Space-man/guitarist Chris Hatfield in his orbital creative process, courtesy of NASA
I’ve been thinking about the day-in, day-out process of creating stuff and trying to make it good. Not just a piece of work in particular, but the lifestyle of creating. What’s required?
Our family just completed month #3 of living without owning or leasing a car. We still use cars occasionally (via CityCarShare, standard rentals, Lyft, and Uber), but there’s no hunk of metal in our driveway that we own, maintain, or are otherwise responsible for.
It’s still going pretty well, but this was the month that the thrill of not owning wore off, some of the hassles became more evident.
At first I was enthusiastic about all the exercise I was getting, and I got significantly leaner during the first month with all the extra walking and biking. But then I started eating more — especially more desserts (I’d earned it, with all the exercise) — and I gained the weight back. Overall I’m still lean, but my hope that not owning a car would be an easy ticket to getting shredded proved overly optimistic.
Jackie at the old Loöq Records office on Brannan.
As I’m trying to launch a new career (fiction writing), I’m also taking stock of an old one (producing electronic music). I signed my first track in 1992, at the age of 23, to Mega-Tech records (an offshoot of the famous San Francisco disco label Megatone). I released my latest record, a reggae/breaks hybrid track, a week ago.
Breaking in wasn’t easy. I remember vividly sending out cassette tape demos in padded mailers to record labels in New York City and Los Angeles, following up via phone, and getting shot down by arrogant label runners (I’ve made a point to never be mean, running my own record label, even though our signing bar is very high).
Conor McGregor just threw a wrench in his own works (if you haven’t been following the drama, McGregor refused to show up for a press conference in Vegas, was cut from UFC 200, and subsequently tweeted his own retirement). He probably didn’t mean for things to grind to such a complete halt, but as he posted on Facebook, the demands of press and promotion were detracting from his training regimen.
Basically, he cracked. He couldn’t handle the pressure of simultaneously training and promoting, and he chose training. Unfortunately for him, the UFC demands both.
I don’t bring up the example to pick on McGregor. Everyone who pursues a dream will break at some point.
It’s too much. I can’t do it. I’m done.
Collage of mixed fruits and vegetables, MRI, by Wellcome Images.
Cancer. It’s one of the few diseases with a personality. The F*ck Cancer meme is much stronger than the F*ck Heart Disease meme, even though both kill a similar number of human beings. While both diseases can develop with no obvious warning signs, cancer is perceived as a sneakier, meaner disease.
Maybe that’s because cancer is mysterious. There are more than 200 different types, and risk factors and causes are multitudinous: genetics, chemical exposure, radiation exposure (including sunlight), age, certain viruses, smoking, alcohol abuse, lack of exercise … the list goes on.
But cancer isn’t a death sentence. As several of the older members of my family have experienced in the past few years, cancer can be successfully treated. Though my family members used both conventional treatments and lifestyle changes, sometimes cancer goes away with lifestyle changes alone.
About half of people in developed countries will be diagnosed with some kind of cancer in the course of their lives. 100% of middle-aged or older people will have small pockets of abnormal cell growth — microcancers — most of which will be either too slow-growing to ever cause a problem, or will be eliminated by the immune system. And if you get cancer and beat it, the only way you know for sure you are “cured” is when you die of something else.
Nobody is totally safe from cancer, but there are things we can do to improve our chances of not developing the disease in the first place. While genetic risk factors play a significant role, so do environmental (lifestyle) factors. The clinical research is there to prove it. We can prevent cancer (or at least improve our odds) in at least seven ways:
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