What are you enjoying?

On what we are all enjoying

By Debbie Millman: How to Think Like a Great Dachshund Designer

Many of you readers are kind enough to reply directly to me by email. This is wonderful. Don’t stop doing that.

However, you may like to know that you can also comment directly on the post.

Commenting on the post is a really lovely thing to do, not just for me, but for the rest of the community. A lot of the comments I get privately relate to feeling less alone because of a post. Commenting publicly may mean you find even more ‘not alone’ feelings, plus all kinds of wisdom that people are carrying around in their own living library selves.

(Of course, commenting also helps me on the Substack side - engagement algorithms and so forth - but more importantly and more interestingly, it helps to connect us all to each other.)

Also, I need your help, readers. I need more stuff for my brain, and I think I can find it in your brains.

Some context.

Here is Paula Scher, a great graphic designer, talking in an interview with Debbie Millman (in her book How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer) about how she works on graphic design briefs, only it sounds a lot like me, a coach and creative, talking about how I work on coaching briefs or creative projects:

“It’s a little difficult to say what I do first. I don’t do anything in any particular order. There’s a certain amount of intuitive thinking that goes into everything. It’s so hard to describe how things happen intuitively.

I can describe it as a computer and a slot machine. I have a pile of stuff in my brain, a pile of stuff from all the books I’ve read and all the movies I’ve seen. Every piece of artwork I’ve ever looked at. Every conversation that’s inspired me, every piece of street art I’ve seen along the way. Anything I’ve purchased, rejected, loved, hated. It’s all in there. It’s all on one side of the brain.

And on the other side of the brain is a specific brief that comes from my understanding of the project and says, okay, this solution is made up of A, B, C, and D. And if you pull the handle on the slot machine, they sort of run around in a circle, and what you hope is that those three cherries line up, and the cash comes out.”

This is a beautiful way to describe this form of creative process, relevant to any creative pursuit but also to the most creative pursuit of all: LIFE ITSELF.

[the readers oooh]

But you can see, readers, that the process needs to be fed, constantly. Books, art, stories, conversations, interactions, observations, all of it, all turning over constantly like a chaotic paper mill (or at least how I imagine paper mills look).

To that end, and for all our benefits, I want us to kick off commenting on posts by commenting on this post with a specific thing that you have enjoyed recently.

I have become a little samey in my intake, and I’d love to enjoy things I had not yet thought to enjoy. Plus I love people talking about stuff they enjoy.

I am thinking mostly here of art and media (a song, a book, a TV show, a podcast, a movie), but if you really enjoyed the clear view to the mountains this morning, I’ll take that too. Highbrow, lowbrow, not on the brow scale, I don’t mind. Let us simply dwell in the prospect of enjoyment, and peek over fences to see what everyone else is enjoying.

I’ll go first.

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May the food for your mind computer be good, and full of enjoyment.

May you feel not afraid of signing up to Substack in order to comment briefly.

May you pull the lever for your mind slot machine and get only cherries.

Till next time

Katie