Happy Accidents
Sweet Bites for August 30, 2024
Hi all,
Welcome to another edition of our Friday Sweet Bites (on Saturday!) Due to a technical issue this didn’t go out on time as expected.
Any of the below bites resonate? Hit the reply button and let me know.
🍰 Sweet Bite #1
Creating is for More than Fame
For many professional chefs, being awarded a Michelin star would be a great accomplishment. Awarded three would make you one of the best in the world. Winning three for eighteen years straight puts you in a class of your own.
These were the accomplishments of Sébastien Bras, the owner and operator of the Le Suquet restaurant in France.
And then he gave it all up. One year he asked the the Michelin judges to stop coming. He was done with them and their ratings.
“He'd realized that his desire to please the Michelin system had imposed tremendous pressure, crushing his creativity,” wrote David Brooks.
At some point in our lives we set out to do something for the sake of doing it and along the way, life gets in the way and our motivations shift. we find ourselves competing for awards in systems that pit us against others and erase the deep meaning behind why we started the thing in the first place.
But once in a while, we get clarity and see what Bras saw, that behind the competitions, the games, the money and awards, there is something more rich and rewarding: to let loose and be creative for ourselves, to push the boundaries of what we know, and to play with our craft once again.
🍰 Sweet Bite #2
Knowing What One Wants and Sacrificing Opportunities for it
When Hugh Jackman was coming up as an actor, he wanted to star on Broadway and work with the Royal Shakespeare Company. But as a young actor, for better or worse, you’re often taking anything that will come your way.
And something did come Jackman’s way—a two year contract for an Australian soap opera.
The problem was Jackman had also been offered a spot in a three year acting course.
He chose the three year course knowing if he wanted to achieve the stages of Broadway or the Royal Shakespeare company, he still needed to hone his craft.
Looking back on the experience, Jackman said the years honing his craft is what provided him the confidence and ability to walk into auditions and know he deserved to not only be there but to get the job.
“Do whatever you’ve got to do to feel like you deserve that job.”
🍰 Sweet Bite #3
The Key is Connection
Great artists know that it is connecting with the audience that makes great art. This isn’t always easy, however, and often requires the artist to be vulnerable.
But according to writer David Sedaris, this is exactly the thing that will connect the artist and audience.
“I want to connect with them. Usually it’s the worse thing you can admit about yourself most people can relate to. It was the most surprising thing to me when I realized that…”
When looking for ways to connect your work with your audience, think about finding a way to bring a bit more of yourself forth.
It is through our shared experiences after all that we relate to one another.
🍰 Sweet Bite #4
Finding Happy Accidents
The author Dennis Lehane loves what he calls “happy accidents,” the moments when the “subconscious catches up with the conscious.”
“If you train yourself, if you write all the time, if you follow discipline, do everything you’re supposed to do, you can get to a point where you can trust your subconscious and your subconscious will do amazing things for you, really cool things, that you just never saw coming. And then you go, ‘oh, that was great.’”
These are those moments we have when we’ve been pushing through creatively, maybe we have an outline or roadmap, maybe we don’t, but then something clicks within us, and we have this moment of clarity where we realize we can do the work better by following a different path, something we weren’t expecting.
Another way of describing this is the work starting to write itself.
“The trick is you have to listen to those moments, because you’ll come to these forks in the road, and if you’re doing it—if you’ve done it enough, you recognize the fork.”
📚 This Week Newsletter
✏️ This Week’s Wednesday Wisdom
Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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