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You are not your art. The greater the separation between your ego and the products of your creative efforts, the happier and more productive you’ll be. So let go of all your assumptions and think. Ask yourself what creative activities you might enjoy. Don’t worry about the product yet or where it will go. If you enjoy creating amazing dinner party experiences for others—at least some of the time—that’s the important thing. It doesn’t matter at this stage what you wish you had cooked or who you would like to have hosted. You don’t have to be good at anything yet. You can learn. In fact, you’ll begin to see the process of learning as a joy, not an obstacle. The only question that matters here is, what would you be excited to try?
Creative Calling
Chase Jarvis
PJ: He wasn’t resistant, but he wasn’t meant for that offense. We kind of had to gerrymander. Michael operated out of the post better than anyone I’ve ever seen coaching or playing. His elevation—he could shoot that turnaround jump shot against anyone, and he had that drop step he used until they eventually began calling traveling on him. But he was very slick and drop-stepped to his right shoulder. Then the next year we moved him down to forward and put Pippen at guard, and that made the whole difference. Pippen had a guard mentality. Pippen rebounded and could take the ball the length of the court; he was a wing runner. And then they were ready.
Masters of the Game
Sam Smith and Phil Jackson
Seventy-five pages into the “C” notebook, in spring 1838, Darwin’s confidence swelled. Grappling with these questions, he admitted, was “a most laborious, & painful effort of the mind,” the difficulties of which would never be solved without long meditation or by someone prejudiced against the whole notion. But once you grant that species “may pass into one another,” then the “whole fabric totters & falls.” Look around the world, Darwin coached himself. Study the gradation of intermediate forms. Study geographical distribution. Study the fossil record, and the geographical overlap between extinct creatures and similar living species. Consider all this evidence, he argued excitedly, and “the fabric falls!” The fabric was natural theology. For him it had fallen. Behind where that drapery had hung, Darwin saw the reality of evolution. It wasn’t just a matter of mockingbirds, rabbits, and skinks. It was the whole natural world. “But Man—wonderful Man,” he wrote, trying out ideas on this most dangerous point, “is an exception.” Then again, he added, man is clearly a mammal. He is not a deity. He possesses some of the same instincts and feelings as animals. Three lines below the first statement about man, Darwin negated it, concluding firmly that, no, “he is no exception.” From that terrible insight, despite pressures and implications, Charles Darwin would never retreat.
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
David Quammen
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