Do Not Try to Win Awards, Redux

by Brad Posted on October 30, 2011

I love this idea: Do Not Try To Win Awards. This is a message that I hammer home to my students, and one they will all be receiving again in the very near term.

Do not try to win awards. Awards are given by those who want to validate what they already hold to be important. Do not follow them. You will create nothing original if you seek awards. Validation from a group should never inspire, drive, or satiate you. There may be a time and place for awards, but if you believe that time and place has arrived, you are a prisoner and don’t yet realize it.

Build something that people don’t even know they want. Step away from expectation and convention. Push the bounds of what is and create a space that never existed before.

When you have pushed those bounds and created that space, you will not try to win awards.

You won’t need to.

Posted in Teaching | Tagged | Leave a comment

Running, Man

by Brad Posted on October 23, 2011

STL_8“That’s crazy,” people oftentimes exclaim when they find out about my running. “Why would you do that?”

It is, as it turns out, an unanswerable question, at least in the way that the person asking the question is used to receiving answers. There are no words that can convey the feeling that comes when you’re out on the open road, or scooting along a trail, or climbing a mountain. There are no words that describe the inner calm that comes when you’re body begins to break down late in a marathon and you have no choice but to go somewhere else mentally until the run is over.

There are no words. But I do know that if you have to ask the question, you probably won’t ever find the answer.

***

Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Travel | Tagged , | 4 Comments

My Life With Steve Jobs

by Brad Posted on October 6, 2011

When I found out that Steve Jobs passed, my life with technology flashed before my eyes. I’d been preparing for this since Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO a few weeks because. Still…

I tried to explain to my students today why Jobs was so important. And I did that the only way I know how: by telling them the story of how technology — and Steve Jobs — changed the direction of my life by opening up the universe to me. This is Part 1 of that talk.

Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Science + Tech | Tagged | 1 Comment

I Don’t Write Enough Anymore

by Brad Posted on October 3, 2011

In the month of October, I promise to change that. At least 3 mornings a week, I’m getting up to write. 

And I’m taking a substantial part of the morning on Sunday to write.

I’m quickly turning into one of those assholes who doesn’t write but likes to talk about being a writer. This is, in the most direct words I can think of, a dick move. 

Posted in On Writing | Leave a comment

Remember at the End of the Day, It’s All about Her

by Brad Posted on September 18, 2011

The words are the only bits that have survived my life. The only elements that have passed the test, time after time. They are always there.

The reality is that it’s me that has betrayed them. I never found a way to live with them when I drank, and I’ve never found a way to write them once I stopped. Still, they stay with me. When there is nothing else…as there must never be…there are the words.

Posted in Life | 1 Comment

The People We Wanted to Be

by Brad Posted on September 11, 2011

A decade has passed since that awful day on September 11, 2001. In terms of your memory, that’s a long time. The major moments tend to stick, but the bits and pieces of it all flitter away into the mind, gone from most purposeful thought.

What it leaves, though, is a filtered version of the things that mattered that day — and the days after. Those moments and emotions that have stuck have become my defining view of that day’s events.

I am prone to disappearing. I find ways to sequester myself from the world, whether driving alone when I could take the train or locking my doors on the weekend and emerging again only when it’s time for work. I am, and have always been, a solitary creature. That’s not to suggest to don’t love people. In fact (and surprisingly), I have a great passion of them.

Many times, I just find all of the emotion to much to handle. I get overloaded with expectations, with disappointments, with joys. To survive, I need solitude to recharge and reboot.

In those terrible hours and days and weeks after 9/11, I remember not wanting that solitude. I remember looking around at the faces in the offices of Wired.com, professionals who were trying to find a way to make our stories make a difference from 3,000 miles away, and wanting to stay with everyone. On that awful day, people lingered about, not wanting to go home. I ended up sitting in a bar with my editor, one with whom I had a terrible relationship, and just processing through what we had seen. There were few words. Just silent drinking.

Continue reading →

Posted in Life | Tagged | Leave a comment

Junkie

by Brad Posted on September 8, 2011

OutstandingUnless you are one, you’ll never undersand one. I’m convinced of that. Because it’s irrational. It’s not anything that can be understood logically.

When the panic sets in, when the manic descends upon you, when the engine revs, and the paranoia strikes, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to have that drink. Not anything.

If I let myself indulge this feeling for too very long, I would abandon all of you, everything I’ve worked for these last three years. I would do that without hesitation and without remorse. I would.

There is no bravery in sobriety, or kindness, or strength. Those are words the logical use in hopes of understanding this.

All these years later, that demon inside me still rears its head and spills out across everyone I know, concerning them. There is nothing I can do about that today. Amends come later.

The only thing protecting me from the panic, and the manic, and the revving, and the paranoia is the rote memorization of the daily affirmations that reminds me rule #1: don’t drink. There is no concern about anything else. No worry about how you might take my mood.

The narcissism of sobriety knows no bounds.

There is not anything noble in that.

But if you ask how I am on days like today, that is the truth of the matter.

 

Posted in Life | Tagged | Leave a comment

Noble in Thought, Weak in Action

by Brad Posted on September 5, 2011

I absolutely cannot wait to buy Season 4.

I’m at times frightened and comforted by the realitis of this show (although I’m always quick to point out that everyone is much better looking on this show than it was in real life).

Your father is a child in a man’s body, he cares for nothing and everything at the same time. Noble in thought, weak in action. Something has to change, something has to give.

It’s getting dark, too dark to see.

Posted in Life, On Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

Today Nothing Mattered

by Brad Posted on September 4, 2011

Lake O'HaraI turned on the television tonight after a long day of running, reading, thinking, and relaxing. I felt good, better than I expected on this long weekend. For addicts, long weekends are hard. I fight the urge to leave my shades down, to hide from the world. I’d girded myself for the destructive, self-loathing wave I’d have to ride out.

It set upon me Thursday night, an anvil of self-pity dropped on my head.It’s these long, slow moments when I have nowhere to be, nobody who needs me, and nothing to do that the worst of my life comes out. The realizations about consequences and decisions can’t be shoved aside. There is no way to feel good during those times.

Throughout the last three years, I’ve learned when these moments come that I need to look to the world around me for solutions. I can’t think my way out of the problem. I can’t sit here and wallow. I have to actively engage in the world.

Continue reading →

Posted in Life | Tagged | 2 Comments