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| Brennen | the content and duration of any moment
is no more constrained and regular than that of a street corner or an open door. |
I’m re-reading Brennen’s chapbook, unrequited poetry. Above is a quote, rather obviously. Every time I do this, I’m reminded of why I love poetry, and why Brennen’s such a great poet.
I’m buying another copy, to give to a friend who’s developing an interest in poetry.
I figure it’s worth grabbing any chance to expand one’s horizons of great poetry.
I’ve heard positive things about Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, so I grabbed the free sample for my Kindle, and have been reading it over the past few days.
It’s the Law of Attraction, but presented in the way that I’ve found true: that which you focus on, and consistently strive for, will come to life faster and easier than you expect.
While this works with just about any goal, Hill starts with money, and presents a six-step system:
So, I’m trying it. My goal is: By November 30th, I’ll be making $3,000 per month by tutoring, and writing code, short stories, and articles.
I spent the last hour reviewing short stories for submission to various magazines. Odd; I’ve only performed half a dozen short story submissions in the past few years, despite knowing that when you get a rejection from one magazine, you should immediately send the story to another magazine. I now wonder why I haven’t been doing that.
Now to see if this works long-term. And how much money I’ll be making on November 30th.
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I recently finished reading Buckminster Fuller’s The Critical Path. If you don’t know him, Buckminster invented the geodesic dome, and is generally considered a slightly crackpot visionary designer. The Critical Path is one of his final books, in which he traces an overview of his life and mission.
In his early 30’s, he decided to devote his life to “an experiment, to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity.”
So he studied energy problems and designed an efficient worldwide energy grid. He studied housing and developed inexpensive, portable housing (geodesic domes). And so forth.
My main problem with his theories: He was intensely rational. He assumed that people would adopt geodesic domes because of their efficiencies, ignoring how people like to live in traditional houses. Granted, he believed that people would adopt such things out of natural necessity, but I don’t think people are that rational. People hold on to things.
On the other hand, Fuller impresses me. He accomplished a huge amount in his lifetime; far more than I have. This is a minor complaint about a giant of a man.
It’s just a shame that humans can be blind like that.
This is from a book I stumbled on a few weeks ago at a used book store in town:
The disciple Kung-too said: “All are equally men, but some are great men, and some are little men; how is this?” Mencius replied: “Those who follow that part of themselves which is great are great men; those who follow that part which is little are little men.”
Kung-too pursued, “All are equally men, but some follow that part of themselves which is great, and some follow that part which is little; how is this?” Mencius answered: “The senses of hearing and seeing do not think, and are obscured by external things. When one thing comes into contact with another, as a matter of course it leads (the sense) away. To the mind belongs the office of thinking. By thinking, it gets the right view of things; by neglecting to think, it fails to do this.
“These, the senses and the mind, are what Heaven has given to us.
“Let a man first stand fast in the supremacy of the nobler part of his constitution, and the inferior part will not be able to take it from him. It is simply this which makes the great man.”
So, a few years ago there was this TV channel called Tech TV. And the most popular show on that channel was The Screen Savers, a call-in tech variety show in which two guys and a crew of geeks covered all sorts of technology news and trends and such.
Then, Tech TV died.
So what did they do? They dusted themselves off and looked for jobs in new media.
One of them started Digg. One of them created DL.tv.
But I want to talk about Leo Laporte, who has since started The TWiT Netcast Network. He began producing free podcasts, then looked for advertisers. He only takes on advertisers who he personally supports, and he provides a live advertisement for their services or products directly in the podcasts themselves (instead of inserting an annoying, pre-generated ad).
Then he signed up with Stickam, set up a few cameras, and began streaming live video of his shows as he records and assembles them. It required a significant amount of money, but way less than a typical studio.
His podcasts now have tens of thousands of listeners, and thousands watch his live streams. Today, he’s announced that he’s breaking even, and his list of advertisers grows.
He’s living the dream. Not through massive financial resources or brilliant marketing or incredibly hard work. Because he dreamed of something, and tenaciously worked towards it.
I’ve been testing out RescueTime, a service that tracks and plots your computer usage. The idea is that it’ll give you an idea of what’s wasting your time.
You install a small app and let it run. Every few minutes, it uploads usage stats to www.rescuetime.com, which you can access at any time to check out your usage. It’ll also email you a summary every week.
I used it for a few weeks, and to my surprise I learned nothing new. I know what I spend most of my time using (Safari and the terminal, mostly). I know what wastes my time (YouTube and Fark, mostly, which I’ve now blocked).
It was a worthwhile experiment, though, and you might want to give it a try if you’re curious about how you spend your time. It certainly functioned well.
| Henry David Thoreau writes: | It is not enough to be busy….The question is: What are we busy about? |
I’ve just put the finishing touches on Your Online Life. It’s a web-based course in web trends and technologies, covering a large set of sites and services. You can learn about online photo sharing sites, user-contributed news sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a host more—both how they work, and exactly how to sign up with them and use them.
The idea is to provide high-quality tutorials and explanations, that are constantly updated and expanding as the web expands. It’s a one-stop resource to keep you up-to-date with the web. When you hear about a site or service, you can go to Your Online Life and learn what it is, why you’d want to use it, and how to use it.
I’m offering this for a one-time fee of $50, which gives you lifetime access to the site and every tutorial and piece of information I ever post there now and in the future. It’s like access to an encyclopedia of web trends and technologies.
Should be an interesting ride.
Finally got a chance to watch Cool Hand Luke recently. It’s one of those films that are frequently referenced but infrequently seen.
Cool Hand Luke works mostly on the effectiveness of its actors. It’s an intensely character-driven piece, with very little action. It’s all about the relationships between the characters, how the bounce off each other.
I was struck by the other prisoners’ reaction to Luke. He’s very independent, seeing no need to observe the prisoners’ little hierarchy. He doesn’t try to upset it, either; he just ignores it. He wins the other prisoners’ respect out of sheer tenacity and difference.
Their reaction? They follow. As impressed as they are at his independence, none of them try to be independent. It’s almost like they expect him to live out their own dreams of independence. It’s a terrible burden, and in the end it’s one of the things that breaks him.
It’s a beautiful film, too, full of the rising and setting sun, reflections in glasses, and creative shots. But that’s frosting on the cake; the actors drive the film. And they drive it straight to eternity.
Some websites are informational. Some are entertainment. The Institute of Official Cheer is both. It’s an archive of old newspaper ads, comic books, children’s books, and strange magazine inserts. It pokes fun at the past, but with a twinkle in its eye; the proprietor (James Lileks) knows that they were just doing their best.
I bring this up because I spent a good chunk of today delving into its many, many subsites. There’s just so much content here, and Lileks’s writing skewers it with precision and style.