There seems to be this implicit direct relation of a relationship’s quality and the closeness of the people involved, where the latter is measured through properties like the total amount of one-to-one interaction between people, the degree to which people are genetically related, or the actual amount of physical closeness (i.e. proximity) the people involved share. I’m starting to think this assumption isn’t as true as I once thought. For example, one of my favorite sets of musicians is Edwar

In hindsight, I still haven’t found the proper way for how to express this idea just yet, but you got to start somewhere… Competition and Self Reflection When you’re submersed in a population you’re familiar with, it’s easy to recognize so called “mistakes” other people make because it’s easy to see yourself in other people. What I’m learning is that when the opposite occurs – in other words, when you’re submersed in a population that completely clashes with your sense of normalcy – it’s reall

Slight backstory: since the music festival I went to in early June, I haven’t been drinking, making me sober for about a month and two weeks since the writing of this post. Since then, the decision has been both highly difficult to stick to and increasingly interesting to contemplate, especially as I make it further than I ever thought I would. By the time I got to Thailand, multiplied by all the other self-reflection I was doing, drinking became the topic of choice for a car ride brain-dump, wh

Everything Is Linked To Everything. That’s karma and I believe in it, but that doesn’t mean that every action has a significant correlation to every other subsequent action. Wishing something might happen and actually having that something happen may in fact have some (whatever little) correlation, but that doesn’t mean - all other conditions the same - if you didn’t wish for it to happen, that result wouldn’t occur anyway. There could be a much more correlated action tied to that reaction, and

Intro So while in Thailand, I did a lot of self-reflection; went through a lot of experiences that tested my endurance, both physically and mentally; and also spent a lot of time traveling in the car. Combined, these things lead to a lot of brain-dumps which – thanks to my Uncle Frank for his graduation-gifted iPad – I was able to write down. I think they might interest some people, plus I’d like to refine their grammar and structure, as well store the ideas somewhere more persistent than the i

Let’s say, hypothetically, a person becomes enlightened to the true nature of the universe and such an understanding frees said person from all forms suffering. This person is no longer blindly conditioned to respond to craving or aversion, and they have a comprehensive knowledge of human experience at it’s lowest level. They understand pure balance, live life in consistent peace, and see beauty everywhere they go. Fantastic. This is the type of enlightenment that I’ve heard wise people lecture

Being a brand designer and a marketer I have somewhat of a cynical and skeptical perspective on the validity of how large organizations are personified, both through their own efforts and the media – the U.S. government, definitely being on that list. It’s not so much that I think there’s always an intentional disconnect made between reality and how these organizations present themselves, but when a system becomes large enough, trying to pin it down with simple definitions or elegant equations j

I recently went through some of my old work and reread a piece I wrote on my past influences in graphic design. The piece in its entirety was slightly arbitrary, having needed to meet certain requirements put forth by a professor, but the introduction I wrote for it seemed more modular than the entire piece and might be of interest to some other people. I also wanted to have it somewhere public where I could reference it in other work. It’s reproduced below: Design is an elusive activity to def

So there have been countless observations made about the failures of the current school system. Whether it be grading brackets crippling student motivation, homogonized material simultaneously boring and intimidating kids, or structured curriculum snuffing out creativity, the problemhas been articulated over and over again. What hasn’t been talked about so much is the solution, and today I believe I’ve found it; not thought of it myself, but literally found it: The idea, for those who didn’t