Wellsbaum.blog

Defying expectations

November 23rd, 2021

There is conflict and harmony between doubt and applause. The art would not be so interesting had it been expected.

The audience seeks novelty and wants to be awed. The creator, therefore, goes beyond predictability and dances with the fear of disapproval.

When we’re making something, we’re almost always uncertain how it might be accepted. But we can’t resist the urge to be unique. That’s why it’s always easier when we’re constructing something for ourselves.

Authenticity propels confidence; the rest takes care of itself. As Francis Bacon reminds us, “We do with our life what we can and then we die. If someone is aware of that, perhaps it comes out in their work.”

Keep anything locked up enough it eventually explodes. There is no way to know if anyone cares about the work, but we at least we can say it’s the least bit derivative.
Time to bear this in mind

November 21st, 2021

Bear in mind that the passport to freedom comes from the gift of time. Time is more valuable than money, the latter which shall be earned, not stolen.

The only way to capitalize on the ticking clock is to combine work and play. Everything is a distraction — the television, the worst of all, choking us with news, entertaining us to death.

We dream with our heads and heads, making progress toward our goals rather than reacting as cogs to mass marketers and other people’s priorities trying to harvest our attention.

The meaning of life is to keep our hands on the beloved mysteries of possibility. Broadcasting one’s effort and craft to the outside world places a block on all the CRAP — criticism, rejection, assholes, and pressure.

Bear this mind: once we grant ourselves the permission to build and persist with an idea, we can have the time of our lives.
Stress test

November 17th, 2021

Stress is the great equalizer and our biggest distractor. It is worse than a sting from the ludic loop, mere fodder for over-thinking.

But we can dampen its attentive nature. We can do things to get unstuck from the chaos of the monkey mind. The quickest mood modulator could be a psychedelic to reset the state of consciousness. But that’s unlikely. We shouldn’t have to medicate our problems away.

A more realistic and organic opiate is to exaggerate the stress trigger by incubating it to a standstill. Think about anything enough, and one gets bored. How long can one replay the mental movie without falling asleep or wanting to move on with the business of living? After all, we’ve got stuff to do.

The anxiety headache brings us to the second option. Doing or worrying about something else is also a vehicle for rebooting the internal wires. We are too busy to get caught in robotic old forms when we can exert voluntary attention to another external component.

Stress, doubt, anxiety are all breakable, proof that humans can work mind magic to solve their problems.
Copycat cravings

November 16th, 2021

To be free of copycat cravings, the individual moves on in a setting of controlled forgetting. It’s always time to move on from the herd.

The mainstream never solves every human problem. It exaggerates the solutions, sucking up to the truth as the best lie.

We exist at the expense of each other as if life is some zero-sum video game. The competition never makes us happy; it merely sucks up to the highest bidding sheep.

Directionless, even the rebel feels compelled to jump through hoops. On the contrary, all is well as long as she doesn’t sink into the donut hole.
Probing the information bubble

November 14th, 2021

The reporter gathers string. The student collects artifacts. The interested are hunter-gatherers of information. They play life by the ear to bring the art of noticing to a world of scant attention.

Blankness exerts its control. Zero thoughts, zero neurochemical flocks — where “staying informed” is merely for entertainment.

That vital urge to research is what drives the bonus context. Therein lies the curator who cuts YouTube videos into manageable slices, DJs with some transcendent purpose that goes beyond merely retweeting it back on the feeds.

There is a place for aggregated and practical knowledge that offers more depth than fancy-looking equations that go beyond common sense.

The creator dreams of an empire of originality. The bulk of output flows from what we understand, gleaning information for what is specific and eternally valuable.

We make meaning by carefully probing the information bubble.
For work’s sake

November 12th, 2021

The consistency of the paint. Showing up and doing it, again and again, is not a magic trick. It’s a routine.

It’s the challenge of no challenge – the rawness of pure practice. The result rarely smothers in success. The only guarantee is stressed eyes, heart, face oil, and a dirty shirt.

But there is a deep sense of fulfillment in doing the work. The true artist needs no spiritual get-up, motivated by the retention of a daily workout.

The law of effort gives you whatever it is you’re working on. The craft is a source of happiness and pure tiredness. It also stops you from second-guessing yourself.
The anxiety monster

November 11th, 2021

Thinking is dangerous. But so is anything done in excess.

In rumination, we trip over ourselves. To get the mind out of the way — escape the head — we learn to curb the unshakable dizziness of freedom.

Exaggerate or accept all the thoughts. The result is a mass relaxation of efforts that dents the anxiety monster.

Only then can we move on with the business of living.
Nature’s mirror

November 10th, 2021

Control is nature’s worst enemy. As humans take the driver’s seat, how the wild evolves tells us about how we’ve changed too.

The environment has a good idea about how things should be, and then it meanders with purpose. The oceans and clouds get anxious and bite back if there’s too much external influence, disruption, pollution, etc.

Nature never second-guesses itself. Destruction wipes the slate clean.

Yet, hurricanes run out of energy eventually, as mammatus clouds signal their intent. Ebb and flow need no instruction manual.

But our internal temperature needs re-gauging. As consumers and creators, we too require a pull-back to levels on par with what nature defines as progress.

Trying to break the cycle of life is a recipe for disaster.
The peril of having it all

November 6th, 2021

We give into temptation as the day goes on. The barometer of aliveness fails to deliver the utmost resistance.

The discipline that once equaled freedom is left unfettered. The surfeit of choice is intimidating.

The minute we put down our guard, desire and fulfillment get ripped apart by the plethora of choices.

Infinity supersizes life but also makes it that much more exhausting. Once we taste one, we want everything.

And having it all is a recipe for disaster. Instead of pushing for consciousness and fulfillment, we get eaten with it. We get fat.

The first taste is with our eyes. The rest of the pie lies, and leaves us hungry for more.
Stepping into the future

November 5th, 2021

Out of step with the times, in step with the undistributed future.

The present is all some people know; an interpretive process stuck into the closeupness of the mind. There are too many lemmings and not enough thinkers.

He or she who insists on themselves always begins with something trivial before the objective gets serious. Everything is play until it turns into interest and opportunity.

Fast culture teaches one to appreciate immediacy and conformity — to consume and long forget. All the while, longevity remains undervalued. It is a test of patience to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

The battle for acceptance sets up frustration, a challenge one must yield to and let extinguish. As one endeavors to create the future, they suffer change to educate the insouciant layman on what’s what.

The dream is to pipe into our conscious mind the possibility of better. In reality, it’s our responsibility to respond to it.
It takes the time that it takes

October 29th, 2021

It takes the time that it takes. We are suckers for speed, enthralled by unnecessary fast focus.

The ideas get introduced. The work gets done. The advice goes noticed. We consume, produce, and disconnect. The revelations occur at rest.

The chase for the security of doneness makes us insecure. The bridge to certainty remains broken, buoyed by partial knowledge.

The road to independent thought accumulates with experience and mastery. The expert treads carefully in an amateur way, dabbling relentlessly, fiddling in a long game of patience and conviction.

As soon as we feel done, the engine begins again. We recast ourselves, ensuring autonomy.
Weighing the good and the bad

October 28th, 2021

The brevity of good — it’s as if the shelf-life of positivity yields to the durability of the negative.

Pessimism turns the world upside down to the point that the Earth’s emotions feel flat.

How do you wake up and shake up the good vibes?

First, you come to expect that the future will be better than the past. Hope is the oldest and most dependable survival tactic in the book. But despair is also in the genes.

Imagination is the great equalizer — it dreams upward and downward. You decide what to latch onto. The challenge becomes how to stay grounded in the good and the bad.

One uses the pragmatist razor to assess the criteria in all subjectivity, deciding which of your beliefs have cash value and convert in the real world.

Practicality withstands all doubts and hopium. It saves you from irrational exuberance. What works, and what we strive to want to work is the philosophy that seems to work best.