Archive for July, 2009

Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor Day

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I am declar­ing today one of those non-​​holiday hol­i­day days.  You must all put this day in your cal­en­dar, and spread the word far and wide.

We all con­sume a tremen­dous amount of media these days, whether it be books, tv, mag­a­zines, or blogs.  But how often do we really express our grat­i­tude and appre­ci­a­tion to the cre­ators of these things?

I’ve long tried to make a point of writ­ing notes to writ­ers in my own field when I read a piece of work that I really enjoy.  I know how great it feels to receive such notes.  When you don’t make a lot of money in your cre­ative pur­suits, the appre­ci­a­tion from other human beings can really make it all worthwhile.

So, I declare today “Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor” Day.  Has some­one done a won­der­ful job with a story, or putting together an issue of a zine?  Tell them.  You’ll feel good, they will feel good, and a lit­tle more hap­pi­ness in these dark times can only be a good thing.

So how often should “Write a Complimentary Note to a Writer or Editor” day come about?  I’m think­ing weekly…  Hey, it’s not like Administrative Assistant Appreciation Day where you have to buy gifts.  This is just a few min­utes of your time to dig up an e-​​mail address and send a mes­sage to it.

The peo­ples of the inter­nets are so quick to say when we don’t like some­thing.  Let’s try to bal­ance that out a lit­tle bit.  Who’s with me?

Music for Renee:My aunt needs help

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Hi all.  This is another post in which I ask for money, but not on behalf of myself.   If such posts bother you, please go on about your busi­ness. I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I should post this, ask­ing you all to help a com­plete stranger. But ulti­mately, I decided that it would be let­ting down my fam­ily if I didn’t say some­thing about it.  So here goes.

I’m ask­ing on behalf of a fam­ily mem­ber, my Aunt Renee, who recently lost a leg due com­pli­ca­tions from dia­betes.  She and her hus­band both live very much on a fixed income , and are now fac­ing very dif­fi­cult expenses not for the hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, but for the equip­ment and home adap­ta­tion costs so that she can do very sim­ple things like make it from her car to her front door.  The fam­ily has approached many orga­ni­za­tions for aid with the costs, but none have any fund­ing due to the economy.

I’ve helped my fam­ily set up a web­site to sell $1.99 down­loads of a song my mother wrote and recorded along with mus­cians around the world.  The site also has a dona­tion but­ton you can use if you’d rather just give a cou­ple of bucks and aren’t inter­ested in the music.    We’re not ask­ing for hand-​​outs.  But whether or not you lis­ten to the song is up to you I guess.  We’re try­ing to offer some­thing in return.

Anyway.  I appre­ci­ate, and the fam­ily appre­ci­ates, any help you can pro­vide.  You’ll have my grat­i­tude especially.

Visit Music for Renee

The Evolutionary Basis for Creative Depression

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Last week, The Economist ran a really fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on recent research into the evo­lu­tion­ary ben­e­fits of depres­sion.  Why do we get depressed?  Why did such a trait come to be, and if it’s so detri­men­tal to our health, why hasn’t it been selected against in the population?

Dr Nesse’s hypoth­e­sis is that, as pain stops you doing dam­ag­ing phys­i­cal things, so low mood stops you doing dam­ag­ing men­tal ones—in par­tic­u­lar, pur­su­ing unreach­able goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mech­a­nism that iden­ti­fies cer­tain goals as unat­tain­able and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.

Unobtainable or unre­al­is­tic goals?   Like, say, beat­ing the odds and sell­ing a story to the New Yorker?  Or sell­ing a screen­play to Hollywood for 6 fig­ures?  Or how about win­ning a Hugo award before you turn 30?  Could this explain why an unusu­ally high num­ber of artists and cre­ative types suf­fer from depression?

Creativity is often all about unre­al­is­tic goals.  The prob­lem is, with­out them, we would not strive to achieve the things we do finally achieve.  Aim for the stars, shoot for the moon, as they say.  So, depres­sion is tied directly to our ambi­tion and stick-​​to-​​it-​​iveness?  From the article:

Dr Nesse believes that per­sis­tence is a rea­son for the excep­tional level of clin­i­cal depres­sion in America—the coun­try that has the high­est depres­sion rate in the world. “Persistence is part of the American way of life,” he says. “People here are often dri­ven to pur­sue overly ambi­tious goals, which then can lead to depres­sion.” He admits that this is still an unproven hypoth­e­sis, but it is one worth con­sid­er­ing. Depression may turn out to be an inevitable price of liv­ing in a dynamic society.

Depression, an inevitabil­ity of a dynamic soci­ety and a cre­ative lifestyle?  What do you think?  Is it pos­si­ble that those of us who suf­fer so much “cre­ative” anguish would be much hap­pier with our lives if we aimed lower?  But would that just be giv­ing up, and just as bad as being depressed?  Which is worse, a lack of ambi­tion or being depressed?