Updike and Oates are extreme examples, but there’s something to be said for what might be called the Woody Allen Method: Good times, bad times, you keep making art. Many of your productions will hit; some will miss; some will miss by a lot. But there’s no time for the flatulent gas of pretension to seep into your construction’s sheetrock. This is how Trollope, Balzac and Dickens worked. Each would have agreed with Gore Vidal, who once declared of those who moan about writer’s block: “You’re not meant to be doing this. Plenty more where you came from.”

from Dear Important Novelists: Be Less Like Moses and More Like Howard Cosell.

“not every day is going to offer us a chance to save somebody’s life, but everyday offers us an opportunity to affect one. so get in the game. save the shoes.”

mark bezos is a volunteer new york firefighter who gave a quick ted talk, on two simple life lessons: don’t wait to be a hero and every little thing counts. it made me smile and it made me think about all the little things that count.

“the clitoris… i know so much about it! it’s like a country i’ve never been to, but i’ve read every travel guide.
angor wat… angor twat i should call it!”

dan savage answers sex related questions live on events and on a column called savage love. it’s pure public service of setting records straight about sexuality in a frank, no-nonsense voice.

recently, he started it gets better, a project where he + his husband and hundreds of other people (including tim gunn, perez hilton or chris colfer) send lgbt teenagers a clear message:

Many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.

i think this is a remarkable project. high school really is a tough time (and not only for lgbt teenagers), but it gets better for all of us, often just the moment high school ends. hang in there, it does get better.

all in all though, i liked the idea of having this big list with a set deadline – it didn’t shape my future, but it did focus me on certain goals. the second list took me a lot more time to draft, as i’ve struggled to remain more practical and make sure all the items are all “doable”. i really want to do better this time.

so, 101 fresh things for the next 1001 days:

• Do the HSK intermediate
• Make a pinhole & take some photos with it
• Take calligraphy/handwriting lessons
• Draw a font
• Read 50 new books (half of which in portuguese)
• Write 750 words for a month
• Spend a week offline
• Reach my goal weight
• Be ok in snowboarding
• Write 20 letters
• Write/draw a small guide to Ljubljana/Slovenia
• Research about Slovenia/Balkans history
• Identify 10 different trees
• Taste 30 different fruits
• Taste 20 different cheeses
• Try a autocaravan holiday
• Visit a volcano
• Fly on a glider
• Learn how to scuba dive
• Visit a mail sorting facility
• Draw and get a tattoo
• Visit a theme park
• Volunteer
• Do a photobook of our time in Slovenia
• Try 25 different teas
• Do a medical checkup
• Go to the dentist
• Draw a comic strip
• Write 20 lists
• Find 150 geocaches
• Apply to the green card lottery november 2010
• Visit 20 Unesco sites: historic areas of istanbul, october 2010
• Fly a kite
• Visit 15 different museums
• Do 5 videos
• Go to 20 concerts
• Watch a sport event live
• Climb 10 Slovenian mountains: tromeja, ratitovec
• Hot air balloon ride
• Go rafting/canoeing
• Roadtrip in the EU: slovenia-austria-germany-netherlands, september 2010
• Be halfway through our house goal fund
• Move again
• Do 20 surprises: bday parcel
• Find out what I want to do related with stationery
• Sponsor an artist on Kickstart
• Make ice cream from scratch
• Buy some Christmas lights to decorate
• Do a secret art project in the city
• Go see an opera
• Go see a ballet
• Sell something on etsy and use the money to buy something there
• Go an entire month without eating out
• Go an entire month without using a car (not even friend’s cars)
• View all of Star Wars movies october 2010
• Donate five dollars to wikipedia for each goal failed
• Track the progress of every item on the blog
• Fill my recipes notebook with recipes
• Get a Fuji Instax and start documenting our life
• Feel a baby kick inside a friend’s belly
• Try to eat local for a week
• Start laser hair removal
• Take a cooking class
• Use all the yarn I have
• Design and print a postcard
• Write something for a newspaper
• Review 25 pieces of stationery
• Lose the jumping habit
• Try 20 different sodas
• Go karting
• Blog at least 3 times a week for 3 months
• Put 200 meals on Foodspotting
• Go see the sea organ in Zadar
• Make 5 surprise breakfasts
• Drastically reduce the amount of coffee I drink
• Ride a ferris wheel
• Carve a rubber stamp
• Try sledding
• Create an herb garden
• Redesign meiadeleite.com
• Host 10 people through Couchsurfing
• Write a letter to someone once a week for 10 weeks
• Learn to cook 10 new soups: mushroom soup
• Design a tshirt
• Fill a notebook with notes from books/articles
• Straighten up the SS details + get EU health card
• Get the surgery done
• Do NaNowriMo (for the blog) once
• Learn how to do sushi
• Fix hanzillion and plan half a year of posts
• Cook pad thai
• Organize a tea swap
• Track our calories for a month
• Pick a holiday and go overboard on the celebrations
• Make a cute bento box
• Shoot only in black and white for a month
• Ride a scooter
• Buy a Dr. Seuss book
• Try 10 different types of film
• Buy something on a flea market
• Try currywurst in Berlin

some of the things i’ve already completed while the list was still a draft, like watching the whole set of star wars movie (pfeeew!), but i’ve only started the official countdown a few days ago, so the new deadline is set for jul 30, 2013. wish me luck! :)

ps – if you’re thinking of doing one, head over to dayzeroproject.com for inspiration from other people’s lists!

these things are always tricky to visualise, for lack of reference points, but this map shows a very concrete term of comparison: slovenia. the whole of slovenia is engulfed in that stain (plus big chunks of italy, austria and croatia).

for us living here, and exploring this country, it surely puts things in perspective.

“I have to say, y’all, that what follows is possibly the most awesome crackfic of any of the series so far.”

cleolinda jones, of movies in 15 minutes, put together a wiki of her lj’s twilight related entries. the glossary and book recaps are unmissable and hilarious. “She’s just saying what we’re all thinking”, says the nerd world times blog, and it’s true.

“And they sexed happily ever after in their magic cottage while their half-vampire toddler slept in the next room, and it was the best series starting with a teenage girl in love with a mysterious boy in her class that ended up with a teenage girl defending her growth-accelerated mutant hybrid baby from an ancient clan of evil vampires with her magical psychic shield that I ever read, THE END.”

if you like twilight, or maybe you find the whole thing a little ridiculous, go read, it’s brilliant! :)

also on the subject, how cool is this collection of 500 coloring pencils?

and of course, impossibly expensive at $33/batch of 25 crayons/month. also, who would have the courage to actually use such a perfect collection? sigh.

Marketing (in all its forms) is unlike everything else an organization does, because it’s always different. There’s no manual because everyone does it differently, and what successful marketers have in common is that they are successful.

The only way your organization is going to make an impact is to market in the way only you can. Not by following some expert’s rules or following the herd, but by doing it in the way that works. For you. Don’t worry about someone else’s invented standards for new media, invent your own. Avoid obvious mistakes, don’t follow obvious successes.

Find your voice, don’t copy someone else’s.

Seth Godin, spot on as usual.

check the interview with the artist on wired magazine for some more insight on the project. a small preview:

Wired.com: You have previously published books of letters, for example one where you sent letters with odd ideas to authorities, like asking a Swedish municipality if it could host a North American Indian tribe. Why are you so fascinated by letters?
Ericson: Sending things is a fun way to communicate, and I love the seriousness in letters. I mean, you would never receive a lawsuit by e-mail. There is something about letters, especially nowadays when they are getting more and more rare, and we’re communicating in other ways instead.