“The people who were interesting told good stories. They were also inquisitive: willing to work to expand their social and intellectual range. Most important, interesting people were also the best listeners. They knew when to ask questions. This was the set of people whose shows I would subscribe to, whose writing I would seek out, and whose friendship I would crave. In other words, those people were the opposite of boring.”
John Hodgman’s advice to writers: writing what you know is not enough—you actually have to know interesting things. And the only way to learn interesting things is to experience life; to orient your life in such a way that you regularly encounter things to incorporate into your work.
“If you can sustain your interest in what you’re doing, you’re an extremely fortunate person. What you see very frequently in people’s professional lives, and perhaps in their emotional life as well, is that they lose interest in the third act. You sort of get tired, and indifferent, and, sometimes, defensive. And you kind of lose your capacity for astonishment — and that’s a great loss, because the world is a very astonishing place. What I feel fortunate about is that I’m still astonished, that things still amaze me. And I think that’s the great benefit of being in the arts, where the possibility for learning never disappears, where you basically have to admit you never learn it.”
“Being a geek is all about your own personal level of enthusiasm, not how your level of enthusiasm measures up to others. If you like something so much that a casual mention of it makes your whole being light up like a halogen lamp, if hearing a stranger fondly mention your favorite book or game is instant grounds for friendship, if you have ever found yourself bouncing out of your chair because something you learned blew your mind so hard that you physically could not contain yourself — you are a geek.”
—Mary Sue, What It Means to be A Geek
Oh man. Wow. I was smiling so much reading this. I feel like it explains why my eyes light up every time I hear someone say Helvetica, or I smile to myself when I hear the name Woody Allen, or I turn to look who just brought up Steve Jobs. Being a geek is about being excited about something that you have somehow made your own. It’s about being uncontrollably passionate. I hope I’m a geek.
“A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. I feel no obligation to deal with politics. I do feel a responsibility to society because of going into print: a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.”
“If it’s a success, if it works, they wanna replicate it. That’s the death of creativity. Then we’ve settled into a groove, then I become bored, the people I work with become bored…it’s a mortifying process. If this isn’t fun and interesting to us, there’s no point doing it.”
“The secret of success is concentrating interest in life, interest in sports and good times, interest in your studies, interest in your fellow students, interest in the small things of nature, insects, birds, flowers, leaves, etc. In other words to be fully awake to everything about you & the more you learn the more you can appreciate & get a full measure of joy & happiness out of life.”
‘Nothing is boring, except people who are bored’
Brian Jay Stanley on interestingness, boredom, and seeing the potential in every single thing:
Paging through an accounting textbook, walking past a wig shop, or listening to a lecture on early American basket-making, I never say “that is uninteresting” but rather “I am uninterested”, for it is always more reasonable to assume that I fail to see what is there than that devotees see what is not there. I love to hear of people devoting their lives to pursuits that sound dull to me, for I know that their enthusiasm is right and my boredom is wrong, and I am happy for the rebuke. I convert my specific boredoms into general fascination with passion’s possibilities, reflecting that, under altered alignments of choice and chance, I might have given my days to different causes. There is more worth loving than we have strength to love.
A foolish trope of modernity is that experience leads to disenchantment and ennui. Boredom with life does not result from exhausting life’s riches, but from skimming them. Nothing is boring, except people who are bored.
See also: how to be interesting and the wanting to like it principle.
How to be interesting
Russell Davies has a put together a great list on how to be an interesting person:
The way to be interesting is to be interested. You’ve got to find what’s interesting in everything, you’ve got to be good at noticing things, you’ve got to be good at listening. If you find people (and things) interesting, they’ll find you interesting.
Interesting people are good at sharing. You can’t be interested in someone who won’t tell you anything. Being good at sharing is not the same as talking and talking and talking. It means you share your ideas, you let people play with them and you’re good at talking about them without having to talk about yourself.
He goes on to list ten easy things to do that will make you a more interesting and well-informed person. I love that central to this ideas of “interestingness” is the idea of sharing—of passing on things you find interesting to those around you and then see what they do with it. Interestingness is like a gift that needs to be shared and spread.
From Wikipedia:
The Marshalite is a form of rotary traffic signal that was designed by Charles Marshall in 1936. It consists of two rotors pointing at coloured sections that denoted whether traffic in either direction should proceed, prepare, or stop. Variations exist for pedestrian crossings with additional text instructing crossers to “Walk” or “Don’t Walk”. The last Marshalite to exist before they were removed in the 1970s was along the Nepean Highway, in Victoria, Australia. A similar system was proposed in Germany in the 1950s, and while shown in publications, the signal does not seem to have been put into use. With the Marshalite, drivers have a clear indication of when the signals will change though the exact point of change is not clear.
Aesthetically wonderful? Absolutely. Practical? Probably not.
One of my favorite recent hobbies is watching (and reading about) craftsman working on their craft. I tend to post a lot of these videos on the blog because I find them endlessly fascinating and inspiring, fitting with something I’ve often thought: passionate people are interesting people. This one on Tartine bakery in San Fransciso is no different.
I think at times it can be hard to think of design as a craft. With more and more work being moved to the computer, we aren’t working with out hands as much. We aren’t becoming as physically attached to our work. I’ve been trying to embrace the craft of my work more and more this past year and I think it’s allowed me to do my best work yet. More craft, please!
(via the ever-interesting Kitsune Noir who also posted a great video on ink-making today fitting right in with these ideas.)
“My original business model—I actually wrote this down—was ‘interesting work for interesting people.’”
—Tim O’Reilly from this profile in Inc. Magazine.
That’s what it all should come down to. I also loved this section: “Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn’t be about the money.”
The Rhythms of Climbing
Craig Mod:
Climbing is meditation. I’ve long since realized this is why I’m drawn to this kind of activity.By ‘meditation’ I mean, having space to think. Feeling an emptiness in the mind that enables you to consider solutions to tough problems, or not-so-tough problems, or just, god forbid, to relax. I find I need doses of this space in regular intervals.
And then:
But less obviously there are the meditative and physical aspects: the pure, piercing awareness and joy of being alive in every step you take towards your goal. Dramatic? Yes. But those are 8,000 meter peaks we’re basking in. It’s hard not to be dramatic.
I’ve gotten into the habit of reading about people who are incredibly passionate at their craft, much like Mr. Mod. I continually find that that those who are the most passionate at what they do, are the most interesting. Even if the topic is not something I’m initially interested in, I can’t help but continue reading/listening/watching what they have to say.
As I posted on twitter, a passionate person is an interesting person. Passion is contagious. Share it.
