Frustration

Posted by Mike | 15 May 2012

My Aunt Judy is whipping my ass at Words With Friends time after time and it’s fucking pissing me off.

The problem is, I’m not playing her on the inside as much as I should. When I say ‘inside’ I mean playing tight combos in between existing words, not extending new words out vertically or horizontally into the void. Every time I even come one block short of a double or triple word block, she takes it.

I’m an educated man. College degree. I’ve read John Updike. I can parse XML.

My lexicon can’t be that much smaller than hers, can it? “It’s not the words, Mike, it’s how you use them. I mean, look at Hemingway.” Yeah, yeah. Spare me.

I feel like Fredo in The Godfather II, ‚ÄúIt ain’t the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I’m smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!‚Äù

A few years ago I watched a 60 Minutes episode where they interviewed Tiger Woods. He said no matter the activity, he hates losing.

I know how he feels.

Let’s do this. Enough already.

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Technology

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Mr. Quiche

Posted by Mike | 15 May 2012

Categories:

Music

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The Key To This Joint

Posted by Mike | 15 May 2012

Last year Andreas Markdalen wrote a post on frog design’s blog on what visual designers can learn from Biggie Smalls. It’s well worth a real.
Andreas breaks down the key take-aways from Biggie:

A Central Theme
A World of Context
Rehearsal and Repetition
The Non-linear and Organic Process
The House of Cards

Process is one of the most important things you can learn from any artist, although my favorite bit of advice from Biggie is in the opening of Jay-Z’s track, My First Song (I wrote about this back in 2009):

Well, I’m just trying to stay above water, you know? Stay busy, stay working. I was telling you like, the key to this joint, the key to staying on top of things is to treat everything like it’s your first project. Know what I’m saying? Like it’s your first day, like I wasn’t even an intern or nothing. That’s how you try to treat things, like just stay humble.

Treat everything like it’s your first project.
Have you been staffed on a little dinky internal project? Or maybe a one for a really boring, life-sucking corporate client. It might be hard, but rock the shit out of it. Find something about the project you can latch onto to keep your motivation up.
I can’t say I’m always successful at treating every project like my first, but I try to.
When I fail, I at least make sure I have a side project to keep me energized (What do you think this site is?).

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Process