February 1st, 2011 / 10:43 pm
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?

36 Comments

  1. Seth Fischer

      What are you doing inside my head, Kyle?

  2. Roxane

      This sounds like much of the running conversation I have been having while working on my novel.

  3. Jimmy Chen

      sweet use of pixel dimensions

  4. Kyle Minor

      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.

  5. Winter News | Kyle Minor

      […] 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 […]

  6. Michael Filippone

      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.

  7. Morgan

      Or 9. You make a small thing.

  8. Morgan

      Or 9. You make a small thing.

  9. Truedat

      What’s the point?

  10. jhon Baker

      Te problem begins when you want to make something of size and not of value.

  11. Rion Amilcar Scott

      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.

  12. goner

      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.

  13. Duh

      That was covered by #7.

  14. Slowstudies

      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.

  15. Tracy

      Dammit. All of that.
      And now I feel like a total poseur.

  16. phmadore

      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.

  17. phmadore

      … running conversation WITH MYSELF …

  18. Ken Baumann

      It’s better.

  19. John Minichillo

      While writing about the thing that is big you ended up with a flash. A good one. Send it off.

  20. zusya

      what’s a thing

  21. Joseph Young

      i think this is a white stripes song.

  22. nba

      make a big thing that masquerades as something small.

  23. jesusangelgarcia

      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.)

  24. jesusangelgarcia

      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.)

  25. deadgod

      gott damn right

      internet = ‘big thing’ birth control

  26. deadgod

      whoa whoa wha-ho – not so fast!

  27. deadgod

      n. Whatever you do, you make a thing that resolves, for ‘then’, wanting what you want and intractable else.

  28. Daveyhoule

      Nailed it!!!

  29. Eli Artichoke
  30. Surrendertostrangeness

      i don’t like you john minichillo

  31. zusya

      smurf.

  32. John Minichillo

      StS,

      I have my very own PH Madore. You prop me up. You validate me.

  33. phmadore

      Loser.

  34. Tracy

      Validation is a thing.

  35. DK

      Me too. #3 is precisely what I’ve been doing, in fact.

  36. Anonymous

      #6