.

Creations we’re proud of? Totally. It’s something loved ones can enjoy when we’re gone.

Phone-free fully-focused family time? Totally. This is what they’ll remember most of all.

Puts things into perspective.

Worth building your priority list around.

People seem to follow one of two things.

Internet celebrities, hustlers and tech-bros? Many of them follow the money, making and saying whatever must be made or said to increase their share.

Artists, writers, and other creatives? Many of them also follow the money. But others follow their love of their craft, making and saying whatever must be made or said to increase their love for their craft, and the contribution they can make with it.

It’s not usually hard to tell what a person follows. Spend a few moments talking with them and your gut will probably know.

We can’t really fully avoid the former. There are too many of them, powering too much of our infrastructure, to avoid them.

But we can certainly seek out the latter. And support them with our attention, our support, and our dollars. Because with enough support, they’ll be unavoidable, too.

In rooms full of businessfolk, they tend to compare based on valuations and net worths. Numbers.

In rooms full of artists and writers, they tend to compare based on tenure and experience in their craft. Time spent with the craft.

If you don’t enjoy the conversations or comparisons, it could be the green eyed monster… Or it could simply be that you’re in the wrong room.

Public speakers memorize their talks so they can repeat it to others.

Storytellers tell stories others remember so they’ll repeat it to others.

There’s room for both in this world.

But if you have the opportunity, try to be the latter.

I’m doing a painting for my wife’s birthday.

(Hopefully she doesn’t read this before her birthday!)

Why?

Because art requires love, care, commitment, patience, and time.

Those are all more important things than the spending of money.

I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me sooner.

When you truly care, engage in the exchange of love, care, commitment, patience, and time.

When you don’t, well, there’s always money.

My Mum talked about her “fantasy world” to me when she was on end-of-life care.

She’d read old childrens books, entranced by the artwork and the stories.

When I got her another for her birthday, she enjoyed reading it, saying it was a lovely addition to her “fantasy world”.

A place she could go, even when she couldn’t go anywhere.

I’ve long enjoyed an inner “fantasy world” too, and never knew we had this in common until the very end.

If you have one, talk about it. Share it.

If you don’t have one, I can’t recommend it enough.

Because you’re always free in your fantasy world, even when your body starts to fail you.

Most of the thoughts I share in this journal never get posted on social media etc.

Because the objective of these words isn’t to get likes or attention.

The objective of these words is to help me discover what I think, and to share the journey of those thoughts with those who care in the future.

Perhaps future-me, looking back on past ideas. Perhaps my son, getting to know what I was thinking about when he was too young to ask. Perhaps you, looking for other perspectives on topics you hold dear.

You don’t need a good reason to start journaling and publishing.

You’re more likely to need a good reason not to.

Life is too short to merely follow all the rules, do your job, pay your taxes, and pass away.

Much too short.

Forget the rules. Forget the status games. Forget the comparisons and trinkets and nonsense.

Make your thing, love your people, and forget those still caught up in the nonsense.

Life is simply way, way, way too short.

We should write more. Draw more. Make more.

Not because it’s for a project. Just “because”. For the hell of it.

Because when we’re gone, it’s all that remains.

And those who love us might really thank us for leaving more of ourselves behind for them to cherish.

Mascots are back on the rise.

Duolingo’s participatory, contextual expressions that transcend the app to the icon itself.

Pepsi bringing back Coke’s polar bear to anthropomorphise rivalry.

Apple’s ‘Little Finder’ to promote the Neo to Gen Z.

They’re back. Because they’re full of personality, let people direct relational equity to that personality, form bonds and feel like they’re entering a world, not just buying a product.

I’ve been advocating for mascots since forever.

This isn’t an “I told you so”, but it’s absolutely a “don’t be afraid to bring your work to life with personality because you think it might make you look silly”.

Multi-trillion dollar companies seem to get on just fine with it.

There are two stories being told, when you build something.

The first is the story you tell others. Every product, service and project is a story. The way we express it and connect with it is a story. If something isn’t working, consider looking at the story, and see what might want to change there.

The second is the story you tell yourself. Every creator tells themselves a story. The way we relate to the work we put into the world is a story. If something isn’t working, consider looking at your story, and see if you’re being too hard on yourself, expecting results too early, or any number of other inner-dialog issues that could be holding you back.

When in doubt, look at the stories.

Is a $200,000 Birkin bag expensive?

After all, it only costs $800-1,400 to produce. It’s a $1k bag with a $199k story attached to it.

What’s the story? For its target market, it’s the feeling of being a better, more important, higher status individual than everybody else around them.

A Rolls-Royce Phantom sells the same story for $500,000. A whopping $301k more expensive story than the Birkin, yet designed to achieve the same feeling.

For the target market, the Birkin bag is a steal.

But facts about the bag don’t make it a steal.
Nor do “offer stacks” or “limited time offers”.
The story makes it a steal.

The desk is brown. The coffee is going cold. The notebook is open. The magazine is creased. The monitor is dusty.

If we held onto every piece of information, our minds would explode. Our brains are excellent at “thoughtfully forgetting” information, holding on to only that which is most obviously pertinent to our wellbeing.

Good stories are the exception.

We remember our spouse’s birthday because it has a story associated with it. It could be, “I love buying them a gift, I love the way they light up when they open it” because its part of our own story of “being a good spouse”. Alternatively, it could be “I must not forget to get them a card or they’ll rip me a new one” because its part of our own story of “preferring not to sleep on the couch”.

Two different stories. One outcome: remembering a date.

Facts may help people intellectually understand, but brains treat stories just like lived experiences. There is movement, tension, consequence, meaning, emotion, and self-preservation all at play when a story shows up.

That makes our brains deem them far more likely to be worth remembering.

We humans don’t think in facts. We feel in stories.

People edit their photographs because the story they tell themselves about their lives matters more than an accurate representation of what happened.

People universally hate movies where “the dog dies” because the feeling spoils the rest of the movie. They can’t get into the movie anymore, therefore it was bad.

People gladly pay $9.99 + free shipping, but almost never pay $5 + $5 shipping.

People can’t remember a series of random numbers they heard ten seconds ago, yet can recite the lyrics to their favorite childhood cartoon theme song that they’ve not heard in thirty years.

Discretionary effort counts double because, while functionally redundant, it makes people feel vastly more cared for.

Stories don’t just pass through the language centers of the brain. They activate emotional and sensory regions too. The brain treats stories more like lived experiences than abstract information.

We don’t feel facts.

We feel stories.

Perhaps part of our continued education should focus less on gathering more facts… and a little more on feeling stories.

People are messy and contradictory. They think they’re logical, while being emotional. They think they’re buying utility when actually buying status, or the other way around. Carefully evaluate whether a $6 book is worth the money while sipping a $6 coffee they didn’t think twice about.

This is news to brands. While they articulate features, stats, charts and frameworks, “but wait, there’s more”-ing themselves into marginalized obscurity, people don’t give them a second look.

Not because the brand didn’t have a good offer.

But because the brand didn’t have a good story.

When I started using the Internet, people didn’t come here for riches.

They didn’t “create content” to lure you into a “funnel” to pitch products at you.

They didn’t chat with you purely to evaluate whether or not you’re a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).

They didn’t contribute to things only because there’s an invoice at the end.

We used to create together for the joy of making a “web” worth visiting. We all made it better, together.

We used to chat together for the joy of sharing common interests, and mobilising around ideas because of it.

We used to contribute to projects we liked because thats how things got made. A bit of all our time, together.

I miss that Internet.

How we see ourselves changes how we see our work.

For instance. I think of myself as an artist.

So when I’m leading my team, I see it as an artist, leading a team. I show up differently because of it. I draw my ideas, treat conversations like a canvas everyone can make a mark on, and look for opportunities for art to lead in the work we make.

Or when I’m writing code, I write code as an artist, too. Even when I’m in Vim — a keyboard-only text editor with no mouse input — I use it on a Cintiq with a Wacom pen between my fingers — all artist tools specifically optimized for non-keyboard inputs. Partly because it’s a twenty-year habit of nearly always having a pen in my hand… and partly because it reminds me to think through code challenges visually on a canvas. I don’t need AI to show me how to solve a problem, I just need a white page to sketch on.

Or when I’m leading a Zoom call, I use Zoom as an artist — a screenshare of a blank white canvas comes up immediately, and what we discuss becomes a sketch of notes and thoughts connected with bubbles and lines. I don’t need a summarization tool to write transcriptions nobody will ever read, we have a sketch instead.

How you see yourself will affect your work, too. Worth think about.

A lot of folks are talking about ‘software brain’ again.

Data. Databases. Everything is data, in databases. Methodical, organized, controllable.. Who controls the database controls everything. Yada-yada.

But software brain is a choice. Organizing things that way is a choice. A popular choice, but a choice.

On the flip side, you could (for instance):

• Think on paper, not in apps. It’s messy, unstructured, hard to recall. The mess is the point.
• Plan less. It’s counterintuitive, unproductive. The spontaneity is the point.
• Have fewer opinions. The discourse is friendlier, and algorithms have less power over your heartstrings.
• Make your coffee differently every time. The randomness is the point.
• Enjoy wrong turns or getting lost. GPS databases are based on the opposite.
• Act on feeling, not just on logic. We do anyway, logic is often just a story we tell ourselves.

The list could go on and on.

The point is this: if we live in ways that wouldn’t suit a database, we don’t get software brain, and tech doesn’t consume our world, or our worldview.

That’s rare. A place where new, unexpected ideas show up. We need more of that: ChatGPT already covered the rest.

Between 2005 and 2019, the number of words we speak out loud to another human reportedly fell by nearly 28 percent.

The pandemic likely made it even worse.

More connected than ever.
Less connected than ever.

We think smartphones keep us connected.
What if they’re keeping us apart?

Your message isn’t what it says on your website.

Your message is what those who know you, tell the others.

Those are words you may not have chosen. You can’t wordsmith or A/B test that. You can’t un-say what you’ve said. You can’t pretend you’ve done what you haven’t.

And that’s part of why those words are so important.

Maybe we should focus less on the simple prose we can control, and more on words that spread.

Is it pointless, or the point?

Some see to street photography as a futile — and often unpredictable — record of banality.

Others see it as capturing life itself, an unfiltered record of existence, a mirror to an imperfect world.

Some see writing emails by hand as a waste of mental energy and time.

Others see it as staying sharp, showing up with care, preferring it over machines talking to other machines all day until we all run out of water.

It’s a good reminder that the point isn’t objective. It’s entirely, empirically subjective.

Changes how we look at so many decisions we make day to day.

For a long time, people pursued convenience.

“1,000 songs in your pocket” was a hugely desireable idea.

More GBs on a smaller SD card. Thinner and thinner laptops, more power. Headphones that don’t even have wires. AI that generates your words. The list goes on.

Everything is so, so convenient, if you want it to be. And yet?

Physical media sales are up. DVDs, vinyl records, physical books, people are returning to the inconvenient.

Because they want to feel something.

The smell of the book, maybe a little post-in note inside from the founder.

The ownership and curation of a music collection that’s uniquely theirs, with the ceremony of listening.

The toil toward words they can be truly proud of having written all on their own, warts and all.

We’re not computers. We’re not wired for efficiency.

When web authors don’t care enough to put readers above themselves, websites are a chore.

When websites are a chore, people prefer talking to AI and risk the hallucinations.

When people prefer talking to AI, the websites die anyway, because people don’t need to talk to other people.

When people don’t need to talk to other people, the fabric of the Internet as we used to know it, goes away.

It just becomes a bunch of lonely people, interacting with their terminal, alone, wondering if the Internet could somehow be more than that.

Welcome back to the late-90s.

Your brand is a character.

Those it serves are the protaginists in a story.

Your brand’s role in their story is up to them, and how well it elects to show up and help them on their journey.

It’s always been this way.

Most just lack the imagination to see it for what it really is: characters, in a story.

When the Gorillaz team were waiting in LA to hear whether or not their movie would happen,

They could have sat around, waiting, sipping coffee, doomscrolling, stressing.

Instead, they made a song, on an iPad, while waiting.

Released as “Cracker Island”, released February 2023.

Not the first time they did that, either.

“The Fall” was an entire album, created in 32 days, on an iPad, while on tour with “Plastic Beach”.

The takeaway?

You’ve got time.

You just need to love what you’re doing enough to want to do it in the small moments.

I’ve written and published an idea every day for over 8 years.

But what I’ve found even more valuable lately?

A daily private “one line” journal, that tells me what happened that day.

I’ve only done that for about 4 years. But over those 4 years, I can see my son growing up, I can see the places we went, the struggles we faced, and how they faded with time.

It shows me how struggles are never what they appear, and gives me the time and memories with my family over and over again.

Can’t recommend it enough.

TikTok is Chinese.

But China’s TikTok (Douyin) is apparently quite different.

Same company. Same product. Different features.

Douyin apparently has mandatory Youth Mode (max 40min/day).
TikTok is banned in Australia for being brainrot.

Douyin apparently emphasizes educational content.
TikTokNot emphasizes empty calorie trends/challenges.

If we’re going to view media that countries ban for brainrot, and their homeland won’t use…

…We should probably tread carefully.

Go back twenty years, in your mind.

No AI. No M5 chips. No 4k screen tablets. No video streaming. No spotify. Social media didn’t rule everyone’s time.

We’d draw on paper, thinking in the future maybe that wouldn’t be the case anymore.

We’d go to the store and buy our movies, wondering how cool it’d be to not have to.

We’d see fledgling web 2.0 sites promise greater connection, and the future looked bright.

But today?

Great artists still use paper. Great writers still use paper. They could generate a novel in a minute, yet they use paper.

Streaming is everywhere, and many of us long to have our physical media back. We have everything, but not what we want.

Social became toxic, AI made spam insufferable, and we’re withdrawing into smaller communities again, just like before.

For all the promise of “new and improved”, or “adapt or be left behind”?

Here we are, right where we were.

My son played with his trains practically all day today.

As he rolls Thomas and friends along the tracks, he recites the words from his favorite episodes, mixing his favorite lines together to form a story of his own based on what tickles his fancy.

Small, simple objects that light up his imagination, create new storylines, and exercise his creativity.

We should all have small, simple objects in our lives that do that to us, no matter our age.

Christmas is usually thought of as a time to celebrate, to cheer, to sing, to eat lots, to do everything you might usually do but… louder.

I find Christmas to be more enjoyable when it’s a time to rest, to appreciate, to feel peace, to hold your closest ones close, to do everything you might usually do but… quietly.

The world’s only getting louder and more sensational.

Seize opportunities to enjoy peace and quiet.