I know a little about a lot. That’s the psyche of a journalist. I look at people who know a lot about one thing with awe.

I’m definitely light years away from being  in the same journalistic league as David Remnick, but this statement couldn’t resonate more with me. I might be able to tell you the capital of Peru, the name of the man who assassinated Martin Luther King or the location of a good breakfast spot in New York’s Lower East Side, but I still spend most of my life feeling that, ultimately, I know fuck all about fuck all. I like this quote for making me feel like my lack of specialist knowledge is a sign of my ‘journalist’s psyche’, as opposed to the result of ‘too much time spent on Twitter and watching reruns of The Hills’. So thanks for that, David.

BTW – Lima. James Earl Ray. Clinton St. Baking Co. & Restaurant

The best thing about travelling – aside from the adventures, and the meeting new people, and the food and the fun and the laughter – is the perspective that you gain on your home life while you’re away. Before I went to L.A. I was stressed to the point of tears. Finishing my degree nearly finished me off, then I immediately started a very intense internship, and then I moved house three days before my flight. Needless to say that by the time I got on the plane, I was pretty much a mess.

Luckily, L.A. was exactly what I needed (previous posts here and here explain why), not least because it made me realise how fucking lucky I am to be 22 and living in London. It’s hard to articulate exactly why this city feels like such a good place to be right now, but it does. I think it’s to do with the fact that so many people are making money doing work that they love, or at least trying their absolute best to. Strong NY-LON connections and lots of shared cultural references mean that young Londoners have adopted the entrepreneurial mentality of our New York counterparts,  but have modified it to suit our naturally less manic pace of life.

The commercial explosion of the urban music scene has obviously been important too – suddenly, making a living out of music seems viable if you’re willing to work hard enough. Ironically, the same goes for the recession. When trying to get a ‘job’ seems like a generally futile mission, you have to think of more ingenious ways to make money. Like a lot of my friends, I decided a while back that freelancing seemed like the best, and most financially fruitful, option. Luckily, my theory seems to be working out quite well so far.

My inner history geek (just done a History degree and I’m still nerd mode, allow me please) is compelled to relate this to historical research which shows that economic depression often gives rise to periods of intensive creativity in urban environments. That seems to be exactly what has happened in London. And I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.

Sprezzatura – “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.”

A term coined in 1528 termed by the Italian count Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier. Fascinating concept, innit? Nowadays people seem to love shouting about how much they work and all the good shit they’ve done but really, it’s the ones who appear to move forward effortlessly that are fascinating. Less talk, more action is the key.

Read more:

Seth Godin on Sprezzatura

Nick Southgate on Being Effortless

On the ‘Monkey-Minded’ post below, I realised that I forgot to provide a link to the origins of Alain de Botton’s article and then I thought that I probably should, ’cause it came from somewhere pretty interesting (depending on what you find interesting, of course.)

The School of Life a self-described ‘new social entreprise offering good ideas for everyday living.’ That translates into a small shop in Central London offering programmes, lectures and services focusing on new ideas and solutions of how to deal with modern life. I live near the shop and walk past it often and it’s presence seems to give out good energy to the street on which it’s situated (Marchmont Street, in Bloomsbury.) I’m yet to partake in any of the classes but am definitely going to do so in the near future (Sample talks include: ‘How To Find A Job You Love’, ‘How To Fill The God-Shaped Hole’, ‘How To Make a Difference’). ‘The School of Life’ is such a genius concept and, like all the best ideas, such a perfectly simple one.

In the meantime, here’s a link to the shop’s blog, which is fast becoming my new favourite. With writers, philosophers and staff members writing on topics like style, gratitude and mutuality, it’s a million times more mentally stimulating than all the other fraff I seem to spend my time absorbing from the net. Happy reading.

Right now I’m suffering from a particularly severe case of what Buddhists call the ‘monkey mind’. For Buddhists, the phrase describes the mind’s tendency during meditation to jump from thought to thought, like a monkey swinging from the branches of a tree.

For me, it means that my concentration span has gone to absolute shit – books go unfinished, DVD boxsets go unwatched and I can’t handle an entire film unless I’m in the cinema and I have to choice but to sit and watch what’s going on in front of me. I think it’s a result of the fact that I’m in the final throes of my degree and am therefore spending my days reading and absorbing more than I ever have before. My brain is so saturated with dates, facts and words that when I try to take in large amounts of non-academic information it’s almost like my brain almost rejects it. Pretty unsettling, not to mention annoying.

Given all this, it was reassuring to stumble across this article by one of my favourite authors, Alain de Botton. It made me realise that my concentration problems are not only symptomatic of what’s going on in my own life, but also probably part of a more widespread social malaise:

One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is how we can relearn to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible.

The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere in the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties, something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows.

We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture – and in the process don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds. We leave an auditorium vowing to reconsider our lives in the light of a film’s values. Yet by the following evening our experience is well on the way to dissolution – just like so much of what once impressed us and which we then came to discard: the ruins of Ephesus, the view from Mount Sinai, the feelings after finishing Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich.

A student following a degree in the humanities can expect to run through a thousand books before graduation day. A wealthy family in England in 1250 might have had three books in its possession: a Bible, a collection of prayers and a life of the saints – this modestly sized library nevertheless costing as much as a cottage. The painstaking craftsmanship behind a pre-Gutenberg Bible was evidence of a society that could not afford to make room for an unlimited range of works but also welcomed restriction as the basis for a proper engagement with a set of ideas.

The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulse, is something we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people and ideas. We require periods of fast in the life of our minds no less than in that of our bodies.

For obvious reasons, the line about humanities students rang particularly true. Does any of this resonate with you like it does with me?

Image via Sharmadean Reid

I am not a journalist. I am a writer. I am a blogger. I am an aspiring journalist. But I am not a journalist.

The Internet is undoubtedly the most useful tool of modern life, but it has had some pretty dire consequences. One of these is the way in which it has enabled people to fool themselves/other people into believing that they can claim a certain occupation, simply because they have a website to supposedly legitimise themselves. All too often, you see people referring to themselves as journalists, simply because they have a blog with their name (or Internet pseudonym) on the banner. I think that’s misguided and potentially quite dangerous.

To me, a journalist describes someone who makes a living primarily by being paid to write. Ergo, I am not a journalist because a) studying is my primary occupation and b) I nearly always write for free. I am happy to describe myself as a writer. I write often  – sometimes for publication in ‘proper’ media outlets and more often just to fulfill an innate urge. But until I am being paid, regularly, to write for other people, I won’t call myself a journalist.

I’m sure there’s people out there reading this and thinking ‘Who gives a fuck? What’s it to you if an 18 year old Sixth Former wants to call him or herself a journalist?’ and part of me is in agreement with that sentiment. I’m all for creativity, enterprise and ambition, especially amongst young people. (Haha at me referring to ‘young people’ when I’m only 22. You know what I mean.) But when those same people confuse creative expression – be it through writing, photography, music or art – for the shit that pays the bills, they not only devalue the work of actual professionals, but they also set themselves up for a major fall.

As a generation, we are entering the working world at one of the most challenging times of the last 100 years. And whilst technology has changed the way we work, it has yet to eradicate the fundamental importance of experience, apprenticeship, practice, qualifications and, most importantly, hard graft. If we fool ourselves into thinking we can skip the hard bits with illusory tactics, we are the ones who will ultimately suffer. Because for every mediocre ‘journalist’ with a blog, there’s someone out there completing endless unpaid internships, studying the structure of countless articles, and generally honing their craft in any way possible. That goes for every occupation. Call me naïve, but I still believe that it’s the grafters, not the chancers, who will prevail.