10 Notes En Route to a Short Essay

1. Trying to invent an exception to the rule: we default to what is doable.

2. An elegant solution to shopping for oneself does not exist.

3. In search of a trigger to short-circuit the trigger.

4. “It’s an individual matter—the affair of a good building, I mean.” —Frank Lloyd Wright

5. Where is the flaw in the rule: consider others better than yourself?

6. Boring some is the cost of a commitment to not boring others.

7. That said, there are worse principles than “Don’t be boring.”

8. “There is something—I don’t know what it is.” Jane Goodall, on the existence of Bigfoot

9. A dystopian novel in which aggression and aggrandizement are removed from the species.

10. Any effort not in service to being of service is suspect.

11. Gleaned from Orson Welles—whose birthday was yesterday—desperate to find the story for his first film: When in doubt of what to tell, find the way of telling it.