I was listening to an episode of the Design Matters podcast this morning, an interview with Eric Zimmer.  If you're wondering why I was listening to a podcast about design, you can thank Steve (see examples of his work at his blog or his website), as he sent it to me weeks ago, thinking I would like it.  He was mainly right, as I liked a lot of what he had to say in the last quarter or so of the podcast.  The first part focuses on his life, which is interesting and inspirational in its own right, but not what caught my attention.

Near the end, he starts talking about living intentionally, though he doesn't really use that word.  He does talk about decision fatigue and a cognitive bank (though I'm not sure if that's the exact term he uses).  What he means is that we have a limited ability to make decisions or think about things.  If we wake up and have to decide what to wear, what to have for breakfast, what time to leave for work (even what time to actually get out of bed), etc., then that leaves us less cognitive ability to make important decisions (you can read about the same idea in Willpower by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister).  Anyone who knows me understands that I largely try to live my life this way.

This idea led into his next one, which was about consuming.  He quoted a friend of his who said that we spend 95% of our time consuming, consuming, consuming, and only 5% of our lives reflecting on what we're consuming.  He talked about how the internet and Netflix are designed to lead us to click to the next article or blog post or show rather than stopping and reflecting on what we've read or seen.  His argument is that, if we stopped and reflected on whatever we've consumed for even thirty minutes, our lives wouldn't be the same.

I like this idea a good deal.  Even the lists I make (movies I've seen and books I've read) can lead me to do the same thing, as it can become about numbers, not about thinking about or digesting what I'm watching or reading.  Our society encourages such an approach to life, as everything focuses on consumption.  If Thoreau wrote that "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation," our society needs to hear that most people lead lives of quiet obliviousness (they might even lead lives of loud obliviousness, given all of the noise in our world, but quiet refers more to the quality of our lives, I would argue).  We consume emails and texts and (ahem) blog posts and videos and pictures and on and on through our supposedly smart phones, and we ignore the world around us.  The only way to be able to create art is to be aware.  For all of the argument that our technology connects us, I tend to see it distract people from what is really important more than anything else (and, yes, I'm fine to sound like a crotchety old man here).

All of this leads him to envy.  He quoted Theodore Roosevelt on envy (I would put it here, but I can't find the quote, unfortunately), where he effectively says that envy hurts both ourselves and the other person.  The host of the show, Debbie Millman, tries to argue that social media forces us to envy people more (or create more envy), but Zimmer disagrees.  He responds that nothing forces us to envy people, and I agree.  We have choice in the matter, and we need to choose wisely.

He doesn't directly relate this idea to art, but it's clearly implied.  He talks about how we believe we'll only be happy once we get x or y in our lives (connecting to consumption, of course), and that's true about creating art.  We believe that we'll be happy when we get a poem published in that journal or a novel accepted by this publisher.  The truth is we won't be happy then, even if our book becomes a best seller or we begin receiving invitations to speak all over, maybe even give a TED talk.  The art itself needs to make us satisfied, not because it is perfect, but because we love the act of creation itself.

If you have thirty minutes or so, you should listen to the podcast.  Then, you should take thirty more minutes and think about what he has to say.  It might just inspire you, too.

David Mitchell gives some good advice about writing in this article from The Atlantic.  Not surprisingly, he talks about how to create worlds, which he's so good at.

I've liked Kurt Vonnegut's work longer than I've liked any author's.  However, over the years, my opinion on that work has changed, sometimes rather significantly.  Here's an essay from storySouth I wrote about that relationship.

There's a quote I love from Donald Hall that talks about what writers need to do to get their writing done.  In his book Life Work (which is fabulous, by the way), he writes, "Anyone who loves accomplishment lives by the clock and the list.”  I thought of that quote earlier this week when I saw this blog post about getting up in the morning and writing.  It's a good reminder that we must set aside time to do what is important to us, whether that's reading or writing or whatever.  In this case (and in mine), it's writing.

Similarly, I liked this article from The New Yorker about how walking helps us think.  When people ask me how I find the time to write and work out, I explain that I think through things when I'm walking.  Then, once I get to the computer or pen and paper, the writing comes much more easily, as I've already been doing it that morning.  Of course, if you really want to read about walking and thinking (and writing), you should read Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust, which is completely devoted to walking (it has chapters on Socrates and the Romantics, for example).

I have a new poem, "Neophiliac," published in the September issue of Gravel.

I have a new essay up at Eclectica about cell phones and why we don't change our minds about owning them.