2014!

2014 already?

A very happy new year to all of you! 

The thought for the day comes from Neil Gaiman, whose new year's wishes are inspiring, energizing and liberating. A teeny snip:

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. 

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.  You're doing things you've never done before...

So that's my wish—for you, for all of us and for myself:

Make New Mistakes

Make glorious, amazing mistakes.

Make mistakes nobody's ever made before.

Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect...

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, DO IT.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever...

Farewell, Steve Jobs

"..the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.  You've got to find what you love.  And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.  Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.


And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.


If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.  As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.  And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.  So keep looking until you find it.  Don't settle."

From the very inspiring commencement speech, Stanford, 2005.  
Full text here... and don't miss the video:

Goodbye —and thanks for everything.

PS. My first computer was an SE-30 (circa 1989) very much like the one in his lap. A pang of nostalgia!!


PPS. More here:
         From WIRED

Eyes on the prize

Things have been so busy these days! A lot of plans in the works right now and who knows what will happen?  Certainly not me.  I usually manage to get from point A to point B eventually.  But sometimes it's via points Q and N and even Y.  Or, as I like to call it, The Scenic Route™.

Speaking of which, here are a few little detours — very scenic, I promise you! — you can take today:

The Bologna Book Fair (which takes place a few short weeks from now) has announced the winners of this year's Ragazzi Awards.  The winning children's books are divided into the categories of  Fiction, Non-Fiction, New Horizons (for entries from countries further afield), and Opera Prima (for artists' first works — talk about hitting it out of the ball park the first time around!). Félicitations, everyone!

Mouse's Houses.  Just because. (More here, if you must).

Les Fables, at the Galerie Camera Obscura in Paris:  photos (dark and evocative) on the theme of fairy tales and fables, and the thin barrier between that world and ours. Includes images by the wonderful Sarah Moon! Thanks to lovely Hazel for passing along the invite...

And finally, today's thought for the day comes from Randall Munroe:

"Take wrong turns.  Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out... There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan.  To find them, look for tiny interesting choices.  And remember that you are always making up the future as you go."

See you at point B!

On the rue des Écoles

And speaking of Michel de Montaigne...

This statue of him is near where I live, and the inscription below it reads:

"Paris a mon coeur des mon enfance.    

Je ne suis français que par cette grande cité —  

grande surtout et incomparable en varieté,  

la gloire de France et l'un des plus nobles ornaments du monde."*

This quote has always resonated with me — like Paris was saying a welcome to newcomers like myself! I have been living here for 18 years (already!) and it still makes me smile every time, to bump into this man, these words...

*(in English)

P.S. Montaigne, the first blogger

The cure for melancholy

"If you are idle, be not solitary;

if you are solitary, be not idle."

Samuel Johnson said that, suggesting that it was a cure for melancholy.

He was such a prolific writer of letters and essays and bons mots that some think of him as the very first blogger ever! But of course, this distinction could just as easily go to other writers — to the likes of Michel de Montaigne, Samuel Pepys, writers of Japanese "Pillow Books", and (my personal favourite) E.B. White... especially his letters.

How about you? Do you have a favourite proto-blogger?