#but i am super excited to be considering this as a new writing avenue and its making me wanna write again owo

[jamaisjoons]

Poll for me <3

Poll 1

Poll 2

#a weird way to come back but yeah i have some plans! #not that im officially back lmfao #im still lowkey burned out from writing and enjoying gaming far too much rn #but i am super excited to be considering this as a new writing avenue and its making me wanna write again owo

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers (February 22nd, 2021)

Hello! Here’s another collection of anon ask answers all put together in one big post.

This might be strange considering how upbeat yall are about the fandoms for your games in general, but is there any particular trope or ship you WOULDN'T want us writing/drawing/etc. in relation to your stuff? (IE, any canon you don't want us 'overwriting' or something like that?)

Of course we would want the fan content people make to not be racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted, harmful, etc. But in terms of generally doing non-canon pairings or adding in headcanons or stuff, we really don’t mind that. People are welcome to have fun and explore their own ideas.

for the 1.2 Android update was it meant to download as a  separate app? I really want to keep my previous save files but they don't show up (also thank u for the updates I'm really excited to get back into the game!!)

We had to change the name of the file and unfortunately for some phones that meant it’s treated as a brand new game. I’m sorry your saves didn’t transfer over to the new version. You can try to look up your specific phone and see if there’s a way to access save files for games on your device and then transfer those saves over to the new build manually. It may or may not be possible.

I'm having some trouble figuring out how to get the update from Itichio without losing my save files? Is it the same game or a folder I can put in the properties? Sorry if this question is not worded well or if this isn't the avenue you'd want to take technical questions on

Are you using Android? If so, the above answer may apply to you. If you’re on PC or Mac, the save files will automatically still be included.

Hey. I really loved playing our life. It was a fun experience and I never thought I would like it this much. I do have a question, I am currently replaying the game and I am choosing choices I never chose at first. In step 2 during the road trip arc, I decided to ask Cove about what he liked to see on people. One of his response was anklets and black eyes. My MC have just happens to have black eyes. Do Cove say black eyes cuz my mc have it or it was just a coincidently programmed into the game?

He uses your eye color intentionally! If you changed your eye color he’d change what he said.

Will step 4 have 10 moments like steps 1-3? 

Step 4 is only an epilogue. It plays like the openings/endings of the earlier Steps where it’s a bunch of scenes all in a row, there aren’t any individual Moments.

hi! who was/were the artist(s) for our life? 

&

who is the artist for Our Life: Beginning and Always?

Main Sprite and CG Artist: Addrossi

Main Background Artist: Vui Huynh

Main Interface Artist: Winter Slice

Other artists who helped out can be seen in the credits of the game.

In the new ol, there are two main love interests... Would it be possible to pair them together or is that weird? 

You can’t stay single and pair them together. If we are going to add all the extra content to have a route where the two LIs get together, it’d be a full poly route where them and the MC were all dating. And that’s not a for sure option yet because it’d add a lot of extra complications. But either way, in OL the relationships all gotta be about the MC, haha.

In OL2, there will be extra LIs in form of DLCs? Like Dexter and Baxter. 

Maybe! We’ll see how it goes.

Since Cove will have 2 diff body types in s4, will the storyline and dialogs reflect this? Or all of it will be the same? Btw love the game and sorry for bad english. Hope this doesn't sound rude 😅 

Some descriptions and pieces of dialog will change, but it won’t impact the story really. And you don’t need to apologize! It’s all good.

Will you ever release the transparent sprites of the Our Life characters? 

Probably not, I’m afraid. They’ve got a lot of pieces and it’d just be kind of hard to deal with, aha.

Something I was curious about, what was your inspiration for making a game with so much customization?

Initially, the idea was just about having a romance where you actually grew up with the LI. But it was pretty stressful to try deciding how fast the relationship would progress with it taking place over such a long period of time and with no real storyline carrying it. People might not wanna play a game where the characters don’t get along as kids, but other people might not bother with a game where kids immediately liked each other. So the obvious answer came, just let the player pick themselves how it goes. From there we simply continued to add more flexibly with the MC due to the same thought process of wanting to make sure people were onboard with how their life was going.

What made you decide to change the artstyle for ol 2 so much? I of course respect all your decisions and will buy the shit out of everything related to ol 2, but i love the original style and i m honestly not a fan of the styles shown on patreon, despite me liking the painterly style in general. (I don t mind the style being changed, just that the examples shown so far all feel like there s something wrong with them.) 

We’ve always used different art styles for each of our projects. They all have distinct looks from each other. It’s just nice to do something new. I’m glad you really like how the first game looks, though. And those samples were only general concepts, rather than the exact options being decided between. We wanted to see reactions to different options. The art style we’re going with won’t be exactly like those, though I personally like all of them. I think players are gonna enjoy the style Our Life: Now & Forever when it’s revealed.

Hey! Is it ok to ask what gender ourlife2 protagonist will be and if we'll be given the same opportunity to customize an MC? Totally understand if you're keeping this under wraps for now if u don't wanna say! 

OL2 will have the same type of MC customization as OL1, but even more refined! So their gender will be up to you.

Hi! I happened upon Our Life on Steam by pure chance. It is such a great game, I am super excited about the DLC, and I just want you all to know that you are awesome! :D I have a question, and I'm sorry if it's been asked before. Do you have plans of making more games similar to Our Life, with customizable player character? The customizable player character was probably the one thing I personally have been desperate for in romance VNs. So glad there finally is one and would love to see more.

Thank you! And yep, we do have plans for more games like Our Life, most notably is another game in the franchise- Our Life: Now & Forever. We’ll also likely have other, non-OL, games with customizable MCs, though we may still have some games with set MCs in the future as well.

On the patreon dlc just curious but is it possible to play it without actually sleeping together/getting the nsfw content? I just want to spend more time with Cove 

Yeah, you can still choose not to go that far. Though the event is shorter if you pass on the 18+ stuff.

At the beginning of Step 2, did Cove end up accidentally falling asleep in your bed? Or did he fall asleep on the floor? 

He fell asleep sitting on the floor with his body/head leaning against the side of the bed.

This may seem like a weird question, but what exactly is the difference between "direct" and "relaxed" on the comfort scale?

Direct is blunter and more teasing, relaxed is lighthearted and goes with the flow.

can the MC have tattoos in step 3? 

Not in Step 3, but you can in Step 4.

how would Cove react if he visited somewhere like North Carolina in winter where it can get in the 20s(F) at night sometimes? 

He would be shocked and unprepared for what serious coldness is really like, haha. The poor beach baby would wanna go home.

Hello! I just joined the PATREON!! It’s amazing! I love your games! I have a question, approximately how much after will the nsfw be out? After or before the dlc 3 and step four? Sorry my English isn’t the best!❤️❤️❤️ 

Thanks so much! The NSFW DLC will be out after the Step 3 DLC but before Step 4. And you don’t need to apologize for that ^^.

This might be obvious but, will step 4 have dlcs? Also, where will the nsfw dlc happen? Won't bother me at all if it s in in our or his house but i do think it d be moderately funny 

Step 4 will have the Cove Wedding DLC and the Derek and Baxter romance DLCs each add a lot of new content to Step 4, though they’re also partially set in Step 2 and Step 3 respectively. The NSFW DLC happens in Cove’s room.

I keep wondering what would've happened if Mr. Holden met Lizzie first instead of the MC. I can't see that turning out well somehow lol. 

It wouldn’t have made a difference. He met the MC’s parents first and they told him about their two kids. He wanted the MC specifically to be Cove’s friend because the two were the same age.

Even though we have a way to go I'm really excited for OL 2! I was curious though, is the next main character going to be adopted again? I thought it was really clever to make the first main character adopted so when players are customizing,  they can make them look how ever they like without worrying about pesky genetics. Just wondering! 

The OL2 MC is not adopted. We wanted to go for a new dynamic. Instead their parents are their biological single mother who is partially customizable and an off-screen sperm donor father. So the mom will look generally like the MC and any other traits not from her can be assumed to come from whoever the father was.

—– —– —–

Thank you so much for all the asks ^^

FAQ   If you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Blog

#our life #Our Life Beginnings & Always #ourlifeba #ask #gb patch #gb patch games #Our Life: Now & Forever

[coffeebooksorme]

AURORA RISING REVIEW

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS:  The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would touch… A cocky diplomat with a black belt in sarcasm A sociopath scientist with a fondness for shooting her bunkmates A smart-ass techwiz with the galaxy’s biggest chip on his shoulder An alien warrior with anger management issues A tomboy pilot who’s totally not into him, in case you were wondering And Ty’s squad isn’t even his biggest problem—that’d be Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the girl he’s just rescued from interdimensional space. Trapped in cryo-sleep for two centuries, Auri is a girl out of time and out of her depth. But she could be the catalyst that starts a war millions of years in the making, and Tyler’s squad of losers, discipline-cases and misfits might just be the last hope for the entire galaxy. They're not the heroes we deserve. They're just the ones we could find. Nobody panic.

First off, a HUGE thank you to Random House for providing me a free eARC through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review!

Aurora Rising is one of my most anticipated releases of this year. Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff blew my mind with the Illuminae Files trilogy and I’m a HUGE fan of Jay Kristoff so it was only natural for me to be excited about their new foray together.

As you can see from the synopsis of this book it’s another sci-fi novel set in space with a huge cast of characters. It’s similar to the Illuminae Files but it’s different enough that fans of that series will walk in with some familiarity but walk out gobsmacked with what Jay & Amie have done with this new world (universe?). As always, the characters are fantastically written and instantly make you love them, the world building is gorgeous and makes you clamor for more, and the plot is wonderful!

However, I found a LOT of similarities between this and the movie Serenity, which is a continuation of the Firefly series. Rag tag team of outlaws? Check. Chick in cryo? Check. Super powered girl that the government is after? Check. Super secret world that no one knows about? Check. Add in a few more elements that are spoilers for the book and you’ve got yourself a literary version of Serenity. Am I complaining? Hell no! 

There’s a lot of nods to previous avenues of sci-fi. If you’re a fan or even a casual follower, you will notice nods to Starship Troopers, Star Trek: New Generation, and Red Dwarf. You will even notice little wink wink nudge nudge nods to The Princess Bride, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Aladdin. Not to mention the 80′s classic The Breakfast Club, which I think heavily influenced the character cast. These are the only nods that I caught, but knowing how much Jay & Amie like to toss them into their work, I can only imagine how many more there are that I didn’t catch. 

As always, Jay & Amie provided their own spin on it and really allowed the novel to soar on it’s own. What really stands out is the cast of characters. Tyler, the Alpha; Scarlett, the Face; Cat, the Ace; Finian, the Gearhead; Kal, the Tank; Zila, the Science; and finally, the namesake for the book, Aurora, our fish out of water. Each character gets their own POV (I KNOW, IT’S A LOT), though Zila only really shows up a small handful of times, and you will grow to love each and every one of them throughout this adventure. Characters are really the bread and butter for Jay & Amie’s novels, I think, because they write such good interactions, dialogue, and growth for their characters.

Personally, I loved Finian, Kal, and Magellan, a smart mouthed AI on a tablet who’s basically next gen Alexa, the most. Aurora, in my opinion, wasn’t really fleshed out as much as she could have been. To me, she seemed more like the typical YA trope of ‘super special YA heroine’ but I know that Jay & Amie have more in store for her so I’m reserving judgement for now. Zila, a black character who I think is on the Autism spectrum but wasn’t confirmed in story, didn’t really get a lot of her own POV in book, but I really did enjoy what we got from her. Magellan was fantastic and I really think it speaks volumes for Jay & Amie as authors that they can make you care so much for an AI character.

There was a hint of romance in this story but it was really a blip in the storyline. It kinda reminded me a little bit of the whole Twilight imprinting thing BUT NOT IN A BAD WAY, I PROMISE! The pairing shocked the heck out of me considering the most commonly used YA trope is that the first guy our heroine sees is usually her HEA. Not to mention, the two characters don’t even get together in this book. There’s literally no relationship execution in this book, but a promise of what could happen and I honestly really enjoyed that addition. 

The plot itself, as I said, wasn’t too original. It’s something we’ve seen before and flew so closely to Serenity that I wasn’t all that surprised with how things turned out. If you watch that movie and then read this book you’ll see a lot of comparisons between the two that will sorta kinda make you expect things to happen in the book and then not be surprised when they do happen. The pacing was really well done. There were enough lull moments that when the action hit I flew through it with a lot of anticipation and worry. The ending, as usual, ended with a loud bang and left me severely wanting more.

All in all, this book is a wonderful add on to the YA sci-fi genre and I am so glad I got to read it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m definitely jonesing for some more from this squad!

#booklr #aurora rising #jay kristoff #amie kaufman #random house #net galley #book review #book reviews #read #reader #reading #bookworm #book dragon #bibliophile

[danielxrk]

           ✞ THINK YOU KNOW ME? *    KILL IT       { rap }

he's glad he ended the first half of the day's auditions on guitar; it leaves him in a better mood to face the others during the break, and all things considered, he's happy with how the day has gone so far. he thinks he did well enough at talking through his interview, and that he showed a good side of himself in the special skills portion, it's just the singing portion that he finds questionable. it's not even that he thinks he did poorly, it's just that he doesn't know, he detached so much from this plane of reality during it. he didn't think about his notes; he got lost in what the song meant to him, and thoughts he thought he subdued, clearly not finished with him yet. yet thanks to the guitar, he wasn't worried about it. he could hope it all came off as genuine emotion (which it really was) and that it sold the performance where his vocal talent couldn't.

he practically tackles kenta in a half-hug once he spots him and woojin in the hallway, easily throwing an arm around kenta’s shoulders, and he grins at woojin, too. "you made it," he says, potentially interpreted as not believing it or knowing they would all along. "just a little bit left." he's sure they did better than he did last year, knowing them, and this much is a reminder to himself, too, but for now, he'll enjoy these 20 minutes before they're separated again. he doesn't talk much, in favor of letting kenta babble about whatever he sees fit, and he just listens; he's always been better at that than talking anyway, and the smile that lingers on his face the entire time is genuine. kenta seems excited, unless this is all just nerves. daniel isn't sure which, but he hopes it's the former, and accepts it as such. he also accepts any of the food kenta offers him, and surprisingly isn't hurt to find out sungwoon made a lunch box for kenta and not him. it seems a little petty, but that also seems very sungwoon, and he probably deserved that much up until yesterday; maybe he still does.

in between each of them respectively checking their phones (though does woojin ever really stop checking his phone?) kenta asks how it went for him, and it's funny, because daniel just read the message from sungwoon in the empty enigma group chat asking the same. "it was good!" he chirps, and it's not like that was a lie. "singing portion was..." how does he describe it? "weird?" he chuckles, almost nervous. "not bad, but i think i got too into it. i don't really remember it, like i blocked it all out or something." at least partially true. daniel remembers how he felt during it, though; it's just that he doesn't want to think about it. when he returns to his phone to message back the group chat, he’s met with the incredibly rare, once-in-a-blue-moon woojin message in the empty enigma chat daniel was pretty sure he permanently had on mute. still, he messages similar to what he said back to the group chat: i don't know, it was weird. the interview was fine but do you ever sing and feel like you get transported to another dimension? i finished and was like what 

the time passes too quickly, and he knows he'll miss the company of his friends as soon as he's back in that practice room alone. in the moments before then, he slips in another quick hug for kenta and pats woojin on the back, for once not fearing how he'll react. daniel can handle a little annoyance for how proud he is of them.

once he's corralled back into the room of vocalists, he sees kenta's messages in the empty enigma group chat and sends his own: sungwoon hyung, why didn't you make me lunch too? 😢

he follows it up with a quick addition of just kidding! you've done well, everyone. let's finish this

--

the air has changed since the last time he was in the room, like someone took a vacuum and sucked the energy right out of it. if these vocalists are anything like he was last year, they're not nearly as confident in their other skills, or they may not have prepared anything at all. if the camera were to pan over faces now, there would be some with color drained, some with anxiety in their eyes, and then daniel: peculiarly composed.

it's not that he's really confident in his rapping. his singing is still probably better, given his experience. daniel has only been rapping for no more than three months now, a new avenue of music opened up to him thanks to trc's triple threat challenge. he's been practicing ever since, venturing into hip hop music, and into bands that feature rapping, too, and picking up as much as he can. it's something he keeps mostly to himself, still not comfortable sharing it with anyone else; it's a little embarrassing, something like a guilty pleasure, but that was how empty enigma started out for him, too.

it's just that he feels like he might have an edge here. his rapping isn't so bad-- especially not as bad as it was last year when he stumbled through super bass as his improvised second skill, because at least he knew the words. now, he's well-practiced, and knows he can surpass the voices in this room that are solely vocals, even if it's only this time. well, maybe knows is too generous. he thinks he can. he believes it, and doesn't let his thoughts wander enough to doubt it.

his name seems to come more quickly now. maybe its just that his comfort level has shifted, or maybe the contestants ahead of him have much shorter performances this time around-- likely a mixture of both. either way, he only feels the familiar dip of dread in his stomach a pinch, but ultimately at peace. he might even be a little excited after not rapping for anyone else since his triple threat challenge performance.

the rap he's set to perform is one he found during his delve into the "art of rapping," a side project of a frontman in a band, so he thinks it's fitting for him. the lyrics feel relevant too, and that always helps. his rap is short, an optimistic attempt at quality over quantity, and he doesn't have a backtrack, figuring it's better to let his voice fend for itself than potentially fall out of rhythm with an instrumental. all of that aside, he's prepared something he's surprisingly actually confident in. they give him the signal, and he pulls his hood up over his head to give himself a little extra boost of the right attitude.

no one knows who i am to flip over this gameboard i spit and grind my teeth every day asleep or awake

maybe it isn't true. everyone he performs this in front of might know him from the mgas, and if this makes it to a tv screen, it may reach others that know him from the same, or from empty enigma. he's not a total unknown, but it feels like the truth, too. even with all of this, he still has some mystery-- now more than ever, like a card up his sleeve, still not entirely revealed even now. nobody here knows who he really is. (daniel himself is still figuring that one out. maybe they'll find the answer together.)

i squeeze my own neck, i’m lazy i pick what i want i step on it and like a beagle, i bark

truthfully, these are the lyrics he understands the least. in retrospect, he could've tried his hand at an original rap to flex is lyric writing again, but he's not that confident in it-- especially not confident enough to apply it to rap. he thinks he gets the point, though: it's hard work, and it's desperation, and it's a hunger to prove yourself and be known. daniel feels that too at his core, and it makes it easier to portray, even in an area he's new to.

this is where the original song picks up-- where he has to be intentional not to trip over his own words-- but he's practiced this the most of anything, because he knew it was what he needed the most help in and because it was the most fun (aside from guitar, old faithful as it were.)

wrote these words all night till i heard the birds chirping, playing the trainee secrete! adrenaline ready! with blood sweat

he didn't write these words in particular, but he's known his fair share of sacrificing sleep to write songs in recent months, not out of necessity, but desire. maybe there was some necessity in it too, like a need to pour thoughts and emotions out on a page, freeing them from where they lurked and swirled in his mind-- that release, that freedom, that productivity. daniel never knew his feelings could be useful for something before he started writing songs.

he's not a trainee either-- still doesn't know if he wants to be one --but he knows how to work hard. he knows the feeling of stage lighting and pounding music and the cheer of a crowd, however humble, and he knows the teamwork it takes to make it happen.

the frustration of the criticism he received last season-- of the criticism he received from himself, and knowing it was all justified. he remembers reading one comment in particular that suggested he didn't work as hard as his teammates, and perhaps that stuck with him the most. in the end, he believed even that was true, and it lit a fire in him to not let anyone down any longer, and to be better for this season, leading up to today. he channels all of it into the final lines

i knocked on this frustration all night i can stretch out my back and say, think you know me? kill it

the original doesn't end here, but they aren't lyrics daniel can apply to himself, nor are they ones he'd feel well re-writing, so it is where his audition ends. the silence of the room afterwards is strange, and he can almost feel an echo of his voice moments prior-- an eco of the entire rest of the day. he bows, a bit belatedly, and says, "thank you," voice scratchy, and he clears his throat. it lacks his typical brightness this time, intensity still wearing off, and he lingers a little longer than he should, like there's something more to say or to do.

in the end, he can't think of anything, and sees himself out, a bit awkwardly, though the smile finds itself to his face soon after. he's finished, and today was so much better than the day like it last year, and it's not even over yet. he collides with kenta and woojin, and slings his arms over both of their shoulders, unfamiliar afterglow of a successful audition rendering him entirely carefree.

✉ ⊰🌞 funky lil thots 🌞⊱ ✉ 🙏 🙏 🙏

#rkmga5audition5 #rkkenta #rkxsungwoon #rkpwj #rkmga5 #;solo #;adrenalineready #;ee #( * yes that is the empty enigma gc #i'm emo actually #that was a wild ride but daniel and i had so much fun!! #here's to more??? prayer emojis intensify )

[oosteven-universe]

Bountiful Garden #02

Bountiful Garden #02 Mad Cave Studios 2021 Written by Ivy Noelle Weir Illustrated by Kelly Williams Coloured by Giorgio Spalletta Lettered by Justin Birch    As engineers Anya and Kamari examine the stalled ship (with little help from the distraught Biologist, Jane), Botanist Marnie, Security Detail Kurt, and Architect Jonas hike across the planet below. Tempers flare as the teens try to figure out how to handle a situation they weren't prepared for.    There’s a fine line between writing them as kids versus adults and while they are what we would consider geniuses Ivy really manages to straddle that line like a tightrope walker.  I am really impressed with how we see them argue and bicker like adults and yet still retain that innocence and fear that a child would face.  Having split up into two groups we see the same situation play out in two separate locations with the appropriate local specific.  Seeing them in action both trying to explore the surface as well as how they try to find the problem with the ship really showcases this whole science fiction horror aspect in the storytelling.  The overall effect is utterly fantastic as this takes us through the gamut of emotions and feelings as well as how it takes us through the pages keeping the reader in a constant feeling of angst and unease.     I am very much enjoying the way that this is being told.  The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well.  The character development that we see, which by the by is utterly phenomenal, through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter brings their personalities to forefront beautifully.  The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story the more tension building things become.     I like how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen.  That these layers open up new avenues to be explored is fantastic and that they all add this depth, dimension and complexity to the story is even better.  Whether he’s going on a space walk or the botanist is dealing with potential plant life these are the aspects I love seeing.  How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is extremely well achieved.    I like the interiors here.  There is a very distinct style and it blends all-ages with indie, old school underground, comics creating something very new.  I do wish we would see backgrounds utilised more because they do enhance and expand the moments.  They also work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope of the story.  The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a very talented eye for storytelling.  The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows an extraordinary eye for how colour works.   ​    This to me takes a familiar spin and puts a fresh new face on it so it feels fresh and exciting.  The kids being kids, super smart or not, demonstrate anger and authority issues with one another and yet they know their jobs inside and out and are freaking out because of the situation and circumstance they find themselves in.  I cannot tell you enough how impressed I am with Ivy and the way she is writing this. The writing it superb and the characterisation is phenomenal while the uniques interiors bring this all to life creating a new feel to a classic horror genre.

#Comic Books #Comics Reviews #Mad Cave Studios

[wallpaperpainting]

Five Common Misconceptions About Canvas Wall Art | Canvas Wall Art

It’s during acute times that art break out of the white cube. This faculty of coercion was axiomatic back Visual AIDS projected Kay Rosen’s text-based ignment AIDS ON GOING GOING ON imilate the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and St. Vincent Hospital at night on December 4, 2015, a few canicule afterwards Apple AIDS Day. Just as it was back Russian achievement artisan Petr Pavlensky nailed his scrotum imilate cobblestones of the Red Square on November 10, 2013, on the nation’s Badge Day, to silently beef the arresting abuse and alienation in his country. 

“Protest is an art form—you could in actuality altercate that some art is beef with its acknowledgment of ethics and beliefs,” mixed-media artisan Hank Willis Thomas tells Observer. Tonight, an abundance of his advancing activity The Writing on the Wall is actuality projected imilate the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C. The one-hour continued bump began at 9 p.m. and is accoutrement the limestone façade of the 85-year-old architecture at Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues with a bend of an 11-minute accelerate of declarations by actual bodies from above the globe.

SEE ALSO: Confined Artists are Expressing the Coercion of Clemency During COVID-19 

The ignment is a accord amid the New York-based artisan and the all-around anticipate catchbasin Incarceration Nations Network (INN). Unsanctioned, it capitalizes on the nocturnal placidness of the basic to actualize a acute admonition of the difficulties faced by those experiencing the appulse of COVID-19 abaft bars, area amusing break and admission to able ysis is abreast impossible. The headquarter of the U.

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[iamliberalartsgt]

HELLO! I hope everyone is having a wonderful spring semester so far! To those of you are new to Tech, this blog, are considering Tech...or blogging...HI! HAPPY TO HAVE YOU! WELCOME! BIENVENUE!

First of all, I am so excited to be back on campus. I’ve enjoyed the brief respite that winter break provided, but being busy and getting back in the swing of things is actually really nice too. I didn’t miss my shoebox dorm room much, but after redecorating my wall (it’s a work in constant progress, I love it) and spending time with my roommate, this is easily amendable.

I am loving catching up with my friends too; I really missed them! I’ve drank a lot of coffee and eaten a lot of Thai food and it’s been wonderful. I’ve attended movie screenings through Georgia Tech (20th Century Women is so good!) and taken new exercise classes at the CRC. I’ve been to parties and brunches and met so many new people that it almost feels I’ve been out to new restaurants in the city and casually saw Anna Kendrick walk into a sushi bar in midtown. (I brag about this whenever possible.)

Finally, it has even been nice to get back to work, back down to business. I’ve started back with my research internship and am currently helping Professor Telotte find examples of science fiction film advertising in pulp magazines from the World World II period.

I am an arts ambassador and am collaborating on a mural with the Women’s Resource Center (one of my favorite places ever). I finally got photoshop on my computer and have been loving messing around on it.

I am also a part of the North Avenue Review, and our magazine is finally here! They’re in stands all around campus and if you like free speech and/or student writing you should definitely check it out! (Ya girl wrote a piece on Hillary and feminism, and my friend DREW the cover!)

And then of course, there are classes. As an LMC, I still SUPER UNFORTUNATELY have to take math, so I’m in Survey of Calculus right now. Never having taken AP Calculus...(yes I am proudly the 5% of Tech students here LOL)...I’m kind of dying. (But PROUDLY!)

I’m also in Spanish 2001, another LMC requirement. I’m having major high school Spanish class flashbacks, complete with workbook activities. But my teacher (Pilkington) is the sweetest lady ever and I don’t get called on too much (my eternal irrational fear) so I can’t really complain.

I’m taking the LMC Seminar class (2050) too, in which we have thus far argued and talked about extremely random but thought-provoking things. Like, people from predominantly oral cultures didn’t have any kind of thought-documentation, so how the heck did they remember anything? What’s the difference between speech and poetry? And is something a remediation if it is altered but remains in the same medium form? Discuss. (We definitely did.)

I am also taking an Intro to Cognitive Psychology class (3012), which is amazingly interesting so far. I MIGHT minor in Psych, so this perfectly fits both a minor and science elective requirement for me. And it’s just dang cool. They needed someone to take notes in class (for a disabled student who may or may not be able to attend), so ya girl applied...and got the gig! I email the notes that I have already been taking after class every day, and at the end of the semester I’ll get paid for it!

Finally, my most favorite class and my most exciting update ever. Last semester I was talking to my friend about how cool it would be if the Major Authors class (at that time a random LMC Literature class on a random class list) was all about Jane Austen. She paused, then thought a minute, then the next day told me that it was. Turns out, her research professor, Dr. Karen Head, taught the class, and she had asked her about it for me. I don’t think I’ve ever signed up for any class that quickly.

So far in my amazingly perfect beautiful Jane Austen class, we have read Northanger Abbey and Lady Susan. Now we are reading Sense and Sensibility (which I have never read before!), and by the end of the semester we will have read them all. We each take turns leading discussions about the books (in pairs, not by ourselves, godbless) and my nerdy fangirl heart is so so at home. After discussions we watch clips from the movie and talk about how the stories have been adapted and retold. It will be so cool at the end of the spring to be able to not only say that I have read all of Jane Austen’s major works, but that I have done it in such a short time period and am able to compare them!

Also, I just really love Jane Austen. And Dr. Karen, she’s freaking amazing. But yeah, go Jane!!!

I’m looking forward to another wonderful semester! I know it will get really hard again soon, but for now I will keep enjoying the things I’ve been and am up to and the people that I get to do them with.

For those of you that I mentioned earlier who may be considering Tech or blogging...it was the right choice for yours truly, so I can’t express how wonderful each of them is enough.

#gatech #xs #spring 2017 #spring #semester #spring semester #first year #georgia tech #iac #ivan allen college #ivan allen #jane austen #lmc #literature media and communication #major authors #sense and sensibility #northanger abbey #books #reading #literature #seminar #liberal arts #atlanta #weloveatl #city #student #blog #20th century women #freshmen

[jclynne]

Epic Problems

  I’m back at it. It’s been a while. Writing writing writing. That’s what I do. Well, I get stuck doing the laundry and cleaning the house, but writing is where I’m supposed to be spending my time.

  The holidays are over. All of the offspring have launched, so now it’s just the dogs and me. And the cats. Oh, and The Beard.

  We spent a lot of time reading and binge-watching. Epic storytelling is the rage.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I have a superpower. It’s more of an evil superpower. If I love a show, it will die. No kidding.

Shows I Love:

    Firefly

  Fringe

  Life (with Damien Lewis)

  Almost Human

  If it’s witty, cutting, and a little dark with excellent writing and a fantastic cast, I’ll kill it. So much so that when friends began their GOT addiction, they begged me NOT to watch it.

  Of course, if a show is slightly inane, completely ridiculous, and beyond most reason, it will never die. No matter how much I watch it.

Shows I Love to Mock:

    Criminal Minds

  NCIS

  Bones (though to be fair that one did recently end)

  Numb3rs (this one did eventually end as well)

  This evil superpower doesn’t actually apply to the written word. Those epic story arcs take care of themselves. Usually, through writer’s block, terminal illness, or what I call ‘ghost writeritis.’

  Ghost writeritis is the feeling that because a series is so long, the original author has passed the torch to someone who keeps churning out novels, so the cash cow keeps producing. I’ll let you decide which of your favorites you feel fall into this category. I know of at least two.

  The writer’s block needs no explanation, nor does the terminal illness. Note in the case of death, a sponsored writer finishing up the series doesn’t fit the ghostwriter scenario.

  I started out reading GOT at the recommendation of a friend in 2010. I quickly arrived at A Dance with Dragons well before the HBO series.

  I’m also a Wheel of Time reader, as is The Beard. Well, most of it anyway. That one I discovered in 1987 and anxiously waited for each new novel to be released. I stopped with Knife of Dreams, book eleven, and the last book Robert Jordan completed before succumbing to cardiac amyloidosis.

  We purchased twelve, thirteen, and fourteen for continuity sake, but haven’t cracked them open more on principle than anything else.

  Both epic series have similar problems. They both include novels that don’t provide any forward movement in the plot. If you are part of the GOT or WOT world readers, you know exactly what I mean. I’m not naming names, but at least two of the published GOT novels don’t offer much, and one even takes us BACK to the same events from another perspective.

  WOT has at least two maybe three (this is a debate that comes up any time WOT is a topic of discussion) novels that don’t offer anything besides a page count and a book sale.

  These novels fall into the cash cow category. Rabid readers (I’m one of them) are clamoring for more, but epics take time, so to fulfill the publishers’ needs, one of those filler books is offered to calm the horde.

  More controversy ensues when the projects become developed for television. HBO rocked GOT (I’m only going on hearsay here as I promised not to watch it until it came to a natural end, and now I’m not so sure I’m interested in watching it based on the finale failure).

  Mainly because there is no shortage of terrific things to watch nowadays, if you haven’t blown through The Witcher, I don’t know what rock you were under.

  I’m carefully metering episodes of The Expanse, a series only The Beard read, but mostly rocking it. (Though if Holden cries one more time, I might vomit.)

  I’m going to go back and give Lost in Space another shot. But daring fire and pitchforks, I really do wish Stranger Things would wrap it up.

  Here’s what I like, a series either book or television that tells a great story without all of the fluff in say, six episodes/books or less. I’m a literature professor, I like trilogies (shameless plug for The Esau Continuum here), but that’s not to say it’s a binding rule.

  Person of Interest wrapped things up in five seasons. The BBC’s Sherlock is a neat and tidy four seasons. Sure, they could squeeze in a fifth, but I’m happy where it landed. Sure, American Horror Story sometimes misses the mark for me, but I love the story switch each season. Granted, I think they are reaching the dry end of the well, but Ryan Murphy is offering us Feud and American Crime Story.

  If you’re a writer, a querying, pitching writer, you are feeling it as much as I am. The pressure to have a ‘sure thing.’ The demand to have a ‘strong’ platform. Which is fine if you’re one of those 15-minute of fame people, but the rest of us are trying to tell a good story.

  If you haven’t fallen for The Child or Baby NOT Yoda, you have no heart.

                      I may be stepping out of the ‘super SciFi geek’ rules, but I don’t need another Skywalker story. Okay, I am loving The Mandolorian, and Baby Yoda is one of the reasons. Yes, I am considering a CBS All Access pass to catch Picard. I think I could get into Tell Me A Story and Why Women Kill. I’ve heard good things about Star Trek: Discovery.

  But, I’m more interested in Avenue 5 or Locke and Key. And while I thought I was Marveled-out, Black Widow has me excited again.

  Here’s the news if you haven’t heard, WOT is being developed by Amazon. This could be AMAZING, particularly if they learn from HBO’s mistakes. They are already ahead of the curve, the series is complete.

  Epic Problems was originally published on JC Lynne

[bentonpena]

Can Music and AI Coexist? Predictions from 8 Mutek Artists

Can Music and AI Coexist? Predictions from 8 Mutek Artists http://bit.ly/30rqdvt

Music has always been linked with emerging technologies. But AI is something new. AI has the power to completely transform how we make and experience music. AI is already changing the world.

We spoke to 8 artists from MUTEK Montreal 2019 to discuss their wildest predictions for the future of music, AI, and their own workflow.

404.zero

We do not see any future as we expect humanity to destroy the entire planet before AI reaches a certain complexity level to be useful in music creation.

More about 404.zero

Kaleema

I think there’s great potential for AI development in musical creation. But the first thing that comes to mind is who owns the rights of the composition—software creators or the AI?

If an AI is trained to create, it needs to work on pre-existing music… So another question arises: is the AI the author, or is it just a copy from the music that the AI used as a reference?

Is there any possible originality in AI at all? I guess it’s still an early stage to answer all these questions as it’s unknown territory.

My music trajectory is very much related to classic instruments. I play violin and piano since I was a kid and had the opportunity to play in orchestras. It was a collective artistic experience of sharing that I consider of great value.

I think each musician can provide a different touch through his original interpretation to make an art-piece come to life, something that is beyond technicality and virtuosity.

It’s an invisible variable, more of a personality and sensibility thing… In this sense I have certain doubts about how an AI can detach from “data” and algorithmic training in order to provide musicality to a creation, as interpretant or author.

I’d be interested in working with AI as long as the situation doesn’t become a music dialogue where the algorithm behaves the same as me and takes me back to the same point.

If the AI can’t create on its own, rather than just copy artists styles, I wouldn’t be interested to add it to my creative process as I feel I wouldn’t be adding anything new.

More about Kaleema

Adam Basanta

From my perspective, AI is one of many algorithmic approaches that could be useful for making new work. Based on the task at hand, it could be the most appropriate or inappropriate tool.

It certainly offers some exciting new potentials for less than thrilling preparation tasks. For instance, the ability to speed up sophisticated similarity-recognition processes could be very useful when using large sample banks, whether in studio practice or a live application.

In terms of using AI for generating musical structures (such as phrases, rhythms, etc) it’s important to recognize that the result is more dependant on the data it is trained on than on the particularities of the algorithm itself.

The use of such generative tools would involve tailoring of datasets, as well as multiple custom macro-compositional levels which would ensure that the generative material retains a character which is not easily achievable by just training the AI.

I feel that despite the exciting specific possibilities of AI in music, the quality of the music will still much more dependent on one’s ears and imagination rather than on any specific algorithm or application.

More about Adam Basanta

Aquaventure

I would like to see how AI can work with non-copyrighted material. I know there are algorithms out there that can take an input and find something that sounds at least partially similar to it. But what if the search results came exclusively from databases of public domain, free-access sounds?

For example, let’s say I want to add something in a track that I know I can sing, but I don’t want to use my voice; such an algorithm could come in very handy. I can only imagine the exciting, unpredictable material it could take me to—fragments of speeches, videos, field recordings, and so on.

Now, what if we included literally every sound online that isn’t copyrighted? Add to your results every instance of home video on YouTube where people are just hanging out, doing their thing. That would be a tool I’d love to experiment with.

I hear AI technologies are already capable of making full pieces of music based on pre-existing, copyrighted material, but that really doesn’t interest me.

I would rather support projects that expand our possibilities as human creators, instead of gradually dehumanizing the process, stealing our jobs away from us, and banking in on our talent, time and effort. I really hope there are leading AI developers out there with this kind of vision in mind.

More about Aquaventure

Huges Clement

I see AI just as another significant advance in this never ending, exponential quest of pushing and questioning technology’s potential and boundaries in this prehistoric digital age.

Democratization of AI is, in my mind, highly connected to the democratization of art practice in our society.

More than ever now, powerful, complex, human brain/mind inspired and—I am tempted to say—organic, is now accessible for people to get their creative vision out of their head, without being musically trained or know anything about computers or programming.

But Just like any creative technology, adapted to music creation or not, I’m interested in what a creative mind can do with those tools, not the opposite.

More about Hugues Clement

Akiko Nakayama

I am a painter. And I use music as a “clear paint” for my audiovisual performance.

AI will be a good entrance guide to people whose main expression technique was not Music. They will help us in shaping that inspiration. Or it will create unexpected chaos luckily.

From the age of ‘tools used by humans’, I have hope in the age of tools that walk with humans.

More about Akiko Nakayama

TM404

I’m very interested in this subject and I read as much as I can about this.

The human brain and ear will always come up with more interesting and ”better” results than any AI could ever do, I’m sure of that.

There’s this famous example of Daddy’s Car which always pops up when people are speaking about artificial intelligence and music making.

The story of a track that was written by AI. But if you actually care to check, the track wasn’t done by AI really. It was arranged and produced by a human being. Also, the track isn’t even interesting.

For me personally, making music is the most thing I know and I love spending hours and hours in the studio just trying out new things.

I know a lot of people who more or less try to skip certain steps in the process of making music. For instance, saying that no-one who listens to a certain techno tune can hear if it’s a sample of a 909 drum machine or if it’s actually the vintage Roland instrument that is playing.

Well, again I love the moments when I make music and for me it’s more fun to use the hardware drummer instead of browsing tons of samples of the 909. Meaning the end result is not all that counts.

Having fun is the most important thing for me and the reason I make music to begin with. Experiencing with various algorithms and generative sequencers is super enjoyable for me but it will never replace actually coming up with melodies and drum patterns myself.

Having said that, I’m a huge fan of not having full control.

The sole reason I think the TB-303 is the most fun sequencer ever is that I still cannot master it, even after all these years. There’s always a certain degree of randomness in the basses and melodies I write due to the fact that the 303 sequencer is almost impossible to master. Ghost in the machine.

More about TM404

Chloe Alexandra Thompson

I see AI being used as a blanket term that may serve as a means to explore automation through machine learning, as well as creating instruments and applications which allow us to work with our trained applications to explore means of interactivity with data, objects, and human collaborators.

I will be working as a spatial sound designer for an artist named James Sprang later this year who is using an AI speech interpretation software as a means to explore legibility, experience and identity. While I will not directly be using this in my own personal work, I am excited to be working with this AI as it is being trained through the work of many recorded voices of poets we will be playing back and running through it in a spatial audio array.

How I see this fitting into music creation as a whole is having trained and intuitive FX chains that are run through automation. Presently it seems that AI programs are being trained to work with composers to take parts of the composition they may or may not typically focus on and expand those through following the users typical choice patterns.

In my own practice I see machine learning potentials being the integration of smart panning protocols which allow me to have the panning automation I construct through code, and also manually play be mapped out by a program rather than the individual panning protocols I apply to each instrument or movement of a work.

I would like to work with an AI that could translate selected frequencies into poetic text, spoken messages, or “lyrics” based on the writings of many critical theorists and poets who’s work I often reference in my praxis. 

As an artist who focuses on abstractions rather than in a more discernible sung lyric song structure direct messages do not make it into my compositions and this could be a way to apply those abstracted principles and find new avenues of entry to this realm of personal interest.

More about Chloe Alexandra Thompson

Written in collaboration with Mutek Montreal 2019.  Learn more about Mutek and their ongoing series of global events.

The post Can Music and AI Coexist? Predictions from 8 Mutek Artists appeared first on LANDR Blog.

Music via LANDR Blog http://bit.ly/2ZnKIfa August 21, 2019 at 03:13PM

#IFTTT #Feedly

[jessicakmatt]

Can Music and AI Coexist? Predictions from 8 Mutek Artists

Can Music and AI Coexist? Predictions from 8 Mutek Artists: via LANDR Blog

Music has always been linked with emerging technologies. But AI is something new. AI has the power to completely transform how we make and experience music. AI is already changing the world.

We spoke to 8 artists from MUTEK Montreal 2019 to discuss their wildest predictions for the future of music, AI, and their own workflow.

404.zero

We do not see any future as we expect humanity to destroy the entire planet before AI reaches a certain complexity level to be useful in music creation.

More about 404.zero

Kaleema

I think there’s great potential for AI development in musical creation. But the first thing that comes to mind is who owns the rights of the composition—software creators or the AI?

If an AI is trained to create, it needs to work on pre-existing music… So another question arises: is the AI the author, or is it just a copy from the music that the AI used as a reference?

Is there any possible originality in AI at all? I guess it’s still an early stage to answer all these questions as it’s unknown territory.

My music trajectory is very much related to classic instruments. I play violin and piano since I was a kid and had the opportunity to play in orchestras. It was a collective artistic experience of sharing that I consider of great value.

I think each musician can provide a different touch through his original interpretation to make an art-piece come to life, something that is beyond technicality and virtuosity.

It’s an invisible variable, more of a personality and sensibility thing… In this sense I have certain doubts about how an AI can detach from “data” and algorithmic training in order to provide musicality to a creation, as interpretant or author.

I’d be interested in working with AI as long as the situation doesn’t become a music dialogue where the algorithm behaves the same as me and takes me back to the same point.

If the AI can’t create on its own, rather than just copy artists styles, I wouldn’t be interested to add it to my creative process as I feel I wouldn’t be adding anything new.

More about Kaleema

Adam Basanta

From my perspective, AI is one of many algorithmic approaches that could be useful for making new work. Based on the task at hand, it could be the most appropriate or inappropriate tool.

It certainly offers some exciting new potentials for less than thrilling preparation tasks. For instance, the ability to speed up sophisticated similarity-recognition processes could be very useful when using large sample banks, whether in studio practice or a live application.

In terms of using AI for generating musical structures (such as phrases, rhythms, etc) it’s important to recognize that the result is more dependant on the data it is trained on than on the particularities of the algorithm itself.

The use of such generative tools would involve tailoring of datasets, as well as multiple custom macro-compositional levels which would ensure that the generative material retains a character which is not easily achievable by just training the AI.

I feel that despite the exciting specific possibilities of AI in music, the quality of the music will still much more dependent on one’s ears and imagination rather than on any specific algorithm or application.

More about Adam Basanta

Aquaventure

I would like to see how AI can work with non-copyrighted material. I know there are algorithms out there that can take an input and find something that sounds at least partially similar to it. But what if the search results came exclusively from databases of public domain, free-access sounds?

For example, let’s say I want to add something in a track that I know I can sing, but I don’t want to use my voice; such an algorithm could come in very handy. I can only imagine the exciting, unpredictable material it could take me to—fragments of speeches, videos, field recordings, and so on.

Now, what if we included literally every sound online that isn’t copyrighted? Add to your results every instance of home video on YouTube where people are just hanging out, doing their thing. That would be a tool I’d love to experiment with.

I hear AI technologies are already capable of making full pieces of music based on pre-existing, copyrighted material, but that really doesn’t interest me.

I would rather support projects that expand our possibilities as human creators, instead of gradually dehumanizing the process, stealing our jobs away from us, and banking in on our talent, time and effort. I really hope there are leading AI developers out there with this kind of vision in mind.

More about Aquaventure

Huges Clement

I see AI just as another significant advance in this never ending, exponential quest of pushing and questioning technology’s potential and boundaries in this prehistoric digital age.

Democratization of AI is, in my mind, highly connected to the democratization of art practice in our society.

More than ever now, powerful, complex, human brain/mind inspired and—I am tempted to say—organic, is now accessible for people to get their creative vision out of their head, without being musically trained or know anything about computers or programming.

But Just like any creative technology, adapted to music creation or not, I’m interested in what a creative mind can do with those tools, not the opposite.

More about Hugues Clement

Akiko Nakayama

I am a painter. And I use music as a “clear paint” for my audiovisual performance.

AI will be a good entrance guide to people whose main expression technique was not Music. They will help us in shaping that inspiration. Or it will create unexpected chaos luckily.

From the age of ‘tools used by humans’, I have hope in the age of tools that walk with humans.

More about Akiko Nakayama

TM404

I’m very interested in this subject and I read as much as I can about this.

The human brain and ear will always come up with more interesting and ”better” results than any AI could ever do, I’m sure of that.

There’s this famous example of Daddy’s Car which always pops up when people are speaking about artificial intelligence and music making.

The story of a track that was written by AI. But if you actually care to check, the track wasn’t done by AI really. It was arranged and produced by a human being. Also, the track isn’t even interesting.

For me personally, making music is the most thing I know and I love spending hours and hours in the studio just trying out new things.

I know a lot of people who more or less try to skip certain steps in the process of making music. For instance, saying that no-one who listens to a certain techno tune can hear if it’s a sample of a 909 drum machine or if it’s actually the vintage Roland instrument that is playing.

Well, again I love the moments when I make music and for me it’s more fun to use the hardware drummer instead of browsing tons of samples of the 909. Meaning the end result is not all that counts.

Having fun is the most important thing for me and the reason I make music to begin with. Experiencing with various algorithms and generative sequencers is super enjoyable for me but it will never replace actually coming up with melodies and drum patterns myself.

Having said that, I’m a huge fan of not having full control.

The sole reason I think the TB-303 is the most fun sequencer ever is that I still cannot master it, even after all these years. There’s always a certain degree of randomness in the basses and melodies I write due to the fact that the 303 sequencer is almost impossible to master. Ghost in the machine.

More about TM404

Chloe Alexandra Thompson

I see AI being used as a blanket term that may serve as a means to explore automation through machine learning, as well as creating instruments and applications which allow us to work with our trained applications to explore means of interactivity with data, objects, and human collaborators.

I will be working as a spatial sound designer for an artist named James Sprang later this year who is using an AI speech interpretation software as a means to explore legibility, experience and identity. While I will not directly be using this in my own personal work, I am excited to be working with this AI as it is being trained through the work of many recorded voices of poets we will be playing back and running through it in a spatial audio array.

How I see this fitting into music creation as a whole is having trained and intuitive FX chains that are run through automation. Presently it seems that AI programs are being trained to work with composers to take parts of the composition they may or may not typically focus on and expand those through following the users typical choice patterns.

In my own practice I see machine learning potentials being the integration of smart panning protocols which allow me to have the panning automation I construct through code, and also manually play be mapped out by a program rather than the individual panning protocols I apply to each instrument or movement of a work.

I would like to work with an AI that could translate selected frequencies into poetic text, spoken messages, or “lyrics” based on the writings of many critical theorists and poets who’s work I often reference in my praxis. 

As an artist who focuses on abstractions rather than in a more discernible sung lyric song structure direct messages do not make it into my compositions and this could be a way to apply those abstracted principles and find new avenues of entry to this realm of personal interest.

More about Chloe Alexandra Thompson

Written in collaboration with Mutek Montreal 2019.  Learn more about Mutek and their ongoing series of global events.

The post Can Music and AI Coexist? Predictions from 8 Mutek Artists appeared first on LANDR Blog.

from LANDR Blog https://blog.landr.com/music-ai-coexist-mutek-2019/ via https://www.youtube.com/user/corporatethief/playlists from Steve Hart https://stevehartcom.tumblr.com/post/187170313209

[nailpanty12-blog]

Atomic Habits for Achieving Your Goals. Podcast with James Clear

James Clear: 00:06 And so, it’s very easy to dismiss the importance of making choices that are one percent better on a given day or to dismiss the consequences in making choices that are one percent worse, and it’s only after your habits have compounded, for two or five or 10 years, that it becomes very apparent, the importance of those daily choices. Speaker 1: 00:31 [Human OS 00:00:31] Learn. Master. Achieve. Dan Pardi: 00:38 Welcome back, everyone. Today I have with me author and friend, James Clear, and James writes on things like habits and decisions and generally how to live better lives, all things that are super important in our lives, but also to our health. His work has been covered by The New York Times and Time Magazine, CBS This Morning, and many other media outlets. James has a new book out called Atomic Habits. So, we are going to talk about that today. Now, I’ve been following his work and appreciating his writing for years now, and James, let me pay you a compliment here. I think you do a superb job taking complex topics and telling a story that makes these potentially life-improving ideas really resonate with a person, and there’s so many good ideas that are out there in the world that we can benefit from. And yet, we can easily miss those ideas, first, by not being exposed to them, but, second, if the idea just isn’t delivered in a way that hits home, where you could put yourself into the shoes of somebody else and experience that as though you’ve experienced it yourself. And that, I think, can really help people adopt these changes and adopt these good ideas. So, thank you for you writing, and welcome to the show. James Clear: 01:41 Yeah, thank you so much. That’s very nice of you to say, and, yeah, I’m excited to be talking to you again. Dan Pardi: 01:46 Let’s start from the beginning. You started writing when, in your newsletter? James Clear: 01:49 Well, I’ve been an entrepreneur for eight years, but I launched jamesclear.com about six years ago in November of 2012. So, the first article went up there November 12th, 2012, and I decided I was just gonna write a new article every Monday and Thursday. And I followed that twice-a-week writing habit for the next three years, and that was really the thing that led to the growth of my newsletter and my site and also was the avenue through which I developed some expertise around the topics of habits and behavior change and performance improvement. I remember, early on, I was talking to a friend, and I mean, I’m just a guy. Who am I to write about this? And he was like, “Well, the way you become an expert is by writing about it every week,” and so, in a sense, I went to school every week … or went to class, by researching and writing these articles and putting them out to the world and getting some feedback and then adjusting and improving from there. And I’m still continuing that process today. Dan Pardi: 02:40 Really, one of the best ways to learn is to teach. James Clear: 02:42 Probably. I mean, it might be the best way. I understand the concepts well now because I force myself to explain them simply to the audience, and so, I need to fully [inaudible 00:02:53] what I’m wrestling with and distill it down to its essence in order to write about it clearly. I’ve discovered that, in many ways, I don’t really know what I think about something until I write about it. If you were to just ask me about a topic right now that I haven’t written about, what I would do, when I respond, is I would sort of talk through my feelings. I would be talking out what my gut reaction is or what my initial feeling is on the topic, and so when I go through a first draft of an article, that’s basically what I’m doing. But then, I go back to the beginning and refine it again and again and again. And many of the articles I’ve written, I’ve read through them 20 or 30 or 50 times, and so, it’s only through that process of kind of endless revision that I really find out what I actually think about something and kind of clarify my thoughts. I mean, you could never do that in conversation, just say the same sentence 30 times but adjust it slightly, so, in that sense, writing is very instructive for me. It’s an effective process for learning. Dan Pardi: 03:44 The fourth time I give a talk is usually a lot better than the first just because I’ve heard myself say something out lout multiple times now, and I figure out some way to tweak it that makes me happier about how I’m communicating because I’ve learned best by doing. And the other idea is that I listen to my own podcast more than anyone that’s out there, so it’s really self-indulgent. But it’s a repetition of going over an idea over and over again to think about it more deeply and think about it a second and third and fourth time to get a deeper level of understanding by repeatedly dedicating to that one concept. I get more out of that than going faster and covering more. James Clear: 04:18 It’s like a habit, a little bit, in the sense that it’s repetition, but anything you want to know or master well, you’re not just gonna do it once, right? You wouldn’t play one chess game and be like, “Oh, I’m a grand master now,” so writing and learning, I think, is similar; you need that repetition to instill the idea or the skill or the practice. Dan Pardi: 04:35 What is your process for writing an article? James Clear: 04:37 I have a couple different stages that things go through, so the first one is let’s say we’re talking here and you mention some interesting idea during the conversation that sparks something for me. So, once we get done, I’ll dump that into an Evernote file, and so, I do most of my writing, or early writing, in Evernote. And that is just like a central holding ground for all the ideas that come across, so it might be something you mention in conversation or a little snippet from a book I read or something that I listen to on a podcast or whatever. And it can be anything. It can be a title. It can be maybe just a sentence. Sometimes I’ll riff for a while, and that’s maybe a couple paragraphs, but all those first thoughts just go there and are in that central holding ground. And there’s a lot now. There’s maybe, I don’t know, 600 or 800. There are a lot of ideas in there at this point, and then, when I sit down to write, I’ll open up that notebook and go through. And I’ll start to look for ones that are similar. Let’s say I have five notes in there that are about something related to sleep. Well, maybe I’ll start to pull those and put them into one file that’s just my thoughts on sleep, and that’ll start to take a little bit more of a shape. And I’ll see maybe what some holes are, and I’ll go off and do a little more reading. Or I’ll start to basically block it into these larger chunks. I’m not really worried about the sentences yet. I’m like, “Okay, this will be a section on this idea, and here’s the next section that’s on this idea.” I move those chunks around a little bit, and then, once the article starts to get a general form, I’ll move it over to WordPress, which is what I run my website on. And that’s the point where the real work begins. I don’t really consider myself to be a very good writer. I think I’m a much better editor, and so, at that point, once I’ve got this generally formed article, I’ll start at the top and I’ll read the first sentence. And if that sounds good, I’ll read the second. If that sounds good, I’ll read the third, and at some point, I get to a sentence that doesn’t sound good or isn’t working quite well. And I’ll edit that, and then, as soon as that’s fixed, I’ll go back to the top and start all again. And so, what ends up happening is by the time the article’s finished, I’ve read it … I mean, it really might not be an exaggeration to say I’ve read 50 or 100 times. And so, I’ve gone through it so much that what I want to see is not just that the sentences are reading well, but the whole thing is working together. There’s this natural flow. Then … So, then, at some point, after doing all that, I get to the final sentence, and it’s done. Typically, that process ends in me cutting a lot. The most recent article I put up, I think it finished at 2,000 words or 2,200 or somewhere around there, and when I put it into WordPress, it was at 6,000. And that’s pretty typical for me, cut about half or so of what I start with, and it’d be nice to be more economical and not waste words. But that’s just how it goes, I guess. Dan Pardi: 07:08 Have there been parts of your process that have become more efficient over doing this, now, for eight years? James Clear: 07:14 Well, one big thing was that switch to having the central holding ground for all the ideas. I used to have stuff just disparately saved all over. I’d have a note on my phone or I would keep separate notes on the books I was reading or I’d … we use Trello for our project management. I have notes in there, and I realized I was just basically losing a bunch of ideas ’cause I would put it somewhere and then never come back to it. So, having one central place was a big fix. The second thing is the realization that I want the scientific ideas to be easy to understand, to be simple, actionable, and practical, but I also want to have a story that brings it to life. I want something that can hook readers in or that they have a reason to remember it. If I give a talk and I mention a research study, nobody remembers the study, but everybody remembers the story before it. And so, I realized that stories were a big part of my writing, and so, what I have now is, usually, I’ll have either a story or I’ll have a main point that I want to make, but I don’t have both. And so, there are a lot of articles that are kind of sitting there, waiting for me, that are in need of a story that can bring them to life. And so, I can remember one in particular. It was about strength-training, the article was. And I needed a story that could make this main point I was trying to get across, and I was reading an article in The New York Times and they mentioned this Greek … I think he actually live … Milo of [inaudible 00:08:33]. But he kind of almost is this mythological character. He was this famous Greek wrestler. And, anyway, it was just one sentence they mentioned, but it was enough that I was like, “Huh, I need to find out more about that guy. That looks interesting.” So, I researched him a little bit, just threw him name in Google, and as soon as I read his story, I was like, “Yes, this is what I need.” And so, that was the story for the strength-training article that I had been sitting on for, like, a year. And I dumped the story, kicked it off with that, and then the article was written a week later. So, a lot of the time, I’m looking for that matching between story and study and main point, and I didn’t know that for the first year or two. I was just writing articles, and occasionally, I’d have a story in there. And those would, invariably, be the ones that people liked more. Dan Pardi: 07:14 Yeah. James Clear: 09:09 But now that I’ve honed in on that a little bit, I’m more careful or more cognizant of that connection, that I look for that type of stuff more. Dan Pardi: 09:15 My process is actually quite similar. In writing, I will collect a lot of ideas then go through a process of organizing then try to figure out a main point to surface in the process of talking about some concept because if you try to talk about too many, you could not make any point at all. And I actually- James Clear: 09:32 [inaudible 00:09:32] Dan Pardi: 09:31 -have an analogy that one book out there, Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. It’s 600 pages one point: carbs are bad. You could argue that there are more scientifically-credible books that try to make 13 points per chapter, and they have had less of an impact on people’s behavior because they’re trying to cover too much one go. James Clear: 09:50 So, I think that’s very true. I’ve been thinking about that a little bit more now that I’ve finished this book, my first full-length book, about what makes a book good, what makes a book bad, what should I improve for next time, and that idea of staying focused on one central point, it makes a lot of sense to me for the articles I write. You know, they’re about 2,000 words long, usually, and I can kind of see the idea from end-to-end. Here’s the story that kicks it off. This is the main point I’m trying to make, and here’s the practical takeaway. I think it’s really challenging to select an idea that is both easy to understand in a single sentence like that but also worthy of two or 300 pages because there are a lot of books … I mean, business books are the most obvious example of this, but they should be a 20-page report or white paper, not a 200-page book. But if you can find the right one … 4-Hour Workweek is a good example. I can understand that in a single sentence. I get to retire early. I don’t have to work that much. I can have a full-time career on four hours a week, but then there are a lot of questions that immediately come from that. Okay, how do I actually do that? What does that look like? That idea’s … you can understand it immediately, but you also kind of need 300 pages to explain how someone does that, and so, I think good books have a balance of that or it’s a easily- digestible, compelling idea but also worthy of a good amount of explanation. Dan Pardi: 11:04 So, let’s talk about habits a little bit. This is a topic that most people are familiar with, but why have you focused on habits? And let’s talk about what they are generally? James Clear: 11:11 Okay. So, I’ll start with the definition. Broadly speaking, a habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to be more or less automatic. You can think of them sort of like mental shortcuts, and they are mental solutions that we use for the problems we face repeatedly in life. So, as you go throughout life, you face a variety of problems. Some of them are big; some of them are small, like you need to tie your shoe. And the more that you face that problem, every morning you need to tie your shoe, the more your brain automates a solution that it comes across that seems to be effective at solving that problem. And if you repeat that enough times, pretty soon, you can tie your shoes while you’re having a conversation or thinking about what you need to do that day or what you’re gonna make for breakfast or whatever. And this is one of the values of habits, is that when you can solve a problem on autopilot, you free up your cognitive attention to direct it towards other problems or towards other areas of life. So, you effectively remove one more bottleneck from your brain, and you can direct your conscious attention elsewhere. But, I think that’s a reasonable definition of what a habit is. Why do I write about it? Why is it important? Well, first of all, this is a process that’s just happening automatically. You don’t need to think about it. Your body’s going to be doing this day-in and day-out, regardless, and so, if you’re going to be building habits anyway, it makes sense to understand how the process works. The second thing is that habits are like a double-edged sword. They can either compound for you or against you, and so it makes a lot of sense to learn how to design them to your liking so that you can avoid the dangerous half of the blade. Early in the book, I … in Chapter One, I mentioned that habits are like the compound interest of self-improvement. So, the same way that money can multiply through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them over time. And the challenge of this is that it’s really easy to dismiss on any given day. What really is the difference between studying Chinese for 20 minutes tonight or not studying it? You don’t know the language either way. Or what is the difference between eating a salad and chicken for lunch or eating a burger and fries? On any given day, your body looks basically the same. The scale doesn’t really change, and so, it’s very easy to dismiss the importance of making choices that are one percent better on a given day or to dismiss the consequences in making choices that are one percent worse. And it’s only after your habits have compounded, for two or five or 10 years, that it becomes very apparent, the importance of those daily choices. And so, that was something I was trying to get across in the book, and then once you accept that habits are these really important processes that kind of solve the problems we face every day, then we need a framework for actually changing them. And that’s, of course, what the bulk of the book is about. Dan Pardi: 13:48 So, we have an intellectual understanding of the process itself and an understanding of the impact that they can have in your life for both positives and negatives. Then you can … taking charge of these to the degree where you can implement better habits and know, “Yeah, I might not necessarily have the immediate feedback, but over time, the compounding interest of designing these right is going to make my life better.” James Clear: 14:10 I think that’s broadly right. And so, I mentioned this idea of habits are the solutions to the problems you face over and over again. Let’s say you come home from work each day and you feel stressed and exhausted. There are actually a variety of ways to solve that problem, so to speak, like, one person might play video games for an hour and another person might smoke a cigarette and a third person might go for a run for 20 minutes. And they’re all plausible solutions to the problem of feel stress and exhausted, and so, what you realize is that, in many cases, maybe you turn around, you’re 20 years old or 25 or 30, and the original habits that you built, the habits that are filling up your life now, are not necessarily the optimal habits for the problems that you face over and over again. And once you realize that, then it becomes your responsibility to try to design a more optimal solution or a more effective solution to those problems. And so, I think that understanding how habits compound and the role that they play, as these solutions to recurring problems, may be- PART 1 OF 3 ENDS [00:15:04] James Clear: 15:00 … the role that they play as these solutions to recurring problems maybe makes that a little bit more clear and possibly inspires us to work on our habits, even though we often overlook them. Dan Pardi: 15:09 Do you personally do a habit review? James Clear: 15:12 In the book, I talk about this thing called a habit scorecard. And I think that there are two ways to do this. First, have scorecard that’s like an inventory of what your habits are. So you just start at the beginning of your day, and you write down pretty much in as much detail as you can muster, what happens to your performing self. I wake up. I turn off my alarm. I check Instagram. I get out of bed. I make the bed. I take a shower. I brush my teeth. On and on and on. Then you grade that habit. You can either give it a plus sign if it’s a positive habit, or a good habit. A negative sign if you think it’s a negative habit. Or an equal sign if it’s just neutral. But the point of that inventory is not to feel good or bad about yourself or to judge yourself. It’s just to kind of get a lay of the land. Almost like you’re observing somebody else. “Oh okay, I check Instagram before I get out of bed each morning. Should I actually do that? No, probably not. It’s probably a negative habit.” But you’re just trying to become aware that you do that. Once you have that level of awareness, then you actually have a chance to maybe design it to some meaningful degree. If you’re not aware of it, it’s really hard to design something carefully. So that’s the first thing. And I’ll add a little caveat to that, about good and bad habits, because sometimes people … “Well, if it’s a bad habit, why do I do it? That doesn’t make any sense.” All habits serve you in some way. Smoking a cigarette might be bad in the long run, but it serves you by reducing stress or making you feel like you’re part of the social group, or a variety of other things that it could provide. So the way I like to think about that, is that habits produce multiple outcomes across time. Pretty much any behavior produces multiple outcomes across time. For bad habits, it’s often the case that the initial outcome is favorable. So for example eating a donut each day, eating a donut right now is tasty and sugary and sweet and you might find it enjoyable, so the immediate outcome is favorable. But the ultimate outcome, that if you repeat this habit, you’re going to gain in a month or a year or whatever, is unfavorable. For good habits, it’s often the reverse. The immediate outcome of going to the gym, is effortful. You sweat. It takes some sacrifice. It’s hard work. Your body is basically the same. The scale doesn’t really change. You’re putting up basically the same weight. But the ultimate outcome if you repeat the habit, is that you’re stronger and fitter in a month or a year. So first of all, that’s a good way to distinguish what is a bad habit and what is a good habit, is what is the ultimate outcome of the behavior. Secondly, a lot of the challenge of building good habits and breaking bad ones, is about figuring out ways to take the longterm consequences of your bad habits and pull them into the immediate moment, so you feel a little bit of the pain right now, and taking the longterm rewards of your good habits and pulling those into the immediate moment, so that it’s pleasurable and satisfying and you have a reason to repeat it right now, rather than just trying to delay gratification. We can talk more about that later. That’s basically the first way that I do that, is this habit scorecard. Then I also have a longer term tracking or awareness exercise where I do like an annual review at the end of each year. Dan Pardi: 17:59 I think that’s a great idea. I don’t know if you’re a basketball fan, but Joel Embiid, his saying is, “Trust the process,” which is really what you’re talking about. You can’t see that in the moment benefit, but you know it will get you to a place you want to go. And you can say, “Ah, this process is going to help me,” and that belief itself can be really good to continue something that doesn’t have that instantaneous reward. James Clear: 18:20 The ultimate form of immediate reinforcement, is the reinforcement of your desired identity. So if you want to be the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts, well as soon as you go to the gym and do one rep, you’re the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. So you can feel satisfied right then in the moment, even if you’re waiting for the longterm rewards of a lighter number on the scale or a stronger bench press, or something like that to accumulate in the background. So it’s easier to trust the process, when you identify with the process, I guess is my point. Dan Pardi: 18:48 How do you make something that has a longer term outcome, how do you support that by making that in the moment process more rewarding? James Clear: 18:56 This is a crucial question. In the book, I refer to this as the cardinal rule of behavior change. Which is that behaviors that are immediately rewarded get repeated and behaviors that are immediately punished get avoided. And it’s really the speed, the immediacy of the reward or consequence that makes a big difference here. Because if you think about it, if you perform an action and it feels good right away, then it’s kind of like a positive signal to your brain that says, “Hey, this is enjoyable. You should repeat this again next time.” Whereas if you have to either wait for a positive signal that doesn’t come until weeks or months later, that’s kind of like too long and your brain has forgotten the feedback loop. It’s not tight enough to close that or to perform that process of learning. Or if it’s unrewarding, if it’s unsatisfying, then it’ll, “Why would I do this again in the future? It didn’t feel good in the moment.” So products and businesses are an interesting example of this. A few stories. One of them from many years ago. Chewing gum has been around for a long time. It was around maybe even for hundreds or thousands of years, but certainly all throughout the early 1800s, but it was mostly just like bland resin. It was kind of chewy, but it wasn’t really tasty. And then Wrigley launched in the late 1800s, and they came out with Juicy Fruit, and Spearmint, and Doublemint and was the first time that gum had this satisfying or enjoyable flavor. So suddenly, you had the same habit of chewing gum, but there was this immediate benefit associated with it. It tasted good as soon as you did it. And Wrigley took off and chewing gum exploded as a habit, and became the largest chewing gum company in the world. And it was largely because they added this immediate satisfaction to the product. Interestingly, there are still many modern examples of this. BMW and Ford, have recently started coming up with methods for if you press the accelerator in the car, BMW will actually … They have a system that will pipe in additional engine growl or noise through the stereo speakers, so that it’s more satisfying to press on the gas. It feels more like a race car in the moment. That is largely built just to make it more satisfying, more enjoyable to drive the car. So those bits of immediate feedback … Video games are the ultimate example of this. There are so many little pieces of immediate feedback in video games, that are signals of progress. Signals of satisfaction or enjoyment. Even we see the score going up in the corner of the screen, picking up power ups or coins or rubies and having a little bit of music play each time you come across them. Even little things like the pitter-patter of the character’s feet running on the ground, is immediate feedback and a signal that, “Hey, you’re making progress. You’re moving through the scene, or this level.” So video games are masterful at that. Now of course, in the physical world, it’s not always possible to have some kind of immediate satisfaction like that, that increases the enjoyment of the behavior and leads to a greater likelihood that you’ll perform it in the future. But there are a couple other ways around it. For example, there are a variety of habits that I would call habits of avoidance. These are things like don’t drink alcohol for 30 days. Or don’t buy stuff on Amazon. Or don’t go eat out at restaurants. And it’s really hard to be satisfied with those kind of habits, because all you’re really doing is just not doing something. How am I supposed to be satisfied not buying something on Amazon? I’m just resisting temptation. So you can flip this on its head and add a little bit of that immediate satisfaction to the process. I had one reader. He and his wife wanted to eat out less. They wanted to eat at restaurants less often and cook for themselves more. But again, same kind of thing. “I guess we’re not going to go the restaurant.” That just kind of feels like a sacrifice. So what they did was, they opened up a bank account, a savings account. And they labeled it, “Trip to Europe.” And then every time they didn’t eat out at a restaurant and cooked at home instead, they moved $50 over to the account. Then at the end of the year, they’d put the money toward the trip or whatever. But even if they were not going out to eat, they still got the immediate satisfaction of seeing the bank account grow, or seeing that trip to Europe … Saving toward that. It’s a small thing, but stuff like that can be meaningful in the moment, because it adds at least just like a little bit of a reason to do it, to feel good about it. Have a tracking is another example of this. Putting an X on the calendar is a small thing, but if every time you finish a workout, you throw a little X on there, that feels good in the moment. It’s a small, positive, emotional signal. That’s really the main point of all this, is that positive emotions cultivate habits, and negative emotions destroy them, and you really want the ending of any habit or behavior to feel successful. To feel positive, so you have a reason to repeat it again in the future. Dan Pardi: 23:17 This feels to be a fundamental component of habits, which is the sense of reward, which can be subtleness of conscious, but present and real, to perceptible. And if you trying to then modify some habit like going out and spending money on dining out, depressing that is hard. It just feels like a bummer. James Clear: 23:35 Another way to think of this, in the book I lay out this four step framework for building habits or understanding or thinking about habits, and one of the things that’s a little different in my framework than some of the others that people may have come across, is that every behavior is preceded by a prediction, which I would call a craving or some kind of interpretation of the cue or of your current state of the circumstance. One of the roles of the outcome of your habits, is to resolve the craving that you’re feeling. And if you don’t resolve that craving you have to sit with it and that can be a very unsatisfying experience. So by having a reward that provides some immediate satisfaction in the moment, resolve the craving and satisfy or complete that loop. Dan Pardi: 24:18 We told a great story about this 1% improvement. You mentioned that earlier, about British cyclists. I would if you could share it here? James Clear: 24:25 For many years, British cycling was very mediocre. Really, almost for like a hundred years. This was like in the early 2000s. They’d never won a Tour de France. The race had been around for like a hundred years. They won a single gold medal, and it was way back in like 1908 or something. So they hired this guy named Dave Brailsford, to try to change this. Try to reverse this process. Brailsford believed in this concept that he called “the aggregation of marginal gains.” The way he described it was, the 1% improvement in nearly everything that you do. So they looked at all these different areas related to cycling, and they just tried to get like 1% better in each one. They did a bunch of things in the beginning that you would expect a professional cycling team to do. Like they put slightly lighter tires on the bike, or they had a more ergonomic seat. They asked their riders to wear these electrically heated overshorts, that kept their muscle temperature ideal and warm while they were training. They had each rider wear a biofeedback sensor so they could see how they responded to training and adjust their program appropriately. But then they did a bunch of things that you wouldn’t expect a cycling team to do. They hired a surgeon to teach each rider how to wash their hands, so that they would reduce the risk of catching a cold or getting sick. They split tested different types of massage gels, to see which one might do the best form of muscle recovery. They painted the inside of the team truck white, so that they could see these little bits of dust that might get into the gears of the bikes while they were traveling to different races. They even figures out the type of pillow that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider, and then brought that on the road with them to hotels, when they were going into a big championship or something. Brailsford said, “If we can actually do this. If we can make all these little 1% changes, I think we could win a Tour de France in five years. He ended up being wrong. They won the Tour de France in three years, and then they repeated again the next year with a different rider. And they’ve continued their success now and they just won the last one. It’s something crazy, they’ve won like five out of the last six. But it was really was at the Olympics in London in 2012, that this fully came to fruition. They won 60% of the Gold Medals available. Then in Rio in 2016, they won 60% of the Gold Medals again, and that was across dozens of different riders. So the point here is that we often think about these little 1% changes as like, “Oh, that’s just an optimization.” That’s like a little cherry on top of our performance. But if you commit to that type of continuous improvement, that mindset of the aggregation of marginal gains as a lifestyle, then it can end up becoming something much more over the long run. This is again, how we can think about the effects of our habits, as these small 1% choices. Something slightly better or slightly worse, and when repeated day in and day out for years, you end up with a very different result. In a sense, time magnifies whatever you feed it. If you have good habits, time is your ally, and if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy. What you really want is to make sure you’re inserting the right things into the engine of that beast, and let it get to work for you and let time become a leverage point in your favor, rather to your detriment. Dan Pardi: 27:22 This is probably one of the most interesting, entirely important concepts that you speak to. If you think about health, which is largely what we cover on the show, there is tendency in society to seek the silver bullet. The thing that’s going to explain everything and make you better, and I think it comes from the time where we invented antibiotics and vaccines that had such a large magnitude on lifespan, 70% increase in a century, that we almost got in the mental habit of thinking that we just need to find that one thing that was going to then help solve all the problems. You might have a very small impact from modifying your light environment in the evening. It’s not going to explain everything, but when you compound that with a lot of other little changes across your entire day and night, then leads to your compounded interest of a more healthy lifestyle over time. It’s a great concept to embed in your mindset for how to be healthy. We talked about doing this habit review, having some oversight into understanding what your habits are, revealing them and thinking about ways to make positive change. We talked about also the ability to then understand what is driving habit process so that you can take control of it in certain areas where you might find yourself doing something that’s not as positive, but you can change it terms of something more positive and how it’s going to have a compounding interest over time. What are some other big ideas that come out of the book you can share with us today? Fundamentals to the importance of this subject. James Clear: 28:44 Sure. We can talk about two. One of them in the environment. We can talk about the physical environment. Then the second one is the social environment. Physical environment, and this is particularly easy to understand, like food. Many of your habits are a response to the physical cues that you’re surrounded by, day in and day out. So a lot of people will think, “Oh, I watch too much TV.” But if you walk into pretty much any living room, where to all the couches and chairs face? It’s like that room is designed to get you to watch television. So there are a variety of steps that you could take here. You could turn a chair away from the TV. You could take the remote control and put it inside a coffee table. You could take the television and put it in a cabinet or wall unit, so that it’s behind doors and you don’t see it as much. But that general principle of reducing exposure, can be a very effective way to curb a habit, or in some cases have it fade away entirely. If you don’t want to spend as much money on electronics, stop following all the tech review blogs and the latest YouTubers who are unboxing tech gear and stuff. You’re constantly being triggered in that type of situation. You have to overcome that exposure all the time, which is a challenging thing to ask anybody to do. Same way if you want to stick to a new diet or eat less, don’t follow a bunch of food blogs on Instagram. You’re constantly being prompted. So exposure is the key part of the physical environment, but thankfully that can work for you, just as well as against you. PART 2 OF 3 ENDS [00:30:04] James Clear: 30:00 … environment. But thankfully that can work for you just as well as against you. So when I wanted to build a habit of flossing, I realized that one of the issues was that the floss was hidden away in a drawer in the bathroom and I just wouldn’t see it a lot. It wasn’t obvious. So I bought some of these pre-made flossers and put them in a little bowl and placed it right next too my toothbrush. So now I brush my teeth, put the toothbrush down, pick a flosser up. That was pretty much all I needed to do to build that habit. I’ve been doing it for years now and it’s basically just because I changed the environment and made that more obvious. The same thing was true for food. For many years … well maybe not years but it definitely annoyed me for a few months. My wife and I would go to store and buy fruit. We’d buy apples or bananas or something and keep them in the crisper in the bottom of the fridge and I just wouldn’t remember they were there because they were tucked down there, out of sight. They would sit there for two weeks and go bad and then I’d get annoyed every time I’m throwing these apples out just wasting money and wasting food. So what I ended up doing was buying a display bowl and placing the fruit right in the middle of the counter and now I eat it in three days. It’s all gone. I noticed something similar with alcohol. If I get beer and place it in the fridge either in the door or at the front of the shelf so that it’s very obvious and I can see it as soon as I open it, I’ll drink one each night just because it’s there. But if I buy a six pack and I put it in the back of the fridge and tuck it under the shelf so that it’s all the way at the back and I can’t really see it when the door is open then it’ll sit there for a month or two months. I won’t even remember that it’s there. It raises an interest question about a lot of our habits, which is do you really want it or were you just doing it because it was obvious and easy? I think that that’s true not just food habits but social media is another good example or your phones. Now I try to keep my phone in another room until lunch each day so that I get at least three or four hours in the morning where I don’t have my phone on me. The numbers keep going up every year. I think the average adult now checks their phone over 150 times a day. But we just keep getting more and more addicted to it. If I have my phone on me I’ll probably look at it every three or five minutes or something. But what’s fascinating is that when I keep it in another room, when I keep it outside of my office I just have to walk up the stairs and go to a different room to get it. But even though it’s only 45 seconds away, I’ll never go get it in the morning. If I had it I would check it all the time, but it was never worth 45 seconds of work. So anyways that basic principle can be applied for good or bad habits. You basically just want to increase the number of steps between you and the bad habit and reduce the number of steps between you and the good habit. Dan Pardi: 32:28 I’ll give you an example of how I’ve done this specifically. I was checking social media more than I wanted to. I was doing it in those moments where I wasn’t thinking which [inaudible 00:32:35] and then pull up Instagram and Facebook. So I took the apps off my phone and now if I want to actually use it, I’ve got to type it into the browser. So it’s more friction, takes more time. The second thing that I did is I’ll badge it so I’ll say, “All right. I’m just going to do this on Sundays or Saturdays.” So I compartmentalize my usage to just the weekend and I’ll just go and check in. Now I’ll casually check on the weekends, maybe spend 5 or 10 minutes on it and then I’m done instead of saying I can’t use Facebook or social media all together, I’m now using it to a degree that I’m more comfortable with. So that is a powerful illustration of exactly what you’re talking about. James Clear: 33:07 Yeah, that’s a great example. While I was writing the book, I needed to focus. So I did the most extreme version of this which is every Monday my assistant would log me out of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and reset the passwords and then I would work all week. Then on Friday she would give me the passwords and I could log in over the weekend and use them and then on Monday we would do it all over again. So it ended up working really well. What’s fascinating is how quickly you realize I really don’t need this. Dan Pardi: 33:33 [inaudible 00:33:33]. James Clear: 33:33 Yeah. So that principle can work both for the physical environment and the digital environment. I think it can be a really effective way to change your habits. Then the second one that I mentioned is social environment which we can talk about more if you like. Dan Pardi: 33:43 Yeah. Absolutely. I’ll mention one other thing too about placing the things that you want to be engaging with in your environment so they are more visible than the things you do not want to be using. I noticed one other thing about this behavior that I put my weights out or gym equipment so I can see it. But if something sits in the same place long enough and you don’t use it, you will look past it without noticing it. What I’ve done is I’ll then keep it visible but I’ll move things around and then that makes me notice it more and use it more. James Clear: 34:09 Yeah, there’s something that happens over the course of a habit being built where the cue starts to be not a specific thing but the entire context around it. So you become comfortable with the entire room. So imagine if you walked into your kitchen. You don’t really think about the kitchen as being the cue that whole context as being the cue for like making your morning cup of coffee but if something was out of place when you walked in in the morning if there was … It doesn’t even have to be that big of a thing. Say you went to a party and there was some little sculpture or something you were given. It’s like the size of a baseball and it was sitting on the counter. You would pick up on it when you walk in because you would implicitly know the context is different for reason. So by moving things around, it’s a good way of capturing your attention again. There’s also a good lesson here for building new habits which is that as habits become built and as you develop those associations with the overall context, you implicitly have these connections that if you’re trying to build a new habit you have to overpower. So one way to think about your physical environment whether it’s the place you live or the kitchen you cook in or the desk you work at is not as being filled with objects but as being filled with relationships. For one person the couch in their living room might be a place where they have a relationship of reading every night for an hour. For another person it might be the association is that they sit on the couch and watch a TV show and eat a bowl of ice cream. It’s the same object, it’s just the relationship is different. So if you want to build a new habit it’s often more effective to go to a new place where you don’t have those associations built, where you’re not trying to over power the current stimuli. If you want to build a journaling habit maybe go to a coffee shop that’s close to your work but you don’t normally go to and that becomes the place where you journal. Or if you want to build a reading habit, buy a new chair and put it in the corner and that becomes the chair that you read in. You don’t do anything else there. What you’re essentially trying to do is find something that you don’t already have an association tied to and then make that the place where this new habit happens. Dan Pardi: 36:06 That’s fascinating. I’m going to try that. One thing we recently started to do was [inaudible 00:36:11] we have something called the daily [inaudible 00:36:13]. The idea is we take your daily recipes and workouts and we email them to you in the morning. People may or not do those but the idea of also triggering the thought process, sort of like [inaudible 00:36:24] of, “Ah, this is what healthy looks like. Here is something to be healthy.” You’re starting your day [inaudible 00:36:29] check your email and you’re getting those thoughts into your mind [inaudible 00:36:33] affect how you might behave later that afternoon. It might affect you in a lot of different ways [inaudible 00:36:39] even if you don’t use those workouts or those recipes on that given day. James Clear: 36:42 Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Dan Pardi: 36:43 So talk a little bit more about the social habits as well. James Clear: 36:46 So this makes sense to us once we hear it explained a little bit. We all belong to multiple tribes. Some of the tribes are big, what it means to be American or Australian or French or German or Christian or Buddhist or Atheist or whatever. Some of the tribes are small like what it means to be a neighbor on your local street or a member of your local CrossFit gym or a student at your school. But large and small, all of these tribes have a set of shared expectations that are part of what it means to be that group. So the result is society and the tribes that we are a part of it leans heavily on our behavior. Just take a couple basic habits that nobody really thinks about. Like if you walk onto an elevator, you turn around to face the front or if you have a job interview, you wear a suit and a tie or a dress or something nice. Now there’s no reason it has to be that way. You could face the back of the elevator. You could wear a bathing suit to a job interview. But we don’t because it violates the shared expectations of the group. So many of our habits are a result of those shared expectations. Humans are innately tribal creatures. Our ancestors grew up in tribes, lived in tribes and perhaps even more importantly to be cast out from the tribe was not just a bad thing, it was often a death sentence. So if you didn’t have some kind of tribal affiliation, some type of desire to belong to the group, then you probably wouldn’t pass down your genes. So one of the net effects of that, one of the results of that is that we all are internally wired with this deep sense to belong. So when habits are aligned with the shared expectations of the group, when they help you belong, they’re very attractive. When they go against the grain of the shared expectations of the group, they’re very unattractive. So it becomes crucial to make sure that you join groups where the desired behavior is the normal behavior or the habit that you want to build is the thing that’s normal for that group. The thing that I don’t hear people talk about a lot with this that I think is crucial for getting it to stick is that what makes you want to go along with the group is friendship. It’s belonging. So what you need is not just to hang around people who have your habits. What you need is to develop relationships with them, friendships with them, to belong with them. A good way to do that is to often have a different area where you have a mutual interest or a shared overlap. So the example that I like to give is from my friend Steve Kamb. He runs this site called Nerd Fitness. The site is about getting in shape. It’s about going to the gym and getting fit but it’s specifically written and organized and branded for nerds, people who identify as liking “Star Wars” or Spider-Man and Batman or Legos or computer programming or whatever the millions of other ways that you’re … can identify. But you can imagine that if you’re out of shape and trying to get into better shape that can be an intimidating thing sometimes. You feel out of place at the gym or you feel maybe this isn’t for me. But if you can connect with other people in the group over your mutual love of “Star Wars”, for example, well now you have friends there and you have a reason to pick up the other habits that they’re performing. It’s like, “Oh, well we’re not that different. We have a shared interest and they workout four days a week. Maybe I can do that too.” So what really gets habits to stick in the long run is belonging to the tribe, to belong to a group. I think that changing your habits often requires you to change your tribe because it’s hard to go against the grain of the group. That is a really challenging thing if the option is either I get to stay with this group and have bad habits or have the habits I don’t want or I get to build the habits I want but I have to be alone. If the choice is between being right on your own or being wrong with the crowd, we often choose to be wrong with the crowd. So it really helps if you have another place to go, another tribe to join as you make those transitions because then at least you don’t have to be alone. Maybe you’re still building a habit that’s a little uncomfortable for you or maybe you haven’t quite figured it out yet but you don’t have to be on your own at the same time. That I think can help make the process of transition or behavior change easier. Dan Pardi: 40:46 Historically that has been locationally determined. We talk oftentimes about the negative aspects of online behavior but in this sense you could more easily find a community that resonates with you that might not have a large, local demographic and that could be one of the good things about online [crosstalk 00:41:02]. James Clear: 41:02 Yeah, I think that’s definitely true. We’re not as geographically bound as we were before. I was just talking to an entrepreneur about VR and AR and what that could mean. If you could throw a headset on and feel like you’re in the same room with people who are working on the same goals or have the same kind of projects. That’s a different level of power than joining a Facebook group for example, which nothing wrong with that but we all know that being in a Facebook group doesn’t feel like the same thing as being in a room with your friends. So the more that you can replicate that in person feel with … and get it anywhere geographically and connect with people that have the same interest as you across the world, the more real that becomes, the more powerful some of those social behavior change platforms can be. Dan Pardi: 41:44 And the more we [inaudible 00:41:45] habit review instead of just getting [inaudible 00:41:47] by any sort of community. One that says, “Is this serving me well? Am I being a good social citizen? Am I going to benefit? Is the accrual of my repetitive investment in this group going to lead to a better me in some way?” James Clear: 42:00 I think that’s a crucial point that you’re bringing up. I broadly put habits into two categories. So the first category are habits that once you build them you don’t really need to think about them any more. They’re just life skills or like tying your shoes or brushing your teeth or unplugging the toaster after each use or something like that. I don’t need a process of continuous improvement for tying my shoes. Once it built, it’s good enough. But then there’s another category of habits that maybe you really do care about continuously improving. So for me it’s things like weightlifting and writing and photography. For those, those social groups make more sense. What really becomes crucial for endlessly refining those areas is having a process of reflection review. I think that that’s a thing that distinguishes that second group from the first one is that these are the habits that even as you build them you need to come back and be aware of them occasionally to revisit them because you want to use the formation of each habit as a stepping stone to the next level of performance and continue to reassess. Is this still serving me? Is this working well? Rather than build it once and let it ride. Dan Pardi: 43:01 It’s a continual process and the more that you understand these factors that do shape how you live, the more you can take control of them into designing your life so that the person that you are now, which is different than 10 years ago, is still operating, effective and [inaudible 00:43:15] to yourself and others. This is great work James. I really appreciate you coming onto the show to talk about it. So many of my shows are talking about the inner workings of circadian [inaudible 00:43:25]. And yet, I consider this discussion as important and more so than just about everything else that we have discussed because this is where the rubber meets the road in a lot of ways. Can you implement good ideas? Do you know the mechanics of taking some concept and making it a reality in your life? So I want to encourage everybody to go out and buy James’s book, “Atomic Habits”. You can find it everywhere. And James thank you for all your work. James Clear: 43:47 Yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Great to chat with you. The link for the book is AtomicHabits.com. So obviously you can check it out there. I also have a couple extra things there. There’s a secret chapter on the biology of bad behavior, which might be particularly interesting for your audience given how scientifically minded they are. Then there’s some chapter by chapter audio commentary from me on why I wrote each chapter and the research and my thinking behind it, then a variety of workbooks and templates and things for implementing some of the ideas. All that’s in AtomicHabits.com. Thank you again. I really appreciate it. Speaker 2: 44:20 Thanks for listening. Come visit us soon at humanOS.me. PART 3 OF 3 ENDS [00:44:50] Source: https://blog.humanos.me/atomic-habits-achieving-goals-james-clear/

[toogoodmusic]

TOO GOOD TUESDAY INTERVIEW: EXES

Allie McDonald and Mike Derenzo of the indie-pop duo EXES are currently gearing up for the release of their second project Before You Go which is the follow up to their first project – an EP titled The Art of Saying Goodbye. In between the two have also released a slew of singles which is quite impressive when we learn that the two are bicoastal. And not bicoastal as in one of them is simply from the East coast and the other from the West but they actually live and create music together on separate coasts! While it may seem surprisingly (although maybe not nowadays considering technology) this separation clearly hasn’t hindered the quality of their music. Luckily, Allie and Mike took some time from their upcoming project Before You Go to answer some questions from Too Good Music. See below to find out what they say about being bicoastal, finding out that they were apart of Taylor Swift’s playlist of Songs Taylor Loves, if they’ve broken any bones and more.

TGM: What’s the story behind “Bones Break?”

MIKE: For this track, we collaborated with our drummer Peter Martin. Inspired by the constant movement of the snare drum in Dave Mathew’s “Crash Into Me” [after a viewing of Ladybird] we set out to make a contemporary version of songs we loved as teenagers. Taking in influences from Dave Matthews to Death Cab for Cutie, we tinkered away until we created "Bones Break”.

ALLIE: Lyrically, I wrote Bones Break following a difficult breakup. It was at my lowest moment that I remember thinking the heartbreak was so painful that I’d rather feel my bones break. And from there, we ran with it. It’s definitely one of our more honest and vulnerable songs, but it was important for me to tell the story. 

TGM: Have you ever broken any bones? If so, what’s the story behind it?

ALLIE: I’ve always been clumsy, awkward, and tall (so naturally far away from the ground). I’ve broken some toes and fingers just by existing. The most embarrassing was when I broke my arm from literally running into my sister.

MIKE: I’ve never broken a bone! I got stitches for the first time last month and that was enough

TGM: What’s the creative process like for you two?

ALLIE: It’s honestly different every time. Sometimes I’m sending Mike voice memo ideas in the middle of the night. Sometimes he sends me tracks that I’ll write over. Usually Mike focuses on production and I focus on lyrics and melodies, but we aren’t afraid to share ideas. We’ve been doing this for a few years now, so it’s nice to have a process that works and that we’re comfortable with. 

MIKE: I like to start the tracks with sounds that I know Allie and I both like. Once we have a grasp on what the song is going to be about I like to go back in and make sure the production matches the sentiment Allie has lyrically/melodically. I try to make sure all of the tracks are grounded in a organic space with room for contemporary flourishes and electronic touches. 

TGM: What’re the benefits of being “bicoastal?” What’re the challenges? Is there a coast that you draw more inspiration from?

ALLIE: Every time we tell people we’re bicoastal, they give us a strange look. Yes, in theory, it should be difficult, but for us, it works. We’ve been working together for so long that we don’t need to be in the same room to create songs anymore- there’s a level of trust now. I’ll take writing trips and fly back to LA every once in a while, which is definitely helpful. Mike has a better mic than me so I suppose that’s a challenge hah. Since I moved to Brooklyn in March I am honestly overwhelmed with inspiration. It’s been an interesting transition, but it’s inspired so many new EXES songs. Stay tuned.

TGM: How do you guys work through creative differences you may have about a song?

ALLIE: Like any relationship, it’s important to compromise. We don’t always have the same opinions, but I view that as a strength and not a weakness. I think that’s what makes EXES our “baby”- 50% of it is Mike’s perspective and 50% of it is mine. 

MIKE: We try to not be too precious about any particular idea and always be flexible to the others opinion. Luckily Allie is my favorite songwriter [LOL] so there haven’t been too many times we disagree! 

TGM: How did it feel knowing you were included on Taylor Swift’s list of “Songs Taylor Loves?” Where were you when you found out?

MIKE: Allie always texts me when things pop up on our Twitter. This time was a particularly urgent flurry of texts. Lots of “OMGs”, exclamations points, and definitely some “aioefdsfsdajkf” excitement gibberish lol. 

ALLIE: yes, I found out from twitter- we had fans tweeting to alert us. And yes, I definitely fangirled. I’ve been a fan of Taylor Swift for ages. It’s a cool feeling to be noticed by someone like that.

TGM: Opening for Børns and Ella Vos had to be pretty cool experiences. What was the best thing you learned from sharing a stage with them?

ALLIE: It was awesome opening for them. As a fan of both Børns and Ella Vos, I felt very lucky to share a stage with them. We learned a lot from Ella Vos as it was our first “mini” tour where we played LA and San Francisco. She’s so humble and sweet. Plus she has such a calm presence. It was honestly an unforgettable couple of shows. 

TGM: If you guys were to form a super group titled “EXES and OHS” who would you like to join your band as the “OHS?” (aka which (2) artists or musicians would you like to form a super group with?)

MIKE: We work with producer Christoph Andersson and writer/singer Jesse Epstein a ton and they have a band called JOME [who we’ve collaborated w/ before]. Jesse and Allie’s voices sound wonderful together!!!

ALLIE: I grew up playing the violin, so I’d love to collaborate with an orchestra. I realize this isn’t 2 artists, but it still remains a dream of mine- Mike and I backed by a full orchestra. That would be insane.

TGM: Which song of yours was the first to rack up a million streams? What’s it feel like having a song of yours be streamed over a million times?

ALLIE: I think it was “twentythousand”? I remember thinking it was crazy when twentythousand had 20,000 streams. It’s still very surreal to think that over a million people have heard a song that two kids made in a garage in Venice Beach. I feel very lucky. It feels very much like a dream still.

TGM: I laughed seeing your tweet where you said that when you meet a group of new people, your favorite thing to do is play who would die first in a horror movie…so between you two, who would die first in a horror movie?

ALLIE: Don’t get mad, Mike, but I think it would be you hah. I’m very into horror movies, Halloween, and true crime. I have anxiety about getting murdered, so I always have an escape plan figured out at all times. I’m also the opposite of brave so I’d never go into an isolated cabin in the woods pretty much ever. I’d probably be the girl at the beginning of the movie who warns her friends, “I don’t have a good feeling about this” and ends up staying home.

TGM: I also laughed when I saw another tweet where you said an Uber driver asked you if he could take you out to Subway and that he might be the one. If someone were to propose to you with a ring inside a Subway sandwich – what would that ideal marriage-material sandwich have on it? 

ALLIE: I’m a breakfast-for-all-3-meals-of-the-day kinda girl so I’d have to say: an everything bagel, crispy bacon, scrambled egg, and cream cheese. I know, very nutritious. I would for sure say yes.

TGM: Which music festival would be a dream to headline at? 

ALLIE: I think for me it would be Outside Lands. I’ve been once before, and I remember having the best time. The weather is always beautiful and fall-like. And it’s in one of the best cities. We haven’t played a festival yet- it’s definitely on the bucket list. Cross your fingers for us!

TGM: What can fans expect from the upcoming album, Before You Go?

ALLIE: As we’re growing, our sound is also maturing. It feels like a great next step for us. We’re still creating music based on our real life struggles, heartbreaks, fears, and joys - but the sounds and the ideas are more unique and explorative. We weren’t afraid to try new things this time around.

MIKE: GUITAR! Lol. I made a point to try and have more organic instruments across the whole project. Allie and I both grew up loving indie music and whats indie music without guitars!! We also messed around with song structure in ways we never had before. The 2nd song and 2nd to last song mirror each other structurally and really help bring home the thematic narrative of the project.

TGM: Individually, if you could only listen to (5) artists for the rest of your life, who would they be? 

ALLIE: ok, these might be a bit all over the place but: Frightened Rabbit, Regina Spektor, Phoebe Bridgers, Arctic Monkeys, and Dashboard Confessional (I’m an emo girl at heart)

MIKE: Death Cab for Cutie; Kanye West; Frank Ocean; Blink 182; Bon Iver 

TGM: What does the rest of 2018 look like for you?

MIKE: Writing more music! We just had a great writing trip in July and have another planned for October! Trying to explore more avenues of what EXES can be.

A HUGE shout-out to EXES for taking the time to answer some questions from Too Good Music. Be sure to follow along with their journey through the links below and be on the look out for the upcoming release of Before You Go!

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#music #indie #pop #alternative #exes #bicoastal #duo #interview #interviews #taylor swift #songs taylor loves #before you go #bones break #dave mattews #alt #kanye west #new music #spotify #borns #ella vos

[manage-management]

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Things I liked: 1) thorough coverage of all things related to ... Didn't know what to expect so was pleasantly surprised (probably because the title evoked "get rich fast"). Things I liked: 1) thorough coverage of all things related to conceiving, test driving, launching and growing a micro business. 2) case studies and realistic financials: perfectly highlighted the diverse range of product and services that can be offered through such a model of micro business. The financials are realistic numbers, therefore setting reasonable expectations (hopefully) for people who might consider trying or benchmarking. 3) The discussion about scaling vs. keeping it small is a very interesting one: I liked that the author presented real-life cases for either scenarios for food for thought instead of advocating one or the other (e.g. presenting a single "formula" as the golden rule that all shall follow)--I can see how this particular decision can be case sensitive and there really is no "right" answer as long as it works for the entrepreneur! 4) Keep hearing the term "the gig economy" these days and this book now gives me a window into a world of side-hustle and micro businesses that I was not previously aware of or super interested in. Enjoyed the book a lot, and might be considering trying my hand at some side-gigs. I mean, why not? Go to Amazon

Motivating and helpful roadmap to turn an "idea" into a legitimate business I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading "The $100 Startup," but I found myself much more excited about turning an idea into a functioning business the farther into the pages I went. The ideas are "real world," and over other business related books I have read, this one made it not only seem possible, but much easier. It's doesn't have to be an overthought $1 million dollar idea based on a large initial investment. Much more focused on using current skill sets and marketing intellectual property rather than coming up with the latest and greatest widget, which is where most soon-to-be entrepreneurs will draw from. Well written, and diverse examples and suggestions for multiple avenues to success. Great read! Go to Amazon

Not Useful for Me I found this book to be largely anecdotal and whose primary message was that other people found a variety of ideas for start ups that fit their lives. Although the title suggested very low cost start ups, much of the book was about startups that involved a great deal more funding and even discussed incorporation and starting non-profits. There were a few check-list pages that I may find useful in the future. Otherwise, if you are looking for a truly useful book, I would look elsewhere. Go to Amazon

ver useful. I have my own business While some of the information contained in this book might be "well, duh!" I did not find that to be the case. I just finished reading the book and I have to say that I have found it to be very, ver useful. I have my own business, but was struggling with ways to make it more fun, challenging and profitable. " The $100 STARTUP" Has provided me with new ideas that are simple to implement. When creating or growing a business, many things are a leap of faith: if you are willing to take it this book will help you. Go to Amazon

Informative, engaging, well written. I learned so much from this book and found myself re-inspired to start my business. There are many real life stories from all types of business owners. The inspiring stories coupled with the incredible depth of information throughout the book make this book my top business book purchase to date. Go to Amazon

Escape from Cube-atory. Excellent book. No book is the final answer, but this book has abundant suggestions. It is way more than vague, motivational stuff. It is full of stories of companies people have started along with how they did it. It also has lots of specific tips, steps, etch. Chris Guillebeau is going to be a savior to countless of us trying to escape Cube-atory. After checking it out from my local library, I bought my own copy, and I'm making my equally miserable coworkers read it. Chris' other books are also excellent. I'll soon purchase a few copies of "The Happiness of Pursuit" to give to friends. Go to Amazon

Inspirational Four Stars Great book! Five Stars Decent first book for the entrepreneurial-minded youngster. But a ... was just as I ordered and delivered on time. worked perfectly. Thanks much Bob A great business mindset book Stories of amazing successes often by shear luck Five Stars Five Stars

#and Create a New Future (8601400553046): Chris Guillebeau: Books

[clubofinfo]

Expert: The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep.  The spectacle is the guardian of sleep. — Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle It is generally accepted that sports, especially spectator sports, serve many social purposes, good and bad, and that they function to distract people from the cares and worries of everyday life, or the “real world.”  No doubt this is true.  The etymology of the word sport, derived as it is from the word “disport” – divert, amuse, carry away – tells us that.  But often a distraction can also be a reminder, even when that reminder remains shrouded in unconsciousness or forgotten in the moment. Sometimes, however, the reminder can be linked to memories that bring a startling clarity to the present. Two recent sports news items have reminded me of incidents from my own athletic past.  And those memories in turn have brought my reflections back to the current news regarding the failure of any National Football League (NFL) team to sign quarterback Colin Kaepernick to a contract, and the recent boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor. Kaepernick’s case is well-known and much discussed.  He took a valiant and principled stand last football season by taking a knee during the national anthem to protest the violent treatment of black Americans by the police and American society in general.  History was on his side, unless one was a clear-cut white racist and ignorant of American history.  But as a terrific football player and a well-known athlete, his stand was unusual in the world of sports where political protest is very rare and not being reminded of the “real” world is the key to success.  The NFL, in particular, is a very conservative organization, long infused with a super patriotic ethos wrapped in the American flag and the song that celebrates it, and Kaepernick’s protest was a diversion from the diverting spectacle on the field and not welcomed by NFL owners, to put it mildly. So as of this writing, Kaepernick, a very good football player who would clearly strengthen an NFL team, remains without a job.  That this is because he lacks talent is ridiculous.  While pressure against the NFL from multiple media and organizational sources is growing to reverse this situation, even well-meaning writers have implicitly used racist language to describe the situation by saying that Kaepernick is being blackballed.  Ironic as it is, our language is filled with such subtle reminders of the white mindset that equates white with good and black with bad. But there is a deeper irony involved, and language once again reveals it. First, however, let me briefly tell you of my memories, not because the details are important in themselves, but because they are examples of how we bring to our present perspectives past experiences that can both help to clarify and obfuscate current events. The saying “where you’re coming from” contains truth; our past experiences deeply influence how we see the present. When I was 19-20 years old, a senior in high school and a Division I college freshman on an athletic scholarship, I was involved in two incidents involving sports and violence. The sport was basketball, not football or boxing, and the violence was minimal, but both are etched in my memory. As a young man, I was rarely involved in fighting, but when I felt abused and disrespected, my Irish temper got the best of me and I would physically defend myself. Otherwise, I was a normal young athlete, fueled by the competitive nature of high-level sports and testosterone. But these incidents taught me that the propensity for violence is in us all, and that certain situations and social arrangements can inflame and promote it, especially when you are most unaware and naïve. But what do these memories have to do with the news about Kaepernick and Mayweather/McGregor?  What I saw in both sports stories was violence; one quite obvious with boxing, the other involving Kaepernick, less so. I realized that violence has many faces, whether it be minor or major, fisticuffs or “blitzes,” face-to-face or helmet-to-helmet, physical or verbal, racial or political, institutional or personal, etc. It’s largest and most savage one is war, and endless war and preparations for war are the large canvas within which the others lie.  Sometimes remembering one’s individual inclinations toward violence can help one see the larger picture. As usual, the Unites States is currently waging multiple wars, and is fomenting many others, including a nuclear one. Most of the victims of U.S. violence are considered “other,” the expendable people, as were slaves, Native Americans, and other people of color. Nothing has changed since that other heroic black American dissenter said that America is “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.”  And we know that Martin Luther King was murdered by those violent U.S. government forces he criticized in his opposition to war, racial inequality, and economic injustice for all Americans. I am not equating Kaepernick with MLK, but his protest follows in the King tradition and that of other black athletes who have taken political stands:  Mohammed Ali, Tommy Smith, John Carlos, et al.  All suffered for their courageous positions. Of course, Colin Kaepernick has a right to play football, just as Ali had the right to beat people up in the ring. Yet boxing, despite the Mayweather/McGregor extravaganza, has generally been recognized for the brutal “sport” it is, and has grown less popular over the years, perhaps in part because of Ali’s “pugilistic brain syndrome.”  Not football.  It has grown to become America’s number one sport, despite the growing evidence of what may be called “football brain syndrome,” and all the violence and other crippling injuries suffered by former players, revealed as far back as 1970 when Dave Meggyesy, a former NFL linebacker, published Out of Their League, his expose of the dehumanizing aspects of football. But the unspoken truth in the Kaepernick story is that football is the war sport par excellence, extremely violent, and deeply tied to the spectacle of cruelty that dominates American society today and that has caused so much suffering for black people and other people of color for centuries. In the 1960s, Brazilian television, in an effort to distinguish football (soccer) from American football, aptly termed it “military football.”  And while it, like other sports, has been an avenue to wealth and “success” for some black Americans (a tiny minority), its war-like structure and violent nature is noted with a nod and a wink.  Heck, it’s fun to play and exciting to watch, and is just a colorful spectacle that we can’t do without. That it’s a conditioning agent for the love of war and violent aggression is usually passed over.  Its language, like all good linguistic mind control, becomes powerfully invisible.  Colin Kaepernick, like all quarterbacks, is the field general who throws bombs to flankers as he tries to avoid the blitz.  Each team defends and conquers the enemy’s territory, pushing its opponent back through frontal assaults and pounding the enemy’s line.  This is mixed with deceptive formations and aerial assaults behind the opponent’s line.  When none of this works and the enemy goes on the offensive, a different platoon is brought in to defend one’s territory. One’s front line must then defend against a frontal assault and hit back hard. The analogies are everywhere, and as with many aspects of “everywhere,” what’s everywhere is nowhere – its familiarity making it invisible and therefore all the more powerful. In a society of the spectacle, football is the most spectacular and entertaining mass hypnotic induction into the love of violence that we have. Yes, Mayweather and McGregor beating the shit out of each other satisfies the blood lust of gamblers and a much smaller audience, but boxing is small peanuts compared to football.  Most American parents wouldn’t bring their children to a boxing match, but football is deeply ingrained in the American psyche and structured into the fabric of our lives from youth onwards, concussions and violence be damned.  It is a microcosm of our militaristic, war-loving culture.  Our love of violence disguised as fun. As an American man, I understand its appeal.  I am sometimes drawn in myself, but against my better nature, which embraces MLK’s non-violent philosophy.  I appreciate the great athletic prowess of football players, and know that it is enjoyable and a way to recognition for many, and for a smaller number, a scholarship to college, and, for even less, a lucrative job in the NFL.  But as an opponent of American militarism, I find its violent ethos and the way it disfigures the bodies and minds of participants and spectators alike to be appalling.  It functions as an arm of the Pentagon and the growing militarization of the country’s police departments. As for Conor McGregor, the slum boy from south Dublin, they say he is an artist, a mixed “martial arts artist.”  That violence is an art is good to know.  I have been living in a bubble, thinking that art was a counterbalance to violence.  When I grew out of my adolescent readiness to defend my dignity with my fists and grew into art, I had hoped that the world would grow up with me.  No luck.  No luck of the Irish.  Conor should read our Irish ancestor, the great poet William Butler Yeats, and take the money and run.  “Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of the heart.” So too Colin Kaepernick, whom I greatly admire for his courage to take an ethical stand.  He deserves to be offered a job by an NFL team. If he is, I hope he turns it down, and speaks out on the propagandistic nature of the sport that made him famous, on its school of violence and its art of war.  In doing that, he would be carrying on the legacy of MLK, Malcom X, Mohammed Ali, and other black leaders who said violence must stop now, war must stop, the violence on people of color must stop, and let it begin with me. He would be disclosing the taboo truth of an American sporting distraction that does violence to its participants while it brainwashes its fans into the martial spirit.  He would be waking an awful lot of people up from the slumber of the spectacle of cruelty that has this country in its grip. Many people would take a knee in gratitude. http://clubof.info/

[wordsmittenmedia]

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO BOOK EXPO AMERICA AND BOOK CON

By Amy Edwards Assisant Editor WordSmitten Media, Inc.

New York City, New York – For three weeks, my life was nothing but an adventure.

This is my first summer free from college and I’ve   traveled up and down the east coast, both for business and pleasure. Of all my summer experiences, this one rates highest and I’d like to dive into my first big city adventure: Book Expo America and BookCon 2017 in Manhattan.

Since I am new into the professional writing world, I was completely unaware of the BEA and BookCon. An annual spring event that usually happens at the  Javits Convention Center in New York City, it is a rite of passage for authors (the expo might be considered the Super Bowl for many in publishing).  

Despite occasionally moving to other big cities such as Chicago, Illinois, BEA tends to keep to its home in the Big Apple. No matter where the conferences  is held, the Book Expo America and BookCon are major hot spots for publishers, acquisition editors, book executives, librarians (yes, they buy and review books), authors,  literary agents, and book sellers promoting thousands of books that are tackling topics about the current trends.

Many attend BEA and Book Con to network with other professionals from all over the country as well as from a few other places around the world. And, like everything else in New York City, this event is massive. The number of attendees at the Book Expo every year can be anywhere from 17,000 to 29,000, so chances of finding a plastic seat in the food court to lounge in during down-times were slim to none.  

I’m a simple person with simple dreams and in my 21 years, the biggest building I encountered is the SunTrust Financial Centre in Tampa before New York.   If you believe I was quite terrified of the constant rushing atmosphere of not only the Book Expo, but of the city in general, you are correct. I would have loved to have a guide, you know, campers, here’s where your tent is, here’s where the kayaks are, and don’t forget to wear bug spray.

For all of my other writers and readers who have just gotten their feet wet in the literary world, here is a quick guide. You’ll discover how to navigate the Big Apple’s BEA, and how to turn this mountain of a marvel into an adventure that may not be an anthill but an enjoyable and memorable journey nonetheless.

Before we get to the actual Expo and Con, there’s definitely some preliminary planning involved. Here are important tips:  

1.       Buy your tickets early.

Although this is good for every event, this is especially important for the Book Expo and Book Con due to everything selling out so quickly. Without registering, you can’t exactly do anything at either event, so your ticket is—quite literally--your key to getting in through any of the doors at Javits.

And yes, I do mean tickets (plural), especially if you’re planning to go to both the Expo and the BookCon.

These events are run by the same team, but Book Expo and BookCon are presented for staggeringly different target audiences (and one ticket doesn’t assure access to both), so there are two separate passes to get.

For those of you who have press credentials—those who are my dear media friends out there—don’t procrastinate—apply early to get a press badge for Book Expo. With a press badge, you gain access and are able to get into the BookCon without a problem.  

If you plan on going to any major   events (such as any of the author’s breakfasts during the Expo), those require special separate tickets. You might be thinking, “Hold on, Ms. Amy: this is starting to hurt my wallet a little bit!” I won’t tell you that it’s not that expensive, but it certainly is worth it for all of the free books that are waiting to join the ones in your bookcases at home. Not only are these books free, but they are often times Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), so you get to read them before the general public!  Ten ARCs, at retail, range from $24.95 to $34.95. If you capture ten to 15 books, and if your math skills are current, you’ll realize you’ve covered the cost of entry to the event. Not to mention getting a selfie with “Barney” a.k.a. Neil Patrick Harris (older folks know him as Doogie Howser).

And just to sweeten the pot, the special events that cost extra feature celebrities. I had to still my beating heart when I read on the Expo’s website that Stephen King and Hillary Clinton were two of the many big name guests coming to the Expo.

I also had to dry many tears when I woke up on the second day of the Expo realizing that I had completely forgotten about buying the tickets in the first place! Regardless of my scatterbrained nature, I’m sure that I would have had to scramble to buy them anyway (since tickets like these do sell quickly), but as a wise woman once told me, “Do what I say, not as I do.” Do purchase your tickets early. Did I mention that?

Which brings me to my next point:

2.       Know where you’re going.

I know it sounds simple, but for those who are not experienced with the boroughs of New York City (or another city like Chicago in the event that it moves again), I highly advise that you figure out how you’re getting there. Fortunately, I had some friends that were going to the event with me, so I followed them until I memorized where to go, but even then I still took some wrong turns every now and then. Even with the numbered streets and avenues, New York City is a labyrinth, so it’s quite easy to get lost in it.

If the BEA returns to New York’s Javits Center again next year--instead of Chicago’s McCormick Place--I have some wonderful news about the West Side of Manhattan. Line 7 opened up in 2015. It runs from midtown to the convention center, and it’s incredibly convenient. The subway line is new, as is the station, so it was pleasant—and swift—to ride from Times Square to the BEA’s front door.

The know-where-you-go tip could also apply to the Expo itself. The Expo (as well as the BookCon) is football-field large (three or more--almost an endless room) filled with publishers and exhibitors, so getting a map from the event staff is a must. Above some of the publishers’ booths, you’ll see signs for HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and PRH. For some of the exhibitors (small and unique presses like McSweeney’s), it’s still useful to learn of all the different publishers and authors that are participating. You might find some people that you recognize that you didn’t know were there!  Like McSweeney’s.

3.       Make a plan, but it’s okay to not stick to it.

Whenever I attend any kind of expo or convention, I like to make sure that I have a rough draft of an itinerary since there’s so many different events happening all at once. On the Book Expo site, there’s a complete schedule that’s up and available, so I combed through it again and again trying to figure out what panels and events were hot and which ones were not. For example, I had to wait an hour in advance to go see Neil Patrick Harris and Lemony Snicket (which was worth it, because I was one and a half round tables away from the men of the hour!), but later that afternoon, one of the publishing software panels nearly rocked me asleep. Next year, when the adrenaline from anticipation keeps me up at night before BEA, I’ll have to find a recording of executives spouting inventory jargon.

[Caption: From left to right, Neil Patrick Harris, Chris Harris, and Lemony Snicket]

Fortunately, with BEA’s thick teal program open in my hands, I quickly realized that this Book Expo was vastly different from the comic conventions that I’m so familiar with. Thanks to the color coded schedule of events, I figured out that some of the events were targeted to certain professions or specific aspects about the business of writing. I didn’t come to this conclusion smoothly either. Much to my innocent confusion, I didn’t quite grasp that the Edelweiss panels were for booksellers and publishers until I went to the second one.

I’m sure for the publishers and booksellers out there, Edelweiss is an organizational gift, but as a new player to the writing game, I was pretty lost half the time and couldn’t keep up with the bookselling terminology. I really regret not recording this lullaby track.

For the first few hours (or days), I was stuck in a predicament of not knowing what to do for decent stretches of the Expo. During these downtimes, I found myself roaming around the Expo floor or networking with other people. I realized that I enjoyed this wayward part of the Expo much more once I put myself out into the excitement.

For those of you who are sitting in your office chairs thinking the Book Expo is full of attendees wearing nice business suits sitting in cavernous professional meetings, I’m going to remind you that this is the Olympics for creative minds. There are plenty of different characters on and off the page at this event, but all of them are gathered there to celebrate books. There are no medals or anything like that, so there’s no point in not stepping out into the buzz, and I know that I would have regretted sticking to my usual wallflower routine.

Even when I was sitting off to the side trying to figure out my schedule for the day, I was able to strike up a conversation with an editor who I quickly learned loved the anime Yuri on Ice!!! as much as I did, and still do.

You’re going to meet wonderful people there, and not a single person I met over the four days I spent at both the Expo and the Con is boring. I even met a wonderful Belle cosplayer who had constructed Belle’s classic golden ball gown herself. If you’re going to try and make friends, I’m going to repeat this until my last days: never be afraid to say “Hello,” first.

If trying to make new friends isn’t quite your goal, the Expo floor is filled to the brim with all kinds of different authors and publishers just itching to pass out copies of upcoming books. A couple of the most memorable encounters for me included meeting Emily Rose Ross, the 13 year old author of The Canis Chronicles, as well as J.H. Sanderson, the author of the seven-part novel series Roadhouse Sons. Both were so kind as to give me copies of their first parts of each series, Blue’s Prophecy and Dangerous Gambles respectively.

From personal experience, I’m going to emphasize the importance of keeping your schedule open because of these friends that you may potentially make, or books you will potentially stuff into your tote. When I’m nervous, I tend to stick to my schedule like cooked cheese to a pizza pan, so I ended up missing out to grab a few beers at a party in Time Square. The best thing about New York is that you never have to drive, so as soon as I got the invite text on the late afternoon subway ride back to 191st, I immediately regretted sticking to the plan of retiring for the night. I could have been chatting up some literary agents and sipping on a cosmopolitan in the atmosphere of a New York bar on a Friday night, but I was stuck on the Red Line 1 with a woman who couldn’t understand that there is one track going Uptown. I held back the urge to grab onto her frizzy bun and state plainly that no, we can’t just back up and go around the police investigation going on three stops ahead so please stop shrieking every five minutes that this is inconveniencing you and making you late to meet with your boyfriend’s parents .I felt so sorry for her young boyfriend curled up in the seat next to her, face hidden in his blue cardigan. His ears were still red thirty minutes later when they were finally able to get off at the stop before mine.

For those of you who aren’t so socially inclined, this is also a great opportunity to observe and write. People watching is an excellent way to brainstorm ideas for your newest story, so I highly encourage time to sit and observe all the different people. Although I don’t recommend getting the pizza from the Javits, there’s two different Starbucks stores that you can hover around and people-watch. Why are they at the Expo? How do they feel about it? The possibilities for the amount of people that go to this event are endless, as are the backstories that you can make for them.

4.       Learn how to say, “No.”

During the many escapades of the Expo floor, I have learned that people really want you to read their work. That should be obvious- if I worked on a book for so long, I would hope that people would take a look! However, the authors and publishing houses are there for the sake of spreading the word about their newest works. It’s honestly thrilling to receive free books from new authors as well as seasoned veterans, but it’s all fun and games until you have to leave the Expo. I’m pretty sure the strings on my canvas tote rubbed my shoulder raw from the weight of all the books I received, and whatever I had on my person was only a fraction of the 28 pounds of books I accumulated over the 3 day expo.

During  Editor’s Buzzes, the staff hands out around 5 or 6 different up and coming books. There are books for sale in preparation for the Book Con in order to get them signed by YA authors. Authors and Publishers toss books for free left and right on the Expo floor. I even had the mother of an author hunt me down like a wolf because she saw that my badge said “Media.” If I had realized sooner that exhibitors translate “Media” to “I do free book reviews!” I probably wouldn’t have 28 pounds of books waiting for me to carry up to my third floor apartment—and no, we don’t have an elevator.

Someone even wrote on my box in black, bold Sharpie, “HEAVY.”

A major part of the reason I ended up with so many was that I also didn’t know how to say “No” to these people. Certainly, my own interest in some of the titles didn’t help, but that’s beside the point.. I’ll confess: if I know that it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll meet the person again and they recommend that I do something, I’ll gladly agree but completely forget about that recommendation within the following five minutes.  It’s not that I don’t want to read all of these books that I’ve been given, it’s just that I don’t know if I actually will.  I’ve decided that next year, before I slip my book into my C-SPAN tote, I’m going to ask myself:

Will I read this book?

No— will I really read this book?

If I can’t genuinely say yes, I’ll refuse to take it. There are thousands of people that go to the Book Expo, so I’m sure that the books will find homes where they will be happily read over and over again.

Also, Freeman provides a shipping service on the bottom concourse, since they know we attendees are book lovers that can’t say no to all these free, wonderful books. Although the books are free, getting them home isn’t. For me, the cost of shipping my 28 pound library back home was more than $60, and my box was light in comparison to some others. Standing in line in front of me was a librarian with thick, black-rimmed glasses who told me, “Well, if you’re able to lift your box, you’re a lot better off than a lot of people.”

When I looked behind me, a short woman with wispy, white hair pulled three boxes behind her on a cart. My wallet could only cringe at the thought of having to pay the flat $40 fee three times, and then some for the weight.

Lesson learned: say “No,” and your back and your bank account will surely thank you.

5.       If you’re going for the Expo floor, skip the first day.

Day one of the Expo is much more quiet than usual, which had surprised me. When I walked in, I thought that I had gotten there too early since the area outside of the Expo floor was on the empty side. I had expected thick crowds of people, but I only saw a few people wandering around. I thought, “Why is it that this place looks like a toy store on a school day? Much to my dismay, I quickly discovered that this is because the Expo floor isn’t open on the first day.

I was quite eager to get to the Expo floor; walking in the front glass doors and seeing the huge posters hanging from the ceiling for books and authors I loved (Rick Riordan, Cassandra Claire, to name a couple) made my heart race from excitement. However, when I approached the main entrance to the Expo floor, it was roped off and full of plywood. My afternoon was suddenly way more open than I needed it to be, and the only panel I really needed to go to was the Adult Fiction Editor’s Buzz.

Now I’ve come to the conclusion that the first day of the Expo is really only worth going if you’re going to the panels for that day, which even then there are very few. As me and twenty other attendees were shooed away, I could hear the many complaints in hushed, annoyed whispers. “I can’t believe I took a day off of work for this,” one disgruntled woman grumbled behind me.

Thus, I made a mental note to myself to dodge the Expo floor all together, go to an Author’s Buzz (if there is one that day), and head home.

6.       Go to both events.

This is especially important for those going for the first time because the Expo and the Con are entirely separate entities. They’re aimed for different audiences, so the atmosphere around the Javits changes literally overnight.

The Book Expo is an event aimed at book sellers. Publishers and authors are trying to advertise their books to the book sellers or to the media in order to gain popularity and get a place in the market, so the crowd is much older and much more professional. While I was at the Expo, I believe the youngest person (after me) was at least five or six years older with much more professional experience. It’s quite fun and energetic, but the air is a lot more mature and business-oriented.

I would describe the BookCon as the Book Expo’s either younger sibling or inner-child. The BookCon is an event open to the public, so the crowd is much more casual than at the Expo (with my nice purple blouse and black slacks, I felt a little overdressed). Most of the authors at the BookCon are Young Adult authors (such as Joseph Fink, Rainbow Rowell, etc.) so I noticed a lot of teenagers were there, eager to meet their favorite authors. This was where I met the Belle cosplayer, Cait Jacobs, and I even saw a few other people dressed as Wonder Woman to celebrate the new movie coming out. Also, the books that are discussed at BookCon are ones that have already been published and released to the public, so sadly, the free books are also few and far between.

Therefore, I believe it’s almost necessary for people to go to each event at least once if they can. You may learn more about what you’re interested in or may learn what you’re particularly not interested in. If anything, I believe more exposure to the different genres can make readers and writers alike much better-rounded. At the very least, you can earn the experience and have an even better argument as to why you don’t like either event because you now have that first-hand experience under your belt.

7.       Go back.

Of all of the things I’ve learned from traveling up to New York City, getting lost in the subway, shouting out my order at Pizza Suprema, and getting heckled by authors begging me to read their books about dogs and the history of the universe, I’ve learned that I love it. I absolutely love the energy in the air: the people in New York are just like people everywhere else. With the Book Expo, there’s book talk from one end of the Javits to the otherand everyone else seems to be enjoying what they’re doing too.

It reminds me of when I went to a comic convention for the first time, except instead of elaborate, home-made costumes, everyone wore nice clothes and had at least one canvas bag with “I’m a readaholic” printed on the front. Everyone was so passionate about what they were doing and even more so about learning what was happening in the literary world.

Even outside of the BEA, I found myself having a wonderful time. I was able to meet with Diana Finch of Diana Finch literary in order to discuss all the aspects of life as a literary agent (a goal that I may strive for in the future). I was also able to have a night out with Holly Brady, discussing the self-publishing industry over grilled chicken ceasar salad at the Hard Rock Café. We even got to go see Bandstand on Broadway, with seats that were not only cheap, but were in the center on the first floor of the theatre.

The Book Expo and BookCon have become two of my favorite summer events; I feel like my eyes have been opened to the huge world of writing, and I’m quite floored by everyone who made it all possible.

Thus my last piece of advice is to go back. This event is amazing and huge, and I know I couldn’t drink it all in by only going once. There’s so much to it that I want to go back so I know every piece of this event inside and out.

I missed a lot due to my own nervousness; I feel like I spent most of the week testing the water and by the time I jumped into the pool it was already time to leave. I want to go back so I don’t regret missing anything, and I hope that I can return again next year.

#BEA #Book Expo America #Book Expo #BEA 2017 #Book Expo America 2017 #BookCon #BookCon 2017 #New York City #New York #Neil Patrick Harris #Lemony Snicket #Chris Harris #Belle #Beauty and the Beast #Writing Conference #Bandstand #Bandstand musical #musicals #broadway

[illuminatedbyu-blog]

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. -Marie Shear”

I’m not quite sure how to begin this or if I am even the right person to write this post, seeing as how I am relatively new to feminism myself, having only been introduced to it around 2011 or so.  I’m ashamed to admit that as a teenager (and, if I’m being honest, even into my college days) I used the term “feminazi” and believed that feminists were just a bunch of men hating weirdos who didn’t want to shave their armpits and legs and who were, obviously, all lesbians.  By the time I reached graduate school, I was more open to the thought that feminists maybe weren’t everything I thought they were, but imagine my shock when my graduate school girl friends pointed out that my views and values aligned with those of third wave feminism.

Much like Taylor Swift, I was resistant to the label at first.  I didn’t know what it meant that I was now a feminist or if there was a set of rules I was supposed to follow or a certain set of things I was now supposed to do.  I can almost imagine the horror seventeen-year-old me would feel at finding out that not only did I turn out to be a feminist, but I turned out to be the type of feminist who would endure a nine hour long car ride and intensely uncomfortable crowds just to not be able to see or hear anything at the world’s largest single protest.  But that’s exactly where I found myself and what I found myself doing a few weekends ago.

Around the same time that I found out I was a feminist, I also found out that I have something called privilege- and lots of it.  As a straight, white, middle class, cisgender female, there were and are a lot of opportunities available to me that aren’t available to other people.  In addition to learning about privilege, I had to learn about things like gender, intersectionality, and  race in ways I had never considered before.  According to Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectional feminism is “the view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.”  If you’d like to learn more about feminism, I highly suggest reading bell hooks’ book, Feminism is for Everybody or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists.

Intersectionality means that I am oppressed not only because I’m a woman, but also because I’m a disabled woman.  I’m lucky in that I’m a cisgender middle class white lady, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t experience any oppression.  It just means that I experience less than some people and more than some other people.  Feminism has helped me make sense of a world that I previously didn’t fully understand and it’s helped me understand why it can feel so bad to be a woman and specifically a woman with mental health stuff.

I wrote something about the Women’s March on Washington sort of for my Memoir Writing class I’m taking and sort of for my own personal record keeping.  It’s here:

I’m walking down the street, River on my left-hand side and Tiffany on my right.  Tiffany and I make small talk about how excited we are for the day to come, but we are also bleary-eyed from not getting to sleep early last night and, if I’m being honest, there’s still a bit of the sleeping pill I took last night in my system.  We are in Arlington, Virginia and we are on our way to board the silver line Metro to the National Mall.  We swipe our SmartTrip cards and pass through the barriers.  The station is packed and it takes us almost an hour to finally board a train as all the ones that come through the station are either too full for anyone to get on them, people push past us to get on them, or they don’t have enough room for Tiffany, River, and I.  River does better than expected on the train, lying down next to me and only trying to greet two people.  A woman spills her hot but not burning coffee on me and all over the floor.  It hurts a little bit but it mostly makes me angry because she chose to push her way to stand in between my legs over River in the first place.  We will see later if River got sticky from the coffee or stayed out of it, but at this point, I’m really not sure.  We exit the train and it’s time to face one of my biggest fears for the day: will the elevator be working or will we have to take the escalator up?  River has practiced on the escalator a lot, including using the escalator a lot yesterday to prepare her for this very moment, but I’d still rather she didn’t have to use it at all in the crowd and she does better going down the escalator than going up it.  The crowds make it impossible to do anything but move forward towards the escalators.  Mercifully, they are turned off and are therefore glorified stairs that are unlikely to trap unprepared dog claws and toes.

The crowd is stop and go, moving at barely a crawl for reasons unclear to us.  We eventually emerge from the escalator and walk out of the metro station where we continue to walk for a few blocks before we run into a massive number of people.  I’m not sure how many people are here, but there must be hundreds of thousands of women with some children and men about as well.  I’m sure the media will have a count in the days that follow, but all I know right now is that it is a lot of people and the weight of having so many of them around me makes me feel like I’ll be crushed to death.  I know that weight is all in my head.  This is a peaceful demonstration, after all.  The organizers have worked very hard to ensure that and have done their best to ensure that few, if any, arrests are made.  But tell that to my anxiety disorder.  Or don’t.  It won’t listen anyway.

Each person is here for her own reason, she has her own motive, her own white whale, but we are all united under the same unifying principles and the same title, the Women’s March on Washington.  I march because it’s the right thing to do.  I march for Planned Parenthood and the ACA and Equity and disability rights.  I march because this is 2017 and the idea that Black Lives Matter should be a given, not a necessary and crucial movement that is dismissed by so many in positions of privilege and power.  I march because I get to call the United States my home, while so many others are in danger of being forced to leave their home because of the President Elect.  I march so I can tell future generations of my family that I was here in this important, beautiful, historic moment.

We are excited for the rally, but we waste time trying to find the ADA tent so that we can sit down.  My back is already screaming at me but it should calm down soon because I took a muscle relaxer after we got off the metro.  I may pay for this later, but this rally and this march are more important to me than a few days of pain.  We look for a way to get to the ADA tent, but we can’t find it and crossing Independence Avenue seems like an impossibility.  Even looking to the left away from the rally, Independence Avenue is packed with shoulder to shoulder people as far as the eye can see.  We cross Independence Avenue a few times, moving towards the front of the rally in an attempt to get away from the super religious counter protestor who has set up shop with a megaphone right next to the closes set of speakers.  From where we end up, you can just almost see a big screen showing the stage and you can sort of hear what the speakers are saying, but the crowd around us is affecting us both in a negative way, me more than Tiffany I think and in spite of the 2 mg of Ativan I have taken.  It’s time to move away and find somewhere else to go and find somewhere for me to sit for a while.

We make our way to the side of Independence Avenue away from the National Mall and walk along the buildings where there is more room and less of a crowd.  We round a corner and realize we are back where we started.  We walk up to the intersection and find a woman with an orange vest that says something about ADA on it and ask her where the ADA tent is.  She says there is no point in going there because all of the seats are full, it’s become overrun by non-ADA people, and it’s very crowded.  We turn back the way we came and sit down in a truck delivery area for some big concrete building to eat our lunches.  We hear from someone else later that this is when Gloria Steinem was speaking and we missed it, but that isn’t accurate- she spoke much earlier even than this.  We were very upset about this, but at least the live-stream is available online.  I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Tiffany eats her ham and cheese.  When we finish, we make our way back to independence avenue and begin searching for a bathroom because I have the smallest bladder in the world.  We went towards the Smithsonian Castle but got to a point where we couldn’t move anymore, so we turned around and stood in place for a while listening to Scarlett Johansen speak about how she had to go to Planned Parenthood when she was fifteen because her family was poor.  Or at least Tiffany was listening to that happen.  I had no idea Scarlett Johannsen was speaking, only that I really needed a restroom.  I interview a woman for the podcast about what feminism means to her and about why she is marching.  I don’t know it at the time, but my voice recorder isn’t actually working.

I eventually tell Tiffany that the bathroom situation is really getting quite urgent.  About two hours have passed since lunch when I first said I needed the bathroom.  We push our way past the crowd coming from the Smithsonian Castle towards Independence Avenue and make it to a place where we can climb onto the grass and continue going.  As Tiffany and I are walking, my left foot goes into a plastic pipe with a broken lid the wrong way, I fall, my foot bends forward, my ankle twists, and I hear a loud pop.  Thankfully, we have just seen a Smithsonian employee and Tiffany goes to get her.  She comes over and asks me if I’m okay and how I was injured.  I tell her that I think I just sprained my ankle (a white lie, I think I may have torn a tendon) and how it came about.  Her name is Rosario and she will continue to be kind and helpful the whole time I am in the Smithsonian’s care.  She calls to someone else on the radio and the other woman, Ms. Smith, brings a wheel chair.  Tiffany grabs River’s leash and my backpack as the other two women help me to my feet, guide me over to and off of a small ledge to the wheelchair, and help get me situated.

Rosario and Ms. Smith push my wheelchair across the grass to avoid the impressive crowd on the pathways.  We have to stop and I have to stand up again so that they can close the wheelchair, push it between two trees, then help me hobble through before I sit back down.  Almost as soon as we get inside, Rosario takes me in the elevator down a floor to the bathroom and pushes me all the way up to the stall door.  I wash my hands and she pushes me back upstairs.  We sit inside one of the Smithsonian buildings for a while, Rosario checking on me every so often and asking if I want her to call 911.  I resist because of the cost.  I don’t want to pay $600  for the ambulance ride plus the hospital deductible and copay just for a sprained ankle or torn tendon.  Tiffany eventually leaves to find the first aid tent for the Women’s March, which is supposedly close by, but before she does she gives me 800mg of ibuprofen, for which I am grateful.  She isn’t gone long.  “They won’t leave the tent to come here, but if we can get you to them they can wrap it and take care of it for you,” she tells me.  Through all of this she is calm and kind.  She doesn’t even act like I’ve ruined her March experience, even though I’m starting to feel like I have.  We make our way to the Smithsonian exit.

I hobble down the street with Tiffany and River on either side of me, surrounded by women, men, and children holding signs, marching, and chanting things like, “hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go! Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go!”  We finally make it to the first aid tent.  They ask me if River will remain calm if they let her inside the tent.  I say yes and prepare myself for an argument about the Americans with Disabilities Act and its provisions for service dogs, but luckily it’s a nonissue and they let her in with me.  The paramedic wraps my ankle with an ace bandage, stuffs some Hot Hands down into my sock, and tells me I can put my shoe back on and be on my way.  There’s still a lot of pain when I put weight on my foot, but at least it’s more stable.

I emerge from the tent to see Tiffany standing just outside it and we make our way out into the crowd.  It’s less dense here now that people are moving, but it’s still a very thick and close crowd.  We march, chant, and chat, making our way along a few roads and into a park that has a fence in it where people are putting their signs.  It’s a powerful sight, but somewhere down to the left some young men start kicking the fence down.  Almost everyone yells at them to stop, but Tiffany and I decide that it’s time for us to head back to my brother’s house.  We walk to the Metro station which is almost but not quite as crowded as the one from the morning.  On the way there, we meet a veteran who has a service dog and her group of friends.  They seem really nice.  On the Metro ride home, I interview three young women for the podcast.  Then we listen to a Trump supporter start a verbal argument with a woman with an “End racism” sign.  He has accused her of calling people names because of her sign.  He then calls her husband an idiot and tells her to go bark at the moon before proceeding to actually bark at her.  If I was braver, I would stand up for her, but he made me fear for my safety, so I stay silent.  We get off at our stop, walk back to my brother’s, and decompress for a bit before figuring out we are going to eat pizza for dinner and hanging out with the dogs.

  Resources

Women’s March on Washington

Chimamanda Ngozi TED Talk- We Should All Be Feminists

Woman in Viral Photo From Women’s March to White Female Allies: ‘Listen to a Black Woman’

Women’s March on Washington

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  Feminism by Catherine Cottam #CompassionOrBust "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. -Marie Shear" I'm not quite sure how to begin this or if I am even the right person to write this post, seeing as how I am relatively new to feminism myself, having only been introduced to it around 2011 or so.