Behind the TEDTalk 2010 from m ss ng p eces on Vimeo.

(Via ISO50.)

Each one of these essays was excruciatingly hard work. Make no mistake, there is nothing easy about writing. It requires a tremendous amount of time and, often, blind belief in the output. The larger essays can take upwards of 50-100 hours to complete — write, edit, design, rewrite, whiskey, redesign, self-doubt, layout, cry, publish, promote, correct embarrassing invariable spelling mistakes.

But the act of writing each of these essays has led to a deeper insight into the subject at hand. Obvious, I know. But this is something many creatives simply choose not to engage. And it’s a shame. Reflection through writing can illuminate the next step in a creative process which all too often feels like flailing aimlessly in the dark.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say an unarticulated experience or creative process is one left unresolved. By writing about your experience you close the loop, so to speak. When you publish, both the output of the experience (book, software, photographs, etc) and now the ability to replicate that experience is in the hands of your audience. That’s a powerful thing. And I can say with absolute clarity, there is as much satisfaction in seeing your experience manifest in others as there is in the creative output alone.

So Long 2010, and Thanks for All the Pageviews — Satellite — Craig Mod

“I think that it’s an incredibly scary thing to do, but I’ve never heard anyone tell the story that they took that step and then regretted it… It’s always a good thing even if you spend the next two or three years of your life completely destitute and eating cup-a-noodles. It’s still more gratifying than whatever job you were dissatisfied enough to have left. And in my case, I just sat there getting so stressed out at work everyday over these meaningless, meaningless projects and creative decisions that ultimately meant nothing, and it’s all such crap. It’s very rare you get the chance in that industry or most industries to work on something that you’re actually excited about. And so, I think that one piece of advice would be to figure out what made you excited about getting into the field you’re in and then figuring out the parts of it that you’re no longer excited about and figure out how to just separate the two and what new thing could it be that… I don’t know because every case is so specific and unique, but I assume a large part of your audience works in tech and it’s just a golden age for breaking off and making your own thing, you know, of solving your own problems, scratching your own itch and all those cliches. It’s a golden age for doing that, and, I think that in terms of starting small, a very important thing to do is just remember that it’s okay to start small. Yes, we’re all inspired by the big ones. We’re all inspired by the Apples… We’re inspired by the big success stories but you hear it over and over again. Every one of these success stories came from something that started really small. So, if you’re looking to grow yourself into something big, I would say, start out, make little projects that interest you, and then if you’re proud of them, figure out ways that people can see them. There’s just such an efficient way of getting things in front of people now, that if you actually do make something kind of cool, people are going to see it. And then the next time around, it might work out that they want more of that same kind of thing from you and there might be a little bit of money in it for you. And then, before you know it, you’ve entirely left that part of your life that you came from. For the first year that I broke off of my job, I was still doing freelance projects from time to time to pay the bills, to still working on commercials for other people. And then, as soon as it became clear that it was time to turn down one of these projects, I felt like a completely new man. It meant all the freedom in the world to me. So, there are hundreds and thousands of these types of stories of people that have been motivated to break off and do what they wanted to do and figure out a way to share it so they could support themselves. Just do it, man.

The Pipeline #22: Adam Lisagor – 5by5

Now excuse me while I figure out what gets me really excited and what itch I should scratch first.

We’ve put up 15 weeks of Window Wednesday posts at our joint blog. Exciting! (Even though the photos themselves are pretty boring).

American English Dialects: Here in London I love listening to accents and trying to figure out what a person’s background is and where they might be from. It’s tough, and you have to listen carefully. We’ve tried to share a bit with friends about the differences between Canadian and American accents and this map really gets all the peculiarities of language and expresses what the rest of us would express by saying, “They just sound kind of funny and different”.

(Via Kottke.)

These are my top ten albums of 2010. These are the ones I listened to the most and that were new to me in 2010 (but most were also new to the world in 2010). Click the artist names to explore them further.

1. Bonobo – Black Sands
2. Four Tet – There Is Love In You
3. Pantha du Prince – Black Noise
4. Beach House – Teen Dream
5. Local Natives – Gorilla Manor
6. Spoon – Transference
7. Toro y Moi – Causers of This
8. Max Richter – Infra
9. Vampire Weekend – Contra
10. Bonobo – Dial ‘M’ for Monkey

And 5 that missed the list but have been equally enjoyable.

• Loscil – Endless Falls
• Kate Simko – Music From The Atom Smashers
• How to Dress Well – Love Remains
• Gold Panda – Lucky Shiner
• The Avalanches – Since I Left You

If you listen to all fifteen of these artists, you’ll notice a bit of a trend forming. I’ve definitely been listening to more electronic music.

• Calgary, AB*
• Rocky Mountain House, AB*
• Abbotsford, BC
• Banff, AB
• Wainwright, AB
• The Dalles, OR*
• Seaside, OR
• Edmonton, AB
• Toronto, ON
• Carlyle, SK
• Fairmont Hot Springs, BC
• Quito, Ecuador*
• Riobamba, Ecuador
• Shell, Ecuador
• Tena, Ecuador
• London, England*

“‘People don’t realize the subterranean conditions out there,’ he likes to say. ‘People don’t realize the levels. People don’t realize the we got things down there from the Revolution. A lot of people don’t realize that there’s just layers of settlers here, that things just get bricked off, covered up and all. They’re not accessible to people, but they are to rats. And they have rats down there that have maybe never seen the surface. If they did, then they’d run people out. Like in the movies. You see, we only see the tail end of it. And we only see the weak rats, the ones that get forced out to look for food.’”

We’ve only had mice in our house this week, but I get thinking about the nests or hidden corridors they have under our floorboards. It would be so curious to find a way to explore those spaces that are only big enough for small rodents.