Lately I've been getting interested in data. It's all around us, yet intangible. What is it? Ones and zeros don't help me much. So I turned to spilling out a bunch of possible visual metaphors that could help me think about it. Some are more related to the way data moves around, some how it can be used, and some just maybe get at what it is...
Shot with my android phone and the LapseIt app at Civic Hall. Enjoy!
To listen to my first (brief) podcast on the topic of creativity, click here.
I'm old enough to remember life before smart phones. Remember how boring that was? But it turns out that boredom is key to your creativity. When we get bored, our brain does a lot of important processing under the hood. Like when you are in the shower, or walking the dog and you get that great idea out of seemingly nowhere. Don't take my word for it, somebody I and respect actually wrote a book about it. In short, your phone is robbing you of that precious boredom! Take a break! Easier said than done. I explain trick I use to get some away time from my phone in the debut episode of the Creative Spaghetti podcast above.
I am intrigued by creativity. What is it? How does it work? What creative processes are the best fit for me? And of course I'm interested in the same questions as they apply to you and everyone else. By creativity, I'm mostly talking about personal expression, not "Out of the box thinking to sell our new widget," although that's a neat topic too.
One creative method I like involves "throwing spaghetti against the wall" to see what sticks. Thus the name of this podcast and blog. So I hope when you interact with the pictures, text, and video there's some good creative sustenance for you, with or without marinara sauce. So again, welcome, or welcome back. It's a pleasure to have you here.
Like a lot of people, the election of 2016 got me from a passing interest in politics to actual involvement. To that end I've supported some political gatherings with visual listening.
While there's not much I can do on the national level, there's a lot happening locally where I can have more impact. I was delighted that one of my neighbors has decided to run for NY state senate.
Jessica Ramos kicked off her first official campaign event last night in her mission to replace NY state senator Jose Peralta. Peralta is part of a group of state senators who were elected as Democrats but supported Republican leadership, thus preventing passage of the progressive legislation his constituents want. In this video Jackson Heights resident Honor Mosher gives Jessica a fiery intro, and then Jessica introduces herself to this packed house of enthusiastic neighborhood voters. She talks about a few issues that are important to her: renter protections, getting funding owed to NY schools from the state, improving NYC's transit system and representing the progressive views of her neighborhood by replacing Jose Peralta. Ramos is a Colombian-American, Queens born and bred, energetic, mother of two, who worked as an aid to Mayor Diblasio. I will be supporting Jessica in the 2018 election. Her main challenge is name recognition---she wants to meet you! Feel free to reach out to her campaign if you want her to speak to any group you are part of---your building, community group, etc. She is @jessicaramos on Twitter if you want to get in touch.
I've been enjoying immersing myself in cryptocurrency culture, which has as any culture, it's own lingo. "Hodl" means, roughly "Hold," as in, hold onto your bitcoins no matter if the market value is plunging or skyrocketing. Like the term "Pwn" (own) from gaming, it was spawned by a typo. Bitcoin has bucked like a bronco on its way up and down and up and down through the last few years. As I type this it's on a downward slide, but I'm sure a lot of people are still "Hodling."
I first started hearing about blockchain and bitcoin about 4 years ago and filed it away as something interesting but didn't dig any deeper. Recently blockchain has broken into the public consciousness, largely due to interest in cryptocurrencies and their meteoric rise in value. I started listening to Laura Chin's Unchained podcast at Forbes where she interviews interesting people in the blockchain space and found myself falling down the rabbit hole, absorbing as much as I can about the history, present, and possible future of blockchain and how it may (or may not) change our lives. As usual, when trying to make sense of new information, I like to spill what I'm learning on to paper. So above is a quick braindump from listening to Laura's podcast. It's very high level---a bunch of individual words and phrases, each of which represent complexity which I'm just beginning to explore. And why explore this topic at all? Partly it's just the pleasure of learning something new, but it's more than just that. This may be a massively transformative technology, akin to the internet, so it makes sense to jump in while it's still relatively early days.
How do you write a novel? One word at a time. Or one bird at a time, according to Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
I don't know about you, but I find it very helpful to translate written words into pictures to understand it better. Sometimes those pictures are in my head, like when I'm reading a novel, but when I'm trying to learn actual techniques, I like to draw out my understanding. So here are some key nuggets pulled from Lamott's book on mining your childhood and creating a writing routine tied to a specific workspace at a specific time of day. I do not currently have a place where I sit down and pour (or trickle) out my creative thoughts but I think I'm gonna give this one a try. I'm going to try this cafe a block from my home with the backup of a cafe near my kid's school for days that I drop her off.
Hi folks! If you've ever visited jonnygoldstein.com, you will notice a different look, and you will wonder where all the old blog posts are. They still exist over here.
The version of the site was too hard to maintain without frequent bugs, so I moved over to a new website management platform and that's what you're reading this on right now. As before, the site will feature my thoughts and explorations of whatever interests me at the moment. And what I'm really intrigued by these days is creativity itself. What is it? How does it work? What creative processes are the best fit for me? And of course I'm interested in the same questions as they apply to you and everyone else. By creativity, I'm mostly talking about personal expression, not "Out of the box thinking to sell our new widget," although that's a neat topic too. One creative method I like involves "throwing spaghetti against the wall" to see what sticks. So I hope when you interact with the pictures, text, and video there's some good creative sustenance for you, with or without marinara sauce. So again, welcome, or welcome back. It's a pleasure to have you here.