END MIDDLE BEGINNING
A Blog About Creativity
Search
Requiem for the Successful Man
That’s a quote from George Steinbrenner that I saw in an obituary on Sports Illustrated’s website today. It seemed to sum up his general attitude toward life, but it also related to the overall tone of the article: over the course of three pages, there were only three fleeting moments where anything remotely warm and fuzzy was said about Steinbrenner. Two of those moments only had to do with his money and were sandwiched between less flattering descriptions.
Sacrificing Entitlement
To follow your dreams and pursue your goals, you’ll probably have to make sacrifices. It’s generally inevitable. Ideally, you’ll recognize when you’re making sacrifices, and you’ll choose to make smart ones. I’d imagine, for example, that sacrificing some free time to work overtime hours to pay off a student loan is probably a reasonable decision one might make, whereas sacrificing spending time with your family so that you can become a Wall Street millionaire may prove unfulfilling in the long run. (Although maybe not. I’m not a millionaire, so I can only speculate.)
Don't Sweat the Huge Stuff
Life is pretty imperfect, and we should probably carefully adjust our expectations. That might come off as a bit cynical, but it’s not meant to be. Let me explain.
The Death of Deadlines
Birthdays are a lot like New Year’s Eve in that they're often a time when people reflect on the year that’s past, how they’ve grown, what they’ve accomplished, mistakes that they’ve made. Some people fret about another year that’s gone by and how much shorter life seems after every 365 days. Other people don’t think about it too much at all and just use it as an excuse to party. I think I’ve done all three at one point or another.
The Sacredness of Inanity
Social networking. A now-ubiquitous term that conjures images of Facebook, nerds, and wasted work hours. These days, it seems you can’t enjoy a useful website without having to sign in, make a profile which reflects the person you’d like to be in the cyber world, and start spending your time networking, “friending,” and generally sucking up precious minutes connecting with other theoretical people. While I don’t mind having to sign into various sites, the social networking side of things starts to scare me off; as soon as I know I can have buddies, friends, or whatever-the-hell, I think about how much work goes into it, how little energy I actually want to exert on it, and how having a small buddy list makes you look inadequate and renders the whole thing pointless. Can’t I just post some videos online without seeing the dreaded e-mail that says “jdpstudman wants to be your friend?”