“Which is worth more, Kind of Blue from Miles Davis, or the third Boston album? It depends on your taste. I hope we can agree, though, that the fact that Miles spent four days on his album and Tom spent eight years on his is irrelevant…Freelancers are close to their work, and it’s easy to tell ourselves that what we sell is our effort. That’s an error. There’s rarely a correlation between effort and value. Even if you charge by the hour, you’re not selling hours. You’re selling something clients can use. Clients will pay more for something useful than something that was difficult.” -Seth Godin
“It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.” -Paula Scher, world class designer on being paid $1.4 million for the Citibank logo
Nobody cares how hard you worked. Everyone works hard. Or at least thinks they do (See various “#thegrind” memes on social media). Hard work is almost a commodity.
What isn’t a commodity, what people do care about and what they will pay you well for, is the value you create for them.
The amount of time or hard work it took to create that value is irrelevant.
And I listen for the voice inside my head Nothin’, I’ll do this one myself -“State Of Love And Trust”, song by Pearl Jam
Giving up the search and realizing the cavalry isn’t coming is refreshing and empowering. You no longer seek external validation or to get picked. You no longer analyze what everything means. You no longer wonder if this is what you should be doing with your life.
You just decide making this piece art at this point in time is worth it and you’re gonna make it happen. If people wanna join you, cool. If they don’t wanna join you, also cool.
Go make it happen.
Be the cavalry.
And then when you’re done, maybe you can actually be the cavalry for someone else. (Because that person has also decided to be their own cavalry. But when you show up, they will be overjoyed to see you.)
“We should remember that even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why. Or how ripe figs begin to burst. And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty. Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar’s mouth. And other things. If you look at them in isolation there’s nothing beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. He’ll find the jaws of live animals as beautiful as painted ones or sculptures. He’ll look calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him constantly—things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home with Nature and its works.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“And…and you know what, maybe I’m crazy. But when I walk through a forest that I saved, when I hear the sound of wind rustling in young trees, trees that I planted myself, I realize that I have my own little bit of control over the climate. And if after thousands of years one person is happier because of it, well then…I can’t tell you the feeling I get when I plant a birch tree and I see it grow up and sprout leaves, I…I mean, I fill up with pride, I…” -Astrov in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (Annie Baker adaptation)
People enjoy their food, take pleasure in being with their families, spend weekends working in their gardens, delight in the doings of the neighborhood. And even though the next country is so close that people can hear its roosters crowing and its dogs barking, they are content to die of old age without ever having gone to see it. -excerpt from Tao Te Ching, Verse 80, by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)
“It gets dark as I sit here, and the fireflies add wonderful effects to the flowerbeds. The birds of the air, the flowers of the field–was ever Solomon in all his glory arrayed as one of these?…There are so many of those brief moments of waiting in our lives. It is wonderful how sweet these notes are to the heart, though often while one is taking them down they seem like commonplaces. But when they are read over again, they have a distilled sweetness. It seems to be God speaking.” – Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage
The easier it is for you to be happy, the luckier you are.
I agree with Snoopy…Watching leaves fall from a tree is pretty awesome.
A poem for your weekend…
Aimless Love by Billy Collins
This morning as I walked along the lake shore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor’s window, and later for a bowl of broth, steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought, without recompense, without gifts, or unkind words, without suspicion, or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut, the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door— the love of the miniature orange tree, the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower, the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor— just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest on a low branch overhanging the water and for the dead mouse, still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I found myself standing at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish. I could feel myself falling again as I felt its turning in my wet hands and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
P.S. – H/t to Susan Cain for the poem and inspiring this post.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” -Teddy Roosevelt
“You have to run your own race. Problems begin the moment you start comparing your results to someone who is playing under different conditions.
The 40-year-old entrepreneur with three kids has different constraints than the single 27-year-old.
A painter with 20 years of practice shouldn’t be the benchmark for someone in year two.
Someone caring for aging parents is not in the same position as someone with no obligations outside work.
Play your own game. Emphasize gradual progress and keep the comparison internal. Are you getting a little better today?” -James Clear
“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.” -Shane Parrish
“The solution isn’t coming. The solution is already here…In a rapidly evolving world, hope is a natural response when things are always getting better/getting worse. Acting like we have what we need already, though, gives us the chance to take action right here and right now.” -Seth Godin
Stop thinking you need something else. Stop waiting for something else to happen. Stop hoping for someone else to show up.
… Well I told you once and I told you twice But ya never listen to my advice You don’t try very hard to please me With what you know it should be easy
… Well this could be the last time This could be the last time Maybe the last time I don’t know, oh no, oh no – “The Last Time”, song by The Rolling Stones
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“While you’re playing each song it’s not a bad idea to think ‘this is the song I came here to play tonight’.
It’ll help put your full weight into it.
You travelled all that way, sacrificed a lot of other things to be on the stage…why not (at least) act like and think like every song is your sole purpose for being there?” -Gabe Andersen
Chances are this won’t be the last time you get to make your art. Or to raise the stakes a bit…be the last day you live your life.
But there’s nothing wrong with proceeding as if it is.
Put your whole shoulder into it.
Give it everything you got.
Leave it all out there.
You’ll be so glad you did.
And if you’re lucky enough to get another crack at it tomorrow?….Well then, you’ll have all the gratitude you can imagine.
P.S. – Thank you to everyone who attended our Vs. “Veteran Artist Night” this evening and to all the Vets for sharing their incredible stories. It was an amazing night. And to all Veterans out there…we can’t say thank you enough for your great service to our country.
You will never regret showing up and supporting your friends.
And sometimes, like tonight, the play/reading will be awesome, your friends and the rest of the cast will be awesome, and you’ll run into some awesome people who are also there because they showed up too.
Choose your attitude and you get to choose your past (your view of it) and your present (finding opportunities), which then shapes your future.
H/t to my friend Joe for the image above and to Billy Oppenheimer’s always excellent Six at Six Newsletter for the Jay Wright story below…
Late in the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, Villanova blew a 10-point lead. With 4.7 seconds left, UNC hit a 3-pointer to tie the game. Villanova’s head coach, Jay Wright, called a timeout, and as his players walked to the huddle, they were all saying the same word: “Attitude.” “It’s the most important aspect of our program,” Coach Wright explains in his book, Attitude. “When we break a huddle, we say ‘1, 2, 3, Attitude.’” The test of Attitude, Wright taught his players, is: “Where is your mindset after something bad happens to you?” Where is your mindset after you blow a 10-point lead? Where is your mindset after your opponent hits a 3 to tie the game with 4.7 seconds left? “When I looked into the eyes of our players,” Wright writes, “I saw no anger or regret. No one bemoaned [the UNC player’s] ‘lucky shot,’ or that any of our guys had failed to stop him from grabbing the pass that led to that shot, or anything else.” Instead, “they were all saying, ‘Attitude. Attitude. This is what we do. Attitude. This is what we do.’”
With this mindset, the players returned to the court.
Villanova’s Kris Jenkins inbounded the ball to Ryan “Arch” Arcidiacono. Arch dribbled up the left side of the court, crossed half court, cut right towards the 3-point arc, where he underhanded a pass to Jenkins, who caught the ball with 1.3 seconds left, and, in perfect rhythm, jumped then released the ball with 0.6 seconds, and hit a buzzer-beater to win the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
Famously, Wright barely reacted to Jenkins’ National Championship-winning shot. Before his guys went back on the court, he explained, “I processed all the potential scenarios.” Most likely, the game was going to go to overtime where UNC would ride their wave of momentum and win the game. “No matter the outcome,” Wright continued, “because of the way our players responded after UNC tied the game [“Attitude. Attitude. This is what we do.”]—I felt like they had the greatest lesson in life. I felt like that was an accomplishment that would follow them through their lives.”
Wright had to instill in his players a mindset, he said, “that they would carry with them for the remainder of their days on earth.” “In that sense, I knew we had already won.” Wright had done the work to have a lasting impact on his players. Everything else was extra.
P.S. – Here’s the buzzer beater. Watch Jay Wright after the shot goes in as compared to everyone else.
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