Change Stress, Karma Building, Etc.

by phil on Wednesday Jul 21, 2004 6:14 PM
passion pursuit

Good evening sirs and madams, here is your fortune cookie for today:

It was a failure of imagination on my part. So many calamities, big and small, are: the failure or inability to work out the day-to-day consequences, over a period, of our actions.

...

She was like those people who retire to a place where they have holidayed, and in this holiday place become frantic with boredom and solitude.

This is from V. S. Naipaul's Suckers, a short-story fiction in the June 7th New Yorker

This bit reminds me of my impetuous trip to London. What happened was that I had just finished watching The Hours and by the incessant suggestions of Virgina Woolf, "I must go to London," combined with my self-intoxication of the "pursue your passions from the get-go" meme, and a quick $200 round-trip flight to London, I decided to embark in 2 weeks. Boom. It was suicide. I was there by myself and did nothing for a month. It was on the one hand, everything I wanted: meditating at 4am in front of statues, staring at paintings at museums (free entry), falling asleep on buses and ambling my way back to Picadilly. On the other hand, I was lonely and bored to death. However, that was when I first started Philosophistry, so there's always a silver lining.

Second fortune cookie.

This time a real fortune cookie combined with some advice from a new client of mine: "Keep your eyes on the prize but your feet on the ground." This is important for people who want the HOLY GRAIL (for artists). What is the HOLY GRAIL?

THE HOLY GRAIL IS...

Pursue your passions from the get-go but get paid handsomely at the same time.

My client suggested, and this is confirmed by the fortune cookie and some other stuff I read elsewhere, that it is important to stay at one location and build up an artist's karma. Eventually editors and gallery-owners get intimate with your name as you plant seeds that take 10 years to grow. Eventually you pass a certain threshold and people start respecting your work.

I love Palo Alto so far, and I'm gaining a great rhythm here. I've already built some karma with my hard work invested into Stanford and various relationships that I've maintained.

We shall seeeee.

PS. this is a wild panoramic shot of my room.