I discovered a pile of blue fuzz.
And his new red scissors.
She wept.
䷔䷲
bite through
wood shackles
no regrowth
cerulean ears
-
Elephant-elephant got a haircut.
-
Imperfections and All
I quit drawing twenty years ago because of the anxiety about the fidelity between the image and reality.
I would feel a panic attack in my throat when the image went off script and I knew I wasn’t going to spend the hours to make it perfect.
A few years ago I had accepted the hard fact that I would never draw again, like I will never take the time become literate in Chinese.
Last November, I started sketching again because I wanted to see more drawings on Post and Tara Trudel encouraged us to share our work.
It became a drawing habit by quietly following the 30 day challenge on Wendy MacNaughton’s Substack.
Now I’m drawing cause I enjoy it.
I know I’ve hit the flow when a deep breath exhales from my lungs. These 10 minute hand sketches have become a daily meditation.
They’re not perfect. They’re not even great (look at the all amazing hands on Pinterest!) But they’re mine and I’m an indulgent judge when I’m not worried about what other people might think.
Like my kids, I’ve learned to proudly marvel at the stuff that comes from my own hand. Imperfections and all.
2023 -
The 3 Gaps, Hyrum Smith, 2016
To excel in life we need to address three gaps — Belief, Value, and Time.
Belief gaps are the deep cause of your underperformance. It’s hard to change ingrained beliefs. Hyrum recommends that you test drive new beliefs by acting “as if” to see if the alternate reality will ultimately change your situation.
Value gaps are your own personal constitution. What matters? So much that they govern your life? How will you prioritize them, to reorient your life?
Hyrum uses the I-Beam thought experiment to test how important something is in your life. What’s worth crossing the Grand Canyon on a little slippery I-beam?
- Family
- Integrity
- Health
- Mind
- Work / Finances
- Making a Difference
Time gaps are where the practical world collies with Belief and Value gaps. His primary recommendation is to start the day with daily “Magic 15 Minutes” exercise.
- Quiet Focus
- Seek Inspiration
- Review Values
- Integrate Long Term Goals
- List Appointments
- List Tasks
- Prioritize
That’s it. It’s a two-hour audiobook that took an hour at 2x speed.
I was inclined to like this book since I have a weakness for self help fare and I appreciated that he didn’t bloat the book like many others in this genre.
However, I could argue that his advice is too simplistic. This book is for someone who is already in a good spot and wants an extra edge. Someone in a tough spot has bigger emergencies at hand.
For someone in such a difficult situation, I wonder if such bootstrap advice is comes off insulting. Ultimately, this is generic advice, packaged tightly.
When I wrote the first draft I thought this might be a good book to return to regularly, like John Miller’s QBQ. In reality, I haven’t given it a second thought over the past two years.
-
Quisling quails queried Qoholet for a quetzal quintet quoting Queen.
We spent the a day at the New Children’s Museum in San Diego, filled with cool installation pieces. The highlight is Whammock! by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam.
Last time we went was before the pandemic, when the boy was 18 months old. He’s now her age then. He took to this piece like a fish in water. Life took a long pause but kept moving regardless.
-
OPM.54 RFQ Hacks
I started this letter two years ago. After reviewing another round of RFQ’s, it’s time to publish four ideas that might help. But really the last one is the only one that counts (assuming you already have relevant experience for the project).
Take care in your project approach narrative. It’s your only chance to signal that you understand what the selection committee is searching for. A mistake in this section is catastrophic. Don’t make it easy for the reviewers to disqualify you.
Show experience that is directly related to the project. If you apply to multiple projects, try to submit separate portfolios for each project. Make it easy for the reviewers to connect your expertise and their project.
Explore white space. A wall of text is bad enough — multiply it by ten (while still saddled with the usual day-to-day work overwhelm). Punchy >>> flowery. Try reading your PDF on a smartphone on Friday afternoon. Make your book easy to read.
Create relationships. When given a chance, put a full team on a small job. Earn a reputation. The same words sound totally different depending who wrote it. The time to make an impact was four years ago.
~
Some Links
David Marquet gave an excellent talk at Google about his time as the Captain of the nuclear sub Santa Fe. I’ve tired of military men turned business consultants, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Perun is publishing some of the best strategic and operational analysis videos of the war in Ukraine. His quadrilogy How Corruption, Lies, Politics, and Procurement Destroys Armies is not to be missed.
Jonathan Parshall examines history with a presentation on a major myth in the Battle of Midway. After the formal talk, they have great chat about the challenges of translation.
~
Playground Train, 2022 ~
Thanks for reading!
Justus Pang, RA -
Twice in two days, the floor was swept, vacuumed, inspected, swept, vacuumed, and mopped.
he messed around
on and off
run around
knock the bowl of the tablerice and corian
everywhere
mama yelling
boy cryingno snacks for a week!
sister got her popsicle
he announced
我今天要一个popsicle或者看姐姐有一个popsicle!
(Today, I wanted a popsicle, or watch sister have a popsicle!)grandma
cooking lunch,
watching a drama,
charging the ipad
the long cord swept
a salt shaker
off the counter
no snacks for grandma!䷮䷁
sluggish suffocation
golden carriage
stingy stop -
Midnight Diner (TV Show)
Seasons 1 & 2
The Japanese aren’t scared of sex. Heck, the first episode includes a stripper who is a regular throughout the series.
But the show isn’t explicit — nothing more than what you find on Instagram. It just accepts sex workers, gangsters, cross dressers, and normies as part of the fabric of life in this district.
The show is ultimately conservative. It touches on the fringes, but happiness is found in a solid relationships and family.
It’s also not afraid of or death. Like many Asian shows, they’ll kill a likable character. Such a dynamic inserts needed tension to keep this upbeat show from going completely saccharine.
I almost wonder if the show is a mirror of where America is headed. A little lewd, a little violent, a little corrupt, but ultimately conservative. I guess things could be worse.
Seasons 3, 4, & 5
Midway through the third season my wife lost interest. I also took a nine month break before finally finishing season five.
A small restaurant with recurring characters is a fun premise, but the characters don’t go anywhere. I wonder if the producers were trapped with a season-by-season contract.
The show is worth watching, but don’t worry when you’ve had enough of their quirky little world. It’s a great case study in television flash fiction (albeit a tad too heartwarming), but fifty episodes is too much.
Then again, if they came out with a sixth season, I’d check it out.
~
At twenty minutes a pop, the show is a series of barely connected short stories. It has a few regular characters, but each episode is free standing. Of course some stories are stronger than others, but pick any one at random (even just the first one). If you dig it, you’ll dig the rest, until you don’t. If you don’t, then don’t bother.
Since this is the first non-animated TV show that I’ve watched and finished, I assume there must be be something good about this series. Or maybe it’s a sign that I have no idea what I’m talking about.
-
Petulant penguins peevishly pecked penitent pecans pleading penury.
A few weeks ago, I got into a conversation about zines and d.w. sent me a couple! I printed out the emails with the kids to make the books.
A single sheet of paper, a few folds, one cut, and voila! an eight page book.
The kids delayed dinner so they could color their new zines.
-
OPM.53 (notes on) A Sense of Style, Steven Pinker, 2015
I often write about the grand challenges aspects of this work — eliminating and preserving slack in the system, juggling budget and schedule, fostering a decisive culture, executing a careful process, developing relationships.
But in this world of digital communication, much of my time on the job is trying to write good. A well turned email can make a difference, and it’s amazing when a carefully crafted memo gets the needed response.
This book stands out from prescriptive manuals (like Strunk and White) because Pinker carefully explains the why behind the rules. This book’s strength is also reflection upon what I do as an OPM.
Yes we must follow our agency standards. And we all got personal preferences. But we’re at our best when we can explain the logic behind our decisions. It’s important for our team to know why, especially if the institutional logic results in weird choices.
At least that’s what I hope. Maybe I just bore my consultants to tears with extended explanations of bureaucratic esoterica.
That’s one of the perks and dangers of being a client — no one will tell you to shut up.
~
Listening is not the best way to consume this book, but a little is better than none. There are diagrams and complex analyses that warrant a visual reading (either physical or electronic). But I haven’t bothered in the past couple of years, so I guess it’s not going to happen.
~
Some Links
Live performances of electronic music sounds like a contradiction, but they have a spark that is sometimes missing from their albums. Here are a few examples.
I’ve haven’t gotten into his studio albums, but I often play Oupio’s concert at Red Rocks with the SYZYGY Orchestra when I’m cranking on work.
Admittedly Caravan Palace’s animated music video is wildly vivid, but there’s a great vibe in this live performance of Lone Digger.
I used to listen to Moon Safari album on a little blue MP3 player while walking to studio. This video of La Femme d’Argent in a recording studio materializes the music and the memories.
~
Ferrero Rocher, 2022 ~
Thanks for reading!
Justus Pang, RA -
~600! (on Post)
It took three months between milestones this time.
This long interval reflects my shift from hanging out on Post to Substack Notes.
Post is a better feed experience — I love the variety.
But the newsletter integration at Substack is the “killer app” that kept my attention there. My major goal this year was to make a dent in the pile of old blog drafts and Substack is a better platform for that endeavor.
But things might be shifting, now that I’ve signed up for auto posting from the RSS feed. It effectively lets me schedule posts for Post and this place has always been a bit more interactive for me. (Until this week, it was essentially impossible hard to follow anyone on Substack Notes without Subscribing to their newsletter, so the circles there are small and extremely top heavy.)
It will be interesting to see how these Social Media Wars play out, even as I try to reduce my time on digital feeds (though I’ve recently discovered Pinterest as a great resource for visual inspiration). I’ve made a dent in my publishing backlog but it will take some effort to clear the decks and I want to spend more time sketching and reading books.
The internet is a tricky beast. In the past month I might have spent more time shopping for fountain pens than pushing any of those priorities. Perusing virtual shelves, watching youtube videos, and planning purchases are great hacks at making you believe you’ve done something while accomplishing nothing.
So I’ve made a resolution to stop shopping for the rest of the year. I’ve got a few toys in the mail and I bet that “necessities” will pop up to open my wallet. But no more discretionary browsing!
Here’s to another fresh start to an old year!
