Are you like me, do you put a metric ton of pressure on yourself? In the light of our Social Networking World, my hunch is that young Americans are finding it harder and harder to live up to expectations and the achievements of the "best" of us. It's no longer surprising to see someone discovered on YouTube launch into super-stardom before their voice changes. Millionaires are getting younger and younger. Or if you have just a bit of talent and a clean face, you can audition for a sleuth of instant reality shows. Our new, radical world leaves the door open for possibilities, and you're doing what? It's a rough reality to handle.

If you allow it.

Freezing perfection is not possible. If not today, there will always be someone superior to you and it shouldn't be a hard thought to swallow. As a matter of fact, and it is a fact, it is just as universal a truth as the inevitability of death. And when we look at the most successful among us, hard bodies, mountains of cash, shining résumés, brilliant minds, and gorgeous significant others, we often tend to see the framed photo. Like rapper B.O.B. says in the track Where Are You:

"People only see it the way it appears, but they never see the ropes and the pulleys and the gears."

Whether you're an "artist" or not, the best of us is defined by time and effort, trial and error. Some of us may have been born with some bit of luck, but no one is born successful. We make decisions and we take risks. And to inspire and help everyone around us, we show our work.

read, reading, will read.

Austin Kleon, author of Newspaper Blackout and Steal Like an Artist, is working on a new book with that very idea in mind, Show Your Work. Analyzing the advice he gave in his old work, the process and success of his writing endeavors, and brand-new fatherhood, Kleon opened a Creative Mornings event in Austin, Texas with proof that art is not always romantic and glittery and clean. In Steal Like An Artist, Kleon's original advice was Do Good Work and Share It With Others. After questions continued to roll in, Kleon realized there was a need for more definition. "Good Work" is the foot that's out to trip you. Looking up to idols of creative masterpieces, we naturally measure our work against them. (Ira Glass caught this too.) The irony here is Kleon's success began with a writing exercise he thought was stupid (his words), blacking out newspaper articles' words to make poems of the few remaining visible on the page. He was discovered by another blog and then myself and now the rest is history.

Doing anything in this lifetime, we want to give our best. No one sets out to be half-assed or stupid or disappointing. We handcuff ourselves to perfection and fail to let go enough to share our work - the whole dirty, ugly, tough progress - with the world.

I'm no stranger to the artistic ideal. Aside from Explode into Space, I have notebooks filled with half-realized ideas and unpublished blog entries. And while they don't see the light of day for, what I call, their imperfections, they become failed chances to connect. I often toy with this vision of dying young, and having those closest to me cherish everything I've left behind in my journals, blogs, and scratch pads. There is no skeleton in my closet, mind you, it's way more ridiculous. I'm feeling sorry for myself. It is a grandiose and moronic idea to think you need a prescription of death for someone to take you seriously, when there would no longer be a "you" around to enjoy it.

notes and notebooks (yes, that's Black Sabbath)

My former boss for Rutgers Television and, since then, an even better friend, Brent, sent me a quote from the Mason Gross School of the Arts Tumblr page that has captured my driving force as of late:

"No one is ever going to ask you to do the thing you really want to do. This will never happen. So just think about what you’d like to do, and then just start doing it." — Laurie Anderson

Hoping for Death or American Idol to knock on your door and discover you will never get you as far as sharing your true self with the world. When you're able to start seeing it this way, every day is another chance. If it means you have to reveal the weakest spots of your armor, so be it. Perfection is for no one, strive for process.

Until next time...
I explode into space.

-dan

Dear Readers,

Motion City Soundtrack sang best into my high-school ears with their song "The Future Freaks Me Out".

There is a compelling train of thought that every second we crawl closer toward it, the future is in our decisions. The advice of any personal development coach would be to believe it and you can become it. Hell, the idea of visualizing the future is the reason we have all this amazing stuff around us. But there is a sliver of this belief that becomes a bit too controlling, too convenient and too freaky. There is no guarantee that any single human can predict the future. Not one psychic, not one dreamer.

It can be a bit hard to swallow. We conveniently forget that no matter our goals or whenever or not they're achieved, the future will arrive in its own style. British writer Stephen Fry challenged me with a video entitled What I Wish I'd Known When I Was 18 when he said, "The worst thing you can ever do in life is set yourself goals." The idea behind this is either you melt into failure for an untold number of reasons or you achieve goals without satisfaction or reflection, marching onto the next.

The danger is looking to the future for an end. Even if you conquered the world, you would still need to keep it. And then conquer breakfast.

I'm currently halfway through Tony Robbins' 30-Day Personal Power II CD set (whew, what a title!). Goal-setting has become a much more potential reality if only because it is transforming who I am daily. While I'm currently all about the Brooklyn apartment with a balcony, Honda cruiser motorcycle, and a debt-free blogging career, it is much more about the personal transformation I need to acquire these goals. How do I know I want all that in the future? I don't. And you don't know either. For all we can guess, we may not want the trophy at the end of the race, but we can always say we ran it.

It's the kind of present thought that had me smiling and without regret after getting a knee planted on my neck during my last jiu-jitsu tournament. (After the tournament, I was smiling, not during the chokehold. I'm not that masochistic.) If anything, it sculpted my ambition, my body, and my identity even better to throw caution to the wind and fight.

If the future can't be predicted and we're moving toward it, whether we like it or not, the most logical thing I think we can do is build today for tomorrow. Dreaming too wild can be like fishing with grenades. There is an acknowledgement that we are not in a place we want to be and often our deepest flaws are revealed as holding us back. Hurting yourself to be someone else is the most masochistic. There is some pleasure in there but mostly you're left with scars at square one.

Ira Glass, host of NPR's This American Life, exhibits this clearly in an old interview he did for CurrentTV when he defines taste as the barometer for creative people. Your taste is the reason you want to create something of your own and it is the reason you know your own stuff is not that good when you begin. It is nothing like the pros, the experts, the famous. The success comes with the goal and fulfillment of bridging that gap and realizing your taste is on the same level with your work. This, Glass said, is what he wished someone would have told him when he was starting in broadcasting.

The simple truth is the present is all we have. You can argue the past makes us better today, you can argue that humans are uniquely capable of striving to their futures. What remains is that two very successful storytellers and thinkers, Stephen Fry and Ira Glass, used the present to throwback lessons to their teenage years. Whether you have goals or not, young or old, we're here to do stuff and sometimes it hurts to know we don't know everything. In the end, Steven Johnson may have exhibited best with this idea: "'The adjacent possible is a shadow future, a map of all the ways the present can re-invent itself".

The future is now. Make it happen, as best you can.

Until next time...

I explode into space.

-dan