Jock Genius

Work like you don’t need the money.

 Love like you’ve never been hurt. 

Dance like nobody’s watching. 

Satchel Paige

IOW, do your work like you're not getting paid. Do the work you want to do. 


I’ve worked in the marketing and corporate communications space for a while now. I've had to write about all kinds of subject matter that, on the surface, wasn’t that interesting to me. But I used a technique I forged when I worked as a bartender in a restaurant that catered to a mostly dull and self-serving grayhead clientele: Find whatever’s in there, be it a person or a subject, that’s interesting to me. Make them/it interesting. Sometimes that means taking the subject/person places they wouldn’t go without your guidance. 

Work like you’re the audience. And find the things within it that are your loves and passions. 

And then dance about it like nobody’s watching because it isn’t for them—it’s for you: All you.

Trying the Previously Untried = Good

How to Do Great Things with Crap Self-Esteem

Master Love First

That dude from Queens of the Stone Age:

Conscious Uncoupling: I won't lie—It's painful

Søren Kierkegaard Gets Unvexed

I need the enchantment of creative work to help me forget life’s mean pettinesses. 

Only when I write do I feel well. Then I forget all of life’s vexations, all its sufferings, then I am wrapped in though and am happy. If I stop for a few days, right away I become ill, overwhelmed and troubled; my head feels heavy and burdened.

Go Hard for You

No one needs your art. 
Imagine if Harry Potter didn’t exist. Pottermania—or Twi-hards, Gleeks, Trekkies, whatever—would’ve just flowed somewhere else—like water. 

But you need your art. 
If you don’t need it, it’ll be the worst thing anyone has seen—even to you. You need to need it, hunger for it. 

What’re you passionate about? 
Turn that passion toward yourself. This is the formula for better work. Just make better work—only strive for better, not perfection.

As Dita Von Teese famously said: You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there's still going to be somebody who hates peaches.
Let them hate your peaches, but whatever you do, don’t hate your own peaches. Load them with passion and work them over and over. Make sure your fingerprints are all over them.

Start now. Or first thing tomorrow.