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Monthly Archives: May 2016

Making Shitty Things

It’s a new mantra of mine: “Make Shitty things.” Why? Well:

  1.  I want to make things
  2. In not specifying the state of the things, my brain naturally imposes “good” onto them
  3. My brain subconsciously translates “good” to “perfect”
  4. I get anxious while striving for perfect, and I don’t make things
As a solution to this, I’ve committed myself to making shitty things (in this case, blog posts), every day. I’m hoping they won’t be that way forever, but you have to start somewhere.

One of my favorite stories to illustrate this point (I’ll share the video where it comes from soon)-

A woman, when asked the question “What do you want to do but just can’t seem to follow through on right now?” responded with, “Run three times per week.” The questioner replied, “Why don’t you only try to run once per week?”. Her answer— “What’s the point of that?”

A question to ask yourself: What aren’t you doing because you’re afraid it “won’t be good enough” or some other “all-in” excuse? How can you get around it and just start?

Stepping into the Arena

It’s a tremendous challenge, doing work you care about. Even discovering what that is. It demands a series of leaps, each one as daunting as the last. There’s no blueprint for going about it, each of our journey’s has to be unique.

Despite this, there seems to be one necessary step in the process: Making things you care about and sharing them with the world.
 
I’ve made things in the past. Funny things. Interesting things. Witty things. But rarely have I made the decision to really try and create something I care about. And so I’m launching a new project to change that: A daily blog.
 
For (at least) the next 180 days, I’ll be posting and emailing out a blog post, Every. Single. Day.
 
They’ll cover a range of topics, but I assure you of this much: They will be heartfelt, and they will be about things I deeply believe in.

So welcome aboard, my new accountability buddies. For today, I leave you with this quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
 
I’ll see you again tomorrow.

P.S. If you signed up for general updates from my website, I’ve automatically signed you up for the daily blog. If you don’t want to receive an email from me every day, I completely understand. You can change your preferences below to only receive occasional updates.