Some Advice: This was originally a PDF, now its a blog post! Written November 14, 2018.
There is a fine art in living. Living well is a mystery to most. Few have what it takes to find the secrets of life and still live a happy life. You will find that in use, the quality of life improves. It’s not enough to keep life hidden in a chest that you never take it out and only try it on during special events.
If you live that way, you will find the quality of your life deteriorate to the point that it’s not worthy of living. Like anything with life, you get better the more you use it. This is especially true of creative living.
Creative Living
If you are creative and living in a vacuum, then you will find that the creativity feels worthless and useless unless you have someone else to share the experience with. It’s not just about being told that your doing great work which at best isn’t very satisfying. It’s the shared experience that others have around your work that makes it worthy of your time.
So how do you balance your creative life with a healthy lifestyle? There is a right balance between time spent alone in doing and creating work and the time that is required to be a living breathing person that isn’t living like a zombie.
When it’s not enough that you just exist, life in a vacuum is a living hell. Only when you start living life based upon principals can you find real happiness. Life in a vacuum is worthless. You have to be able to make an impact and make a lasting impression.
Today’s World
Unfortunately today’s world isn’t made for people like me. They want mindless sheep that don’t think. To exist in today’s world you have to be able to live and learn. Learn early from my mistake. Don’t wait until you are forty to figure out what I’m talking about. If you are going to be successful, you will have to have people’s support from the start. Make your groups early. Find those that you can be of use for, and do what you can to help them; just make sure that the road is a two way street.
If you build a two way street then the traffic will flow down both sides in an orderly fashion. Then get enough people to actually use your street and then you have a working model. From there you can build almost anything that needs done and have some level of success. It’s best when there is good in all that you plan to build. It’s not about getting rich anymore, it’s about the value you have as a citizen in society. What value you can add to society as a whole, that makes everyone’s lives better. Do that!
What More Can You Want?
Creativity and intelligence alone are not enough to sustain a living life. There has to be interaction, companions, and people that are your equals in life to sustain reasonable success. If you measure your success on the benefits that society as a whole can benefit from then you are measuring the right stuff.
Intelligence alone isn’t enough. You can not sit in a vacuum and be happy long term. In some short term solutions some isolation can be good, it gives you time to think, to learn, to grow, to figure it out. However once you reach that point and you are no longer struggling to understand the meaning of life, you have to grow your social circles.
If you reach that point and can not function as a being, then you have a problem. It’s important to care for your mental health while being as productive as F**k, this requires careful balance in life and not being addicted to things that prevent you from making good use of your time. You will find it surprising how much you can accomplish with the right frame of mind.
To achieve this frame of mind, requires that you put the work in. At the very minimum, you should have written a million words to reach your first goal. In addition spending an hour doing nothing but meditation each day is only a starting point. Maybe you should spend two hours a day in meditation?
Advice
Things that grow your person:
• Reading, Writing, Speaking
• Having in depth conversations
• Talking about other’s work in a positive way
• Having physical Activities
• Pushing your limits
• Keeping Your Original Mind
• Listen to music
• Meditate daily
Things that waste your time:
• Watching TV
• Drinking and partying
• Mindless entertainment
• Idle conversations
• Complaining
• Being mean to others