Published

February 8, 2019

Written by

Chris Gonzales

Photography

Raul Rosas

Welcome to this week's edition of our Friday Quality Linkage column. Please enjoy this week’s collection of interesting and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee, find a comfortable place, and relax.

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Featured Links

Purl: Pixar's First "SparkShorts" Film »

Mildly NSFW for language.

(^ I never imagined I would be using that tag on a Pixar short, but here we are.)

This week, Pixar debuted Purl, their first ever Sparkshorts animation project — directed by Pixar story artist Kristen Lester and produced by Gillian Libbert-Duncan, with music by composer Pinar Toprak — that tackles the topic of toxic masculinity in a way most ages can understand:

An earnest ball of yarn named Purl gets a job at a fast-paced, high energy, bro-tastic startup. Things start to unravel as she tries to fit in with this close-knit group. Yarny hijinks ensue as she tries to fit in, but how far is she willing to go to get the acceptance she yearns for, and in the end, is it worth it?

On Twitter, Cabel Sasser raised an interesting point:

It's interesting to me because it's literally about Kristen Lester's experience in the field of animation — and it's from the studio that, up until recently, we associate most with John Lasseter. That takes some corporate guts and I like it.

Be sure to watch the filmmakers' introduction to the short and how it speaks to their own real-life experiences:


Photo: Mia Baker

Photo: Mia Baker

13 Tips for Making the Switch from a Consumer to a Creator »

Nathan Barry (the ConvertKit guy) posted some great tips to get you out of the consumption mindset and start making things of your own to put into the world:

The difference between you and the creators you follow is simply they are creating while you are consuming.

Reading their content, watching their videos, and following their journeys is so inspirational! For years I watched and learned. Paying special attention to each creator and how they built their audience and made the switch from consumer to creator.

I overcomplicated this switch. Thinking that I had to become a fundamentally different person before I was a creator. In reality I just needed to stack small changes.

In a response post, our editor-in-chief Shawn Blanc underscores the fact that, while it's not a bad thing to rid oneself of bad consumption habits, the right kind of consumption is still helpful for creating great stuff:

If I spend 15 minutes mindlessly scrolling Instagram or Twitter, I do not feel inspired or recharged.

But if I spend 15 minutes reading a book or a thoughtful article that’s saved in Instapaper, then my brain is usually bouncing with ideas and fresh inspiration.

[…]

It took me a few years to to realize it was okay (even necessary) for me to take time away from “producing and creating” in order to maintain and increase my capacity to do my best creative work.


A Different Approach to Gardening »

In response to a silly comic about gardening, Redditor r/Suuperdad wrote a treatise on how people need a paradigm shift in their thinking — i.e. working with nature, not against it — if they want to garden sustainably:

We need to stop thinking we have ownership of every plant on our property. We need to be okay losing one or two, if it means we create a healthy ecosystem. […] We just need to realize, we're the small fry here. We're insignificant in the grandeur of nature and natural ecosystems. We need to sow our seeds, sow enough for everyone, leave some for nature, and harvest our modest share of it. But then we need to step back and remove ourselves from the equation and let nature sort it out.

In short...

You just need to take that one small step in realizing... this isn't all yours.


Miscellaneous Links

  • You may find Patrick Rhone's loose manifesto on website building helpful: “Who is coming here and what are they looking for? I design the entire site around the answers to those two questions.”

  • From the psyche of cartoonist and illustrator Grant Snider comes this illustrated map of the authorial life.

  • Entrepreneur Marshall Haas recently put out a free ebook called Inside The Box, which is a great starter guide to making and selling physical products. At 6,000 words and 59 pages, it's a pretty quick read but a super helpful one at that. Simply sign up for his mailing list to have the book immediately emailed to you.


Neat Stuff We Published This Week

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Got any suggestions for articles, videos, stories, photographs, and any other links you think we should be posting in our weekly Quality Linkage? Please do let us know on Twitter.