On the expectations of others
My looming fear of letting go is not fueled by the uncertainty of what is below, but by my consistent belief that someone is holding on to me.
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
Kahlil Gibran
This is me. I get excited easily as you can tell.
- me: it was stupid. not what i was supposed to do
- her: you were trying to impress yourself
- me: i was trying to impress others
- her: did you succeed?
(via swissmiss)
(MINI)malism
The biblical tale of David versus Goliath gets a fuel-consumption re-visioning in this viral spot for Mini Cooper directed by Jochen Hirschfeld with animation by Weirdoughmation in Germany.
via FEED
Thanks, Eli.
Played 72 times
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Anyone who’s ever watched [adult swim] is undoubtedly familiar with the interstitial text clips that they display before and after commercial breaks. They’re simplistic, witty and always have some eclectic beat to accompany them. I was no doubt in want of these beats for my life’s interstitial ether, but could never find them. I don’t know how long they’ve been up there, but now you can download or buy a lot of them at their site.
The one above is Night Court by Mux Mool
I love this short video with graphic designer Milton Glaser done by Adobe. Worth the six minutes of your time…(via chrbutler)
Solve it!
I went home a short while ago to visit family and reminisce with friends, during which I found myself rummaging through my stored book collection in hopes of gathering a few to bring back to the city with me.
One of the books I found amongst the shelves was Solve it! by James F. Fixx (also, oddly enough, the author of The Complete Book of Running), which is “a perplexing profusion of puzzles” according to the text on its bright yellow cover. I’m absolutely terrible at brain teasers and puzzles, but I figured the best way to improve was to practice, so I spent my bus ride back to the city limping through the most basic problems and getting my ass kicked as I progressed to the more difficult ones.
The interesting part, though, was that in the beginning he outlines a series of ten mental “rules” for solving the puzzles in the book that I feel apply for most of the everyday challenges I face that ultimately require creative solutions:
- Study the question carefully.
- Confidently start work.
- Appraise the context.
- Relax.
- Expect to wait.
- Don’t accept unnecessary limitations.
- Yesterday’s problems may help.
- Change the problem.
- Ask questions.
- Time brings all things.
He gives detailed context for the reasoning behind each rule in his book, so I can’t say that the list above does his writing justice, but I find myself referring back to these simple points often when I feel stuck or frustrated while learning, creating, fixing or solving in my day-to-day. I never expected inspiration of that nature to spawn from an aged puzzle book written in the seventies, but such a thing is rarely attained intentionally through a specific agenda. I’m happy to have lucked out in this case.
Now I just need to get better at solving puzzles.
There are aspects about this vert I like and some I don’t like:
- The nasal voiceover tacked on at the end is superfluous. It makes the ad tacky.
- Dancing professional volleyball players are always welcome on my television or computer screen.
