Jess Columbo

"Where the inspirational figure is selected for us, and the gap between their life and ours is too..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:56:38 -0400

“

Where the inspirational figure is selected for us, and the gap between their life and ours is too great, the effect is not one of encouragement but of disillusionment - especially if their story is told in terms of personal qualities like bravery or persistence.

Knowing a famous person has the same impairment as you can be reassuring, but only in the vague way that hearing of a successful distant relative is reassuring.

Most of us will never scale Everest, compete for our country at sports or have a showbiz career. This doesn’t mean we’ve failed.

”

- For BBC’s Mental Health Awareness Week, Mark Brown questions the value of glorifying role models who share our own disabilities and pathologies.

A flipside of the same coin to consider is the perilous “tortured genius” myth of creativity, which implies that depression, addiction, and other mental health issues that plagued some successful creators were central to their genius. The human antidotes to this mythology are worthy role models.

(via explore-blog)

A few Friday tunes I love and hate to hear. One foot in front of...

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:11:12 -0400

A few Friday tunes I love and hate to hear. One foot in front of the other, Jessica.

Ben Howard, Only Love

Bahamas, Lost in the Light

Bernhoft, C’mon Talk

Wow, wow, wow. Archy Marshall, aka King Krule. He’s 19.

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:11:28 -0400

Wow, wow, wow. Archy Marshall, aka King Krule. He’s 19.

“Love her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:32:53 -0400

“Love her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces - and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper - love her, love her, love her!”

- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

via huffposttaste Now, listen to this.

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:47:13 -0400

via huffposttaste

Now, listen to this.

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they...

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:10:00 -0400

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”

- f. scott fitzgerald

For Fun: Lip Sync-Off with John Krasinski

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:46:34 -0400

For Fun: Lip Sync-Off with John Krasinski:

“But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find away to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think.”

“I heard it too. The sound of something important to you...

Sun, 05 May 2013 17:17:34 -0400

“I heard it too. The sound of something important to you disappearing.”

And I think we could be friends.

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:46:48 -0400

She caught my eye

And I think I caught hers

I know I did, I’m just afraid to say it

She smiled slightly

Which surprised me

I wasn’t expecting it this morning

Not with the sunshine

And the suburbanites

And the type of people

Here at this type of place

You know these people

Baristas and google employees and old, beautiful jews

She was somewhere in the middle of all of those

Jewish maybe,

Her hair was dark and curly.

Looked freshly washed

Works in tech almost certainly, at a startup maybe

She helps bloggers do SEO or SEM or

And we laugh about it at a very dark sushi bar

Every Wednesday night

Maybe she was a barista when she first arrived

You know, years ago – probably six – which means she is From Here now

Colorado is where her mother and father do well for themselves

They’ve made sure she does well for herself

But she’s made sure it feels like she’s done it

She tells me about the tough times when she first moved Out Here

And I am pleased at how my small fingers grip the bamboo chopsticks

There’s a very haggard, soiled man underneath a layer of rags and bags

He is yelling at me now

No, now he is yelling at Marshall

To - Get Over Here Now

And help him move his chair

It has two wheels and two what-once-were tennis balls

The girl bounces from the café

I am quite surprised she did not bring her own cup

Paper means she doesn’t know better

Paper is what her mother drinks from

But you are From Here, dear

And her hair bounces down her back and the summer dress she can never wear is bright and cotton

“I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a...

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:35:50 -0400

“I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown, eat interesting food, dig some interesting people, have an adventure, be careful. Come back and you’re going to see your country differently, you’re going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You’re going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It’s not what Tom Friedman writes about, I’m sorry. You’re going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking twelve miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can’t get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people — Americans and Europeans — come back and go, “Ohhhh.” And the lightbulb goes on.”

-Henry Rollins via TKOW

“You Should Date An Illiterate Girl” by Charles Warnke

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:40:29 -0400

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

”

On project management:

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:39:09 -0400

“The best project managers, including those people who do lead or manage things yet never use the PM title, somehow know instinctively that everything is a project. They know there needs to be a driving force of thinking, a constant source of social energy, a list or a table or a spreadsheet, that makes it easier for everyone to push their own small decisions forward, increasing the odds with every single effort that the results will be good.”

Kid Cudi - Young Lady (Feat Father John Misty) (Indicud)

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:15:28 -0400

Kid Cudi - Young Lady (Feat Father John Misty) (Indicud):

Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it. - The...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:57:41 -0400

Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

- The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses: Walter Benjamin’s Timeless Advice on Writing

"Maybe I don’t like people as much as the rest of the world seems to, but occasionally people will..."

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:47:42 -0400

“Maybe I don’t like people as much as the rest of the world seems to, but occasionally people will pleasantly surprise me and I’ll fall in love with them so go figure.”

- Things the Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett. (via thatkindofwoman)

A Comment on Social Sharing in Difficult Times

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:31:00 -0400

Or is it? Not to play “devil’s advocate” at a time when proverbial devils seem to be having their way with folks from Massachusetts to Texas. But I do wonder whether or not it so abhorrent to share normal life, normal things in times of communal sadness and grief?

As professionals who help consumer brands navigate the complicated social media space, we’re often called upon for counsel in times of crisis – both related to our clients and to those that affect the larger community. When the Boston Marathon tragedy struck a few days ago, our recommendation was to:

a) refrain from posting previously scheduled content if you hadn’t already, or

2) comment on the days events, simply and gently, if you felt so inclined.

As the week from hell has drudged on, piercing our collective consciousness with each new (kind of accurate) media tweet, I see a great deal of soapboxes related to the appropriateness of other folks’ content. Everything from “stop glorifying the shooter and give more attention to the victims” to “You shouldn’t be posting about your muffins at a time like this.”

But who are you to upturn the whole social sharing applecart? That is, my friends and fans have a choice as to whether or not they’d like to follow, fan or engage with me in the social space. Perhaps more importantly, as we all process and grieve the ongoing events of this week, it is quite presumptuous to assume that your moments of reverence are happening more often than or concurrent to mine.

I had a casual conversation this morning with a colleague, where we shared conflicting reports we’d found across the Internet. We exchanged our concerns for those involved, a collective groan as we came across new information, and I can say I felt sacredness in the conversation that influenced the content I began sharing across my social channels.

But down the street and across the country, perhaps you did just finish a pretty fantastic blueberry muffin recipe – and perhaps you’d like to share it. And perhaps your followers might really enjoy it; maybe they’ll make some this afternoon, when their neighbor comes over to share their sadness over lives lost. And perhaps those muffins will be quite comforting to these friends and quite disconcerting to the devils among us.

33 Unusual Tips To Being a Better Writer

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:46:13 -0400

Write whatever you want. Then take out the first paragraph and last paragraph. Here’s the funny thing about this rule. It’s sort of like knowing the future. You still can’t change it. In other words, even if you know this rule and write the article, the article will still be better if you take out the first paragraph and the last paragraph.

Coffee. I go through three cups at least before I even begin to write. No coffee, no creativity.

Bleed in the first line. We’re all human. A computer can win Jeopardybut can’t write a novel. If you want people to relate to you, then you have to be human. Penelope Trunk started a post a few weeks ago: “I smashed a lamp over my head. There was blood everywhere. And glass. And I took a picture.” That’s real bleeding. My wife recently put up a post where the first line was so painful she had to take it down. Too many people were crying.

Write with the same voice you talk in. You’ve spent your whole life learning how to communicate with that voice. Why change it when you communicate with text?

Read the rest here.

"The essayist, unlike the novelist, the poet, and the playwright, must be content in his self-imposed..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:40:05 -0400

“The essayist, unlike the novelist, the poet, and the playwright, must be content in his self-imposed role of second-class citizen. A writer who has his sights trained on the Nobel Prize or other earthly triumphs had best write a novel, a poem, or a play, and leave the essayist to ramble about, content with living a free life and enjoying the satisfactions of a somewhat undisciplined existence.”

- E. B. White (via explore-blog)

Photo

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:38:33 -0400

"If you are really a wit, remember that in conversation its true office consists more in finding it..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:36:06 -0400

“If you are really a wit, remember that in conversation its true office consists more in finding it in others, than showing off a great deal of it yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with himself is sure to be pleased with you.”

- The Art of Conversation, 1866. (via explore-blog)