I’ve begun reading 43 Folders pretty regularly and typically I agree with what is written there or at least find in it an interesting perspective. The article Attention & Ambiguity: The Non-Paradox of Creative Work struck a nerve of sorts with me.

In particular the following paragraph bothered me:

Most all makers with longevity talk about a process that involves regular, scheduled work periods that allow generous time for warmups and getting into what Csikszentmihalyi himself has called, “Flow.” For as long as he or she can stay in that Flow state, a good artist is capable of synthesizing unbelievably disparate material and ideas in a way that’s often satisfying and productive. For those who cannot, it means another morning of video games, Facebook, and binge eating.

The reason it tugged on my reply strings is pretty basic, it seems to attribute the state of “Flow” solely to artists. I realize this is not the most significant part of the article, in fact it seems almost like an aside but reading those sentences colored the rest of the article for me. I focused on this so much because I disagree with it, it is not simply artists who get into a “Flow” but I would say any individual who is focused on creating or producing something tends to get into a “Flow”. When I’m talking about “Flow” I’m thinking of a specific mental state which I can most easily describe as focused on a task or action with something akin to tunnel vision. Given a definition such as this arguments could certainly be made for expanding it’s applicability far beyond an association with people creating things.

Other than the above bit though I generally agree with what Mr. Mann is saying. Talent and brilliance does not occur in a vacuum. Producing great works requires a number of things including attention, refinement, and criticisms.

On my way home this evening I found myself asking a significant but oft overlooked question. The question is this; “Do I want to be happy or will I be satisfied with being content?” The reason I think this question is often overlooked is because most people associate the two things together. Most folks, in my wealth of experience satisfy themselves with one and assume it fulfills the other. This is to say most people affiliate being content with their existence equates to their being happy with their lives.

In light of this evening’s rather odd revelations I have to kindly disagree. As I was walking home this evening this question struck me in a rather odd fashion. I walked past a clearly comfortable home and saw an animal, presumably a black collie, laying quite contentedly on the hardwood floor sleeping. At the time I thought to myself “I wish I were as content as thought pup.” However, soon after I realized I didn’t actually wish I was as happy as that pup. In fact I am as happy as that pup. I lead a relatively healthy life, sleep in a warm comfortable place with familiar and non-threatening surroundings. Call me cynical all you want but this is how I qualify contentment. My internal statement about the contentment of that pup made me ask myself if I was content, and when I decided I was I asked myself if I was happy. When I decided I wasn’t happy I asked myself well what the hell is the difference.

At this point I have no answer because to be honest I have found myself quite happy any number of times within the bounds of my current circumstances. However on looking back I realize the happiness was merely fleeting during my times of contentment. I was happy while I was dating certain people because they brought me joy. I was happy while I was working on certain projects because they brought me joy. No matter though, during every case I found my happiness and joy to be fleeting.

This of course brought me to the academic question: what would make me truly happy with my life and existence. Asking myself this question made me realize that during each period of happiness there was something sustaining the rest of my being. This leads me to believe that if I combine the experiences I can find what would bring me real and lasting happiness rather than simple periodic contentment.

• Interesting and hence challenging work
• Honest and lasting friendships
• Challenging and complementary female companionship
• Fulfilling though perhaps standard sex life

Each of these things have in turn brought me a great amount of joy but rarely have I had more than two occurring simultaneously. Presumably I would need all four of these things to be truly happy though I can honestly say I don’t expect I’ll ever know for sure. Perhaps that is a commentary on how I expect my life to play out but I take no shame in it. I don’t expect many people ever achieve real true happiness.

I was spending some time carousing about the internets today and eventually encountered a somewhat profound question. I’m not totally sure how I ended up where I did (I don’t recall googling call girls or hookers at any point today) but my meanderings through the interweb eventually landed me on College Call Girl’s website and for reasons I don’t fully understand I was completely engrossed by her writings for hours, quite literally. Eventually while reading through the archives I found a post regarding online dating. This particular post references a site which is truly fascinating to me: Crazy Blind Date. Basically you sign up and it tries to set you up on a blind date in a potentially short period of time.

I’m kind of in a weird place right now and the mood struck me to sign up and give it a shot. I could after all use a little more adventure in my life and I’m certainly not ‘attached’ at the moment so I figured “What the heck” (no dates for tonight we’ll see how things pan out). The people running Crazy Blind Date (CBD) also run a dating site called OkCupid which, it seems, allows users to ask questions of potential matches and then uses the answers to create chemistry between people (I’m not totally sure on this I’m just guessing). Regardless of how it actually works on OkCupid they have taken the questions generated on OkCupid and put them on CBD and I started answering them once I had my profile initially created. Most are pretty standard fare and then I ran across this gem:

If you had to choose ONLY one, would you rather…

• Have great sex
• Have great friends
• Have great love
• Have great ideas

.. and I was completely taken aback. I immediately started to check off friends and be on with it and then I realized / remembered how much gratification and personal satisfaction I get from thinking about a problem, having a great idea, and coming up with a solution. Needless to say I was now stuck between friends and ideas. Then I started thinking about what great love would mean. I know some couples in real life who are incredibly happy and seem quite capable of subsisting on their feelings for one another without a real need or longing for the companionship of others. So now I’m thinking harder about it, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced great love. At this point it starts to really eat at me, what is great love? Is great love what those super happy couples in sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother (Marshall and Lily) or is sitcom / television / movie love truly so far idealized it is never really attainable?

I ended up, as you can tell, way over-thinking this particular entreaty into my psyche and as a result I ended up not being able to answer and had to skip it. I do believe it is an important question and the answer tells you more about who people are than a number of other questions more easily answered.