[Frontier] On Love & Craft
a few great essays & books for the end of autumn
I’ve been thinking a lot about love & craft, in both a professional and personal sense. And I’d like to share a few snippets that I find fascinating.1
How to avoid half heartedness by Ava Bookbear2
…See how strong you become when you remember that love is just reassertation, choosing something over and over. Do it one more time & watch mundane repetition become something transcendent.
If you’re serious about what you love, does that mean everyone will love you? Absolutely not. People will continue to kind of like you and like you a little bit and not like you at all. The difference is that it won’t matter so much, because you already have something to pour your love into, something that nourishes you. So you don’t have to spend your time watching everyone else to see if they glance towards you and deign to bestow their love.
You have so much within you. Pay attention to it. Pay attention to your feelings of discomfort and uncertainty—watch yourself as you think and feel… Treat everything that happens to you as material and write it down. Don’t let someone tell you your experience doesn’t matter—you’re the one who gets to decide if it matters. Give yourself agency.
In a scene from We Play Ourselves, the protagonist, a playwright named Cass, confesses her love to the director she’s been working with, Helene. And in response Helene tells her that her crush is a form of deflection. Later she encourages Cass to “Choose your art, practice your art, always, always choose your art over and above anything else. If you can’t do that, then you have—what, a few more years?”
You can’t get away with half-heartedness in making art. You can’t believe that something, someone else will be a solution. It never is. If you’re fundamentally ambivalent about yourself no one else can change that relationship. Everything you’re reaching for is just a mirage.
Don’t rely on someone else to give you what you need. Choose what nourishes you every day. See how strong you become when you remember that love is just reassertation, choosing something over and over. Do it one more time & watch mundane repetition become something transcendent.
How to do great work by Paul Graham
When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved… Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.
What should you do if you're young and ambitious but don't know what to work on? What you should not do is drift along passively, assuming the problem will solve itself. You need to take action. But there is no systematic procedure you can follow. When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luck is involved. They discover what to work on as a result of a chance meeting, or by reading a book they happen to pick up. So you need to make yourself a big target for luck, and the way to do that is to be curious. Try lots of things, meet lots of people, read lots of books, ask lots of questions.
When in doubt, optimize for interestingness. Fields change as you learn more about them. What mathematicians do, for example, is very different from what you do in high school math classes. So you need to give different types of work a chance to show you what they're like. But a field should become increasingly interesting as you learn more about it. If it doesn't, it's probably not for you.
Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers… As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
Stay in the gap by Mandy Brown
It will take years, probably, for your skill to catch up to your taste, but there’s no other way to get there. There are no shortcuts, no magic tricks, no way to download the skill to your brain, no faux-intelligence ready to do it for you. The work is the work…
The work of creativity, at the end of the day, is the work of creativity—not what you create, but who you become in the act of creation.
Ira Glass’ famous “taste gap”… the gist of it is that when you start some new creative practice, you very quickly confront a gap between your taste and your ability. Your taste inspired you to the work, but when you’re just getting started, you can’t make work that’s as good as your taste demands.
This is where most people quit. You see some beautiful ceramics, sign up for a ceramics class, and when your first lumpy creations emerge from the kiln you conclude, well, this is not for me... As Glass notes, the difference between the person who bails at this point—and the person who goes on to make great work—isn’t talent but practice. “The most important possible thing you can do is, do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work,” he says. It will take years, probably, for your skill to catch up to your taste, but there’s no other way to get there. There are no shortcuts, no magic tricks, no way to download the skill to your brain, no faux-intelligence ready to do it for you. The work is the work.
…the gap between your abilities and your taste is not a gap to be crossed but one to be cultivated. As you build your craft, whether it’s writing or radio or glass blowing or leading a team, you develop ever more ideas about what’s possible in your work. As your skill grows, so too do your ambitions, such that your taste always and forever outstrips your abilities. For every increment of improvement, you extend your desires out that much further. This is not to say you will never be satisfied with your work—although, that is a not uncommon scenario, and not necessarily as dreary as it sounds. But rather that as you become more capable, you are wont to find as much joy and satisfaction in the process of developing your skill as in the outcomes of it. The work of creativity, at the end of the day, is the work of creativity—not what you create, but who you become in the act of creation.
The gap is not a void, not an empty space you must endure on the way to greatness. It is not a punishment or confinement, not a prison you must escape. It’s fertile soil under a bright blue sky, a cool, meandering spring, and a pocket full of seeds. It’s a verdant valley in the shade of a snowy mountain peak. As you watch, the snow melts and the peak changes shape, but it remains ever a point of attention, even as your seeds grow into tall, broad trees that gleam and wave beneath the stars.
Burn the playbooks by Not Boring
Do something that makes you feel more creative, more alive, more human. Something that sets your brain on fire. Something that you love doing more than anything else in the world. Something that no one can do just like you. Something that can’t be playbooked.
AI will do math tests better than we can. AI will do reading comprehension tests better than we can. AI will copy code better than we can. AI will follow playbooks better than we can. Anything that we playbook becomes more legible to AI.
So we must burn the playbooks. This is the real Butlerian Jihad, not destroying the machines, but destroying the playbooks that would turn us into machines.
The challenge with an essay like this – one in which I’ve so vehemently railed against playbooks – is that I can’t very well turn around and tell you exactly how to do that. That would be a playbook. You need to figure it out for yourself.
Maybe you want to read full, obscure books. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you want to do math problems for fun, or code for fun, or build something for fun, or call in sick tomorrow to hike in the woods, or spend the next 730 days straight working 18 hour days on the thing that you need to create because the world needs it and you can’t stop thinking about it and even though it will probably fail you’re willing to sacrifice years of your life for it, miss birthday parties and weddings and casual hangouts with your friends just to bring it into the world. Maybe you want to spend more time with your kids and family and friends.
But I certainly don’t have all the answers, even for myself, let alone for you. Do something that makes you feel more creative, more alive, more human. Something that sets your brain on fire. Something that you love doing more than anything else in the world. Something that no one can do just like you. Something that can’t be playbooked.
Books & Podcasts:
Ken Kocienda. Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs4
thank you to friends who recommended a few items on this list
favorite newsletter of the year. would highly recommend
highly recommend to anyone in any creative field
favorite book on apple. would highly recommend