016: The Alchemist

I'm reading The Alchemist.

It's about a boy who takes a journey to find a treasure.

On page 21, the boy meets a king who gives him 2 magical stones.

These magical stones answer any "yes or no" question.

So after meeting the king, the boy asks: do I still have the king's blessing?

"Yes," the stones say.

Then he asks: Am I going to find my treasure?

The boy reaches to his pocket for the stones, but they fall to the ground (through a random hole).

He smiles and realizes: some things you just can't ask.

I love that.

We're all on a personal journey of some kind.

Asking "will I get there?" misses the point.

The only answer is to try and go.

Time spent asking "will I get there?" is time spend not going.

Further—knowing you'll definitely reach your goal makes your actions meaningless.

If I'm driving a bus to New York and know I will definitely get there, then I might as well take my hands off the wheel and take a nap. *bus crashes*

Like any movie, a journey is interesting because we don't know how it will end.


Music Production Class I'm Taking


Ableton Live (via Point Blank Music School).

For a while I've wanted to make music. A couple years ago, I took drum lessons for a few months. I enjoyed it, but drums are loud and bulky, so it was hard to practice in my apartment. Plus, it's impossible to make a "full song" with drums alone.

So I decided to learn electronic music—I'm taking a class to learn Ableton (popular software for this). Excited for the time when I can hear a sound in my head and make it real.

Wanna take the class together? It's fully online, starts next Monday, and lasts for 6 months ($1K for the course + $750 for the software).

Complete Ableton Live.png

Quote I'm Pondering

"I took violin lessons from age 6 to 14, but had no luck with my teachers for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing. I really began to learn only when I was about 13 years old, mainly after I had fallen in love with Mozart’s sonatas. The attempt to reproduce, to some extent, their artistic content and their singular grace compelled me to improve my technique, which improvement I obtained from these sonatas without practicing systematically. I believe, on the whole, that love is a better teacher than sense of duty—with me, at least, it certainly was."

–Albert Einstein

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