There’s this mostly unknown writer who is found in a cafe with a former lover of his. From the way he talks, he seems to be made of words and sadness and little else. A suffering face, clothes a bit out of style. Legs crossed. He listens to her talk about what was what while she was no longer his.
Continue reading “[short story] hiraeth”
Some five hundred years ago, a 26 year old sculptor was given the task of turning a leftover slab of marble into a work of art. Other artists had tried to give life to the stone and had failed, but the young artist took on the contract, determined to shape the marble that others had discarded.
Early in the morning on September 13, 1501, the artist began to work in order to extract his vision from the piece of stone. He carved and carved until he set his dream free.
Later, artist Giorgio Vasari would describe the process as, “bringing back to life of one who was dead.”
In June 1504, the statue, a depiction of the Biblical character David of epic proportions, was installed at the entrance of the city’s town hall. The name of the artist? Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known best as Michelangelo.
This story serves as a reminder that we are often wrong in assuming that in order to become successful we need access to resources.
It is quite the contrary. It is not the resources at our disposal that determine our success, but rather our resourcefulness, our ability to be creative in spite of certain limitations and setbacks.
Continue reading “The Beauty of Doing What You Can With What You Have”
The truth does not change based on your ability to accept it.
I do my best to live life in a way that I am aware of what I do, while also trying not to chase things that are outside of my control.
Here are some of those truths that help me stay in control of my life.
Continue reading “Eight Undeniable Truths That Are Going to Change Your Life”
Here I am, four months until I get to celebrate a full decade since I self-published my first novel.
I love writing stories.
It’s what I have always loved to do. And I love it more than anything else I’ve had the pleasure of doing over the years.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing glamorous about having a passion.
I often say passion means to suffer. It does. It truly does. The universe doesn’t suddenly make sense because you know what is the one thing you love doing more than anything else in the world.
In fact, most times it feels like an obstacle.
I love to write, yet I’ve also come up with a rather impressive reasons why I shouldn’t:
And on and on.
The funny thing is, you only need one reason why something won’t work.
If you start writing down an entire list of reasons, most probably it means that you, somehow, wish it would actually work.
Somehow, deep down, you know that the obstacle is really the way to go.
There’s nothing else to do.
It is the things we smear with realism that usually make us dream in ways that stop us from falling asleep.
That’s the way of the world.
I am a writer. I write stories. It is what I love to do, and I can’t find much joy doing anything else if I can’t write.
And that’s what I am going to do.
I am going to write.
And I’d love it if you could join me on this journey.
I’d love to share my stories with you.
Heya,
Cristian here.
Just published a mammoth of an article over at The Art of Blogging.
If you’re struggling with blogger’s block, creativity, coming up with ideas for blog posts, procrastination, perfectionism, or you’re just afraid to click on the publish button, this is the post for you.
Click here to read the article.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.
Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path.”
Steve Jobs
Fourteen years ago someone read one of my stories.
They didn’t like it. They told me to give up and do something else.
And this made me angry.
Continue reading “Connect The Dots”
“Every morning, upon awakening, I experience the supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali, and I ask myself, wonder struck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali.” — Salvador Dali
Dalí was famous for two things: his art and his eccentric and often ostentatious behavior.
In 1955, he delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne, arriving in a Rolls Royce full of cauliflowers.
To promote Robert Descharnes’ 1962 book The World of Salvador Dalí, he appeared in a Manhattan bookstore on a bed, wired up to a machine that traced his brain waves and blood pressure.
Dalí would avoid paying at restaurants by drawing on the checks he wrote, thinking that the restaurants would never want to cash the checks since they were artworks by the Spanish master.
There are plenty of critics that have often considered these antics to have obscured his genius, or to have been nothing more than the marketing gimmicks of a creatively bankrupt artist who had peaked in his 20s and 30s.
I, on the other hand, believe that it was his nonchalant demeanor that allowed him to produce great art.
Continue reading “The Dunning-Kruger Effect”