Don’t get me wrong. General knowledge is extremely important for a growing person. But destroying the love of learning and education in a budding adult looks to me like a problem.

School taught me one thing about life: Fear. Fear of the future, fear of not being accepted, fear of making mistakes. Might as well give up, no?

Creativity, which is something I feel really strongly about, was never really fostered at my school. Any unique thought was quashed in class and in the school yard as well. Conformity was the rule, no exceptions. The better you conform the more accepted you are socially and probably even by teachers.

I never really felt inspired enough to pick up a book on a class related topic and learn. Instead I sought out the knowledge I wanted and had to scavenge on my own. Would it be music or digital arts, coding or programming, graffiti, I had to go out into the wilderness, find it myself then devour it. I spent more time working on things I loved than on homework, which in turn gets me into more trouble.

I loved those days and wished that I could do it all over again. Unfortunately the rent needs to be paid and bread has to be put on the table…

I can hear educators mumbling already, blaming me for the lack of interest and laziness. But oddly enough thanks to my schooling, I’m pretty much used to it already.

There are exceptions

If you happen to be as lucky as myself to have a music teacher who actually let me experiment with various instruments and the complete spectrum of music, I most likely never would have developed a love for the art of music at all. Learning lessons suddenly wasn’t learning at all. I just picked up the instrument and played along. It simply was. Learning happened so organically.

Today, although being primarily an interface and graphic designer I still think that music shapes my everyday life would it be at work or in life.

Final Thoughts

I can’t help but imagine how life would have been if all classes were as hands on and inspiring as my music class was at the time. Instead I find myself absolutely uninspired by general schooling. I fear there is still no solution in sight, in fact I have the growing feeling that the addiction to academic achievement has become greater and the need to teach and nurture creativity is fading away. So on that note, I give Creativity in Schools the illustrious WTF seal of approval.

Related Links

Sir Ken Robinson says school kills creativity @ TED 2006

What ever that gold may be. It can be your line of work, your schooling, beliefs, thoughts, dreams, you name it.

Okay now, here’s what I learned.

There are those people who like the spotlight that follows the hunt for the gold. They enjoy the glamor and mystery it comes with and try to follow in the footsteps of successful people from the past. They adorn themselves with the (supposedly) correct attire. They get their equipment and clothes dirty and try to break in to the proper circles, and pose for photos at famous digging sites just to be seen. Heck, they even choose to take part in classes, visit conferences, join seminars and junkets, all that for all the wrong reasons. The only thing they are doing is looking the part, without breaking out a shovel. At the end of the day they are satisfied by deceiving most of the people they meet along their way.

On the other hand , there are those who are neck deep in the trenches, getting cut and bruised deep inside the mines, or way underneath sea level tirelessly and relentlessly digging. You might even call it an obsession with their chosen path in life. They don’t care about the bright lights and/or groupies. They are in Love with the struggle. They are fully aware of the sacrifices they have to make in order to find what they are looking for. Often they come up empty and yet they dust themselves off and pull themselves up, just to fail over and over again.  Even after all that, they still keep going.

These are two people on the exact same path, but they are light years away from each other.

I know which one of the two I want to be.

I’ve pretty much been stuck in front of some sort of monitor for many many hours on end. Sometimes I get the feeling 24 hours is not enough for everything I want/need to accomplish… There. I said it. I’ve been hearing that quote a million times, now I get to actually say with all honesty!

Yep, now it’s time to kick back and rest since my Time Capsule is backing up my entire drive…

Basically instead of dishing out for an iPhone, effectively giving a leg and an arm for it (on a monthly basis) I thought I’d invest in a new back-up drive. The last one I had was a basic 250gb external HDD firewire and backed up by Time Machine. Well, that one got fried by a split-second energy surge. Tried a couple of progs and apps to win back my old backups – 8 months worth to be exact.

All said and done, I didn’t experience any terrible file losses or lost documents in the few weeks I had to go without. I finally made up my mind and went and got myself the 500GB Time Capsule, which is backing up my files since this morning at 6am as we speak.

Second on my list would have been the MyBook 1TB Office Edition, actually. Actually had a difficult time getting one… No turning back now. Pretty happy with my Time Capsule so far. Now I can get to finally backup my MBPro at the same time.

Pretty important to have a major backup system like the Time Machine as a graphic designer though. Sometimes I overwrite files while working on them, busy beating the deadline. Some important assests get rasterized, cropped or deleted. Good thing I just need to “jump back in time” and pull it back out.

Speaking of lack for updates… I think I should go with twitter someday instead…