GRIZZLY PEAR
Seth Godin recently wrote a great blog post Investing in Slack.
Most of my mistakes as an experienced architect have been due to a lack of slack.
Corners get cut when moving fast on that adrenaline rush of a looming deadline.
When corners are cut, regrettable mistakes happen.
Unforeseeable errors are an unpleasant fact of the profession, but regrettable mistakes gnaw at your soul. Just give us a couple more hours!
The hard part is managing a project is getting the slack before we need it.
We went to a concert by pianist Dr. Spencer Baker the other day, and aside from the great music, I was struck by the fact that he played most of his pieces from memory.
It made me think of our own work, and the vast quantity of information that we shove into our memory banks.
While I am in a good good lucrative profession, I can’t help but feel that musicians are on the right track.
If one is going to waste their brain on something, memorize some art!
I had a canker sore on my tongue for the last few days and I was struck by how one well placed ulcer can be so debilitating.
This sore was on the side and thus perfectly place to be irritated when eating and talking. It was bad enough to the point I ended up just taking naps all weekend to avoid the pain.
Like my recent bout with pneumonia was a reminder that health is darn near close to everything, this one is a reminder that the details matter.
Even the smallest ailments can make life quite miserable!
I dreamt of meeting an old acquaintance and chatting about work as the snow fell outside the cafe windows.
It was a nice dream.
But instead of sleep-processing a meeting every six years, there has to be a better way to keep in touch.
However, time is tight. I don’t have time to chat with everyone I’ve previously known.
Social media makes it easier to stalk people, and it may be a medium for contact like email, but it is not actual connection.
Maybe the dream world isn’t an awful filter to figure out who is worth keeping in contact.
Last night, my wife and I snuck off to watch a movie after the kids fell asleep.
Summer Wars had won the 2010 Japan Academy Award for animated film. It is indeed a very nicely done film, but was ultimately just a fun fluffy popcorn flick with lots of action.
It’s a little unfair to come away slightly disappointed, since I find a lot of Disney and Pixar fare just that as well. But still, I guess all these years of watching Studio Ghibli films has made me expect just a little more in its core.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth a watch, but unless I’m missing something, it is just what it says it is.
Most everyone has their vices.
These are the ones I spend my money on. The first three are in reality, and the last in aspiration.
Then again, also not so much the first two, since we’ve been living in constrained quarters.
And the third has been a bit limited due to a lack of promising places for going out to eat.
But still, these are nice luxuries to have. The greatest luxury being the ability to indulge in them at will.
Its disorienting when you’ve been grinding on projects and all the sudden the last immediate deadline has been crossed.
I have a couple long term projects that have been in the back of my head, but it was not easy to suddenly shift gears and start working on them.
I’d like to figure out my own Google 20% rule (did it ever really exist?), where I don’t ever really drop a long term project even as I douse the immediate fires around me.
Maybe it’s time to reread that Essentialism book, even though it is packed with its share of fluff.
I like to follow sports. Don’t have time to watch the action anymore, but I follow the players. Living through the strategy game vicariously.
I’ve started reading Lone Wolf and Cub. It’s a classic, but ultimately still a samurai manga.
Or how about my run of watching Spike Jonze music videos?
Excellent craft is beautiful to watch.
But is worth my time?
If not this then what?
This morning I ended up falling down a youtube rabbit hole indulging in the little boy’s fantasy of arms and armor.
The first was in the classic youtube format of a nerd geeking out in front of a camera. The info was great, I found the conversation about swords where the sharpened edge on the inside curve very interesting. But ultimately it was a monologue with a few video accents.
The second was a bit more polished production about armor and weaponry. This must have involved a team, not only did it involve an archer and medieval armor, it also included a visit to the range with modern body armor.
And of course both were totally free, after a pre-roll advertisement. Shadiversity is clearly a personal project, nicely done, but not super polished, but I’m scratching my head what is the business model for the Modern History.
I most likely shouldn’t ask too many questions and just enjoy it.
We really are in a golden age of free content, it’s all out there as long as you have an internet connection.
As I got off of the steroids from my bout with pneumonia, I ended up crashing for a long night.
It was quite refreshing to sleep for ten hours straight. As I get older, these occasions where I just sleep for hours on end seem to have become quite rare.
I can’t remember half of what I dreamed, but it felt like I had trawled through the memory banks clearing out the muddle in my head to be rearranged in the morning.