For all the fucked-up-ness that went into making me who I am today, and I suppose who I'll be tomorrow, sometimes I feel like I am the luckiest person alive.
There are five reasons for that.
1. I was born with a wide-field of vision. I see things that other people don't. Things in the sea I live by. Things in the books and magazines and newspapers and websites and social feeds and emails I read. Things I hear from friends and family.
This wide-field of vision gives me a bug's-eye-view of the world. Or in the vision of Adam Nicholson in his great book "Life Between the Tides," a fractal view of the world. Nicholson summarizes fractals in a way Bazooka Joe, even Mort could understand.
"Fractal theory suggests that the closer you look at something, the more it remains unknown."
Here's an example of looking close from a book review I read not twenty minutes ago. Jean Thie, an ecologist from Canada was studying how beavers transform ecosystems through their dams. On Google Earth, Thie discovered earth's largest beaver dam. It was more than half-a-mile wide with a 17-acre lake behind it. From the ground, the dam looked like nothing. From above its majesty became clear.
That's what my vision does for me.
2. I'm good at storing and categorizing things. So I can recall them and find them when I need them. This is how I've written more than 7000 blog posts, and can find analogies when working that allow me to explain things in a way other people often can't otherwise understand.
3. I am interested. There are people all over the world who say, 'that isn't interesting.' You hear it in advertising. You hear people say, 'I want a cool assignment.' I'm of the belief that finding the interesting, finding the cool is what we do. That's our job.
Once on IBM, I had to advertise a more powerful and faster computer chip. The brief said something about how many milliseconds faster an operation could be done. I found out that the milliseconds was the length of a human's 'blink of an eye.' All at once, we should show faster. Not just say faster.
Here are two diagrams I made, so as not to just say 'faster.' You can't do this if you aren't interested. I couldn't really give a shit about chips. But I do care about a) learning and b) explaining.
America's two-time Pulitzer and National Book Award-winner Robert Caro says, "turn every page." Doing so is where you find unique, interesting, weird, startling.
4. I spend money. When I hear or read about something interesting--especially a book, I am lucky-enough to have the money and the space so I can buy it, read it, absorb it, keep it, recall it.
In short, I am able to surround myself with words, images and ideas that excite me. That make me a better person, a better writer, a better ad agency.
5. I am a rule-breaker. I don't like doing what I'm told. So don't tell me to organize my books. They are organized. In my fashion. Rule-breaking also allows you irreverence. Word play. Humor. To do things others super-ego away.
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It's Juneteenth today and I am not working.
My wife is out of town and I have no pressing client deliverables.
Also, Sparks and I were out on the beach at 6:30 this morning. She's dog-tired and I'm old-man-tired.
But I thought I'd get a jump-start on next-week's posts. I'll write a few portraits of some of the books I surround myself with. Some of the books that might be why, for all my gloom, I sometimes think of myself as the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Here are some pictures of why I sometimes feel that way.
This week, tour my head. With me as your Virgil.
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