“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” –Samuel Beckett
Happy New Year!
This week, we wrote about overcoming our waves of emotion and letting go of closed doors. There’s a story on “It’s Only Fear,” a song by Alexi Murdoch, and we’re excited about relaunching The Imperfectionist Book Club in 2018. We’ll be reading The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin, The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, or Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer. If you hurry, you can pick your favorite on Twitter before the poll closes.
We’d love to hear from you with thoughts, suggestions, or just to say hello. Email or tweet to us!
Some things we thought were worth sharing this week:
- Lessons from Austin Kleon’s two-year old son on the value of perseverance.
- The most rejected books of all time. Some of them will surprise you.
- Favorite podcast this week: Tyler Cowen’s interview on Hurry Slowly. We listen to almost every episode of Conversations with Tyler, and it was just as insightful and interesting to hear him from the other side of the mic. We’ve long wanted to read his book, The Complacent Class, and it just moved up to next on the list.
- There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people as illustrated by Zen Pencils.
- Favorite comic this week:
- We’ve thought a lot about New Year’s resolutions this month, and whether we want to make one. Most resolutions fail. They fail because we set goals that are unrealistic, and they fail because we attempt to try to change our habits overnight. It’s easy to give up when we don’t meet our overly ambitious goals. Instead, commit to something tiny and seemingly insignificant. Over time, the small can become something bigger. Habits aren’t built overnight, and they’re not only built in January.
- Or consider an anti-resolution.
- Please read this story about Anthony Carbajal, a photographer with ALS. He’s not letting his disease steal his art, and it’s a beautiful thing.
- We really really love Josh Radnor’s Museletter…It’s insightful and wise with lots of great recs.
- Our favorite byte this week. Every day, we post a byte on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or you can check out our searchable collection of quotes.
