The grand scheme of things

It's so easy to get caught up in the tiny dot that is your life, and conveniently shut out everything else that is relevant about the world. It's the simplest thing ever to focus on the narrowness of your own world. We do it a lot, and we do it often.

Time to step out. Smell some sunshine.

Condescending Growth

The line between condescending and concerned is rather fine. It's important to welcome elements of condescending comments into your life though. It's probably the greatest way to grow- it pushes you to your limits and helps you realize your full potential. Without those few people in your life that don't throw advice onto you in a seemingly condescending manner (honestly, if they're trying so hard to help you, it's unlikely that they're genuinely being condescending), it's easy to get comfortable with your abilities and with your life in general.

So welcome it, take it as positively as possible, and grow.

Ideas are cheap

While discussing potential novel writing dreams with a friend, I voiced that my main barrier was the lack of a concrete novel idea. I have a bunch of these small ideas floating around, which would be great, for, say, a five line long blog posts. Short stories, and even scarier- a novel? Don't think so, buddy. But this friend, being the inspirational angel-like figure that he is (read it and rejoice), said that 'ideas are cheap'. This is an interesting statement; whether I agree entirely or not is another matter. I do believe that ideas are overused though- with so many creative outlets, I'm not sure if there are any original ideas left. And if this means that ideas are cheap, then I stand by the statement. Execution and implementation are the much harder steps in this process. It's so difficult to achieve flawlessness in these two areas.

A good idea wouldn't hurt though, however over/underused it may be. An idea with the potential to build out and to ultimately lead to that perfect execution, and that perfect novel.