Wow. There is some great and striking stuff in there. Examples:
Your wee voice doesn't want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something.
If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.
Frankly, I think youʼre better off doing something on the assumption that you will NOT be rewarded for it, that it will NOT receive the recognition it deserves, that it will NOT be worth the time and effort invested in it.
Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
A very lively and, in places, shocking piece that I am going to have to reflect over.
Apropos of this being a dupe, I wonder if it would be reasonable to judge drift in the quality of a social news site readerbase via the response to the same content submitted at different time periods.
Loved the read! I can relate to some of this. Usually, my (unorthodox) creativity in coding and data management does not go over very well with others.
I've learned (been somewhat conditioned) to give a canned response when asked for my (mostly crazy) thoughts nowadays:
"You're not going to like what I have to say and you're definitely not going to like how I say it."
After this, they usually don't like what I've said nor how I said it.
I keep marching on though, knowing that I need to work on those communications skills of mine.
Very good article. Gave me a lot to think about. I especially found the "Cash and Sex" theory very interesting. I've always been into the whole young starving artist fantasy and this article somehow articulates the rationale behind some of my personal decisions.
(Actually, I wouldn't have said MacLeod's piece was a manifesto; it's more of a personal essay. Regardless of that, you said one thing I think is the kiss of death for this kind of writing: you called it reasonable!)
Your wee voice doesn't want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something.
If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.
Frankly, I think youʼre better off doing something on the assumption that you will NOT be rewarded for it, that it will NOT receive the recognition it deserves, that it will NOT be worth the time and effort invested in it.
Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
A very lively and, in places, shocking piece that I am going to have to reflect over.