Day 8

Day 7

Day 6

Day 5

Abbey Sunset, Home.

Day 4

A treehouse…and a time lapse

vimeo.com/353399151

Day 3

On a boat

Day 2

Ok, so it seems I am starting with a photography theme:

Aunt Barb

Day One

A picture to start my 30 day journey, can I create something every day for 30 days…here goes…

Ira Glass, You and Me.

I’ve heard eskimos have dozens of words to describe snow. Some credible folks have written about who discovered this and whether the claim is true, so you can look into that if you wish…but I wonder how many variations of the word love there might be if someone created a new language.

Love could mean romantic, could mean how you love a certain food, you respect something so much for being so energetic, or maybe you just have such happiness and joy when you encounter a thing, you burst with wonderful emotions that could be called love.

So, when I say I love Ira Glass, I don’t know exactly how I would describe that emotion. And I find my admiration for him a little odd. I’ve never met him in person, I only know him from his radio persona and from interviews. While he is a master storyteller, for sure, but he also generated one of the greatest inspirational quotes about being creative and conjuring a “thing” out of thin air. In an interview in 2009 with Current TV, he lays out this thought…

“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.”

Based on Glass’ words, David Shiyang Liu made this great kinetic type video that I have watched and shown to dozens of classes:

https://vimeo.com/24715531

 

I love the simplicity and truth of the message. Glass wrote on the This American Life website:

“Somehow, this interview I did with Current TV long ago became so well-known among creative types, that sometimes it feels more famous than our radio show.”

I have found a few more folks who have taken his words and done some creative adaptations of his quote:

By Daniel Sax:

https://vimeo.com/frohlocke/thegap

 

And another by Saar Oz:

 

So, with this inspiration, let’s heed Ira’s advice, and make something every week!

Time Flies Like An Arrow…

Fruit flies like banana.