A largely irrelevant photo of Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak c. 1977, that I found when I searched ‘jobs’ in Google images. Haha.

To date, ‘Work It’ has been by far the most popular post I’ve written on this blog in terms of both hits and feedback. Given that so many other people also seem to be inspired by this type of thinking about jobs and work, I thought I’d share a couple more short blogs from Seth Godin’s website that really reiterate Steve Pavlina’s message. The first post is a response to a longer essay by programmer/venture capitalist Paul Graham on startups, which you might also be interested in if you’re entrepreneurial like that.

1.

Everyone’s model of work is a job

That’s is the conclusion of a very long essay on startups by Paul Graham, and it’s an insightful quote.

The reason you feel most comfortable with a job (unless, like me, you’re in the minority–a job would destroy my psyche) is that you’ve been brainwashed by many years of school, socialization and practice. I pick the word brainwashed carefully, because it’s more than training or acclimation. It’s something that’s been taught to you by people who needed you to believe it was the way things are supposed to be.

If you’re a boss, you need applicants, lots of them, to keep the wages you have to pay nice and low. And so the more people who believe they need a job, the better it is for you.

I don’t believe that everyone should be an entrepreneur or a freelancer, that everyone should quit their job and go work for themselves. I do believe this:

The less a project or task or opportunity at work feels like the sort of thing you would do if this is just a job, the more you should do it.

2.

Yourself

“Years ago, when you were about four years old, the system set out to persuade you of something that isn’t true.

Not just persuade, but drill, practice, reinforce, and yes, brainwash.

The mission: to teach you that you’re average. That compliant work is the best way to a reliable living. That creating average stuff for average people, again and again, is a safe and easy way to get what you want.

Step out of line and the system would nudge (or push) you back to the center. Show signs of real creativity, originality or even genius, and well-meaning parents, teachers and authority figures would eagerly line up to get you back in line.

Our culture needed compliant workers, people who would contribute without complaint, and we set out to create as many of them as we could.

And so generations of students turned into generations of cogs, factory workers in search of a sinecure. We were brainwashed into fitting in, and then discovered that the economy wanted people who stood out instead.

When exactly were we brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a living is to have a job?

I think each one of us needs to start with that.”

The moral of the story? Don’t allow yourself to be brainwashed. Question everything.

Un prophète/A Prophet

The words ‘gritty’, ’shocking’ and ‘thought-provoking’ spring to mind, alongside all those other generic adjectives often used to describe foreign films about ethnic minorities. As you’ve probably heard, if not seen with your own eyes, ‘A Prophet’ is a pretty fucking amazing film about a young Arab man who is sentenced to six years in a French prison, where he quickly falls in with a bunch of horrendously violent Corsican gangsters. Obviously it’s also about a lot more than that but if I broke down the plot you might not go and see it. And you should. So I won’t.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

I know basically fuck all about art, and I went into a screening of this Banksy documentary (out next week) more or less completely ignorant of its subject matter. I had a vague idea that it would be about, um, Banksy but actually it’s not really about Banksy at all. It’s about a mad French dude living in Los Angeles who tried to make a documentary about Banksy, until Banksy took his footage and decided to make a documentary about him instead. Sound a bit mental? Yeah, it is. It’s also really funny, like L-O-L funny, and sharply edited. Plus it gets you thinking about street art and the way it’s been affected and perhaps devalued by its own commercialisation, and films that get you thinking are always worth seeing really, aren’t they?

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.

Olivier Zahm

I love magazines. Really love them. I’m always interested in reading any kind of informed opinion on them. Here’s a quote from Olivier Zahm, founder of Purple Fashion Magazine, from the new issue of i-D:

“The internet sphere is amnesia: information arrives and disappears, arrives and disappears. Magazines always touch me because there shows a true love for the present time,  an historical trace of what’s going on by year, or by decade. You can pick up an issue of Interview magazine from 1974 and understand the 70s in New York, but you can’t figure out what 2007 was like by going to a website from 2007, because it has disappeared. I know there is love inside a magazine. There is a collective voice of people who want to share something.

There are two reasons for magazines on paper. First it’s the glamour and to me real glamour comes from photography and interviews. This is because it is the place where people get intimate. The fashion world is organically a part of magazines – it’s the best place for fashion to be seen, appreciated and evaluated. And secondly I think magazines need to survive because magazines are intimate, it’s one person to one person. It’s me to you. The photographer shot this model, with this stylist, for you. It’s like a film; everyone is working together to achieve a certain vision, of the time, of the fashion. So when the reader opens a magazine immediately they are part of the world.

A magazine has presence, it reveals something about people, about their dreams, it’s on paper, you can keep it and it gives you this possibility to interact…Purple is my life.”

This month’s i-D also features a great Rihanna interview by the marvellous Ms. Hattie Collins, and lots of other good shit. Go cop that.

In case you’ve missed the virtual hype, ‘How To Make It In America’ is a new HBO show that aired in the US for the first time last week. I managed to catch the first episode via the wonders of the Interwebz and from what I can gather, it’s a sort of ‘Entourage’-in-The-Big-Apple thing (and is actually produced by the same people) – but instead of tracking the exploits of a famous actor, it follows a pair of young, down-on-their-luck New Yorkers who decide to fight ‘the man’ by setting up an independent, premium denim label.

So basically, ‘How To Make It In America’ is a TV programme about the downtown NY creative ’scene’, albeit with a glossy, major-network spin on proceedings. It’s spliced with series of SLR photo-style freeze screens, set to a trendy hip-hop soundtrack, and features appearances and cameos from NY scenesters such as Kid Cudi and Roxy Cottontail. Watching it feels like seeing the corporate version of a hipster blog, realised in celluloid. It’s very watchable, but also strangely unsettling. The boundaries between reality, TV and the Internet are blurring so much that I wonder if one day we’ll even be able to tell the difference between them.

Trailer after the jump.

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