March 2007 blogposts

If You're Going to Go to Hell, You May As Well Go Express...

Surfing the Web on my lunch hour, and came across this news story on an NBC affiliate in Philadelphia.  If Britney Spears' recent behaviour was a cry for help, then this guy's life is a 130-decibel horror movie scream for help:

I mean, you know someone's in serious trouble when the fact that he's a crystal meth dealer lands up in the secondary headline....

Where On (Google) Earth...?

Now where is this place? (pictured right)

Well, why not visit it on Google Maps yourself, zoom out a bit, until you discover it.  Google Maps now has a very few areas of the globe (downtown Las Vegas is one of them; Sydney, Australia is another), where you can zoom down to an amazing new level of close-up detail!  Here's further explanation and some more mind-bogglingly up-close shots. 

Where On (Google) Earth...? Part II

This is amazing!  The level of detail is so clear on this Sydney image that you can see the tennis ball:

Directions

It used to be that every five years or so I would spend a few days, pull out some paper, and answer the whole who-am-I and where-am-I-going and what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life question. But it's been a long time since I've done that.

However, something's nagging at me and telling me that it's time. In the past when I did this exercise, I found that I'm not very honest with myself; I told  myself that what other people wanted for me is what I wanted as well. Mix in some stupid pride and I used to land up with a list of ridiculously high goals.

This time, when I do this, I have to focus on what *I* think, what *I* want. And I'm afraid to ask the questions this time around, because I don't know the answers. I'm afraid that the answers I do get will mean making big changes in my life, like changing jobs or moving away to another city.

Beating Resistance

A serendipitous find on a subject I had just blogged about less than 24 hours earlier: resistance and fear of success. Merlin Mann, the blogger behind the personal productivity blog 43 Folders, writes:

Resistance can be thought of as anything that pulls us away from doing the work we know is most important to us. It takes many forms (including procrastination, fear, distraction, and negative self-talk), but the effect is often similar: we find or permit all kinds of barriers to keep us from becoming the person we want to be, or from completing the thing we really want to make. Whether that’s being a published author, a composer, a playwright, or a painter, our impulse to create constantly battles an impulse to do something else, or to do nothing — to not upset our weirdly comfy stasis.

This book [The War of Art by Steven Pressfield] came up twice in my recent interview with Jonathan Coulton; both in part one and today’s recently released part two. Jonathan strikes me as someone who has, so far, succeeded at talking down the resistance he’d faced, and now he’s doing what he’s great at, and, in his words, he’s working hard to become the kind of “true person” that he wants to be for his daughter.

I think it’s really important to underscore that beating resistance does not have to mean quitting your job or doing something equally dramatic; it just means that you identify and then choose to beat the crap out of whatever perceived obstacle keeps you from doing your work. You “go Pro” … making it all about the work, and not allowing yourself to trail off when it gets hard or when you have to fight in order to get your stuff done. Pretty inspiring stuff, as far as I’m concerned.

In this video clip of the interview, Merlin interviews singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton, when the conversation drifts towards how resistance can block us from becoming (in Jonathan’s words) a “true person”.

Here’s a transcript of the part of the interview that really hooked me:

JC: …if I’m gonna be a true person, and an example of a true person to this child, then I should be true to myself, and do what it is that I’m interested in doing. And it just felt so much more honest since I’ve decided to that. So, yeah that seems suicidal…

MM: No, not really. I men, that’s the funny part about stuff like that…to refer to a book I referred to earlier, The War of Art, it’s not it’s my favourite book or something, it’s just a book I recently read…

JC: (smiling) Sure, sure…

MM: One thing that he said is really interesting ... he said that one reason we do things like procrastinate and we kind of, we find these barriers for ourselves, is that the closer we get to the thing that we kind of secretly realize in our head that we should be doing, the more reasons we find to not do it. Because it creates this kind of stasis that lets us sort of stay locked in.  And yeah, I mean, maybe it’s the craziest thing you ever did, or maybe it’s like you finally unlock the door to thing that’s gonna make you happy.

JC: Yeah, and I do feel like…when my daughter was born, that was the moment that sort of clarified my whole life.

Merlin Mann's websites: 43 Folders and The Merlin Show

Jonathan Coultons website: Jonathan Coulton