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Advice on Life and Creative Integrity from Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson
About Loving Your Work
If you love your work, then it is enough motivation to keep going no matter how much rejection or wait there is to catch your big break.
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Bill Watterson: The reator of Calvin And Hobbes
- Bill Watterson is the elusive creator of the much-loved comic strip Calvin And Hobbes, which provides a glimpse of life’s funny and often bittersweet musings and philosophies through the eyes of the mischievous six-year old boy named Calvin, and his imaginary tiger friend Hobbes.
- Even though Watterson concluded the daily strip after ten years in 1995, it is still adored among fans worldwide.
- Bill Watterson has given only a handful of interviews or public appearances throughout his career.
- His 1990 Commencement Address at Kenyon College, from where he himself graduated, is a case-study of his guiding philosophy of life: The pinnacle of creativity is playfulness.
A Motivation To Work
The amount of effort we are able to put when we are completely in charge and are not working for someone else is astonishing.
While a work ethic and a daily grit towards working consistently is a must, the only time one is really working hard without any stress, and enjoying it, is when the work is just for us.
A Playful Mind
We need an environment that stimulates our mind and lets it wander, doing activities that expand upon the mystery and wonder that the world provides us with.
A playful, inquisitive mind automatically learns, using the natural, in-built curiosity. This helps us absorb and cushion the upcoming problems of life.
Garbage In Garbage Out
Mindless entertainment does not refuel the drained creative wells of the mind, and only real nourishment is high-quality stimulation like reading, traveling and pondering about life in solitude.
Like a car battery that charges when it is used, the mind needs to be exercised so that it rejuvenates, and eventually becomes what it is fed all the time.
A Routine Life
If all joy is sucked out of an activity, it becomes a boring, monotonous robotic job that many of us are stuck with, or have experienced in the past.
A routine life where all activities, belief systems and responses are automated becomes a dead life. If one is doing a job that one hates doing, but is there because the bills have to be paid, then it is the definition of what a job is supposed to be in our society: Stressful work that one hates.
About Loving Your Work
If you love your work, then it is enough motivation to keep going no matter how much rejection or wait there is to catch your big break.
Don’t Be A Sell Out
Selling out is like knowingly and intentionally letting go one’s freedom to craft, say and build things of one’s choice, and buying into someone else's system of values, rules and regulations.
Selling out makes creative art as a form of commerce, which prefers efficiency and committee decisions over fulfilling, joyful work.
Being Happy Is A Success
Your life should not be defined, graded and handled by other people, and having an enviable career is just one of the many ways one can be successful.
The real, rare achievement is to create a life that amplifies one’s values and satisfies the soul.
Rilke Rainer-Maria
"“Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.”"
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Setting In Stone Future Behavior
When the commitment is 100 percent, your future behaviour is already set in stone, with no back-and-forth struggle and revisiting of the decision-making condition.
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