I love going into office supply stores and looking at blank notebooks. A blank notebook is an invitation to create. It’s so much better than what happens at the other end: seeing how banal your ideas actually are, once executed.
I’ve enjoyed writing Perspectives. Taking a single thought you’ve been wrestling with and making it clear in 90 seconds makes one parse ones words with caution. I’ve used my time to advocate for spoiling movies, for not buying coffee for strangers, and for stealing other people’s anecdotes and claiming them as your own.
Lately though, after a couple of years and over 30 Perspectives, the intellectual exercise has been reversed. Instead of thinking of how to say something in 90 seconds, I find myself wondering, what am I going to say in my 90 seconds?
It’s during these weeks missteps occur, like when I told you the net worths of all the Oscar presenters, or that you shouldn’t eat in other people’s homes and that people shouldn’t start sentences with an “initial so.”
So, I’m thinking it’s time I step aside and let someone else fill my ten-times-a-year 90 seconds.
I’d love to hang around as “citizen reporter,” telling you about interesting stuff happening around here like bike rides or beer, or going to the bars to ask who you’re supporting in the elections. But in Perspectives, I’d rather hear the voice of someone who can fill up those blank notebook pages with something fresh, instead of my tired voice just trying to think of something to say.
I’m hoping you take this as an invitation to fill those 90 seconds yourself, and I look forward to hearing what you come up with.
I’m Dan Libman, and those were my Perspectives.
