Random
Which Problem is the More Vexing Problem?
1. You want to make a thing, but the thing you want to make is too big, so you spend your time thinking about how big it is instead of making it big.
2. You want to make a thing, but the thing you want to make is too big, so you spend your time trying to make it big instead of attending to the smallnesses from which big rises.
3. You want to make a thing, but the thing you want to make is too big, so you spend your time reading other big things searching for pathways to bigness instead of working on your big thing.
4. You want to make a thing, but the thing you want to make is too big for your ability as a maker to accommodate, and instead of working to expand your ability as a maker, you work to expand a thing that is growing ever physically bigger, but which will never be anything that is worth anything to anyone except you.
5. You want to make a thing, but the thing you want to make is too big for other people to understand, yet you keep consulting them in the hope of convincing them that its bigness is worthy, and you don’t get around to the act of making the big thing because those you hope will approve the big thing haven’t yet and won’t ever get around to endorsing the big thing until the big thing is already made and they can pass judgment upon it as a big thing instead of as the idea of a big thing.
6. You think you want to make a big thing, but what you really want is to have made a big thing, so you don’t make the big thing, and you’re miserable because you haven’t made the big thing.
7. You think you want to make a big thing, but what you really want is to have made a big thing, so you make a thing you think is big, but since all you’ve been doing is thinking about its bigness, you’ve not attended to the many small things from which big things are made, so the thing you’ve made which you’ve hoped would bring you the things the making of a big thing brings doesn’t bring you any of the things the making of a big thing brings, and you must consider the possibility that the thing you’ve made which you think is a big thing isn’t a big thing at all, but rather it is a not-big thing which is masquerading as a big thing.
8. You think you want to make a big thing, but what you really want is to have made a big thing, so you make a thing you think might be big, but since all you’ve been doing is thinking about its bigness, you’ve not attended to the many small things from which big things are made, and now the thing you’ve made which you’d hoped would bring you the things a big thing can bring is actually a thing which is bringing you the things a big thing can bring, because the thing you’ve made is physically and otherwise superficially big, and everyone looks at it and says Look at that big thing!, and although everyone is looking at the thing you have made and calling it a big thing, and even though you are enjoying the things which the making of a big thing can bring the maker of a big thing, the making of the thing which everyone is calling the big thing has brought you an insight into big things and the distinction between things that are made to be big things and things which actually are big things, so you look at the thing you have made which everyone is calling the big thing, and you decide that the thing is a thing but it is not a big thing, and although you don’t tell any of the people who are bringing you the things a big thing brings that your ostensibly big thing is not a big thing, you know that it is not a big thing that you have made but rather just a thing you made while thinking about the big things big things bring, and what do you do now?
What are you doing inside my head, Kyle?
This sounds like much of the running conversation I have been having while working on my novel.
sweet use of pixel dimensions
I’m trying to channel my inner Chen, but I won’t be able to do it properly until I learn to make my own images.
[…] been playing in a new sandbox called HTMLGiant. Here are a few blogs I’ve blogged there: Which Problem Is the More Vexing Problem? A Conversation with Deb Olin Unferth Deb Olin Unferth and the Double-I Seminar in Sentence-Making […]
This is what it is to want to make big things. At any moment I am one of these, as are most makers of things.
Or 9. You make a small thing.
Or 9. You make a small thing.
What’s the point?
Te problem begins when you want to make something of size and not of value.
Number 3 is not a bad place to be at.
I might be at Number 7. Not sure.
I have a mental block against reading Number 8.
What if you make a big thing and you desperately want it to be a Big Thing and when you were making the big thing you were secretly certain that when it came out everyone would think it was a Big Thing and you would be accepted and revered as someone who made a Big Thing, which makes you Important, but when it comes out no one sees it the way you hoped they would see it and they don’t really think it’s a Big Thing but really just a thing that you unfortunately made big.
That would be a whole other thing.
That was covered by #7.
Hope (the non-kitsch variety) in these straits might resemble: Delve far enough into any given small thing, and you’ll find it’s infinitely larger than anything perceptible as or from the vantage of bigness.
Dammit. All of that.
And now I feel like a total poseur.
You waste years of your life making the big thing and it implodes on itself when the whole “build it and they will come” thing doesn’t happen. Its wreckage is a museum and you are forever changed by this.
… running conversation WITH MYSELF …
It’s better.
While writing about the thing that is big you ended up with a flash. A good one. Send it off.
what’s a thing
i think this is a white stripes song.
make a big thing that masquerades as something small.
You want to make a thing, and as you begin to make it, you see the bigness of the thing, so you make it bigger and bigger — and bigger — battling the tech gods along the way, until it’s time to unveil your big thing, and you find you were able to achieve bigness way beyond its original thingness, and you do so just under deadline. (It’s good to dream big.)
You want to make a thing, and as you begin to make it, you see the bigness of the thing, so you make it bigger and bigger — and bigger — battling the tech gods along the way, until it’s time to unveil your big thing, and you find you were able to achieve bigness way beyond its original thingness, and you do so just under deadline. (It’s good to dream big.)
gott damn right
internet = ‘big thing’ birth control
whoa whoa wha-ho – not so fast!
n. Whatever you do, you make a thing that resolves, for ‘then’, wanting what you want and intractable else.
Nailed it!!!
Reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OqveSybH0A
i don’t like you john minichillo
smurf.
StS,
I have my very own PH Madore. You prop me up. You validate me.
Loser.
Validation is a thing.
Me too. #3 is precisely what I’ve been doing, in fact.
#6