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Embrace Failing, or How to Live Free

March 6, 2023

Experiencing, Society

capitalism, experience, experiencing, mediocrity, social masses, society

I’m deliberately provocative, I fully admit. I’m asking you to embrace failing, supposedly promising you this will let you live free. Though the title isn’t a clickbait (in the sense, I really do mean it and I will argue for it), there is more nuance involved.

If you’re a thinking reader, you should first and foremost identify the ambiguity involved in this title. “Embrace failing” doesn’t quite reveal anything, in the sense that it doesn’t communicate what “failure” really is. Just think of how difficult success is to define, and you’ll see why. “Live free” contains similar problems.

I’ll try to unpack all this, but here’s a word of warning: In a truly meta- kind of way, it’s likely that I’ll fail in my attempt. That is, I don’t feel I’ll be able in this post to properly explain why you should embrace failing, let alone why it should help you live more freely.

Why I still go along with it is part of the lesson, of course.

embrace failing
“I again failed to stay awake today. I’ll embrace my failing and enjoy my dreaming”
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The Smartphone Model Is Rotten: You Don’t Own Your Device

January 9, 2023

Society

capitalism, mediocrity, programming, society, technology

Let’s be clear, I’m not breaking any new ground here. The topic described by the heading has been talked about and analyzed a lot. And for good reason: The smartphone model – that is, the way smartphones are designed and sold – is rotten to the core. The subtitle might give you a hint why: You don’t really own the device you paid for and purchased.

What you own is the temporary, easily withdrawn right to operate the device for a short, undefined period of time.

Perhaps you’ve either realized this yourself or you’ve read about it elsewhere. As I said, I’m not breaking any new ground. Nonetheless, in this post I will share the… Kafkaesque experience I recently had with “my” smartphone – the model of which isn’t important; they’re all the same disaster.

At the same time, I will bring to your attention some menacing repercussions you might not have thought of, some news you might have not heard. Put simply, the… smartphone model of doing business is spilling over into other industries with potentially dystopian consequences.

How would you like not to own your car? Or, here’s a better one: How would you like the right to operate “your” car to be revoked if, say, you left a nasty review about the manufacturer?

smartphone model
There are many things to dislike about smartphones. One of them, they’ve facilitated a whole generation of people who take videos at concerts, missing the experience
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Why It’s OK to Suck at Writing (or Anything, Really)

November 22, 2021

Writing

fiction, ignorance, mediocrity, writing

Forgive the lame title, I suck at coming up with proper ones – though I seem to have a talent for self-reference. Today’s post will be about feeling taken aback by our perceived lack of skill in writing, singing, drawing, or anything, really. Though the focus will be mostly on writing – and so the implicit thesis is: “Why it’s OK to suck at writing” – the lessons are applicable everywhere.

Indeed, inspiration for this post came after I saw something remarkable on YouTube (I’ll share it with you in a moment) that made me question my guitar skills. Question? More like, wanting to sell my guitars and never touch one again for as long as I live.

I then realized that similar feelings can be inspired regarding writing. The ultimate takeaway, as we’ll see, is this: Comparing skills in artistic processes is very thin ice.

suck writing
You might think you suck at writing (I do too, sometimes), and I experienced something that made me feel I suck at playing guitar. But it made me think, and that’s a good (meta-)lesson for this post
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