Strategic ignorance is not being close-minded. … Selective ignorance is not avoidance of learning. … It’s knowing what to avoid.*
Ben Hardy

Generally my feeling is towards less: less shopping, less eating, less drinking, less wasting, less playing by the rules and recipes. All of that I want in favour of more thinking on the feet, more improvising, more surprises, more laughs.**
Brian Eno

Choose your way well,
Be unmovable,
Pulled neither to the left or to the right.

There will be many things that are less
but are dressed as more,
Promising but disappointing.

Being a writer is a act of self-authorisation.
No matter who you are.
Only you can authorise yourself.
You do that by writing well, by constant discovery.^

More vitally,
This is true for being human.
We choose our way
And we live well:
Imaginatively, creatively.

Sometimes we lose our way
And we live badly.
Then it is time to be kind and to forgive.
To begin again,
Even to be born again,
And, having discovered more,
Carry kindness and forgiveness with us.

*From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**From Brian Eno’s A Year With Swollen Appendices;
^From Verlyn Klinkeborg’s Several short sentences about writing.