You can easily go too far with all this talk of meaningfulness: that way lies acres of self-help nonsense about Finding Your Life Purpose and “doing great work”. But Graeber’s analysis suggests a more down-to-earth question for navigating the world of careers: is the job you’re doing, or applying for, one that the world would be perfectly fine without? (Financial necessity might still oblige you to do it, but at least you’ll be acting without illusions.) As life strategies go, this seems a decent one: where possible, move in the direction of non-pointless activities, and away from those that reek of bullshit. Do stuff that people would miss – however slightly – if it never got done at all.
Movie: "Blue Jasmine"
To get this out of the way as quickly as possible: Cate Blanchett clocks an amazing performance as Woody Allen's Blanche DuBois in this utterly unsurprising and tiresome movie. Oh, and there's a great soundtrack -- I'm definitely buying the soundtrack. As with Allen's "Midnight in Paris," the soundtrack is more entertaining than the wretched movie from which it is hellspawned.
“Fuckin’ endings, man,” Get Shorty concludes. “They weren’t as easy as they looked.” When Elmore Leonard died this week, the Mozart of profanity, the Cole Porter of the word “motherfucker”, he left the world as easily secure of a lasting reputation as any novelist in history. What makes a novelist last is the music they make – not their social concern, not the importance of their subjects, not the utterances they make. PG Wodehouse has lasted where AJ Cronin faded. Silliness, absurdity and the utmost triviality are no barriers; novels about nothing more than the squire’s daughter marrying the squire’s neighbour last forever, if they sing.
Have less to do
A quote from the Mark Forster forum:
My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.
The first book ends where I’m like, this fucking sucks. And I wanted – it’s like, for better or worse, this stuff recedes and doesn’t rule your life after a while. And that’s part of what is so sad. Honestly, that’s one of the saddest things, when you’ve gone through it. When you realise you’re getting over it, and you don’t want to get over it.
