*Typing*

If you wake up one day with the overwhelming desire to make a million dollars, you will suffer until you have in your possession a million dollars. The price you pay for a desire is a degree of suffering until you possess the thing that you desire: money, fame, sex, food, drugs, luxury, etc.

What's worse is that desire breeds more desire. The moment you have in your possession a million dollars, is the moment you desire two million dollars. And, the moment you have in your possession two million dollars, is the moment you desire three million dollars. And so on.

If desire is a series of islands that each promise warmer and more tropical weather than the last, suffering is the boat we are rowing. Eventually, to do away with our suffering, we must give up desire. We must dock the boat and decide the island we are standing on is enough.

Furthermore, desire and suffering provoke one another like two Bengal Tigers encroaching on the other's territory. When we are suffering, we look towards desire to ease our suffering; and once we get what we desire, we desire more which only leads to more suffering.

Desire and suffering are two side of the same coin.

Social media isn't dead. But, it's bleeding out.

Every day I hear about a friend or a friend of a friend who "quit". What's fascinating to me is how they talk about their departure. They do so with the same religious zeal that decade-long smokers talk about kicking the Camels.

These people are seeking something that social media promised but didn't deliver: Connection.

Connection can't happen by growing a following. Possessing millions of followers can make you a lot of money and make you feel very important. But, it comes with the cost of connection. Celebrities and influencers will tell you this, if they're being honest with themselves.

At the height of his career, Michael Jordan felt the loneliest. He would stay in his hotel room for up to 18 hours a day––only opening the door when it was time to step onto the court––because of the never-ending stream of fans vying for his attention.

The problem with social media is that all of us have become miniature celebrities with very small followings. We still suffer the cost of connection but enjoy none of the gains. Today, 100,000 Instagram followers won't make you rich, let alone pay the mortgage.

While the last decade has been about growing a following, the next decade will be about building a community.

Andy Warhol once shared the following reflection on building The Factory, his legendary studio, club and community...

"A lot of people thought it was me everyone at the factory was hanging around, that I was some kind of big attraction that everyone came to see, but that's absolutely backward; it was me who was hanging around everyone else. I just paid the rent, and the crowds came simply because the door was open. People weren't particularly interested in seeing me, they were interested in seeing each other. They came to see who came."

I like the line by Warhol because it's the perspective of a man who made the transition from a celebrity-artist to some that looked more like a facilitator-artist.

Building a community is the antithesis of celebrity. It's an act of love, in a lot of ways. You create an environment. You foot the bill. You facilitate conversations. Then, you step out of the way.

There is a reason your grandmother's recipes never taste the same when you make them. It's because there is a transfer of energy happening that her recipes don't account for. Love is an invisible force that has as dramatic of an effect on the work we create as skill and process. The Greek word for this is Meraki. It means to leave a piece of yourself behind in your work. Meraki can be something of a mantra for anyone striving to pack grandmotherly love into their work. When tempted to cut corners, compare yourself to others or obsess over the wrong metrics (likes, followers and engagement), just repeat the word "Meraki" aloud to yourself until you become re-grounded in the true intention of your work: Love.

One day an art dealer by the name of Ivan Karp showed up to Andy Warhol's studio to see what all the fuss was about. He noticed Warhol was playing the same record over and over again. It was Dickey Lee's "I Saw Linda Yesterday".

After a half-a-dozen spins, Karp asked Warhol if ever played anything else.

Warhol responded...

"Well, I play a record for a long time until I learn to understand it."

This habit of repetition eventually bled into Warhol's creative process, which he described as...

"I started repeating the same image because I liked the way the repetition changed the same image. Also, I felt at the time, as I do now, that people can look at and absorb more than one image at a time."

You've got to spend some time with something in order to really understand it.

Dennis Rodman is considered the greatest rebounder the game of basketball has ever seen.

Over his career, Rodman averaged 18 rebounds a game.

But, what a lot of people don't realize is that what would become his greatest strength was actually birthed from weakness.

Rodman was undersized––especially for his position––so he obsessed over perfecting the art of the rebound.

He would often have his friends meet him at the Bull's practice gymnasium. He would ask them to shoot around as he sat and studied how the ball would bounce off the rim. With time, he learned to anticipate where the ball was going based on the shot.

Rodman would then try and snatch the ball from the air one-handed (recognizing he wasn't tall enough to get both hands on the ball). He would even wear a blind-fold, forcing himself to rely strictly on his sense of sound to locate the ball.

Rodman single-handedly made rebounding fashionable by romanticizing a difficult, gritty aspect of the game of basketball that so many overlooked. There's a lesson there, somewhere.