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Comment by cryingpotato | Hacker News Reader

A piece I read at least twice a year to understand how creative work is done - "Some thoughts on the real world by one who glimpsed it and fled"

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I don’t know if I got anything very profound from it tbh - this sounds like just another commencement speech from someone who has very little in common with almost every person in their audience asking them to do something they would never do. Similar initially inspiring but later on making you question speeches include the ones from Neil Gaiman, Steve Jobs and Conan O’Brien.

Honestly the most amazing speech is from David Foster Wallace. Some great wisdom that’s not easily found elsewhere that applies to the common man instead of the exceptional creative.

I disagree about Watterson's speech. It seems very actionable to me for the common man: define meaning in life for yourself, don't get stuck on the hedonic treadmill, think about what your values are and shape your life around them, etc

Yeah I totally agree with this! The crux of the speech for me is "To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble."

This is not very different from telling a depressed person to just cheer up and go for a walk imo.

No one told Watterson to love cartooning and hate “work” the way he says it with disdain. He was just born that way.

And he also turned out to be an exceptional artist. People with exceptional skills should refrain from telling others to follow their paths. It’s disingenuous and not in the interest of the audience at all. Follow your passion will fail badly at you if you are bad at it.

This is a really negative outlook. The crux of the advice is to have a playful mind, and don't live a life of quiet desperation. This advice can apply to engineers, business people, and anyone else. It does not mean you have to be a cartoonist. In fact the reason I love programming is exactly the same as the reason he says he loves cartooning, because it allows us to play with ideas and learn new domains and problems and ways of thinking. Let's go exploring.

He's not telling them to follow his path. He's telling them to make sure the path they follow leaves them satisfied.

I'm not particularly exceptional, and I give the same advice.

The way I read it, it's not about being exceptional (or not).

More like not blindly following other people's definition of success.

We all have choices to make. And most of us could, for example, choose a less prestigious job in order to have more time and energy for other stuff. Among other things..

I don't think he's just saying follow your passion. He's saying be true to your values (and figure out what those are). If your values are that hardwork is important or providing well for your family is the priority then you can be happy doing those things.

I agree on the DFW point. It’s rare for a commencement speech to hit the nail on the head, it almost always lapses into this “do what you love” shtick that isn’t really relatable for kids who studied business to pay off their incredibly large student loans - at that point, you love not being in debt

I've always been conflicted about the DFW speech as a wonderful tool to think about how to live from a man who seemed to have led a pretty troubled life. I keep coming back to the speech for its content, but can't help but think of the man who gave it when I do.

You can take the argument at its own merit. The a big chunk of the world walks their bride to the music of one of the most famous antisemites in history anyway!

It’s gotta be tough to write a more realistic speech for those folks though: “if you don’t love business and making money you done fucked up. Even if you do? This was almost certainly a dumb idea.”

https://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html

To save a search for anyone that wants to read it.

You should be able to click on the title to get to it, but thanks for posting here too!

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