Wellsbaum.blog

A test case of curiosity

April 12th, 2022

There is no plan. We go through long stretches of time, just guessing. But the passage into mystery lures us forward. It costs nothing to try.

The world changes—we change—when we live in the continuous present to see where it’ll lead us. As we dabble in life’s experiments, our efforts necessitate a kind of dream state.

What emerges is a test case on openness, the possibility, and the ability to entertain outcomes of various kinds.

Unmoored from certainty, we proceed to find a sweet spot between experimentation and well-being. As John Berger reminds us, “You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.” Everyone deserves a chance at the highest quality of experience, bolstered by one’s idiosyncratic strengths.

What makes us unique is a source of power, not snobbery. Perceived flaws remain untrammeled to reinforce impressive persistence. We become society’s greatest participants when we harness the benefits of our clunky selves as a passport to creative freedom.

Life is a sine wave; it ebbs and flows. The path is less linear and more immersive. It takes courage to stay afloat in a sea of indifference. Yet, the water absorbs the gloom. Double down on the surf by embracing its randomness and luck with a test case of sheer curiosity.
Raging against the machine (us)

April 4th, 2022

Writing is to rage against the machine, not the powers that be. It’s a practice that hollows out the anxieties within. The machine is us, and the blank page is the battlefield of emotion.

Writing is a meditative process, a chance to pause and self-distance from the everyday. Prose allows us to exhaustively test society’s rules and expectations while confronting the shame of our uncertainties.

Feeling the squeeze, stuttering into a handicap, we bleed words on paper and onto the screen to reinforce mental fortitude. We already beat the psychology of regret over the head by making the bad decision to scribble our feelings in public anyway.

Yet it remains the nature of the playwright to scribe behind the curtain in anonymity. The author bares all and rarely becomes famous.

Whether they’re deemed right, wrong, fanciful, or insane, we own our own words. However, the brain’s plasticity guarantees that our thoughts evolve; strong positions get weakly held. The pragmatist takes a razor to unnecessary complexity.

Writing is a serotonin pump, and the practice oozes confidence into our mental muscles. Words act like bicep curls for the brain. Struggling with words is a paradoxical pleasure. As the US Marines say, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

Writing, like a fork or spoon, is an instrument for living. It’s also a passport to freedom. Our only concern should be its inhibition, a gauge that comes from the synchronicities from within.
Purposely absorbed

March 30th, 2022

Absorbed in the real work, unlike the spasmodic focus of want-to-be influencers.

The professional demands order, rituals, and practices that solidify the certainty anchor.

Those serious about their craft very much know they’re alive. They draw a map of the future based on reality, then lean right into it.

It’s easy to believe that armed with today’s digital tools we can all become stars. After all, all the internet’s a stage. As Andy Warhol predicted: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Even then — most viewers merely stroll with their eyes.

Most art gets consumed and then goes long forgotten. As much as screens captivate us at the moment, it’s always about what’s next.

The most dedicated workers remain internet-proof, detached from the ephemeral likes and favorites. They think long-term and “train” every day, bearing more influence on the culture than ever.

“In the future, everyone will want to be anonymous for fifteen minutes,” said Banksy. The question now becomes how one cultivates a sly reputation forever.
Ear players and slow bakers

March 25th, 2022

Ear players, slow-bakers, and scribblers; all are just noticers of things.

But they are also the most impeccable dancers, converting nerves into spontaneity to battle fear itself.

For the musician, the student, and the artist, what’s elemental clicks into place.

They are at their freest with the tools in their hand — the saxophone, the book, and the pen — once gifted, forever scripted, and followed for the rest of one’s life.

It’s rewarding to have a passion for something trapped inside. And it’s a blessing to share the developed talent with those immovably attached to the status quo.
Chords of inquiry

March 22nd, 2022

We remain emotionally uneven, driven by the vagaries of an electronically-fueled world tilted toward bad news.

The external glow messes with our internal wiring, where even the illusion of reprieve bears zero hope.

Yanked out of our public selves into private accountability, how do we cope with the torrent of life’s clutter?

Facing reality is a form of backtalk — an experience akin to visiting the psychologist for an open dialogue.

Embracing the suck is not a means of capitulation. Our task is to replace emotional capital with patient, big-picture thinking.

Going toward the fear releases oxytocin in our body like a friend’s hug.

We know what we want, even if the law of magnetism clashes with the dialectic. Slowly, the chords of inquiry blossom from caution into a badge of curiosity.

We’re steadfastly determined to evolve slowly by turning off the voices inside the house. The anxiety mutes — we’re finally naked, floating into discomfort.
Flow of attention

March 20th, 2022

The creator goes from broad attention to a narrower focus. They see the forest for the trees while simultaneously shifting their vision to see the trees through the woods.

Like a student, the artist aggregates what’s interesting and then goes deeper, pulsating from a generalist to a specialist, adding and subtracting, exploring the world through a lens of curiosity. Nothing feels forced; instead, the immersive play helps grasp how one feels.

When we’re deemed to make, we feel something elemental click into place. We develop a sense of kinship with even the most untouchable spaces. Patterns appear everywhere as we sample the environment inside them.

The creator is all things collector, researcher, and storyteller at heart. The messy output called art reflects the internal process. Rarely, do we paint precisely what was once fodder in the mind’s eye.

Creativity defenestrates the day-to-day doldrums. Making is a lifeline, the telescope where our attention flows and where the beauty of life opens up upon release.
Double or nothing

March 13th, 2022

The best art deserves the long look, just as the best books earn a re-read. The second our surroundings pull us out of a desultory scan and compel interpretation, we learn twice as much.

Pausing (and thinking deeply) is integral to the learning process. Disfluency extends the hesitation and augments the meaning.

We’re not all vacuum cleaners. The mind mulls over the information before chewing it up and gutting it of its value proposition. Which parts present facts, theories, pointlessness, and interest?

The student seeks links between disciplines, converting thoughts and abstractions that seem real into practicable experiments.

The educated want to dabble relentlessly in freedom of movement. Rolling wakefulness increases the desire to inspect wide-ranging interests. Curiosity is like breathing, and it unlocks all possibilities.

It pays to be both a generalist and a specialist, a fox and a hedgehog, as they complement each other. With the best intentions, we observe and make sense of all kinds of outside stimuli.
Never enough peace

March 11th, 2022

The world is a slow-methodical GIF loop that suffers from nasty jolts. The map is artifice; an illusion of safety that tempts the tyrants to remake boundaries.

We spent two years social-distancing, at home hovering under flattened time and held together by screens of electronic bondage only to get invited to the worst party in our lives: war, the maw of nature. As if we needed a further test of our aliveness.

Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

History teaches man to make new mistakes, even in the face of those horrific blunders stuck in living memory. Despite rotting like rope bridges, the past teems with patient anticipation and waits its turn to be recycled.

There’s no such thing as too much peace. Neither is there never enough action to preserve it. The hegemon(s) keeps the international order at bay. Therefore, the bully’s goal is to test his most principled opponents through scaremongering tactics designed to undermine the status quo.

The itch to spread one’s tentacles adds further piquancy when scratched.

The war of words gives shape to a doctrine of aggression while amygdalas fire on all cylinders. Unperturbed, the dog marks ground in every nook and cranny — whatever it takes to feel safe.

The imperialist demands control of the stage. Everyone else is a puppet, his own cronies — lemmings — learning to climb the ladder into dark skies. To be sure, the aggressor throws their body into participation with no fear of consequences.

War reduces people to their basest instincts; it also wipes the slate clean and restarts the most ‘august imagination.’

But attrition defeats the short-war delusion of the aggressors. Peace stands a chance, as hope grinds out murmurs of memory and perception that fend off ruin and help build more robust operating systems.
Let it roll

March 6th, 2022

We remain stuck in a rolling process, moving along despite taking on the beatings of market forces. The gyrations try to wash us out to the point we capitulate into the sea.

We only drown when we try too hard to control outcomes. Curious yet complicated, letting go of gravity and force seems the only way to stay afloat.

Never taking it easy, we proceed with the business of living, patiently waiting for time to fill in the gaps.

Life intends to be savored to the point of sensing the individual flavor notes. To develop any hardened concentration, we need to act more like the tortoise than the hare. The more opportunities we take to pause and search our minds, the better.

The stakes are far too high for a head-rush. Dopamine gets consumed and swiftly forgotten. Instead, we want to stay balanced while surfing the rolling swells of structured serotonin levels.
Creativity is for the uncertain

March 1st, 2022

Creativity is an all-in, imaginative process that prides itself on chasing the unknown. So we proceed in a random fashion, anticipating discovery through trial and error.

Most people want to repeat what they ordered in the past. And they get upset when something new disrupts their banal yet predictable everyday menu.

Certainty is too darn comfortable.

Furthermore, innovation can be frustrating, especially when what we foresee in our heads rarely comes out in the labor of our hands. But it’s that gap between what’s tangible and fantasy that compels creators to stretch their noses rather than watch from a distance.

Instinctively, we know when we’re on to something when we can identify a void in knowledge and sense patterns. Moving around in this world, climbing ladders, and reaching distant branches bring us closer to the richest fruits.

The creator is one who often experiences self-division. But what breaks us also reinforces a felt cohesiveness. Had we known where to go, we’d never stumble upon the bewildering mixtures of experiences.

The reward for all thinkers and doers is self-growth. With change being the only constant, we can only anticipate what happens next.
The role of the creator

February 22nd, 2022

Content creators are also content keepers. Like DJs, they find pleasure in curating the web for hidden gems.

The internet offers a treasure trove of interesting artifacts just waiting for perusal. So the creator notices, samples, and recasts subjects into something completely new.

Everything is a remix, built on the stems of previous forms. The end product may not be truly original, but it’s hardly theft. Previously buried in the graveyard of dead blogs, old ideas reemerge and get nurtured into clever hybrids.

Making media is the process of making sense of the profundity of content. We see patterns and connections by revisiting and jumping around in our collections. Synthesizing helps consolidate information in our consciousness and headspace.

There’s no reason to squirrel away notes and observations for our own safekeeping. We needed to know about Darwin’s finches. If the ideas never get shared, do they even exist?

The creator takes on the extreme privilege to ensure media never gets lost in the data shuffle. They tread carefully, preserving and categorizing information objects into something meaningful. The archive remains evergreen.

Creators exist to tell the short-sighted or too busy what’s what. Their job is to explore the known and strange things. Dissecting what’s overly overconsumed, overlooked, advertised, and unseen is an art that helps keep culture humming.
Divided by tribes, sprinkled into individuals

February 15th, 2022

Every mass system eventually morphs into tribes, balkanizing in the form of nation-states, denominations, political parties, and social media cliques. Those unproselytized, perhaps charged with individualism, eventually convert one way over the other.

Even crypto enthusiasts suffer from waves of hyper-transmission. With high fives and pats on the back, bitcoin maximalists scream ‘up only’ to calcify their self-selecting, self-reinforcing belief network.

Whatever harvests attention — religion, Bitcoin, our favorite sports team — shapes one’s perspective on most categories in life. Groupthink encourages every member to participate in the conversation.

Partisanship is mostly immutable. But what happens when the memory glue unsticks; the book loses its freshness, the perfume’s toxicity wears off, and the chemicals of attraction dissolve.

At some point, we have to be able to stand apart from the whole thing and develop our own thesis. Even 8-hours workdays are a myth, a product of an industrial midcycle.

The synchronization of time may be the only equalizer. For everything else, we mainly disagree. The image of collective minds and identities poses a challenge at the individual level. Different is attractive.

The purpose of ideas is to make better friends with ourselves, to carve our own little circle amid a large box of strangers.