#1 Start somewhere

Everything starts from somewhere.

Books start from the momentum of the first word, then a sentence, then one paragraph, then a page. It builds from there.

Movies begin from a writer sitting in a dark room dreaming up the first line of a dialogue, or one scene sketched out on paper.

Paintings arise from one uncertain stroke that leads to the next.

Start somewhere. It doesn’t matter where. Begin small and gently.

The bar — one word, one line, one stroke — is so low you cannot help but succeed.

the future is written

Have you heard about GPT-3 yet? The language-generating AI? The AI that “writes”?

Here’s a screenplay it wrote, given this prompt –
Below is a screenplay for a film-noir hard boiled detective story by Raymond Chandler about the boy wizard Harry Potter:

“Scene: A small dingy office, early morning, furniture of the Salvation Army store variety. Sordid atmosphere. Harry Potter, in ratty tweed suit, unpressed shirt, and unshined shoes, sits behind the desk looking haggard, rumpled, and embittered. In one corner of the office a torn shade rattles at the wind gusts outside. Harry has one long index finger on the butt of a .38 and he broods over a photograph. The photograph shows a gorgeous blonde wearing an evening gown. She is holding a cocktail in one hand and looking pensively at a cigarette in the other. A tear adorns her cheek. Harry looks at her for a long moment, sighs, then puts his gun down and stands.”
— GPT-3

I’m kinda scared.

More here and here.

real feeling

It’s not enough to do things, but I must do them with real feeling, with heart. Sometimes I catch myself coasting, nodding without real feeling, falling into things I don’t care for. But it’s all a waste of time.

Invest your entire being into the things you care about and you no longer need to wonder about the meaning of life. Meaning becomes the air you breathe — a basic, unquestionable element of life.

the time experiment

For a day, an hour, or maybe just ten minutes, try this: Pretend time doesn’t exist, and live, for once, without the notions of “past” or “future”. Throw away your to-do lists, schedules, goals, worries, and live only in the deep now.

How does it feel?

Do you like how it makes you feel?