Writing, learning and earning better (Sunday Sesh 03/10/21)

Hello, welcome to another week of the Sunday Sesh, where I share tidbits of things I’ve found interesting over the past week. This week’s photo was taken right before an interview I filmed at an office. I used a single keylight on the right in this set up, with fill light and some background highlight coming through the window on the left (outside the frame). I’m very happy with the way it turned out: the lighting looked great and the various certificates, awards and memorabilia in the back made for a really interesting background.

 

🎵Music

Porter Robinson Nurture live set

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMc-4GsuXJc

Watching this set gave me all sorts of chills. So many layers of excitement, nostalgia and euphoria all wrapped into this 90-minute set. It’s Porter’s first time performing to a live audience for his new album, which was released earlier this year. It’s an album that has really hit home for me this year. In it, Porter explores the dissatisfaction and emptiness he found at the heights of his success, battling his inner demons and finding hope to keep going and create something beautiful. Safe to say that I’ve been extremely excited for this show.

On top of that, we’re still living in a time where it’s hard to imagine even going to a club, let alone a concert. And here’s a crowd of tens of thousands of people, screaming every lyric of every song in unison. Porter plays just the first note of a song and the crowd knows what song it is loses their minds. That’s what happened when that first note of “Sad Machine” was played. I could feel so much of the crowd’s energy and excitement just watching through a screen, I could only imagine what it would have been like there in real life.

 

🎧 Podcasts

“Seth Godin: Writing Every Day” from North Star Podcast

https://www.airr.io/episode/5f96c152b996283d3fecd119

Legendary internet writer Seth Godin sits down with another legendary internet writer, David Perell, to discuss the hows and whys of writing every single day. As well as other interesting topics like imposter syndrome and building an audience.

I like what David said about writing online being a beacon for other people on your intellectual wavelength to find you. Since it lets other people know what you’re interested in and gives the impression that you have some sort of authority over what you’re talking about.

In the same way sound isn’t music, traffic isn’t audience – Seth Godin

This quote was speaking about the clear distinction that needs to be made between having people that just see your work once versus people who are actively engaged with you and interested in what you have to say.

 

📚 Books

  • I finished reading Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins in Audible. I’m looking forward to going through the notes I made whilst listening to this. I really liked the audiobook/podcast format they did with this one, having a ‘live’ discussion after each chapter to delve deeper into Goggin’s mindset and drive home the points he wants to readers to take home. Let’s hope I can learn how even slightly “callous my mind” as David likes to say.

 

  • Also finished reading Ready Player Two. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as Ready Player One – it is always a difficult task for a sequel to live up to the original after all. But there were many more references to 80’s pop culture that just went straight over my head in this one. There’s a very interesting vision of tech utopia along with an underlying lesson about the importance of having money vs. meaning in life too in there. Both of which I enjoyed.

 

📃Articles

Writing Powerful Descriptions

https://litreactor.com/columns/writing-powerful-descriptions

As you might have ascertained if you’re reading my blog, that I’ve been trying to improve my writing this year. One of the ways I’d like to improve is to be better at describing things, places and people. I’m always in awe when I read a good book that really makes me feel like I’m somewhere else. Where the author has done a fantastic job of stimulating my imagination using just the right number of words.

Here are some tips I took from reading this article:

  • Appeal to the senses: sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch.
  • Be specific. Go over your writing and take out unnecessary words that don’t add anything to your description.
  • Place emphasis on the most important information in the sentence by putting it at the end of a sentence
  • Metaphors metaphors metaphors. Great descriptions are all about using these to build a bridge between your mind’s eye and the reader’s. As hard as it sounds, try not to use clichéd metaphors (e.g. gold sunset).
  • Don’t try and sound smart. Almost everyone does this as a writer. Trying to use big fancy words that don’t really add any vividness or value, thinking that we can prove ourselves as good writers just because we were smart enough to know that word.

 

The Internet Dream | Ramen Potential

https://ramenpotential.com/the-internet-dream?mc_cid=e32fddf891&mc_eid=7fc314536d

A nicely written and concise article about the dream afforded by working online and how to get there. Basically, what so many of us dream of is freedom: with your finances, time, location and with people. This is what’s on offer by the many opportunities on the internet.

The way to get there is to provide value to people: produce media like photos, writing, drawings, videos etc. Use these tools to provide either education or entertainment to people. Just remember that years ago, this sort of thing would be really hard to do at scale. It used to be hard to reach lots of people, unless you owned a distribution network or TV channel or something. Now, the only thing you need to do if you want to reach millions of people is hit that Publish button.

Another option is the code. Again this is something that is now more possible than ever. Especially since you can learn to do it from some of the best teachers for almost no cost. With the ever-growing internet, apps, SaaS platforms, crypto projects etc. the demand for coders is only going up.

Increase your chance of winning this game by showing up everyday. Although we’re talking about working under a new paradigm, the basic principle of consistent work and improvement still applies here.