Mistakes in time

I feel like this is what makes dyslexia kinda cool. You spend so long when you're young trying incredibly hard to pick up this seemingly impossible thing that comes naturally to everyone else, eventually you build up a resiliency to not being very good at anything in particular, and you become pretty comfortable just trying many many different things as creatively as you can, because there is a zero percent chance you'll become "good at them" anyway. The upside of this is an inherent curiosity.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dyslexic+entrepreneurs

For the longest time I had this fear of looking at a pristine piece of paper and being afraid to put anything on it, because my ideas might not be worth the effort and materials it took to make the paper. I had collected stacks of beautiful clean notebooks as a child from friends and family who got promotional business materials, so I'd have plenty of paper to write on, once I get wiser (culture of scarcity in Eastern Europe didn't help matters).

The biggest allure of dabbling with computers at 8 and learning to program was because you can play and undo things with no material impact. Today I pick my mediums of ideation carefully - scrappy paper notebooks, whiteboard or iPad and only pencils for creative work, but no fancy notebooks or permanent pens.

Whether its time or medium the fears are the same - we just need to give ourselves permission to be kids again and go play.

>>> I had 4 different jobs, and 4 different career paths, in the 10 years after college.... Each time I switched jobs... I also realized that I’d gotten older, and started to fear that I did not have the time to get great.

I too have changed jobs and careers several times since graduating college. Strangely, doing so has actually been liberating for me. I entered a PhD program immediately after college, obsessed with not only being the greatest, but also the youngest. (I didn't just want to "break records," I also wanted to be many years younger than the previous record holder when I did.)

I let go of these fantasies the moment I dropped out of grad school though. I was starting over from scratch which meant I'd be too old to be the best and youngest at anything. And not chasing that goal has pretty much set me free. Everything is way more fun now, including being a complete noob in a room full of experts.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care... <-- I always appreciated this Scott Adams post. It helped me go from path #1 to path #2.

Ps. Your photos are phenomenal. Thanks for sharing, even though it was scary to! You are (almost certainly) already the top 25% at two or more things. Now how bout dat?! :D

Still better than my own existential dread about all the things programming I'll never be able/doing/learning/getting a hang on, which I derive from the realization that my lifespan is limited. I mean, it's not easy to admit that even my basic research is ... mostly out-/open-sourced.

EDIT: reading the article further, I discover the author is covering this. It's an amazing read.

Do you know the song "Quick Canal" by Atlas Sound? It articulates some of the sentiments in this thread beautifully.

"I wanted to live the life of a prince Because I thought saints were born saints So, indeed, we didn't stand a chance

Insalubrious offshoots of nature With heart & mind of our own All the daughters, all the sons Taking centuries to unearth the creature

Heralding a stage Where consciousness is higher Taken through a costly process Of success & failure

I thought saints were born saints I looked in the dirt & found wisdom is learnt Through a costly process Of success & failure

Oh, wisdom is learnt"

https://youtu.be/RwjUyrp7-aI

With a startup, you can setup KPIs. The author of this piece mentions growth as the main one and to focus on that. How was the author able to measure his growth as a photographer?

Using a getting-things-done approach has really improved my ability to learn. Before, I’d often get too overwhelmed with the end goal I had in mind (being great, perhaps). Within GTD, I always define a next tangible action for things I want to learn. It changes the game, as it redirects my focus from horizon view to what I can do right here and now to advance my goals or desires.

this is really great for understanding what has been happening to people. glad we built this time machine!

This post speaks to the value photography brings to my life, as something that can exercise sensual creativity. But, there is a caveat. This does not work in correlation with social media. This isn’t to say one should not share their photos, but that there can be a few different agendas at play there and this comment concerns the more personal one.

I am often critical with art and normally one to make things harder than they need to be, but I don’t think my photography habits show it. I approach photography much like the author and, for me, it has nurtured a very special relationship between myself and the world around me that I feel so many miss out on, including many photographers. There are many ways to explain the zen and fulfillment of photography but experiencing might be harder for some people. I recommend stashing your photos and not uploading them to social media for long periods of time after shooting them. Shooting film helps with this. Also don’t shoot simply to document. Shoot because your visual senses are nudging you.

Gear trap is awful. Shooting film has few defensible benefits, but it does prevent the gear trap. I shoot on a trusty Contax G2 with 3 lenses, using Velvia 800 or Tri-X 400 maybe push a couple stops and use my own flatbed scanner. This is a simple and reliable setup that no new equipment can compete with. For someone starting out, look for a decent condition rangefinder with around a sharp 35mm focal length lens.

Also, I like the author’s photography!

> Fundamentally, the thing that scares me is that I’m worried about not being great at the things I do.

My daughter learns Mandarin at school. I try to catch up with Duolingo (which btw is amazingly good).

Mandarin is a great antidote to the “greatness worry” above.

No matter how hard we work, how much we progress, how good we become, there will always be at least a billion people better than us.

“The race is long, but in the end it is only with yourself”.