QUESTIONS
1. Would you value a coveted toy or a vacation with your family more?
2. What do you most admire about your parents?
ANSWERS By: Austin Smith
1. Variances in the values of either of those items is wide, I also don’t like vacations. That being said obviously the vacation.
2. The shear amount of things that they have managed to do in their lives.
Quite a few people still use notebooks, it seems. I use them more than most. Unfortunately, most people use them for school. Composition and spiral bound notebooks are the most common everywhere. For most of the people using them, the only distinction between their notebooks is the class they’re used for and maybe the amount of subjects or the color of the cover. I use my notebooks differently. For starters, they are of all different shapes and sizes. Colors and bindings, too. I do have preferences, but I also want to find new preferences.
I use my notebooks based on their type. By that I mean I have a different one for every task. I have one for stories (several actually), one for sketches, one for my “drawing every day” drawings, one for story notes, one for general notes and cartoons, and many others. I’m not sure how many people do this or something similar, but I find it handy to be able to grab a notebook and know exactly what is in it. This over-specialization has backfired and it resulted in me combining several notebooks into one, leaving a few books without a home.
Those instances are few and far between, though. In general I’ve found it good to specialize my notebooks. If I am doing a certain task I can take a small notebook that is suited for the task instead of a large one that covers everything. It also enables easy referral since I don’t have to constantly search the one and only notebook for something on a specific topic.
It doesn’t just come down to using different same-brand notebooks or even differently sized notebooks. I use completely different brands with completely different styles for my various books. I use Mead, Moleskine, Field Notes, Top Flight, Bienfang, Strathmore, Rhodia, Clairefontaine, and even military-grade Memorandum books. I use all different rulings from blank to dot grid, and I’ve even found a hex grid notebook.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, I just think it’s weird that I use notebooks like this. Is it? How do you use notebooks? Most of the people I know seem to use them in the way I described above, where they just have one that holds every thing. Or a large one and a pocket one. Either way, my giant bag of notebooks I take with me and cycle through my satchel will continue that way. And I will continue to write on paper notebooks. And I will love doing so. And I hope all of you writing on paper notebooks will love it as well.
QUESTIONS
1. Do you have an oily scalp?
2. What is one thing you could do to get along better with your friends?
3. have you ever seen a sunflower with the seeds still in it?
4. What are some things your family does together?
5. How tall is your father?
ANSWERS By: Austin Smith
1. Not really, my skin is very dry.
2. Not makes jokes about not caring about what they say.
3. No, I never have strangely enough.
4. Play games, eat, watch TV.
5. About 5′ 6″
Too much bluffing will make you show it,
Too much pressure will make you blow it.
-Guy Clark
By: Austin Smith
I love Blogging, and writing in general, and doing things. I’ve never turned and said to a person ” Man, you know what I hate. Doing stuff!”. But I’m also terrible at getting stuff done. I have so much to do and never end up doing it all. Like yesterday, I had three goals, and I got them all done… in the two hours before midnight.
That’s what I’m going to talk about, deadlines. People just do better with deadlines. And the ability to force yourself to meet a deadline is an awesome skill. Like right now, I’m forcing myself to get something done on friday before eight. Friday was my choice, eight was my friends’ choice. It’s not like I have to get anything done, but I want to. I could just not go out and do stuff, but then I would have no friends.* I could also just forget about it all together, but then I would let myself down.
Deadlines help us get things done, they give us a feeling of necessity. I have not seen one person do worse with a deadline then without. Sometimes I haven’t seen them do better, but that’s because they suck. And it doesn’t need to be a fast and hard deadline either. Some people work better under pressure and prefer that, but others crack. The deadline doesn’t have to be the end, though. I could stop now and still have “met” my deadline. It isn’t necessary to put all the pressure on, just some, just enough to make you get it done. Telling someone that they have to finish something or someone’s going to die doesn’t help, and I can guarantee you that if you told one of the novelist crowd to write a book in a week or the world would end they couldn’t do it.
A lot of people will say that you need time to create the masterpieces that your ideas were meant to be, and if you can write ” War and Peace” fine by me, but from my experience the best ideas come when you need an idea. Sometimes they are forced and bad, but sometimes you can overwork something to death, too. The deadline never has to be the end of something, just ask George Lucas. Everything you do will get the time you owe it.
* Not that I have any anyway.