Wellsbaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

daily prompt

  • Worrying is a waste of time. Greet your anxiety instead.

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    2 min read

    It is human nature to ponder anxieties that do not exist. The mind is a fabrication machine, developing worries before they deserve any attention. Wrote Carlos Castaneda in Journey to Ixtlan (Amazon):“To worry is to become accessible… And once you worry, you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to…

  • The gateway to light is the eye

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    1 min read

    A short-term realist, a long-term optimist. Can one hedge against fear and doubt while simultaneously pushing for a better and brighter future? Most of us struggle in bear markets when confidence ebbs into despair. We can only permit pertinacity. What keeps one going is the light at the end of the tunnel, connecting the slightest…

  • Walden, water, and wifi

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    1 min read

    One day we’re going to miss the powerful silence of the natural world, the way it smells and begs for an inquisition. That’s because “most people are on the world, not in it,” wrote the father of national parks John Muir. In putting a “fence around nature,” we lock ourselves into a secluded wall of…

  • Your vocation chooses you

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    2 min read

    We all start out with a dream, a goal of someone or something we want to emulate. We keep that dream close, putting up bedroom posters and memorizing phrases that propel us to keep pushing toward our goal. But then something else happens along the way? The creative gods tell us to do something else instead.…

  • The London Milkman

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    2 min read

    Photographer Fred Morley staged the famous photo of a milkman walking through the destruction of London after the German blitz during the Second World War. That’s right – this photo was staged. Morley walked around the rubble of London until he found a group of firefighters trying to put out a fire amidst the fallen…

  • Signalling anonymity

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    1 min read

    Your face and clothing signal your identity. Your DNA is one thing, your outer design another; fashion is the only element you can control. A winsome smile can be deceiving. On the inside, we could be a sufferer undressing the mind’s eye. There is no need to prejudge one’s possibilities, even our own. Wearing a…

  • Processing “reality” through the camera lens 📷

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    1 min read

    We must look at our surroundings with a keen eye otherwise every day just becomes transactional in nature. Writes Susan Sontag in On Photography: “Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it, and participating in public event comes more and more to be equivalent to looking at it in photographed form.”…