🐎 Wild horses
Let's get weird.
Hello! I'm Gina Trapani and about once a month I round up the 10 best posts from Note to Self in this newsletter. It snowed here in NYC this week. Time to warm up with some good links.
I can't stop listening to the devastating collection of earworms that is Lily Allen's new album, West End Girl. Allen wrote and recorded all 14 raw, catchy tunes about her marriage’s breakdown in just 10 days. "It just sort of fell out of me," Allen said. Listen to it start to finish, with lyrics on.
How many ways could you make an animated horse run with your computer? Isabel Fish did it a dozen unconventional ways, including with Excel, Google Maps, desktop icons, and fingerprints on a MacBook screen.
Using donated Harry Potter books, Tai Ericson makes portraits of trans people who have been murdered.
I haven't made anything new in awhile and it doesn't feel good. When I don’t make progress on creative projects, my internal judge decides it’s a less productive day, even though maintenance and care is just as valuable.
Why do coffeeshops, book covers, office buildings, and YouTube thumbnails all look the same? People are less weird than they used to be.
Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein turned his quilting hobby into a full-time job. What I wouldn't give for an invite to one of his "bitch & stitch" sessions.
AI hype is exhausting. Here's what being measured about AI looks like for me.
"I spent a long time thinking success meant climbing higher. Now I think it means coming home, to the work, to the craft, to yourself." My former colleague Lisa Woodley recounts her 20-year path from designer to corporate sales leader and back.
"Sitting around and making things, either alone or with people you want to be around, is a fundamentally human experience." A Redditor makes a useful distinction about the ways we make things at work and for ourselves.
A useful exercise for anyone deciding on a path: Visualize your inner voices as passengers in a car. Which part of you has the wheel? Who’s stuffed in the trunk? What would happen if they switched spots?
November bonus: 'tis the season for giving back. Join me in donating what you can to great non-profit organizations serving our most vulnerable communities of the moment, like No Kid Hungry, The Florence Project, Women for Women, and Trans Lifeline.
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think – just reply to this email.
– Gina