Alex Jeffries

This is a collection of posts about what I'm learning, updates on projects I'm running, excerpts from what I'm reading, and other things of that nature. For more on me, head over here.

[defineyourgrind]

Define Your Grind

[alexmjeffries]

I’m working my way through Josh Kaufman’s Best Business Book list, and I enjoyed the Dale Carnegie classic How to Win Friends and Influence People.

[alexmjeffries]

“Although you have no control over the future, you have control over what you are creating right now, and if what you create is honest, it will be compelling.” - Ivan Brunetti

[austinkleon]

How to read more. Here are books I’ve written. Here are of books I like.

[alexmjeffries]

7. Listen - (it works for running and commuting)

[alexmjeffries]

People with great projects afoot habitually look further and more clearly into the future than people who are mired in day-to-day concerns. They do not easily grow sad or old; they are seldom intimidated by the alarms and confusions of the present because they have something greater of their own, some sense of their large and coherent motion in time, to compare the present with.

Robert Grudin, Time and the Art of Living

I'm trying to figure out how to look forward.

[alexmjeffries]

Many moons ago, I had a project called Fantastic Ballads. It was a good project, one I'll remember with fondness and good humor. The idea was based on the combination of rhyming, sprawling ballads  with great illustrations, which would culminate in sweet stories with a sneaky emotional uppercut.

Through it's been a few years since Fantastic Ballads disbanded, the idea for these stories has never fully left the battered orb I call my brain. It's bounced around, sometimes latching on to my Motivation Lobe for a few weeks at a time, resulting in a flurry of writings and ideas.  Then something will come along at knock the idea free of its grip (usually some 70 or 80-hour work week), and I would be left similarly floating , wanting this project to come to fruition but not having the gumption.

No longer, I say! The wishy-washy days of nambly pambly-ness  will lie forever in the past. I move forward with decisiveness and vigor in the name of Ordinary Poems, a weekly poem read aloud by a spectacular voice.

So a toast - to many moons from now, and always remembering things in fondness and good humor.

[alexmjeffries]

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt.

Our show's sixth month was its first without rudder, and as much as I said I wouldn't allow that lack of direction seep into my own body and work, it's proved difficult to separate myself from the crew and ship. I've kept myself from feeling the depths of bummer-dom under the guise of perspective. What started out as a defense mechanism has become more permanent, and what I recognize in myself of months and years past as a person of drive, volition and ambition is not as readily apparent now. I have become a person, a poor spirit, who neither enjoys much nor suffers much, because it's been easier to live that way.

It is time to move past that, even if it minds finding a different ship. Or my own.

[alexmjeffries]

14 weeks

What kinds of things can happen in 14 weeks? Projects could launch, podcasts could start, connections could be made, writing could be done. 

Many, many things can happen. Let's see what will.

[alexmjeffries]

This, I realize, is a giant slingshot. The attendant rebel, thickset with a fan-shaped beard and close-shaved mustache, introduces himself as Abu Zakaria. He hefts a grenade from one of the shopping bags that another rebel has carried up. “Angry Birds,” he says in English, laughing and jerking a thumb toward the slingshot.

"Makers of War" from WIRED.

[alexmjeffries]

Top 10 Albums of the First Half of 2013

1. Daughter - If You Leave

2. Kanye - Yeezus

3. CLASSIXX - Hanging Gardens

4. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City

5. Chance the Rapper - Acid Rap

6. The National - Trouble Will Find Me

7. Autre Ne Veut - Anxiety

8. Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer Different Park

9. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

10. Local Natives - Hummingbird

*based on an unscientific combination of how many times I played the album through and how likely it will stick in the musical rotation in the coming months.

Who did I miss? Who should I check out? WHO AM I SLEEPING ON?

[alexmjeffries]

“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”

John Muir

[alexmjeffries]

What we do with our lives is obviously central to who we are. What we expend our mental energy on, what we put our emotional resources into, where we deploy courage or daring or prudence or commitment: these are major parts of existence and are inevitably much connected with work and earning money. And we need these parts of existence in order to find proper application in activities that deserve our best efforts. We don’t want to reserve our central capacities for the margins and weekends of life.

John Armstrong, from Brain Pickings's "How to Worry Less About Money"

What a relevant quote as I am about to expend 98% of my mental energy over the next month on a television project. It remains to be seen if I will deploy any courage, daring, or prudence in that time period, or if this is the activity that deserves my best efforts (though, fear not, faithful reader, for I will apply them!).

[alexmjeffries]

This guy from a place in Haiti where 20,000 people live in tents on a landfill which means there's no beach and the garbage cliffs tower over the azure sea.

[alexmjeffries]

A frumpy couch oasis of genteel bohemia amid a cookie-cutter sea of caffeine commodification, the Fall welcomes the rootless.

Mark Jacobson's "The Laptop Nomads"

Mark Jacobson could be the Cesar Chavez of the Itinerant Lit Worker.

[alexmjeffries]

People I Spoke With This Year

A woman who lives in an 84 square foot house

A guy who lives in a bus

A woman who hasn't bought anything new since 2007

A mom who hasn't bought anything new in a year

A family who lives in a dam

Four friends who've been roommates for 18 years

A musician who wrote Judge Judy a love song

A recently retired NBA player

A woman with face blindness

A marathon runner who suffers from narcolepsy

A 78-year-old vegan bodybuilder

Two brothers who make YouTube musicals

A pick-up artist

A hiker who was lost in the woods for three days

A fake psychic

Several girls who suffer from Sleeping Beauty Syndrome

A man who lost 200 pounds

Two women with Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder

A woman with Foreign Accent Syndrome

A woman designing engineering toys for girls

A piemaker

The creator of a shrimp burger

An Obama impersonator

A kid who loves LEGOs

A New York Times bestselling author

Directors of a documentary

A female lumberjack aka a lumberjane

A woman who met all of her Facebook friends

A mom who lost 17 years of her memory

A boy pushing his wheelchair across the country

A mom whose family throws away no trash

The first man cured of Tourette's Syndrome

A girl going a year without shoes

A woman who went a year without using a mirror

A family of backup singers

The last remaining speakers of Boontling

And probably some others, too.

Talk shows are neat.

[alexmjeffries]

Kind of. I’ve been writing. I’ve wrote a lot when I was younger—like two years ago—but I haven’t been writing at all lately because of school and technology. I wrote an article last summer about how my addicton to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook has affected how much I write. It’s awful. I feel like the second I finish my homework, I go on my phone for like an hour and then I go to sleep. And I don’t have…I don’t make any time to write or do any of the things that I want to.

Maude Apatow, in her Rookie Magazine interview with Molly Ringwald.

Today was a day where teenage girls were better at articulating my issues than I have been lately.

[melodykramer]

1. Be Kind. If this is the one thing I manage to do, I’ve done enough. Kindness may seem like a personality trait, but I think of it more as a habitual spiritual practice. Being kind has taught me that simple, seemingly insignificant human interactions can be profound. It has opened people and their stories to me. And, perhaps most important to my work, being kind has taught me that I know far less than I think I do. Always. 2. Love What You Do. This is not a passive thing, or a happenstance of trying to do what you love. It is a proactive, daily decision to nurture and seek satisfaction in the work I am doing. I think of it like marriage: sometimes it’s easy and simple. Sometimes it’s a daily, grinding decision to love. And sometimes, when you can’t do it any more, the last act of love is walking away. 3. Keep Your Brain Spongy. This is the fun part. I’m a big believer in feeding curiosity, and offering my subconscious mind a cornucopia of ideas. I read history, literature, and ancient Chinese murder mysteries. I feed the birds, train my ear to identify distinct birdsong, and try to learn the differences between sparrow species (almost all are the same buffy, brown color). I study physics, the latest developments in the modeling of protein-folding, and the genetic underpinnings of personality. I dig big holes in the yard, play and talk with animals, and right now I’m thinking about buying a metal detector. I am never bored. 4. Do the Next, Most Interesting Thing. This is a corollary of keeping your brain spongy, but it requires a very loose hold on one’s life-plans. In fact, I do very little life-planning at all; for better or worse, no career path can hold my attention for very long. So when people ask me how I became an NPR correspondent at such a young age, (or for that matter, how I ended up with a bit part in a Mexican telenovela) my best answer is that I didn’t really mean to. I just did a long series of the next, most interesting things. It’s kind of an informed version of winging-it.

Andrea Seabrook’s personal rules are awesome. (via melodykramer)

Well well well. Would you look at number 4.

[alexmjeffries]

two weeks left

We finished the clip shows this morning. Our host ran through the script we'd written over the past week with a carefree precision. The few mistakes made were met with laughter as the guilty party offered up a confession and two dollars as a consolation, and the crew kept the momentum moving forward until this was done, and our team's two clip show requirement was fulfilled.

With only one show left next week, and then another week after that to wrap up the season, the feeling in the office has shifted. There are a few more empty desks, there are more people with answers to 'what are you doing next?', there are later starts and there are earlier departures. There are less things to do with only one major project left, after all.

In a few days I may find out my next project, or I may confirm a trip abroad. With either one there is uncertainty after June, so time off is almost guaranteed. Even in looking for work there's a frightening openness, a void, almost. And with that, a wonder of what will fill that space. Mornings spent refreshing job sites and sending resumes? Or mornings spent walking, running, riding? Seeing more. Thinking more, maybe? Being more choose-y, maybe. Of course, there are choose-y type decisions to make in the immediate future as well.

There are two weeks left of the job that was the most interesting choice I could make last June (and in some respects, the only solid one, which certainly helped). There are more choices to make now, and there's some time to make them. There are two weeks left, after all.