2014

Status 40

I was sitting on the grey metal flat files in the back room of my art gallery talking to my friend Wil, my feet half slipping off the drawer handles. He’d just gotten printed copies of his book Dancing Barefoot  -I’d helped him with a little bit of the layout and so he’d swung by to give me a copy. It looked great. I held a copy in my hands and smiled. I remembered a year or so earlier a conversation we’d had where he said more than anything he wanted to be a writer, that he was going to be a writer. And now here we were, with an actually real book that he’d written in our hands. It was pretty awesome.

Wil was telling me about an idea he was working on for his next book, what would become Just a Geek though I don’t remember if it had a name at that point, but the way he described the collection of stories reminded me of an idea I’d been chewing on for a while. See, I’d also fancied myself a writer. I’d been writing zines and columns in magazines and things like that for years, so even though I’d never written a real book I felt like I knew what I was doing to some extent. At that time I was approaching my 30th birthday, and my idea tied into that a bit. Growing up, I never thought I’d see 30 years old. Hell, I never thought I’d see 25. I wasn’t very optimistic about my future as a kid. But here I was at the end of my 20’s and looking back on what, at that point, had been a pretty interesting ride so far. And when looking at it, I thought I could identify a handful of moments where something happened – something that in a flash could have gone any number of ways – and because they went the direction they did my entire life was impacted. And if in that one quick moment things had gone a different way, everything in my life could have played out differently. I thought, if I could write about 5 of those stories and put them together info a collection, it might make an interesting book. I wanted to call it “Status: 30”

I told Wil about this idea and he said he liked it and I should do it. Why not right? What did I have to lose?

I felt pretty good about that, I respected Wil and was pretty sure if it was a crap idea he would have been honest about it and told me, and so I decided to do it. I made some rough outlines and told myself when inspiration hits I’ll plow through this and write it all in one sitting. I was pretty sure that would happen relatively soon, I mean it was a good idea and all. Definitely would be done before my 30th birthday a year later.

I turned 39 a few days ago, and recalled that conversation and realized it happened 10 years ago. And I never wrote that book. I never wrote those stories. I’m not even sure I remember which stories they were anymore, or what the thread was that I’d worked out that tied them all together. I think one of them was about a time I was in a car accident. Maybe another was about a falling out I’d had with a business partner in college. It doesn’t matter, the point is I never did it.

And I have no reason for that, other than that I just didn’t do it. Inspiration never hit. Not for that anyway. I’ve of course written other things since then, and just shy of that 10 year mark I published my first real book last year – assuming you don’t count the collections of blogposts that I’d batched and published in a single volume many years previously. I don’t anyway. But that’s beside the point, the point is – if I’d done it, it would have been done. But I didn’t, so it wasn’t.

Like anyone else I can come up with a million excuses not to do things, but I think as I’m about to cross that line into 40 I want to finish more things. I want to ship shit. Honestly, I have no reason not to.

Uphill and overwhelmed

There was a day about a week ago that seriously kicked my ass. I made a todo list in the morning and it was epic. So much, I didn’t even know where to begin. And on top of that every item on it was epic and required something like 20 other steps to even attempt to think about crossing it off. I stared at this list. I thought about it. I paced around the house. I went back to bed and hid under the covers. Hours later I emerged and went a looked at the list again. It was scarier than it had been before, and now I had less time to do all these things. So I made the responsible decision and walked out of the house, down the street, around the corner and kept walking until I got to the coffee shop. I sat there and drank coffee. Thinking about the list. Thinking about how I didn’t know how to do anything on it. Thinking that if I could just check off one thing that would be progress and then I’d be in motion and could keep going but nothing on the list was easy or small or accomplishable. I ate junk food. I made irresponsible and ill advised purchases. These things, the tried and true self medication of overwhelming and crushing defeat did nothing to help me. I didn’t feel better. I felt just as depressed but now with a dash of guilt on top.

I wondered how I ever got in this situation. Which choices had I made in my life that instead of having a normal job with a boss that would just tell me what to do and then I could do it I was here, lost and frustrated. Instead of working on something that was annoyingly below my skill level, but easy and mindless, I was facing all of these things that were obviously way above my ability. Far beyond what I could actually pull off – that I’d somehow fooled everyone into thinking I was much more capable than I actually am. That any moment everyone would realize what a fraud I was.

I went back home, back to bed and climbed back under the covers. The world was too scary to face.

I didn’t finish shit that day. Hell, I didn’t even start anything. Then the family came home – I think they noticed something was off but I didn’t talk about it. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself, and I wasn’t even doing a good job at that, because my “you suck” voice kept getting interrupted by my “fuck that ‘you suck’ voice” voice, which usually would be reassuring, but in that case was just confusing. I couldn’t even successfully beat myself up.

I gave up and went to bed early. The next day I woke up and remembered something that had happened, or actually not happened many ears ago. And something not happening might be cause for more grey clouds, this was actually a little bit of a kick in the butt, the kick I needed. I got up and did one thing. And it felt good. I don’t know if I did anything else that day, but I did finish something and that’s what I needed to remind myself that I could finish stuff. It felt good, and that list didn’t seem so scary anymore. There was a time when that entire cycle would have taken me months to get through and sitting here a week later realizing how quickly that whole process happened and resolved itself is in itself helpful. I have a LOT on my plate for the next few months, things I’m exciting about but also nervous about, things I want to do right, but things more importantly I want to do. And even if they are all happening at once and it feels like too much, I feel like I can pull it off. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way.

I can’t wait to see what happens.

Ripley for Ripley

Last month I saw some of Adam Lister‘s work on Tumblr and immediately showed it to Tara. We’ve been buying artwork for our son Ripley for a while and had talked about getting him somethings personal/significant each year for his birthday so that later on in life he’ll have this collection of pieces that we got for him. We had the idea of commissioning Adam to do a scene from Alien’s of Ripley (the character) in the power loader, We named Ripley (our son) after Ripley (the Alien killing character) and thought this would be fantastic. I contacted Adam and he was psyched to do it, and the result is everything we hoped it would be. Rips turns 4 next month, no one spoil this surprise gift for him, OK?!

Sean Commission

Coffee Posse Is Go!

boxes

Coffee

 

For the last year I’ve been curating a box with Quarterly – which, as the name suggests, sends subscribers a box of things I’ve picked out four times a year. In the second box I put together I included a bag of coffee that I was really enjoying and received some excellent feedback from people, including a handful of them lamenting that I wasn’t able to hand pick their coffee all the time. Of course, this got me to thinking. There are a number of wonderful options if you want to have coffee shipped to you, Tonx and Intelligentsia immediately come to mind – both of which I recommend all the time. So it’s not an issue of people not being able to get coffee, rather it seemed like people were interested in me actually picking different things to send them each month. Different roasters, different farms. It was kind of a crazy idea honestly. Would it actually be possible for me to send some people coffee on a regular basis? Is this something people would actually pay for rather than just going and buying coffee on their own? Was this just an excuse for me to try lots of coffee all the time? Maybe so.

End of last year I said fuck it, and launched the coffee posse. Keeping it limited and small at first to see if it works, and not make it too hard for myself right away. This week I’m shipping out the first boxes of coffee. I’m writing a bit more about why I picked this specific coffee, but that’s just going to the people who will be getting these delivered to them. I’m excited to see this idea become reality, and think it’ll be a pretty fun project to mess around with for the next few months at the very least. If you are a member of the posse, expect something on your doorstep soon. If you aren’t and want to be, there are a very few spots left.

What’s In My Bag (travel edition)

Sean Diptych

After my talk at Mailchimp the other day, Jason Travis approached me and asked if I’d be willing to be a part of his ongoing series of portraits and “what’s in your bag” photos he’s been doing. I thought it sounded like fun and, since I wasn’t expecting to do it, I didn’t overthink what I should have in my bag at that point. It was literally what I had with me for that trip, just off the plane, giving a talk, heading back the next day. I really like it, and it’s funny how years of style, color, theme choices all work together.

OK, so what is all this stuff??
(I’m including links of where to buy when possible to avoid a slew of “where do I get…?” – If there’s no link I forgot or can’t find it online anymore)

Friends will note that the glaring omission is any kind of knife, and I’ll point out again I’d just gotten off a plane. Also, my laptop was hooked up to a projector and I’d forgotten to grab it for this.

 

Mailchimp Coffee Hour Talk

This morning I gave a talk at Mailchimp Headquarters that I was fairly nervous about giving. Last year and old friend of mine – Gregg Bernstein – who I hadn’t talked to in quite sometime reached out to me about coming to give a talk at his office. He works at Mailchimp and they have an ongoing speaker series called Coffee Hour and he thought I might be a good fit for it. I said of course and didn’t think much about it as the date was kind of far off at that point. I actually really like Mailchimp and use their Tinyletter platform for my personal newsletter (which you should subscribe to if you haven’t already) though I wasn’t totally clear on what he wanted me to talk about. Normally when people ask me to come talk at an event or to some group of people they somehow persuaded to sit quietly in a room together they have a set topic in mind and ask me to speak about that. That’s easy, hand me something and I can talk about if for hours – even if it’s something I don’t know anything about I’ll just make some shit up and people will assume I’m an expert on the topic. You think I’m joking there, but.. well, yeah. Keep in mind that I’m a college drop out. Anyway, when Gregg asked me to come talk I agreed and then I asked what I should talk about and he said “anything” which left me thinking “…” so I asked again, with a little more sincerity and he said clarified that as long as the talk was about me and the stuff I’ve done all would be well. 

Crap.

If you know me, you know my least favorite topic to talk about is me and the stuff I’ve done. I get super self conscious and all the little head voices tell me how stupid it all is and that no one cares and who the fuck do I think I am talking about stupid shit like this and all that. Most often I take those voices as trusted council and avoid this dangerous topic at all cost, but I for this I told those voices to shut the hell up and I moved right into uncomfortable land. In part because I never do it, and I thought forcing myself to do it might help me get more comfortable with it, or at worst at least I could point to this in the future if anyone asked. I tweeted that I was giving the talk and some folks asked if it was open to the public or if they could watch it online, neither of which is was – fortunately for me, unfortunately for those folks. But what I did do was record the audio and posted it as episode 005 of my Viva Riot podcast, and I put the slides up on Slideshare as well in case anyone wants to listen and follow along at home. I’m embedding the slides here, though I know sometimes some people can’t see these embeds, so here’s a direct link as well.

If I sound nervous, especially at the beginning that’s because I was. I seriously considered faking my own death this morning at the hotel before making my way to their offices, but I didn’t and I think I calmed down a few minutes into it and it went really well. I think it did anyway. I did a “questions?” thing at the end and about 10 people had really great questions – the audio didn’t work out so well on those however, but I think if my talk sucked people would have just walked out rather than hang around and ask questions and stuff after. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. So there it is. Thanks Gregg, and Thanks Mailchimp!