Resilience

It’s hard to say at times like this.

But I maintain it’s worth being a “hopeless optimist”.

“Hopeless”: You don’t hold out hope that the optimistic point of view will necessarily be correct, or that things will somehow turn out better because you thought that way.

“Optimist”: You try to see the good in the things around you, even if there is also bad, and try to show support towards the good parts in case it helps them overcome the bad.

For example. The current UK government is busy trying to chip away at any good person’s relative use case for freedom of speech. But the hopeless optimistic view is, the current government is doing that, but that’s not to say the next will.

Another example. I supported a whole bunch of artists who sold NFTs around 2020–2021. Not because I thought it was going to be a “big money play”, but because I believe in artists. Some were grifters, others were trying to make art and got labeled as grifters by grifters. The hopeless optimistic view is, supporting artists, if you can, is a good idea anyway.

Know what you believe, know what you value, then try the “hopeless optimist” hat on.

If nothing else, it’s better for your blood pressure.

Not every project needs to be successful.

No good person would expect that of you.

But a good person might expect you to:

1: Stand by your work. If you release something into the world, let it be something you’re proud of. I try not to ship anything I’m not truly happy with, even if it means a few uncomfortable conversations with other contributors. Those contributors, the recipients, and myself, all deserve the opportunity to fill their days experiencing great works.

2: Do right by those who trust you. I’ve had projects fail before, and the first thing I try to do is do right by those who trusted me, as best as I’m able. To a good person, that’s just as valuable as if the project was a success, and builds their trust in you even more.

3: Do 1 and 2 without waivering. We can waiver on a great many things. Confidence. Energy. Skill. Mood. Hope. I’ve waivered on them all and more, too. But so long as we still stand by our work and do right by those who trust us, we can go again tomorrow.

Mum taught me to fight for — and dream of — the the world you want to live in.

Every day.

Until your very last day.

Humans care a lot about status and affiliation.

Humans are very good at spotting both in each other.

Humans are very bad at realizing how little all this matters, until they witness the end of someone’s live — be it theirs, or someone very close to them.

Then, they sometimes notice the futility, and turn to the things that matter. Their craft, contribution, courage, wisdom, and temperance.

Then, in time, they forget again, reverting back to status and affiliation.

You can break the cycle if you notice the nonsense.

When you’re about to lose someone, the pain is the point. The real tragedy would be to not feel pain.

When you’re wrestling with your art, the pain is the point, for the same reasons. It shows just how very much you care.

Maybe we don’t want these things to be easier, more efficient, more productive.

Maybe the pain is the point.

I saw a quote today that tickled me:

“The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memoryh was bought with money that doesn’t really exist to be put into GPUs that haven’t been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven’t been built, powered by infrasttructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn’t actually there, in order to generate profies that are mathematically impossible.”

Fascinating. A fun reminder to not believe everything you read in the news, folks.

Agencies love interns and junior talent because they have fresh eyes with fresh ideas, unburdened by memories of what got shot down, what clients won’t go for, and what the market “expects nowadays”.

What they overlook is, we should all remain that way anyway. What use is your contribution if you’re happy to be neutered by every negative experience along the way.

If you can, try to be like a junior with experience, not like a war veteran afraid of loud noises.

Your work will thank you for it.

What do you do when there’s zero feedback?

The best thing I’ve found is to… just not care about the size of the response. Most of the things I’ve made that did well took a minute for others to understand. They were novel… different… and that means less competition (good) but also slower time to “get it” (bad).

So we have to either make peace with periods of zero feedback, or make peace with grueling, never-ending, fierce competition.

No right or wrong answers I suppose. But I know which I prefer!

I was fortunate enough to be laughed at by some of the kids, back in highschool, around 2002.

It meant I learned to do my thing (back then it was making comics, videogames, animations, and card games) and putting some of them on my website for free, and others in my backpack to sell on the schoolyard.

Some laughed, said they were lame, thought it was silly, and questioned why they’d buy things from me when they could go and buy “real” ones from the store.

Others thought it was cool. They bought my games on floppy disk. They bought my card games and the expansion packs I’d have printed and cut out the night before. They’d go to my site and read — and play — my work. We even had a tournament set up in school for the card game.

Thank goodness some laughed. It gave me the strength to learn how to do novel things anyway, despite what others thought.

It’s worked out well for me so far. I have no plan on stopping. I hope you’ll join me.

One of the things my mum taught me, was how to enjoy today while fighting for tomorrow.

Live today like it’s the last one, don’t sweat the things others sweat. This is all thats guaranteed, so enjoy it and be happy.

And

Fight today like you’re going to fight and fight and fight for many many years to come. As more problems come, fight those too. You’ll know when it’s time to stop.

I don’t know if she knows she’s teaching me that lesson.

But she’s still teaching me that lesson.

And she’ll keep teaching me that lesson when she’s gone.

And I’ll continue trying to be a good student, and let the lesson live on through me, to teach to my son, too.

Life’s long until it isn’t.

For every craft you pursue, remember to enjoy it for what it is today.

For every project you work on, remember to enjoy what it looks like today.

For every client you work with, remember to enjoy the work as it is today.

For every recruit you hire, remember to enjoy them as they are today.

If you can’t do that, maybe they’re not for you.

Because life’s long until it isn’t.

I was chatting with my neighbor in the lane today.

We’re both fairly tech-savvy, using technology extensively in our projects.

And it reminded me that there are always more than one way to go about things, even when you think the path is obvious.

His tech-savvy led him to automating his entire home. Everything, controllable from his phone. It’s very cool.

My tech-savvy led me to minimizing tech as much as possible. From having being so exposed to it, I love the low-tech, tactile alternatives to tech-everything. Physical notebooks and calendars. Drawing on paper. Light switches that are on or off, no UI. A local, owned music collection. Card games over TV. Gardening by hand rather than with those little robot things that tootle around yards.

Both are responses to tech-savvy.

It’s a reminder, to me anyway, that opposite of a good idea may also be another good idea.

When the camera happened, artists were supposed to be doomed.

Yet there are still many artists. More, even.

When the smartphone happened, photographers were supposed to be doomed.

Yet there are still many photographers. More, even.

In the moment, when a new thing happens, things are supposed to be doomed.

Yet they continue, often with expansion.

Remember that when things feel catastrophic.

Whenever I go to the park with my son, I’m struck:

Every other parent is on their smartphone, most of the time.

Pushing their kids on a swing, while scrolling.

Walking down the stairs, while scrolling.

Sitting in coffee shops, while scrolling.

Sitting on park benches, while scrolling.

Everyone is so eager to give away their attention, their focus, their mind, their opportunity to build memories.

We don’t have to join them.

If everyone wants “more more more” on social media…

More sensationalism, more content, more dopamine…

Then why is “slowmaxxing” trending on TikTok?

A trend that promotes:

• Spending 15 minutes making your coffee
• Choosing calm over pressure, rest over hustle
• Disconnecting from screens as a modern luxury
• Slow intentional meals, reading for pleasure
• Doing less, but better

What people do and what people really want are not always the same thing.

Many may be addicted to their phones. But that doesn’t mean it’s what they want.

If you ship work and it doesn’t get the response you expected,

It might not have anything to do with the work itself.

It could be related to:

• The moment in time (algorithms or news cycles not working in your favor)
• The portfolio it lives in (perhaps it’s still small, thus not carrying you forward like it might others)
• Who saw it (perhaps your people were doing something else, and it didn’t catch fire as a result)
• Something else entirely (who knows, we’re welcome to guess, but that’s all we’re doing)

The world is obsessed with judging work in numeric form.

But numbers don’t tell the full story, and can lead you astray if you let them.

Keep up the good work.

If you have free time… and you doomscrolled in it… were you really free?

Or are forces at play manipulating how you spend your time, reducing you to a phone zombie and leaving you feeling objectively worse for it?

Does that sound like freedom to you?

Take your time back.

Don’t think of it as “free time”, think of it as “freedom time”, and invest it into something that builds your freedom.

Advancing skills. Learning craft. Enjoying something.

Anything except the brainrot of empty-calorie doomscrolling.

There’s no more time to lose.

If you go big, go hard, spend big to look big, you hurt yourself.

Your runway goes away.

And everyone needs a runway, no matter how big their operation becomes.

So really, your competition isn’t your competitors.

Your competition is your costs.

If your runway is longer than theirs, you have space for the brave work you seek to build.

“What if I ship my work and they don’t like it?”

So what?

Lots of people won’t like it.

It’ll be too happy, too sad, too light, too dark, too professional, too silly, too loud, too quiet, too safe, too edgy, too something.

It’s not for them.

If you ship your work and they don’t like it, that’s great, they’re making room for those it’s for.

Ship away.

If you’re addicted to your phone…

…You could just not have one.

Ultimately, it’s your choice.

For some reason, social feeds are offering me “operating system wars” at the moment.

Where Mac users are distraught with Apple’s many recent design changes, are ready to move to Windows, but became frustrated that Microsoft went all-in on Copilot at their moment of exodus, so they considered Linux, but can’t get their favorite commercial software there, and on and on it goes.

It’s like a soap opera.

A silly, cheesy, dramatic soap opera.

Who cares.

Work on your craft, use whatever gives you access to the tools you need to what you do, and let that be that.

The excess drama doesn’t make you better.

Social networks make you feel you’ll miss out on something important if you don’t check them again in an hour.

They’re lying.

“Time well spent” is an ambiguous goal for time.

It’s easier to look at time two-dimensionally, waiting for someone else to tell us what we should do with our time, or what is worthwhile.

But that’s not usually the answer we need.

The answer we need might be in finding comfort in the true, ambiguous goal for time.

To look at the day, to listen to our gut, and follow that toward “time well spent”.

Sometimes, it might be working on your craft. Other times, it might be going for a long walk with your loved ones.

Both are time well spent.

There are so many good ways to spend your time.

Ignore what others tell you it should be that your instinct disagrees with.

And definitely ignore all the bad ways to spend your time, such as doom-scrolling.

We don’t have infinite time. It passes faster than we think it will.

Make sure it’s time well spent.

Go on social media. Everyone has opinions on everything.

A lot of conflict, arguments, and “heat” around any topic imaginable.

It looks exhausting. All that energy that could have gone towards creativity and new ideas… wasted on arguing with strangers.

Try having fewer opinions. It gives you energy back to do your important work.

We let our computers have too much stimulation on them.

They’re powerful things, they can handle it.

But we can’t.

Computer says “Hit me with more tabs! I got this.”
Brain says “Too much, I’ll just check my email again.”

Computer says “I can render this while you write that.”
Brain says “Too much, I’ll just tab to see if anything crashed.”

Computer says “Want Al to help you think that through?”
Brain says “Sounds easy, but you’re training me not to think.”

Better to let the computer respond to what our brains need,
Rather than have our computer tell our brains how to feel.

Hard isn’t bad.

Parenting your own children is hard.
Freedom running your own biz is hard.
Creating your dream projects is hard.
Maintaining a happy marriage is hard

All the things you want, are hard things.

Turns out you LIKE hard things.

You like hard things.

So when something feels hard? Smile. It’s for you.

A lot of our hangups come from our childhood.

And it shows up in our creative work, all the time, without us even realizing it.

Pick up any well-written book about being a parent.

Read it, see all the ways parent behavior shapes young minds, for better or worse.

See it through the lens of the child. Because you’re the child.

And the first step of releasing those limitations, is seeing them.

In Starbucks today, I sat behind a guy giving a sales presentation.

Something about, don’t use Shopify, what you need is this AI-native platform that does something-or-another because growth.

The poor kid receiving this pitch sounded nervously enthusiastic.

His YouTube channel was reviewed, critiqued for his subscriber count, critizised for the effort spent in each upload (it was reportedly too much effort).

The whole time I tried not to listen, but found it so fascinating, I had to hear more.

And the whole time I thought to myself,

“Poor kid. Take your time, make things that matter for people who care, do your shop how you like and let people who would miss you if you were gone — thanks to the investment you’ve made in them and the permission you’ve earned — buy from you in their time. It’s your business, your rules, don’t worry about the hustlers who tell you to speed up and care less. The world already has enough people like them.”

Kiddo, if you read this, you’ve got this.

Your best work is not for everybody.

It’s probably only for a small number of people.

Which means the rest — the majority — won’t like it much.

So when you do your best work…

And the majority don’t like it much…

You might be on the right track after all.

The App Store promoted a popular, general-purpose AI app as a recommended download today.

Not for experimenting with LLMs.

But for Counselling. For people who need someone to talk to.

An LLM that is rewarded for saying what people need to hear.

Even when those words are delusional, or antagonize a relationship.

And it’s all happening on a device we call…

A phone. Something we used to use when we needed someone to talk to.

Maybe we don’t need to use word-prediction machines to feel better.

Maybe we simply need to use… a phone.