🔬 TREE 706: Make small things
Hypothetical question: If FFOREST was a series of little paperbacks with readings for each day and it came out monthly or quarterly, would that be cool or an expensive waste of trees?
When making a thing, there’s a temptation to make it big. This is why you see a headline like ‘The Thing Everyone Gets Wrong About Carrots And When You Fix It By Doing This Thing I’m Going To Tell You, You Will Totally Get Laid By A Hot Person Of Your Preferred Gender’ at the top of an article that has a somewhat useful tip about peeling. It’s why blog-post-sized ideas get turned into 250-page books. It’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), an hour’s worth of plot stretched to 132 minutes.
When something is small, it’s better when it’s allowed to stay small than when people inflate it to sell as something big. Two examples:
Tierra Whack made an album in which all 15 songs are exactly one minute long.
Nick Hornby and Stephen Frears made a TV series where every episode was 10 minutes of Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd arguing in a pub.
When you are making a thing, ask: What size does this thing want to be?
What size do I want it to be? and What size does my audience expect? and What size does the algorithm demand? are all the wrong questions.
If you are making a tiny burger, let it be a tiny burger. Don’t bury it in a pile of parsley and call it a meal.
Be true to the thing itself.
This song is incredible. I have no idea what the deal is with that dress.
Grow slowly
Jeff
P.S. My book is a collection of small things.
I’m having a small sale. I’m selling jewelry, clothing, accessories and chicky stuff. It needs to be intimate and friendly so I will have baked goods to eat and sell. A friend is coming to help who is a kindred spirit. All this will come together with little effort and lots of fun (and money to be had), during the holidays. It’s a small project that will produce big results of new faces and potential friends in the new area I live in. Small is doable 🪷
That was shitz n giggles 🤭