Halftime Speeches (Vol. 1 No. 1)
Here are five bolts of inspiration I’m sharing this month:
1. Neil Gaiman on failure:
- “When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick skinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.” – Neil Gaiman (from his Make Good Art commencement speech)
2. Alfonso Medina on critics:
- “If they bark, it signifies we are advancing.” – Alfonso Medina
3. Seinabo Sey on self-possession:
There is a light to all this darkness if only we
Fight against them telling us how we should be
I refuse to have you break me
When you know you ain’t getting any
Younger, younger, younger
Are you?
– Seinabo Sey (from Younger (Kygo Remix))
And, two from me:
1. On being a late bloomer:
- “I learned how to make photosynthesis happen even when I am in someone else’s shadow.” – Late Bloomer
2. New project: How to Change the World: a checklist (and a free online course)
- A freely available, do-it-yourself, social-good-project-building-blueprint that’s comprehensive, chronologically ordered and accompanied by free tools, resources, and how-to-guides. It’s also a free online course. Check it out.
That’s it. Have a great day. Now, go and start something! – shawn
PS If you’re reading this newsletter for the first time, you can read previous issues here, view lists of poems, questions, quotes and songs I’ve shared before here, and subscribe here.
