I've Been so Busy I've Become Useless
Dear Students,
This is Henry David Thoreau.
The guy who wrote Walden.
The book about living in a cabin in the woods.
Thoreau kept a lifelong journal that is filled with, well, read it--there are several different collections--the journals are about 2 million words long (so I've been told; I've not read even close to all of it)--and also pieces of it online.
http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings
/journal/Journal%20I.pdf
Read some.
I know you read Walden in high school, but that doesn't count.
It's impossible in your teens to understand what Thoreau was putting at stake by going out to live by himself in the woods as an adult.
In your teens your instructors, even in college, would have taught Walden as man escaping from the real world.
Man trying to get away.
Man trying to find himself.
I used to wonder about that.
What is so far inside you that you have to go way out to nowhere to find?
I see the opposite.
I think Thoreau's story--from both Walden & the Journals-- is man escaping from busy-ness to what is real in life.
Escape from busy-ness not to nothingness but to engagement.
Thoreau engaged with what surrounded him.
Read the Journals and you see a man intimate with plants, trees, agriculture, making a living out of where he was, the well-being of his friends, and his own thoughts.
Engaged with what was there, not with all that wasn't.
A man happy with and filled by his apprehension of what came each day into his path of walking and paths of thinking.
There was a busyness in his world that oppressed him.
I think Walden was not retreat from that busyness but the removal of busyness because it hinders engagement.
This...
...is one bitch of a master.
The continually shortening timelines we are conducting the ad business by leave less and less time for thinking.
Specifically and most destructively, for the kind of thinking the creators of joy need in order to flourish.
Busy-ness keeps me from engaging with what surrounds me.
It keeps me from the lazy playfulness that surprising insight comes from.
Producing to too tight a schedule results in snap insights.
Snap insights, while they can be true and have value, are more snap
than thought, and tend to be the same insights other people get when they don't think about an idea for long.
When I am busy I am not able to sit idly with a thought others deem ridiculous, turning it over and over until something in it strikes me and I can follow that thought out until it turns into something funny/true and etc.
There may be none of the originating impulse left in the thought by the time it turns into a piece of work.
Nevertheless, the significance of the starting point--and this includes my attitude toward it and the lazy time that inspires it--cannot be overestimated, it seems to me.
Judging by the work I've done, at least.
And that of people I've seen with like minds.
But this should not surprise.
The value of the kind of engagement with the world Thoreau spent time at and which filled his thinking and writing is not obvious to the world.
Which is to say THE MONEY can't see value in it.
And whatever THE MONEY can't see doesn't exist.
What am I suggesting you do?
1) There is a laziness in the thought process that is important.
Do not be bashful about indulging in it. Do not let the nimcompoops bully you out of it. Don't be a bully to others. It's part of the process.
2) Look for the chance to engage with the world instead of engaging with the busyness of the job. The joy you seek to inspire in others does not & will not rise up out of the clammy-handed nothingness of a Blackberry.
Technology contains no salvation.
I have no gripe with timeliness and in no way do I suggest there is not significant & life-giving power in deadlines.
But without engagement with the world about you and the people about you, the word dead in deadlines becomes more powerful.
3) Read. Thoreau, Emerson, U.S. Grant's Memoirs.
Good writers read.
This is Henry David Thoreau.
The guy who wrote Walden.
The book about living in a cabin in the woods.
Thoreau kept a lifelong journal that is filled with, well, read it--there are several different collections--the journals are about 2 million words long (so I've been told; I've not read even close to all of it)--and also pieces of it online.
http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings
/journal/Journal%20I.pdf
Read some.
I know you read Walden in high school, but that doesn't count.
It's impossible in your teens to understand what Thoreau was putting at stake by going out to live by himself in the woods as an adult.
In your teens your instructors, even in college, would have taught Walden as man escaping from the real world.
Man trying to get away.
Man trying to find himself.
I used to wonder about that.
What is so far inside you that you have to go way out to nowhere to find?
I see the opposite.
I think Thoreau's story--from both Walden & the Journals-- is man escaping from busy-ness to what is real in life.
Escape from busy-ness not to nothingness but to engagement.
Thoreau engaged with what surrounded him.
Read the Journals and you see a man intimate with plants, trees, agriculture, making a living out of where he was, the well-being of his friends, and his own thoughts.
Engaged with what was there, not with all that wasn't.
A man happy with and filled by his apprehension of what came each day into his path of walking and paths of thinking.
There was a busyness in his world that oppressed him.
I think Walden was not retreat from that busyness but the removal of busyness because it hinders engagement.
This...
...is one bitch of a master.
The continually shortening timelines we are conducting the ad business by leave less and less time for thinking.
Specifically and most destructively, for the kind of thinking the creators of joy need in order to flourish.
Busy-ness keeps me from engaging with what surrounds me.
It keeps me from the lazy playfulness that surprising insight comes from.
Producing to too tight a schedule results in snap insights.
Snap insights, while they can be true and have value, are more snap
than thought, and tend to be the same insights other people get when they don't think about an idea for long.When I am busy I am not able to sit idly with a thought others deem ridiculous, turning it over and over until something in it strikes me and I can follow that thought out until it turns into something funny/true and etc.
There may be none of the originating impulse left in the thought by the time it turns into a piece of work.
Nevertheless, the significance of the starting point--and this includes my attitude toward it and the lazy time that inspires it--cannot be overestimated, it seems to me.
Judging by the work I've done, at least.
And that of people I've seen with like minds.
But this should not surprise.
The value of the kind of engagement with the world Thoreau spent time at and which filled his thinking and writing is not obvious to the world.
Which is to say THE MONEY can't see value in it.
And whatever THE MONEY can't see doesn't exist.
What am I suggesting you do?
1) There is a laziness in the thought process that is important.
Do not be bashful about indulging in it. Do not let the nimcompoops bully you out of it. Don't be a bully to others. It's part of the process.
2) Look for the chance to engage with the world instead of engaging with the busyness of the job. The joy you seek to inspire in others does not & will not rise up out of the clammy-handed nothingness of a Blackberry.
Technology contains no salvation.
I have no gripe with timeliness and in no way do I suggest there is not significant & life-giving power in deadlines.
But without engagement with the world about you and the people about you, the word dead in deadlines becomes more powerful.
3) Read. Thoreau, Emerson, U.S. Grant's Memoirs.
Good writers read.
11 Comments:
Inspiring comments indeed. Timely too as I just quit my full-time art director job to spend more time engaging with what's around me and important to me. Like finishing my basement and dusting off my oil paints. Like spending time with my new daughter while firing up some freelance work to pay the bills. Like mowing my grass when I want to and not having executing my creative director's shitty ideas.
I've sacrificed myself over the past 2 years trying to follow a path that burried my soul and smothered the creative fire that used to burn inside.
I choose to not be busy for a while.
I'm ready to fry some bacon. On low. So it takes forever to get crispy. So I have time to read the sports page. Then I'll probably take a nap.
I'm not advocating quitting the business--though I'm happy for you class '04 that you took a step you felt needed taking--as much as I'm hoping people in the business will allow back into advertising the kind of time schedules that foster greatness.
On another level, be careful not to leave that bacon in the bacteria danger zone too long.
This is true in some cases in others it is better to have a gun to your head. The stress of it causes the brain to hit over drive and greatness happens. I know this is not for everyone but give me three weeks or three days and 9 out of 10 times award winning ideas will come from the three day brain spill.
it's great to hear this mark.
i've always believed you need to give time to the subconscious to solve problems creatively.
Yes, work and get the "good" idea hammered out.
Then, it's almost as if you need time to move on and forget about it - then suddenly, almost out of the blue, you get another idea.
It's like people who walk away from a situation some time later and say,
"this is what i SHOULD have said" - even when what they said was a great /witty/funny/perfect response/comeback/burn/retort etc.
When it comes to ideas, time can make them even better.
As a non-Adcenter person who has stumbled upon this, it seems like these replies have missed the point of the post. It's not about advertising. I mean, it is. But it's not. It's about BEING. It's about living life, not as a slave to the pressures and routine of it, but in a way that engages you, in a way that draws out the best of you and the best of what this life has to offer. Most of the posts on this site are universal. They offer a great sigh of relief against the crap corporate America shoves down our throats, or appears to try to impress upon us (how much do we just do that to ourselves??). Thank you for your reminders to STOP. BE. BREATHE. LIVE. Not for the money. Not for the pressures. But for who we were created to be. The most full picture of reality.
It's not about slacking, or not caring. It's about not being defined by what you do, not losing perspective.
And time ran out on the Badgers.
Michigan 27
Wisconsin 13
All Hail to the Victors.
Come to think of it, hail is a strong word.
How about, "nice job"?
On Wisconsin.
Yeah, that happened to me last February. Darned WALDEN.
["Opening pages of WALDEN cause brief epiphany, resumption of mindless wage-slavery."
http://www.bendeily.com/id51.html]
Still, thanks to Mr. Fenske for bringing it back on home again--good to remember that we can take our time, rather than being taken by it...
Oh, well. Back to busyness.
:-)
It's about taking the time on Sunday to watch the Bears continue the march to the Super Bowl!
Balance... breathe.
Keep a blog.
It helps.
oh, the abscence! Not even a blog post to cling to...
The impotance of this blog's message cannot be overstated. In my now tween-aged career, I have worked for three agencies. All three headed by account guys. And, not to imply that all account folks are like this, but all three completely misunderstood how the creative mind works. How staying up until 2 a.m. every night doesn't result in great work. Ideas have to come from somewhere. And the latest CA doesn't count. Go out and live. Assuming you have talent (you do, don't you?), the ideas will follow.
Fox
adhole.com
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