Be Your Own Worst Enemy: Say No. I Dare Ya.
Just a little aside re creating cool stuff and realizing a vision: People who start out saying “no” and “no, that can’t be done” and “no, that’s too ambitious” when you start talking about a creative process (perhaps even before you’ve finished explaining)…those people are already entering a downward spiral of lowered expectations. Don’t be one of those people. (Which is not to say if Evil Monkey wants to partner with you making a perpetual motion machine you ought to take Evil up on his offer.)
It’ll sound like a motivational poster, but almost anything is possible if you have the practical knowledge or tools to support your vision–and you will it to happen.
- Say yes to three creative opportunities that scare the crap out of you this year and you will experience tremendous personal growth.
- Take one area you’re weak in and make it a strength through practice and force of will.
January 14, 2009 at 10:00 pm
The Evil Monkey endorses this blog entry.
So, when do we start with Vandermeer cloning experiment? (Just don’t steal Jay Lake’s prototype.) Or your new Squirrel Cam Fiction Project. =)
January 14, 2009 at 10:21 pm
NO.
Wait. Maybe. If there’s cake involved, definitely.
January 14, 2009 at 10:24 pm
I’ll send you a cake. Now, go out into the street and scream “I WANT MY EVIL MONKEY, AND I WANT MY EVIL MONKEY NOW!”
January 14, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I’m too lazy to go out on the street. I just did it here. In the office.
No one bat an eyelid.
January 14, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Maybe you need to punch them in the guts while you’re screaming it. Maybe then they’ll eye a batlid.
January 14, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Dipping my banana in their coffee did the trick. Restrained and dignified, that’s me.
January 14, 2009 at 11:48 pm
I teach. Doesn’t that count for virtually all of those, since all of my weaknesses as a human being are being exposed continually and I have to be übercreative just to keep half the class awake at any given time? :P
I’ll have to think on this more. I have vowed to become more reflective and less reactive as I age.
January 15, 2009 at 2:26 am
I blew my youth saying yes to every dumbarse creative endeavour my empty little head could conjure up. When I look at how much time I wasted, let alone the money… and all because I believed so utterly and relentlessly in me.
January 15, 2009 at 5:07 am
Jeff, can I get you to come to my house and say this to me three times a day?
January 15, 2009 at 6:06 am
Cat, what should you have been doing instead?
January 15, 2009 at 7:28 am
depends on your definition of success. the definition of success can be “i learned a lot from it” even if the project is a failure compared to its potential. for every project I get off the ground there are four that never made it. then there are projects that do make it that I call “successful failures”. leviathan was supposed to come out every year. baf may not last past 3 or 4 or 5. album zutique was supposed to be a series. secret lives was something I thought would do great as a gift book from a major publisher. if I had a negative mindset all I learned from those and everything that was accomplished re those kinds of projects would mean nothing.
January 15, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Sometimes I say ‘no’ out loud when on the inside I am screaming ‘yes! yes! yes!”
I am trying to hide my true desires from the gods, least they play Job-like tricks on me.
January 15, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Unless you’re really careful, saying yes to creative things gets a lot harder when you’re over 50 years of age. Then, the reminder helps.
Thanks, Jeff — from a 52-year-old.
January 15, 2009 at 7:01 pm
[...] Be Your Own Worst Enemy: Say No. I Dare Ya. [...]
January 15, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Dear Be-Quilled Zephid: Yes, you do indeed say no. But I have allocated 10% of my life to making Zephid say yes, because you’re worth it.
Terry: In all seriousness, that’s why I lift weights regularly. Short of terminal disease (knock on wood) I plan to be in better shape at 50 than I am now.
Jeff
January 16, 2009 at 11:57 am
Oh, now, see, that’s not a fair thing to say to someone who just started Weight Watchers on Monday.
But how about this: I plan to be in better shape at 60 than I am now (short, as you say, of terminal disease).
March 21, 2010 at 2:31 am
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