What I believe: 2012 Edition

The end of any year tends to be a time of self-reflection and analysis. What did we do right or wrong this past year? What have we learned? What’s really important? In that spirit, I’ve put together a list of things I hold to be true and principles that I’ll be using to guide my thoughts and decisions into the new year.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

winter-bw

Relationships are everything

When I was in school, I thought I was preparing well for my future by studying hard and getting good grades. Years of formal education gave me the impression that the world was a meritocracy. Do the work, impress the teacher, and everything you desire is yours.

Yeahhhhhh, not so much.

Now, I’m not saying that being a good student and being skilled at what you do isn’t important. Sure it is! However, I am now of the firm belief that how you present yourself and who you know are just as important. In other words, in life, relationships are #1. Cultivating and maintaining genuine relationships makes just about everything in life better. You get the first crack at opportunities before they’re publicized, you have people you know spreading the word about you and your awesomeness, and really, it’s just plain nice to have people in your life to hang out with through the good times and the bad. Having a mutual support system is so vital for one’s mental health (or at least mine). If I could do university all over again, I’d spend less time in the library and more time meeting people. True story.

Context is king

(Or queen, or gender-neutral ruler of choice)

If you live on the web like I do, you’ll have probably heard the phrase “content is king”. My twist on that is that context is king. In life, in business, and in just about everything, context is critically important. What I mean is: what works for someone else might not work for you. What is true for you might not be true for some of a different age, ethnicity, location, or life experience. What was true for you ten years ago might not be true anymore. Everyone has advice to give, but it may or may not actually be useful in your life. Let’s think of this in terms of design, to take this more into the realm of practicality. Blindly copying an aesthetic from a designer you admire isn’t nearly as useful as trying to understand the thought process behind it and integrating some of those thoughts into your own work, in your own context. If you design for clients, it’s probably more important to understand their niche and their users’ needs rather than try to get on the front page of Dribbble, you know? And to take this back to life in general, this means that you may not be able to always understand someone’s actions or motivations because you’re not living their life and haven’t had their experiences. Knowing this makes me keep more of an open mind, and try to understand rather than immediately judge.

Anything worthwhile requires risk and vulnerability

When I think about all of the positive things in my life, I realize that they all required a certain degree of risk. Sure, maybe it feels safe to keep your routine the same, only ever hang out with the same people, stay in that comfortable but boring job, and keep your opinions to yourself (at least that way no one will ever disagree with you, right?). Although living like this is safe, it doesn’t reap any rewards. Living an exciting life requires taking some chances and opening yourself up. And don’t think I’m just talking about grand gestures and large-scale action. Confession time! Just starting this blog was terrifying for me. I hated the thought of people thinking that my writing is stupid and potentially even, like, judging me and stuff. But you know what? Keeping yourself hidden away in the name of not being judged or criticized means no one will ever think anything of you because no one will know that you even exist. So be open, and fuck the haters, ’cause haters gonna hate.

hatersgonnahate

This may or may not be my last post this year. (I like to be indecisive like that sometimes.) If it is, see you in 2013! :D

Inspiration can be dangerous

I have a confession to make: I’m a complete information junkie. I love reading books and blogs, taking courses, listening to talks, and otherwise acquiring as much information as I can on just about every topic of interest.

This is my bedside table. I am actually in the middle of reading every one of these books, I shit you not.

Inspiration is a big buzzword these days, and for good reason. It’s important to be creatively energized and it’s really great to be able to see beauty and promise in the world around us. There are countless websites and books that are what I like to think of as aspiration porn. They make us want better, more interesting, more beautiful lives.

Inspiration is great, but it can also be dangerous. Why? Because it’s way easier to be inspired and to absorb information than it is to actually do something. It’s easier to think, to read, to plan, and to overanalyze than it is to actually take action and make changes in our lives. This applies to the little things like making that DIY craft project you keep saying you want to try and remembering to floss every day, all the way up to the big things like making major relationship and career changes.

I’m a total information junkie and always will be, but I have to constantly remind myself that although knowledge is power, going one step further and actually taking action is way more important.

Don’t live your life just inside your head. Don’t settle for merely being inspired. Go ahead and take a baby step (or, a big leap, if you prefer) toward building the life you really want to be living.

Why I love fall

Fall is a beginning and an end

In some religions (e.g. Judaism and several forms of Paganism), the start of the year happens in the fall. The school year also starts in September, which always fills me with a sense of renewal and possibility despite not being a student anymore. Fall is definitely a time of new beginnings. At the same time, the calendar year is wrapping up and the trees are losing their leaves, signifying an ending of sorts. Fall constantly reminds us of the cyclical nature of life, whether we see it as a beginning, an ending, or both simultaneously.

Giving thanks

Even though we should all be practising gratitude on a daily basis, it’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of life and become bogged down in the tedium of day to day activities. Because Thanksgiving is a popular, secular holiday, we have gratitude baked into our culture around this time of year. We’re reminded that we have a lot to be thankful for, regardless of our situation in life.

Time for reflection & self-care

With the weather getting colder and the days getting shorter, most of us find ourselves staying inside more and making fewer active plans. This can feel like a bit sad on the one hand, but on the other, this season (and the winter that follows) gives us a great chance to slow down, be still, and think. More quiet time inside also means more opportunities to cook good food, hang out with excellent people, make exciting plans for the new year, and really commit time to taking care of ourselves. I believe that this quieter period gets us into tip top shape for the warmer, more action-driven months.

It’s pretty

And my camera loves it. Enough said!

Slowing the eff down, or, how to survive today’s world as a culture/information junkie

It’s not much of a stretch to say that we’re living in a pretty fast-paced world today.

Between the hundreds of people we follow on Twitter and Facebook to the mountains of websites we visit to our ever-expanding inbox(es), it really feels like there’s a lot that we “need” to keep up with.

In a world where memes are created within hours of an event and then discarded and forgotten a day or two later, it can feel nearly impossible to stay on top of things. Try to tell someone a huge piece of breaking news, and chances are they’ve heard it already. It’s so five minutes ago.

Today, many of us — especially those of us who have many interests and/or spend tons of time online — are partaking in what I think of as a sampling culture. When we’re in such a rush to consume the wealth of information and/or cat pics that are in front of us on a daily basis that most of it is really going in one ear and out the other. Be honest with yourself: How much can you really retain when you’re looking at potentially hundreds of websites/articles/posts/tweets/cat pics every day?

Just kidding, I always have time for catpics.

It’s as if we’re being faced with an amazing buffet that’s passing by on a fast-moving conveyor belt. What are we to do? Try to take a crumb of everything that’s zipping by, or let most things pass by untasted and enjoying a few chosen items?

With that in mind, here are a few of my suggestions about how to slow the eff down and enjoy life a bit more.

Embrace repetition

Now, as I’ve discussed before, making permanent memories and retaining information is not the be all and end all. It’s perfectly fine to have an experience, enjoy it in the moment, and then let it go. That being said, I do like to remember some of what I’m taking in. There’s a lot of really fantastic advice, inspiring stories, and beautiful art in the world, and am I doing these things justice if I’m scarfing them down in a fruitless attempt to “keep up”? For ideas to have a real impact on your life, they need to be absorbed more slowly, and potentially multiple times.

This is especially the case when it comes to music. With the rising popularity of Internet radio services like Rdio and Spotify, we’re culturally trending towards all-access passes to huge catalogues of everything ever. With no ownership of what you’re consuming or limits on how much you can consume, you’re being encouraged to embrace sampling culture and enjoy a bit of everything. This is cool, but to really love an album, you often have to give it a few listens for it to really sink in. Sometimes you only really connect with a song or an artist upon hearing it at a very specific time, in a very specific context, which is why you end up strongly associating music with certain times in your life.

With so much going on and so much on the menu to sample, I believe in deliberately forcing some repetition of music, writing, and art that I like. Although I fight against feeling like I’m wasting my time by revisiting something I’ve already once consumed, the repetition helps to forge a deeper connection. Lesson: Go for quality over quantity.

I’ve probably listened to this very Movember-appropriate album several hundred times, and I’m okay with that.

Get offline and rediscover physical objects

Between the plummeting price of storage and the vastness of the Great Interwebs, our capacity for discovery and hoarding are endless. Meanwhile, in the physical world, we have constraints.

My iTunes library. Kiiiind of ridiculous.

This complements the first point about repetition. In the world of physical objects, we’re restricted to a finite number of resources, and we therefore have a better chance of giving things proper attention since we have less to focus on.

Using a film camera instead of a digital camera is another exercise in slowing down and being more deliberate. When you’re limited to 24 or 36 exposures per roll of film and developing film takes time and costs money, you’re bound to be more careful when taking pictures and really focus on capturing what’s important. When I take my digital SLR with me anywhere, I inevitably end up taking hundreds of photos in a day, most of which, to be honest, aren’t that great or memorable. Analogue processes and physical objects help to reduce some of the noisy waste. (That being said, there are also huge advantages to digital photography and I ♥ my Nikon D600.)

Some of my favourite photos are ones I took with film, like this one!

There’s also something to be said for ownership and the ability to hold something in your hands. Once you’ve bought a book/album/roll of film, you’re much more likely to want to fully enjoy it since you paid good money for it and are giving it space in your home and your life. For better or for worse, I think that we value virtual objects less and we feel that they’re more easily disposable and forgettable.

Be selective

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love. Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist

Go ahead, hit ‘Mark all As read’ in Google Reader. Cut down the number of websites you visit. Get rid of the clothes in your wardrobe that you don’t feel good wearing. Pare down ruthlessly until you’re only devoting your time and energy to things that you love, because time is finite and noise is endless. Cutting mediocrity out of your life leaves space to let in awesome things that are worthy of your time!

How do you feel about the pace of life and information today? Do you have any good coping strategies?

An afternoon in Brooklyn

On the last day of my trip to New York, I decided to visit Brooklyn, since I’d never been before and I’d heard that it’s really different than Manhattan and was worth checking out. I ended up mostly walking around Williamsburg — I know that this invites a knee-jerk “lol hipsters” reaction, but I really found it quite delightful. Does that make me a hipster? Do I care?

For quieter people like myself, being in Manhattan is amazing and exciting, but a bit of a sensory overload. When I got off the subway in Brooklyn, I felt a bit more sane again. In a way, it felt more like Toronto to me — still definitely city-like, but more spread out and laid back. I definitely want to check out more of Brooklyn to see what it’s like beyond the super trendy and hipstery part. You know, for science.