An idea gumbo + friend bumps
Miscellanea #60: Fallibility, feelings, and insight, how to price your freelance work, plus a few nice places to send your money
Unlike in previous weeks, I don’t have a full piece to share today. Instead, here’s an unsolicited collection of thoughts and ideas:
A serious reckoning with one’s own intellectual malleability reveals that any real notions of justice come at the expense of other valid notions of justice. The questions we must continue to ask and answer can not be wholly solved by mere fact, but must be contemplated with an understanding that we are fallible.
Empathy is a privilege and a pleasure, more-so than a burden. The time sacrificed at the altar of another’s lived experience proves a reward in and of itself.
Following feelings is often a fool’s errand — but just as often, it is the key to greater insight.
My friend Jordan shared some thoughts I appreciated — click through for the short thread:
Then there’s this thread of freelance pricing advice that I stumbled upon — worth a read for anyone in the industry looking to better their own pricing practices:
Everything I've learned.
Band together!
An unfortunately conceited American exceptionalist response to the pandemic is taking an incredible toll on hard-working citizens. Read this post from a local bakery and sense the dire circumstances.
In the spirit of supporting freelance artists and small business owners, I’m bumping a few things on the top of my mind and close to home:
Pond Coffee dropped a new t-shirt
Mary is drawing your pets
I just bought Erin Krall’s new zine
My friends Thurman and Torrence teach under-served youth how to swim for free, so donate!
I’ll leave you with these wise words from Ram Dass:
“The game, of course, is not to force anybody to do anything. As an appreciator of individual differences, you see that each human being has her or his work to do. They have their incarnation, they have their work. It’s presumptuous of me to decide what they have to do.
So instead I become like the earth in a garden in which flowers can grow. For example, when I am with a person who has, say, an advanced and probably terminal illness, my job is not to force them not to deny it, but to be an environment in which, if they would like to explore the issue of death, they can be comfortable doing so. What I do is I merely come into a room naked of concepts, because if I walk in with a plan and a credential for dealing with ‘dying persons,’ forget it!
You will begin to see how every model you have in your head pushes somebody away. It keeps them at a distance. So you walk in as just another being coming in, sitting down, and hanging out. You’re just right here, or as much ‘here’ as you can be. ”