Author: Andrea Grassi

I remember a friend who believed that to write a good piece he needed to be a bit drunk.
Not totally drunk, but in a middle state of “I’m not sober and words just come out”.

Hemingway did the same thing.

I happened to write too on those moments, words flow easily sometimes, they don’t get stuck in all the mind-tricks you get day by day.
But in the end, is it good enough?

I wonder if this is just a shortcut to express our emotions.
Since I personally believe that to any problem there’s a good question to ask, here I would ask
“Why aren’t we able to express emotions without alcohol?”

It’s the mind, right?
When we are drunk all the social status gets thrown away and you just do what you want (or so it seems).
But why am I making it such a big deal?

The thing is wouldn’t it be better if you could express your full range of emotions whenever you want?

It’s not about drinking, it’s about being mindful and recognizing that there are some blocks within ourselves that we need to figure out.
If we’re not fully aware of this, we should work on it.

Emotions are the most powerful thing we have ever come across, we can’t leave them just for the drunk moment.
We should allow emotions to come freely, we must work towards a version of ourself that doesn’t need any external input to express deep joy, gratitude, passion.

Yes, it’s because of our society.
The same society that concludes “If you’re too kind or sensitive you’re gay”.
Since we care about society, we obey those rules.
But those rules are moving us away from what we are.
Because we are scared to show love, we are scared to share emotions.

There aren’t scary emotions in this world.
There is a scary mind, though.

Today I discovered that Flickr has finally updated its Mac Uploader, what a news!
Since the apple cloud photo announcement I looked at Flickr as an alternative solution, given the enormous amount of free space they offer.

What bothered me was that they weren’t integrating.
There wasn’t a way to upload all my library to the Flickr server unless using third party programs (Like Backup to Flickr for iPhoto, which has done a magnificent job).

But today the good news is that Flickr has moved into the right direction, automatic upload from the iPhoto storage, without even the need for a click.

This seamless integration is what keep user thriving to use webapps.

We all want bridges to be removed, we want apps that integrate into our daily life without requiring attention.
The easier, the better, because we are already flooded with information, and all we want is “The Dropbox way”.
Install and forget it, but know how to get it when you need it.

Seamless, that’s it.

One thing learned yesterday:
Always do something that leaves a trace

You will want to look back at your past not for gazing or dreaming, but to see your progressions.
When you start learning at first you’re goofy, you produce terrible results.
If you keep practicing you will eventually get better, but it will be a one step at a time result.

You might even hardly notice.
You might even think you didn’t progress at all.

That’s why tracking is important.
I don’t think we should track everything, because, seriously, we -as humans- are not designed to keep track of things.
It’s useless.

But we can do something that leaves a trace, this way it will be easier to track down what we’ve down.
This blog is something that leaves a trace and it’s a perfect example of “traceable thing”.

Anything that comes with a trace is something you want to do.
Everything that disappears in time is something you should think about it twice before doing it.

Because if it didn’t leave a trace, you might have dreamed it all.

Lately I’ve started reading “Quiet” by Susan Caine, and it’s such a refreshing experience to read something that doesn’t talk about the extrovert ideal.

I have been an admirer of the self-help world, having also written a small book on the subject, but then I learned also a lot from the experiences which didn’t involve the almighty ideal of the “man who can do everything”.

It’s so nice to see that this kind of view is shared among some other people and has also a book for it, I couldn’t possibly expect it.

The Extrovert Ideal is great, awesome.
Many people I know resemble this ideal, and usually society tends to reward them.
I consider myself to be partly extrovert, but can’t help thinking about how good is to be alone and take my time (not to stay away from other people, but to enjoy my silence and my entire perception of the world).

Many successful people around the world built their fortunes around Extroversion and Aggressive Behaviour (which doesn’t mean they were bad guys, just that their competivity was really high).
Are there successful introverts in this world?

When we change there will always be something that we lose.

Changing a smartphone, is like losing all, in just one hit.
To chain the user, every platform tries to be unique, without even thinking of a base ground.
But there are couples, families, who would like to do this.
To share without feeling locked in.

To be different, to have each one his/her own way.

Why don’t we help them out?