FIRST - Take a look at the above. This is Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs. It will help you be the best unique and focused individual you can be.

NEXT - Begin at the bottom, if you've got a solid foothold within a category move up to the next tier. Rinse and repeat.

FINALLY - How close are you to the top?

I know many intelligent folks who are endlessly trapped in Safety and Love/Belonging, and so this brings the question - how smart can they really be? Solve your own damn problems first. No one else can fix you. Now you know where to start.

Hope you're enjoying your shiny new year. Tis the season for resolutions, so I'm starting with one that I'm sure is quite rare:

I will try my best to see how truly awkward I am at everything I hold dear. I will also look deep to understand how remarkably unimportant I am versus even the most mundane of common house-hold objects. Sincerely, a tiny speck of dust on a spin-y rock.

Whew! That was easy. Now this resolution isn't solely based on self-humiliation...it is a maxim created for the sole purpose of making me prove my self worth. A wonderful article in the Meditations on Meaning blog (found HERE) delves into the power of self-esteem on our daily actions. It turns out having high self-esteem can be detrimental to one's actions as these bloated individuals simply don't try as hard as those with low self-esteem who are forced to prove their value. Dan's blog article handles it with much more charm then I could so jump over and give him some meta love.

So rumor has it that you don't need to be a genius to make compelling art (or for that matter stories, or inventions, or any other hobby your wacky little monkey mind can aim for). It seems a healthy bit of dedication will do just fine for most.

William J. Sidis was a true genius though. He could read by age one and a half, graduated Harvard cum laude at 16, and was heralded the foremost mathematician of the 20th century after one speech. And he had already published four books while twiddling his thumbs in between. Young Sidis' IQ was estimated at somewhere between 250 and 300 points, versus the average IQ score of 100.

But for all of the celebration, Sidis made a few choices very smart people often do. He closed himself off from art, music, the whole world, simply in hopes to concentrate on his research. His fame pushed him into the spotlight and so he continually ran from one job to the next, running from the pressure. He soon became a wreck of nerves unable to even look at an equation without recoiling. Bitter. A recluse. Idiosyncratic. Much of his time was now exclusively spent obsessively around his hobby, the railroad system. Mr. Sidis spent his last years working as a poor office clerk and died alone without leaving any true mark.

The smartest folks I have ever met mirror William.

They are gripped by the inability to confront their emotions which never allows their personal beauty to engulf the world. They let their acute mind regurgitate fears and desires without end. They never try and tame their minds. And without a disciplined mind pressure will eat you alive. You aren't prepared for debate with another because you lost the first fight with yourself.

I have watched friends destroy their careers.
I have heard co-workers disown their family.
I have seen family members build a personal prison of fear that encourages inaction.

Taming your mind doesn't mean beating it down into homogeny, it means understanding that anyone can get sucked into fear. The first step to gaining control is as pure as not listening to your fears. They are made to break you down and make you into a creepy little domesticated mammal. Aren't you better then this caged life?

Put another way, happiness is the antithesis of fear. The two can't be in the same place at the same time. You are either happy OR you are afraid, but you can't be happy AND afraid. Sound good so far? So if this is true then wiping fear from your vocabulary should be job number one. For every moment fear steals from you, a second of your unique gift was taken. Fear needs to go. To do this you treat it like a child, and when ignored it whithers plant-like into nothing. Without fear you are free to rise above. Face your creativity. Face it full on with no regrets and no excuses.

Sit your ass down today and DO something that makes humanity regard you with anything more than a whisper. If you look at your life, and anyone else could have taken your place, you have failed.

No one needs any more William J. Sidis'.

I hate Dave Sim the comic artist.

If you're not familiar with his particular style it like taking Dungeons and Dragons circa 1975 and mashing it together with a rambling drunk telling long-winded fables. Rinse and repeat for 10,000 pages. And while I think he is a solid character designer, his art is nice but lacking to me. If I had to choose something it would be spirit and passion. Although the man drew nonstop each day for thirty years, does it matter if I don't care to read anything he has written?

But this is just one guy's opinion. This said, I do think Dave Sim is that special kind of genius though that stumbles into being a one-of-a-kind teacher. I love Dave Sim the teacher. His book "Cerebus guide to self-publishing" was my holy grail as a kid. I squeezed each and every once of my four dollars out of it until I could recite it backwards. And today I still can recite most from memory. I hear his voice (or a fictional one I'd created of him) chiming in when I don't connect lines, or try to be Lee Trevino. (Read the book!)

In this guide Dave Sim says that the most important thing for a comic artist is to be able to draw one page comfortably a day. This was his benchmark for barely existing. If you couldn't reach this limit you might as well stop right now.

I always felt this was harsh in that not many folks are built to be as obsessive as Mr. Sim, but I understood his point. And with a medium that takes so long to draw and so little time to consume he is essentially correct. A few months back I began this effort once again. It worked very well when creating Nothing Left to Lose so it might work to revive my latest graphic novel.

I'm now doing 2+ pages a day, and the art that I'm making here is just blowing my mind. Being a designer so much of my time now it so easy to sit back and just escape through drawing. This freedom is translating into the best story and art I've ever done by tenfold. "Welcome to Pixelton", the name of the new-new thing, is going to be an enjoyable unique experience that will be unlike anything I've heard of.

Today's point is that momentum is about forcing your weak monkey mind to do things it doesn't want to. It wants to be lazy and full and content, but it is your job as a human to find ways to force the weak flesh towards it's next goal. If you can lead the monkey one day it gets easier the next, until a few months in you have him scooting around wearing a tuxedo and serving cleverly named drinks.

-Josh

My previous post about "Forever Learners" brings up another very important point: Long Ideas.

Back then, in my professor days, I was working on an infant of a book called "Welcome to Pixelton". I had most of the characters, setting, a general "go" at the plot, and even the big as of yet unrevealed super-secrets. I had a vision of what the book needed to be and was confident I could reach it.

Today, each and everyday I'm still working on this book. I'm a bit older, and the book is too. I work on it on the train into the windy city, at lunch in Union Station, and at night at home. I'm now doing 2 pages a day in hopes to catch the next round of the Xeric grant. The initial vision was a major help, but it wasn't the real thing. Only 6 months back did I finally stop working on a few other books and say "I have it."

The point here is that in every dream you are willing to hold onto, there comes a point where it changes paths. All of your heart goes into fueling a project and once you make it over the crest you know that it isn't what you expected to see.

From first-hand experience, many people stop here out of fear. Or worse yet they refuse to budge from their original idea perverting the careful and deliberate decisions they'd made along the way. It can be debilitating to feel that your time was wasted and you aren't quite sure what you have just ushered into being.

If you have these feelings this is a very good sign. It means that you are invested in what you do. It means you are focused on birthing something magical. Nothing worthwhile has been created by someone who punches the clock from 9-to-5.

There is no quick fix here. I'd love to say "Deal with it" and hope for the best. But if you believe in your idea hard enough,and your willing to deal with the fear of your own lumbering creations, then you have no problems. This is simply another part of the journey with a unique point of view.

Two years back I worked weekends as a cartooning teacher at a local college. It was a fun job that I enjoyed profusely. I was also not at all qualified for the job (but we'll get to that in a bit). I was twenty-two and would be standing in front of a class that was largely older than me. I had planned for months that I was going to sit in the back and call the infamous "ten-minute rule", in which the class leaves when the teacher is tardy. Then with a flourish I would get up and pretend to start teaching. Only I wouldn't stop...

It was a fun ride. While there I coined the phrase "Be a forever learner, not a forever student.".

It means that reading and planning are wonderful helpful tools, but once placed in a real-life scenario you need to be willing to learn again.

Ironically, I taught the class as a learner. I was trying to ignore the convention. I was praying to spark anger. I begged that they apply their life to a page. And like most first experiments, it probably was a failure. While I was walking a tight-rope re-learning how to verbalize what had only been between my arm and my head, they had nothing on the line. They were in planning mode.

In my life I've had the experience of being around far too many who look to the skies for rain instead of listening to the trees. Experience dictates everything, knowledge is just the blueprint for experience. This is rule number number one in my book.

So next time you hear yourself or someone else say the phrases below keep this in mind, these are stalling techniques plain and simple.

- "I'd love to learn but..."
- "I'm reading a book about it..."
- "I have it on the to-do list..."
- "Once I complete the (blank) I'll..."

Throw away the book. Stop the 12-step course. Just sit down and dive into the pure terrifying thrill of the unknown.

When Drawn and 37Signals quote an article, you know it has more than a bit of God's honest truth. Read the full "How to Charge" article from 1099 HERE. It is a really powerful and yet condensed piece of advice.

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him."It's you -- Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist."So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art."It's perfect!" she gushed. "You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?""Five thousand dollars," the artist replied."B-b-but, what?" the woman sputtered. "How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!"To which Picasso responded, "Madame, it took me my entire life."