Tag: xoxo (page 1 of 1)

September 29, 2015 / 0 Comments

On Living Wisely: Finding Meaning in the In-Between Time

 

“Offer me something inside. A place to go. A place to hide.” – Jessie Ware, Something Inside

What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? – Richard J. Light, How to Live Wisely (New York Times)

Yesterday, I tried to reconcile how I want to be spending my time with how I spend my time. I was unsure, so I spent time SnapChatting my day to see what was going on. I don’t think I did enough talking about what actually happened so tomorrow I’m going to do more explaining. More storytelling.

Today’s exercise, though, asks about how I spend my spare time.

Well, right now, I’m writing. It’s 8:51 P.M. and I’ve watched the premiere of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Good job, kid!) and what I’d rather be doing than anything else is typing words into the white screen that Ulysses provides. I don’t do this enough. 

I wrote on the first night of XOXO:

I’m most human when I’m writing.

That’s true. I also feel most human when I’m reading other people’s words. I do that often. When I take a break from work and grab an iced skinny hazelnut latte at the nearby Starbucks or take lunch by myself, I’m usually spending my time with the writing of others.

I talk a lot and watch a lot of basketball. When I was a kid, Hell, up until my late twenties, I played a lot of basketball. These days, I’m particularly passionate about women’s pro ball. We are season ticket holders for the Los Angeles Sparks. I’ve seen more women’s basketball live than I’ve seen any other sport, by far.

I love television and consume it in large quantities.

So how do I spend my spare time? Writing. Reading. TV. Ball is life.

Now, the way the question is presented in the Times article, the question is meant to help a person focus their college studies. I extrapolate that to presume this is supposed to be a good way to make decisions professionally, but I’m not so sure. What I know is that when I’ve had to write as the primary work product of a job, it’s dimmed my love for writing.

Having worked in/around television for the bulk of my professional career, my love for it only grows when immersed in the process. I like how those donuts get made. I imagine, at some point, I will get back to that.

I do a lot of reading as part of my gig now. Reading. Editing. Massaging copy. I should do more of it. It’s painful but making someone else’s words better whether through soft nudges or complicated surgery is satisfying.

If a professional basketball team came calling for my services in some way, I’d have to consider it but I worry it would tarnish my love of the game. I’m a fan first. Could I still be with a paycheck on the line?

What I didn’t mention to this point is that I also enjoy doing things in service of the greater good. I didn’t include it because I don’t do enough of it.

I’m making time for writing and reading and basketball and my eyes glued to the endless hours of great tv, but I haven’t been creating space for making the world a better place.

Huh.

There it is.

A moment of clarity.  

September 28, 2015 / 0 Comments

On Living Wisely: How Do You Spend Your Time?

You told me to take the chance and learn the ways of love.” – DeBarge, All This Love

What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? – Richard J. Light, How to Live Wisely (New York Times)

I’ve come back to this article a few times since dropping it in my Pocket in early August and while these questions are rarely far from top of mind for me, they’ve taken on greater urgency since leaving Portland after XOXO. There, the question is, perhaps, more specific-What does it mean to make good things?—but as Amit Gupta’s talk conveyed, these questions may, ultimately, be one in the same.

The first exercise referenced in Richard J. Light’s essay is:

Make a list of how you want to spend your time. What matters to you? Then make a list of how you actually spent your time, on average, each day over the past week and match the two lists.

Stream of Consciousness Answer:

I want to make good shit every day. I want to spend time coming up with creative ideas and then executing on them. I want to talk about what’s good and why. I want to spend time figuring out why certain things get seen, read, watched and others don’t. I want to work on big ideas. I want to delight and surprise. I want to be clever. I want to waste less time. I want to read more for pleasure. I want to Tumblr. I want to help more people more often. I want to workout. I want to spend time with those I love.

How do I normally spend my time?

  • I dilly-dally on the internet in the mornings.
  • I spend two hours of the day commuting usually listening to podcasts and dilly-dallying on the internet.
  • I spend a lot of time looking at why things are or aren’t working.
  • I spend a lot of time in or preparing for meetings answering other people’s questions
  • I watch a lot of TV.
  • I workout.
  • I twitter.
  • I…

I don’t know. Well, what I do know is I don’t spend enough time being creative and making stuff. I don’t spend enough time talking about what’s good or working on big ideas. I don’t give enough of my time to others in need. At least that’s how it feels.

I want a more accurate view of this, though. This week I’m going to SnapChat my days and document what the hell I’m actually doing.


You can follow me there if you don’t already. And bug me if my story seems a little thin. I haven’t done much SnapChat making so I tend to forget and/or get shy.

Does your every day look like how you envision? 

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September 15, 2015 / 0 Comments

XOXO Fest 2015: Quotes and Queries

“Was it worth your fam or worth all a the fame? Exchange your personal relationships for personal gains.”—Wale, The Glass Egg


“My desire to do it the way it is being done is.” – Heather Armstrong (Dooce)

What do you give up of yourself to make money (on the internet but, really, in any gig)?

Is it worth the trade?

“[W]hat we want to do is make a place where things that we couldn’t have imagined can grow.” – Alex Blumberg (Gimlet Media)

“It’s about culture clash on equal terms. Your adventure being someone else’s disaster.” – Spike Trotman (Iron Circus)

“We are not taking anything from you, because it was never yours to begin with.” – Spike Trotman (Iron Circus)

“Let’s all just take a minute and acknowledge that to a certain extent we are all just posturing when we come together in public to discuss our achievements.So don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re currently being too hard on yourself. And don’t pat yourself on the back either, if you’re super concerned with stacking up accolades. Death is coming for all of us.” – Mallory Ortberg (The Toast)

“We know a couple stories of mostly dudes who are promoted as being these brilliant founders and treated as if they worked alone. And that ain’t how the internet was made. What is best on the internet is what drives us to love technology, to be creative in these ways has very little to do with what makes start-ups really wealthy.” – Anil Dash (Your Internet Dad)

“Don’t be a snowflake in someone’s avalanche.” – Zoë Quinn (Quinnspiracy)

“Design is a value statement. What we build and how we build it says a great deal about what we value and who we are. What we make easy speaks to what we value and what we make difficult speaks to what we reject.” – Eric Meyer (Meyerweb)

Am I conscious of injecting my values of my work? Does my work reflect who I think I am?

“What would you regret? What are three things you’d regret?” – Amit Gupta (@superamit)

You used to be like Pusha T but you’re 40 now and have regrets. What are you going to do about that?

Find my answers and change my life.

Don’t believe me? Just watch.

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September 13, 2015 / 0 Comments

Nostalgia Vibez

“They are the waters of March, closing the summer and the promise of life and the joy in your heart.” – Bossacucanova, Aguas de Março (feat. Cris Delanno)

Aaron Hawkins and Brad Graham are looking at me from the stage. They’ve been gone from this world a while now and yet, here they are. Anil invokes them in his XOXO talk and while there are many folks in the audience who know nothing about them—that is Anil’s point and the problem his and Gina’s new project, Makerbase, is attempting to solve—I feel their presence in the room like the moving portraits of Harry Potter’s magical world.

A conversation on twitter about Six Feet Under had me going through my blog archives recently. It was time travel to a decade ago when I was processing the death of that Uppity-Negro and reflecting on the conversations we’d had. Aaron, more than anyone at the time, ignited my digital world. His words sparked my words. His comments section was where much of my online community formed. Many of my dearest friends today can be linked to connections and ideas and ways-of-being made then. With him. I miss him.

The very first thing I did at my first SXSW experience—also a decade ago—was Break Bread with Brad. It felt a lot like opening night here at XOXO 2015 actually (thank you, Andy and Andy) although there were far more people here awkwardly but openly chatting in the Park at Washington High then there were in Austin that night. Both spaces had the same vibe: Warm, welcoming, accepting, kind.

I got it.

Dooce’s excellent talk was a bit of a mirror. She asked herself and all of us, what had we given up of ourselves to make a living online?

Eric Meyer’s heartbreaking and heartwarming talk wondered what values we were investing into our work with the decisions and systems and processes we make? This may be the central thesis of this year’s event. It was a bit of Alex Blumberg’s thoughts for us and a lot of the point of Anita Sarkeesian’s work.

I got it.

The Suck not-panel and Anil’s talk have cemented my feelings of nostalgia for the internet in the wayback machine that I’ve been having all festival. Well, the ideas of the culture back then. What I’m realizing this weekend is that despite our short memories and the ephemeral nature of our digital selves (by the way, finding references to things from just 10 years ago online that still work is a reminder of this, so hard!), we haven’t lost that. It’s a state-of-mind. It’s a way-of-being (I wanted to put “online and off” here, but that’s showing my age even more, innit?). In 2015, everybody’s Internet so you feel smaller—I feel smaller—but that’s okay. It doesn’t change that I can create. I can write. I can make things and be proud of them.

It requires more discipline. It demands that from those of us who know better. Those of us who recognize the magic of the not-so-long ago.

The memories of those we loved and mattered and have gone from that time deserve that.

Let’s break bread. Let’s get uppity.

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September 12, 2015 / 0 Comments

The Audacity of Dumb

“You say that you care. I was unaware.” – Allen Stone, Unaware

During last night’s live performance of Reply All during XOXO’s Story track, PJ Vogt said something to the effect of:

This room is filled with people working on a dumb idea with friends that they are hopeful about.

We might quibble over what’s “dumb”—he included his own podcast in that list and I had just laughed heartily for nearly an hour over the, okay, dumb yet brilliant Hello, From the Magic Tavern live show—but it’s the “they are hopeful” line that got me.


Does your work fill you with hope? I don’t mean, necessarily, that for which you get paid. Is there a thing that you’re doing on the regular that ignites you? Does it fill you with possibility even if it’s stupid?

If you’re working on it rather than just thinking about it, you’re living the dream, right? It may not pay the bills (but it might). You may suck at it (but if you keep doing it?). It may never stop being dumb (but what if it’s so ridiculous it’s actually genius?). It may fail. Hell, it probably will fail but…

But if you’re doing it, if you’re making time for it, if you’re working at it, I’d bet you’re happier. You’d know what joy looks like even if you only glimpse it on occasion when you’re trying to make this dumb idea happen ideally with people you like.

You’d know more about what you look like inside.

And by you, I mean me.

Try to make good shit. Every day. You might get it right once in awhile.

XOXO.

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September 11, 2015 / 0 Comments

Searching. Questions. Answers.

“Rarity glistened sharp/the memory of silver tooth bark/Bathed led light history/Fractured into pieces.” – Hiatus Kaiyote, The World it Softly Lulls

Heathervescent—a name that brings up memories of a previous era of Internet—said something to the effect of “We should bring old school blogging back.”

That resonated.

Before getting on a plane to Portland, yesterday, I tweeted:

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While standing in the XOXO badge pick-up line making small talk with others who happened to be from Los Angeles, I found it.

It was solidified this morning as I introduced myself to others while waiting in another line (this time for Pine State Biscuits) and yearned for words that meant something.

I longed for my 2005 SXSW self when I could be described as a blogger of note and editor of an independent site about Los Angeles. Today, my work for corporations—a thing I did back then to pay the bills just as I do now—has overcome all else. My twitter bio reads “Trying to make good stuff every day. Occasionally succeeding.” but for whom? Not nearly enough just for me.

Across from The Park at Washington High sits Sweetpea Baking Company where Gary Hirsch’s “Questions for Humans: Joy Wall” was recently painted.


What’s my inspiration? In the first few hours of XOXO, it’s to be more human. On the Internet and everywhere else.

And I’m most human when I’m writing.

Here I am.