*Typing*

An impression used to be an idea, feeling or opinion on a piece of art. I like this kind of impression. It requires thinking and discussion; a point-of-view.

But, these days, an impression means something entirely different. An impression is a person who happened to scroll past your photograph or video or thought and lingered for a half-second (if that).

Social media platforms place this number front and center as a means of valuing your work. This is backwards, though. If a man drops trout in the middle of a sidewalk and takes a shit, dozens if not hundreds of people would stop and stare. His maneuver would garner a lot of impressions. Many more than the man on the corner playing his heart out on his nylon guitar. But, which is more valuable? 

In an age that has high-jacked the word impression and made it something shallow, shiny and new, it's worth asking ourselves how we will choose to value our work. For me, it's no longer about how many but who. If my work can leave an impression (the original definition of an impression) on just one person who cares enough to really think, consider and form a point-of-view around what I've created, then that's worth 100,000 of the other kind.

Ray Bradbury was once asked to give a speech at the University of Southern California.

He had prepared an astonishing amount of notes and read from them verbatim. Five to ten minutes into his speech, Bradbury looked up to see everyone was half-asleep. He yelled "Attention! Attention", threw his speech on the ground and stomped on it repeatedly. The audience looked up at him wide-eyed. He continued, this time speaking rather than reading.

After this, Bradbury would show up to speaking engagements with a list of metaphors. Each metaphor reminded him of a topic or a story he could riff on for an hour about.

In Listen to The Echoes, a collection of the great science-fiction writers interviews throughout the years, Bradbury shares, "So that's the truth here about public speaking. It has to be like acting, just as natural and wonderful as breathing."

Why is it that most people put more time, energy and attention into getting discovered by the world than they ever do discovering themselves?

Let's pretend it's your lifelong dream to create the greatest burger humanity has ever stuck in its mouth.

It would be preposterous to assume this kind of feat could ever be achieved having never tried a burger.

If you have ambitions of creating a great burger, you've got to try a lot of burgers: thick burgers, smash burgers, turkey burgers, portobello mushroom burgers, elk burgers, black bean burgers, fast-food burgers, diner burgers, double-patty burgers, triple-patty burgers, butter burgers and so on.

Until you've tried an extraordinary number of burgers, you can't make a great burger because you won't have the taste. We often overlook taste as we seek mastery in our crafts.

It's not enough to practice our crafts. We must also develop our taste as we practice our crafts. This can only be achieved through a maddening and obsessive consumption of the work we are seeking to make.

If your happiness is entirely dependent on what's going on outside yourself, you will never be happy. This might seem obvious at first glance but how often do you allow external factors to disrupt your internal state?

A shitty little dog yipping a few tables over while you attempt to sip your coffee. A molasses-slow driver inching down the road while you're late to your dentist appointment. A stoic-looking stranger giving you a cold glare while you pass them on the street.

Happiness is like a zen garden in the middle of a forest fire.

You can't control the fire raging on and the more you attempt to control it, the less happy you will be. Suffering is, after all, wishing the world to be a different way than it is. However, if you can learn to go inward and tend to the zen garden that is your mind, you can find happiness anywhere.