The saddest designer An Essay by Chia Amisola chias.blog I am tired of the premise that creation means productivity––especially in the laborious sense...Creation has become mangled with labor in a world that demands man to monetize all of their hobbies and pursuits. In return, it seems empty, almost sad, really––to be the designer spending weekends again on the screen. To tell you what I like to do in the weekends, I like to do the sad thing...The ‘good’ people tell you to detach your life from your workspace, but this summer, I think I’ve just realized how much I adore what I have the luxury of working on everyday. In the weekend, I make. I make not because it’s the only thing I have ever known, but because it’s the most certain way forward. To see the fulfillment of the workYour life adds up makingidentitywork
The web in decay is the web by design An Essay by Chia Amisola chias.blog When will there be a guide to best practices for archiving the web? Will the giants responsible for the platformization of the web make the act of digital archival any easier for us? Is it foolish for platforms like Snapchat or Instagram Stories to brand themselves as “temporary” when temporariness is impossible on our internet? Should the web exist as something organic, malleable, and destructible –– or as an eternal timekeeper? Is link rot more of a technological issue or a human one? Do humans want to know themselves forever? The Internet Is Rotting decaywww
In defense of disorder: on career, creativity, and professionalism An Essay by Chia Amisola chias.blog Professionalism is a lie, build what you love, explore everything. In today’s age of creation, anyone who attempts to tell you otherwise is lying. You’ll end up seeking what you traded for the rest of your life. Successful careers are not planned workcreativitybureaucracy
One brick She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana. “I sat in the hamburger stand across the street,” she said, “and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn’t stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don’t understand it.” Neither did he, but on long walks through the streets of town he thought about it and concluded she was evidently stopped with the same kind of blockage that had paralyzed him on his first day of teaching. She was blocked because she was trying to repeat, in her writing, things she had already heard, just as on the first day he had tried to repeat things he had already decided to say. She couldn’t think of anything to write about Bozeman because she couldn’t recall anything she had heard worth repeating. She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before. The narrowing down to one brick destroyed the blockage because it was so obvious she had to do some original and direct seeing. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance www.drury.edu Rationality: From AI to ZombiesI recommend eating chipsLooking Closely is EverythingThe Student, The Fish, and Agassiz writingconstraintsseeing