people make the place
Some people look for a beautiful place. Others make a place beautiful
Hazmat Inayat Khan
The Office on the surface is a boring uneventful show. It’s literally about a failing paper company. People with ordinary lives. Mundane lives filled with the triviality of everyday.
Yet it’s probably the most compelling show I’ve watched (and rewatched). Why?
It comes down to the people.
It’s a show about ordinary people. Fallible ‘boring’ yet interesting, funny, angry, sad, loving, caring, destructive, chaotic and frustrating people.
It zooms in on conversations. Sometimes emphasises awkward silences. People talk over each other. People are unhinged.
That’s what makes it compelling. Not the physical location, but the people.
The prison was never the place, but the perspective
Where ever you go there you are is a common Zen saying. One might be in the midst of beauty, yet the mind can conjure fantasies of ‘better places’ in the non-existent future or the partially remembered past.
The solution is to really see the stories. Drop them. And pay vivid attention to your surroundings. Feel the sensations of the wind, hear the birds, pay attention to the passing of phenomena. The world will be infused with magic.
You infuse the world with magic. The people make the place.
I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply and doesn’t stop where it once used to
Rainer Maria Rilke
27
Turned 27. I am going to make some personal predictions.
Predictions
Career : At the moment, I can’t imagine doing anything other than radiology. Endlessly intellectually stimulating, purpose inbuilt, varied, time to enter flow states, social at work, chilled out. Prediction is : MSK/GI Radiology as a specialty.
Love. Regular metta is slowly infusing the world with joy.
Location : Trees/Forests nearby with easy access to the city. I have this now. Hopefully I will continue to be grateful for it. Habituation to location is corrosive. Die to each moment. See each moment anew, and the world is suffused with magic.
Friendships : Reach out, open your door, form communities. The people make the place.
Personality : Become more playful. Humour and self righteousness are mutually exclusive. The older I get, the less cynical/solemn/fearful/anxious I want to be. Anxiety and humour are two opposites of the same coin.
Continually ask questions. Introspect. Journal. Sit. I don’t think this aspect of ‘me’ has slowed down as I’ve gotten older.
The best advice is not to tell people what to do, but to ask them the right questions. Find out what’s going on in their head, and help them frame that in away that’s useful." - David Allen
Physically : Calisthenics and Cycling. I deeply enjoy both.
Creatively : Guitar/Drums/Writing/Singing/Photos.
archive your memories
I had 2 YouTube channels as a teenager. One of them regularly had 1K+ views on Minecraft let’s play with almost 20 episodes.
One video hit 1 million views.
As a self conscious 16-17 year old, prompted by a comment from a friend - I deleted it. I never made any backups. It was gone.
Similarly, I had a notebook with loads of short-stories/insights. One day I just decided to throw it away. It felt like a burden because I knew it wasn’t good.
The taste talent gap (Ira Glass). The taste was there. The talent was not.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Ira Glass
I deeply regret deleting these. I would love to see what 17 year old me made, but memory has eroded it. The belief that something needed to be ‘good’ took over the creative aspect.
Since then, I’ve radically changed. It’s better to make a 100 crappy things, than to get super attached to one piece and one outcome. The belief that everyone must like it, means that no-one will.
Make 100 crappy things
Be creative like a child. Create simply to create. Create absolute garbage. And archive it.
If you start a project. You will inevitably quit (very likely). You want a record.
- Save those stupid blog posts
- Save those stupid vlogs/videos
- Save those bad photos
- Save those terrible singing/guitar videos.
Go buy a 10TB hard-drive. and save everything. There is no excuse. Document your life.
All this comes down to - is to take yourself, and anything you produce less seriously.