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A Blog About Creativity
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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?”
Your Indie Cred's Safe With Me
I've never quite understood it when people worry about their personal "indie cred." For some people, listening to a pop band that sounds polished and radio-ready is equivalent to selling their soul to Lucifer. But if you think a song really is catchy and really is fun to listen to, there's no reason to feel guilty about it. You shouldn’t have to apologize for anything. Sure, maybe you’re a devout follower of Bright Eyes, but so what if you hear a Paramore song on the radio and think “hey, that actually kinda rocks?” You’ve done nothing wrong. If someone else thinks you’re somehow less legit as a human being now, I don’t know why you’d want to hang out with them in the first place. Their approval means nothing.