Thought For The Day

"From a very early time, I understood that I only learn from things I don't like. If you do things you like, you just do the same shit. You always fall in love with the wrong guy. Because there's no change. It's so easy to do things you like. But then, the thing is, when you're afraid of something, face it, go for it. You become a better human being."

Not Marina Abramovic: Me in Sept 2012 after cycling to Paris.

Marina Abramovic, interviewed by Emma Brockes for The Guardian ahead of her upcoming London show at The Serpentine. At the moment I'm trying to be more accepting of discomfort and failure, both at work and in my personal life. I find that there's a big difference between reading about difficulty- of the importance of making mistakes and embracing crappy output as an inevitable stage of creativity- and actually accepting it in reality. I'm predisposed (like a lot of people, I'm sure) to feel bad about making mistakes- particularly at work as I get to grips with new systems and environments, and I subsequently waste time mulling over the mistakes instead of viewing it as a beneficial learning curve. Similarly I want to be better at accepting those niggly difficulties like reading tricky books and giving them time and patience rather than becoming frustrated and worrying about every little detail so that I assume that I'm not smart enough to understand. Or to make the things I want to make and accept that I might not like what I produce the first, or the second, or the third or fourth time but that having some content to work with is ultimately so much more rewarding that planning and never beginning the first attempt. In short, I'll be thinking about Marina Abramovic's words this week. Here's to not doing the same old shit!