JASON ATEN | INTERNATIONAL AWARD-WINNING WEDDING & LIFESTYLE PHOTOGRAPHER

Make someone a hero

When's the last time you got to make someone else a hero?

I'll admit, I'm a sucker for good TV. One of my guilty addictions is Grey's Anatomy. Yes, I watch that show. In case you don't watch it, brief background:

George was an intern but he didn't pass his exam. So while all of his friends are now residents, he's still an intern. None of the other interns know this, but he's pretty down about it. He has to repeat his first year.

So, on this, his first day of his second year as an intern, he delivers a baby for a woman who was in a tragic accident. For him, it's a letdown. He's done this before. He can only think about the fact that he's still an intern. He has a conversation with Lexi - one of the other interns (who is also Meredith's half-sister), and she basically tells him to suck it up.

Then she does something special. She tells all the other interns that he delivered a baby by himself on his very first day as an intern.

To them, he became a hero. None of them did anything remotely close on their first day. They were in awe and he became a hero.

When is the last time I lifted someone up by giving them the credit - publicly? In front of their peers? In front of their boss?

Make someone a hero.

on creativity

I didn't write it, but it one of the best riffs on creativity I've read....

HT to gapingvoid

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, "I'd like my crayons back, please." So you've got the itch to do something. Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for fudge brownies into a proper business, whatever. You don't know where the itch came from, it's almost like it just arrived on your doorstep, uninvited. Until now you were quite happy holding down a real job, being a regular person...

Until now.

You don't know if you're any good or not, but you'd think you could be. And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of business. You don't know any publishers or agents or all these fancy-shmancy kind of folk. You have a friend who's got a cousin in California who's into this kind of stuff, but you haven't talked to your friend for over two years...

Besides, if you write a book, what if you can't find a publisher? If you write a screenplay, what if you can't find a producer? And what if the producer turns out to be a crook? You've always worked hard your whole life, you'll be damned if you'll put all that effort into something if there ain't no pot of gold at the end of this dumb-ass rainbow...

Heh. That's not your wee voice asking for the crayons back. That's your outer voice, your adult voice, your boring & tedious voice trying to find a way to get the wee crayon voice to shut the hell up.

Your wee voice doesn't want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something. There's a big difference. Your wee voice doesn't give a damn about publishers or Hollywood producers.

Go ahead and make something. Make something really special. Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it.

If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.

The wee voice didn't show up because it decided you need more money or you need to hang out with movie stars. Your wee voice came back because your soul somehow depends on it. There's something you haven't said, something you haven't done, some light that needs to be switched on, and it needs to be taken care of. Now.

So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die... taking a big chunk of you along with it.

They're only crayons. You didn't fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?

Lincoln, NE

Total Distance Traveled Today:  872miles  Total Time: 13h26m

Salt Lake City is way more interesting than Lincoln, NE.  I remember Wyoming and Nebraska as being a little more interesting than they were this time.  Once you leave the mountains north east of SLC there's really nothing until you get to Chicago. 

We probably wouldn't have made it this far, except I had made reservations here - which gave us motivation to keep going.  It's not that it's too far to drive (when I moved out, Eric and I drove 16 and 18 hour days), it's just that we get bored!  There's nothing to even see or do along the way!

We're about to take off for the last day.  752 more miles to go.  I have pictures from the last few days and I'll post them probably tomorrow.