Tonight we're going to party


If you’re one of those sharp-eyed folk, you’ll have noticed I did not send an email the past two days—August 30th and 31st.

There is a reason.

And it is that Kayte and I take our birthdays seriously.

And those are our birthdays. First mine, then Kayte’s.

I’m 44 now…do I look taller?

I recently read a snide comment on LinkedIn. The post author had written, “For my birthday, I’d love it if you could do X.”

The commenter said, of the author, “What is he 12?”

Implying that being an “adult” meant not celebrating one’s birthday. This made me sad.

In a world with so much pain and befuddlement, we should celebrate every occasion we like. Nothing too small—nor too big!

Yes, birthdays are markers of arbitrary happenstance.

So are all the other holidays!!

The whole calendar’s made up. The names. The dates. What’s important, why, and to whom. So why the hell not celebrate your birthday?!

This being the first birthday season since I started writing daily, I misjudged how out of the flow and routine I’d be. Every year I think, “I should just book all of August off.” I never act on it. Maybe I should?

As my gift to you, here are two pictures of Mt. Fuji I took in 2008 on a flight from Nagoya to Tokyo.

I’ve wanted to use them for a while but never had a reason.

Since it’s my birthday post, I decided I don’t need one.

Like it’s 1999,
James

One Creative Moment

One Creative Moment is a daily email for founders, owners, and creators. You'll get insights, irreverence, and inspiration to help you build a better business & live a more creative life.

Read more from One Creative Moment

One of the things missing from much of the “get AI to do everything for you” messaging is this fact: writing isn’t just a product, it’s a process. Yes, it’s nice to have “content.” But thinking that having it is the only outcome that matters is shallow and short-sighted. One of the things that has astounded me since I started writing daily(ish) emails back in November 2022 is how much it has changed me. It has vastly improved my ability to think—and to put those thoughts into clear, concise...

If you want to achieve more, do less. That is to say, build time into your day, your week, your year for quiet. In our house, following lunch, there is a period of mandated quiet time. It gives everyone a chance to do something they’d otherwise not do: nothing. It could be napping, reading, working on art, or even listening to something specific on headphones—as long as it’s quiet and done alone. For Kayte and I, it’s almost always napping, lol. During that time, we can recharge. We can...

“…We are ‘persuaded to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to make impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.’” This is Kate Raworth quoting Economist Tim Jackson in her book Doughnut Economics while discussing the power of aspiration in influencing human behaviour. Reading this, I realized that seeing (or at least feeling) this is what kept me from marketing for so long. (And what keeps me from engaging in much of its mainstream still.) I thought of it only as a...