Inspiration

One of my goals for the upcoming year is to spend less time online, or at least less time doing useless things online. We all seem to need periods of time with our brains in neutral. Some people achieve this state by drinking or doing other types of drugs, some people sink into their couches and gaze upon the vast wasteland of so-called reality shows, and some people mouse and click their way across the hinterlands of the internet. I'm one of the latter, and since this is my chosen method of wasting time, I scorn all of the others I've mentioned. That doesn't mean that my way is necessarily any better, although it's a little less passive than the others. Also, I have a feeling that many people spend pretty much every waking minute in neutral. I base this on observation.

Every once in awhile, I come across something online that I find inspiring. A short video about a young woman named Zina Nicole Lahr is one of those somethings. Watch it on YouTube or click here and scroll down to watch it on Vimeo. What I think impresses me most about her is her energy. In the video, she diagnoses herself with "creative compulsive disorder", which seems about right, and then takes us on a whirlwind tour through a variety of projects and her room, which is jam-packed with the results of her aforementioned disorder.

Tragically, shortly after this video was shot, Lahr lost her life in a hiking accident. I wonder what she would have gone on to accomplish had she lived out a normal lifespan, but I know that in the short time she was here, she accomplished more than most of us will no matter how long we live.

Here's a clever little stop-motion film by Lahr about the secret lives of items on the kitchen table.

Take inspiration from Lahr and go create something. Anything.