Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
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| — | Ira Glass (via nefffy) |
Organizing the Bookcase (via crazedadman)
Some stop-motion inspiration. Always a good time… but also an example of folks with a lot of time on their hands.
The waiting room of Detroit’s once-grand train depot, Michigan Central Station, long after the last train rolled out in 1988.
Until the mid-20th century, Detroit was the most significant industrial town in the world, and Albert Kahn was its architect. The son of German immigrants built factories and sky scrapers like they were coming off a conveyor belt. And then, just as quickly as his city grew, it was abandoned.
The old white-haired man was awarded the medal for outstanding service during wartime and TIME magazine praised him enthusiastically: Albert Kahn’s contribution to the defeat of enemy powers is greater that that of most others, a journalist wrote in 1942. But the 73-year-old man had never seen the front line during the World War II. He fought, so to speak, from his desk in an office in Detroit.
Today in the United States House of Representatives Republicans continually drew parallels between those in support of universal health care and the Nazis. Being a proponent of said policies and also from a political persuasion that would have left me a prime candidate for Nazi imprisonment, I’m not only offended but entirely outraged. My desire to see every citizen of my country given proper treatment is out of respect and humility for every individual. A persons circumstances should not dictate whether they receive treatment, and never will I back down from this stance.
