design inspiration writing

My Beautiful New 2016 Day Book

It’s that time of year again … time to buy a new calendar/day book for the upcoming year. I’ve been keeping a day book for years and years now, probably since the 1990s, when my sister-in-law bought me my first one. At the time, I was journaling long-hand in notebooks, trying to follow the suggestion in “The Artist’s Way” about writing three pages per day. The long-hand requirement drove me crazy because I didn’t always…

Continue reading

art inspiration olio reading thought fodder

Olio: December 13, 2015

  Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things — My recent internet findings … I had not heard the terms “trigger warnings” or “microagressions” until the past month. Now I’m seeing the whole phenomenon surrounding me. For a good article that explains both, see “The Coddling of the American Mind” from The Atlantic. South Park has also been exploring the issue in recent episodes with the character P.C. Principal. “i will let go of my darkness when…

Continue reading

ideas reading

The Architecture of Happiness

The book I just finished, “The Architecture of Happiness” by Alain de Botton, is one that I read slowly in order to savor the language. This is the second book I’ve read by de Botton and he is a smart writer, putting together words in unexpected ways to create insights that make you think. One of his make-you-think statements is the following: “It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value.”…

Continue reading