I realize there's a very temporal aspect to professional jealousy.

In rivalry with peers, we want to do it before the other.

The hardest moments to go through are when those we admire or envy reach a summit before us. We feel left behind—even if it's not exactly the summit we were aiming for.

So we want to enter the race, to hurry to do it now.

Sometimes losing sight of what we really want to do.

Because, at the end of a career or a life, does it really matter when we did things? Doesn't fulfillment come rather from having done exactly what we wanted to do, regardless of timing?

So it's easy to lose sight of what matters.

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Deeply moved by this sad but dignified lion walking through the flowers to commemorate the Bataclan attacks ten years ago.

Verbal thought is just commentary. (We've talked about it.)

It's not what chooses the action. No: it observes and comments.

A bit like a babushka sitting all day at the foot of a building:

"Did you see that? They chose to raise their right arm again. What kind of world are we living in, I tell you."

Sometimes, she uses her memory to interpret the body's manifestations:

"You feel that knot in your stomach? It's the same one we felt during the divorce. They have regrets, for sure!"

Except most of the time, the babushka is wrong. Because her world revolves around two or three obsessions that loop endlessly and that she thinks she sees everywhere.

So, rather than listening to the interpreter, you need to return to the source: the physical sensation, the body's manifestation.

By inspecting the present, by simply observing what arises, you'll start to learn the language.

Soon, you'll be fluent.

And believe me: it's a more important language than English or Spanish since it's the one you'll use your whole life to dialogue with yourself.

--

Related:

• Without a voice in your head?
• All in the body

Personally, I've reached 12K followers on Instagram.

I remember a time when I wanted to create discussion groups with friends: virtual salons where I could find conversation and company 24/7. It never worked out. Now I have something like that with the channel's messages and comments: at any hour, conversations with people interested in the same topics as me.

It creates a lot of opportunities. I say yes to many things. Projects, meetings. Not everything.

Professionally, the channels I've created for ChezFilms are taking off too. (Insta, TikTok, Youtube and Linkedin.)

The numbers aren't astronomical but it's working for what matters most: I'm getting client inquiries.

This week, I have five phone meetings with qualified prospects: people who are interested in exactly what I offer. (The hardest part was defining that offering precisely.)

We'll see how it all works out. It's exciting. But we're not letting up.

--

Related:

• The Mechanics of Success
• Time and Productivity

Everything is so clear when I'm present.

When I'm curious about the moment, when I inspect the colors, sounds, and sensations that come to me... The world is no longer mysterious. It's no longer frightening. Stories of success and failure seem far away.

Action becomes easier, too.

Every gesture feels obvious and problems seem to solve themselves.

Yet I spend most of my time elsewhere.

Even though I meditate in the morning and return to presence several times a day, I regularly let myself get caught up in urgency and fabrication. Less than before, perhaps.

In those moments, though, it feels like going back to square one. Everything becomes serious again. The past and future are threatening again. We're back to trying to solve problems that didn't exist two minutes earlier.

Apparently this is normal: we move in and out of presence.

The goal is to stabilize, to truly change our operating system.

I'm going to work on that.

--

Related:

• Controlling Is Resisting
• The Ego and the World
• Thinking Is Not the Solution

Hit ten thousand followers on Instagram.

Does that officially make me an influencer?

The best part: the messages and comments.

It's helped me find a whole bunch of people who are interested in the same things I am.

And I also get tons of messages from people my videos seem to be helping.

And for now, the videos are quite easy to make.

So that's good.

--

Related:

• 4000 followers 😯
• One video per day (again)

Yet another abandoned project (for now).

Animated science fiction short film about the life of the first human on Mars... who happens to be a 7-year-old child. 

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When technology became advanced enough to reach Mars, every government on the planet wondered... "Who should we send?"

"I know!" someone answered. "What if we sent a child?"

And everyone thought it was a brilliant idea.

But if you ask me...

It was a crackpot idea.

Race car drivers want to drive race cars at 300 km/h on tracks. To win.

To achieve this, they need to know how to do other things: prepare physically, be mechanically savvy, build a network of partners, etc.

But a driver who only prepared physically, day after day, wouldn't become a driver: they'd become an athlete.

Another who was interested solely in mechanics would become a designer or mechanic.

As for the one who invests all their time in networking, they'll end up an agent or manager.

You must never lose sight of the goal.

What you do now is what you'll do later. Preparation can become your entire life.

The whole game is finding a way to do it now, even when conditions don't seem right.

I couldn't find the original source (even though I searched for at least 30 seconds), so I'm telling you from memory.

It was a music critic who was talking about a new track:

"Anyone eating alphabet soup would shit better lyrics to a better tune."

Which begs the question: how many people eat alphabet soup and shit out works of art without ever knowing it?

In the "everyone knew except me" series, subsection "pretty song about birds but actually not," I give you Barbara's L'Aigle Noir, which is actually about the incest she experienced as a child.

A friend mentioned it in passing, so I went to check.

The lyrics take on a whole different meaning.

My god.

A music video I absolutely love shot by Camille Tardieu in a single take during this year's Off Courts festival:

The musician is Édouard Pons (who composed the music for my film Migrul, also shot at Off Courts this year). And the video is directed and animated by Camille Tardieu, who makes amazing stuff.

When I wake up in the morning, I don't know.

I have things to do ("what"), like everyone else, but I have no idea how I'm going to go about it.

And I think that's the secret.

Obligations are like contracts made with the outside world: we commit to a result.

But we're entirely free on the manner and form.

So every morning, I take stock. What emotions are present? What desires? What's the weather like outside? What is this day telling us? What occurrences spontaneously manifest?

We identify these disparate ingredients and then invent a recipe that didn't exist the day before.

Ignorance is key to the process.

Without a pre-established plan, we have no choice but to open our eyes, improvise, dance with what arises.

Otherwise, why get up? Isn't that what life is all about?

"If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the point of doing it?" – Pablo Picasso

--

Related:

• It (re)starts today
• Controlling Is Resisting
• Some days I'll struggle

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Three or four of my daily videos did really well on Instagram and BOOM: my followers more than doubled in just a few days.

I was happy to reach 2500 followers but I was at 4000 two days later.

It feels like when several videos went viral on TikTok earlier this year: I couldn't put my phone down without coming back to 99+ notifications. Right now, I'm gaining followers every minute.

What's nice: it's my most sincere videos that perform best, the ones where I expressed something I truly believe. I must be starting to find "my people."

Obviously, it's on Instagram. So it's bad. I'm starting to think about alternatives.

UPDATE : 5200 the following morning 😯

--

Related:

• One video per day (again)

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I enjoyed the first podcast with Cory Doctorow so much that I listened to a second one : "Capitalism ruins everything".

It covers much of the same ground as the previous podcast, with a particular focus on mergers and acquisitions that give rise to giants, effectively becoming de facto monopolies.

Here are a few new ideas that stood out to me:

• The "chickenization," which describes the horizontal and vertical integration of certain industries, based on the model of chicken farmers : the large agribusiness corporation tells them what breed to raise, how to feed them, how to organize their space, what time to turn the lights on and off... The farmers have no power. Without knowing it, they can be part of an "experiment" : overnight, the chickens die. For the farmer, it's a tragedy; for the corporation, it's a data point to gain even more control.
• When buyers consolidate to form large corporations, sellers have no choice but to do the same to compete, creating even less choice for the end consumer.
• Amazon lost $100 million in one month by giving away free baby diapers... to sink a competitor that had launched a diaper delivery service. A cautionary tale for all entrepreneurs.
• Individual artist copyrights are not enough to protect them from large corporations where the negotiating power is too unbalanced. Collective rights seem to be a better path.
• Even though Microsoft won its 2001 antitrust trial, Bill Gates's deposition was devastating for him and his company. The punishment is the process, not the outcome. For this reason, most large corporations prefer to settle. Despite this, it's necessary to find more immediate solutions than lawsuits that can sometimes take decades.
• Just because there is no map doesn't mean there is no path. Sometimes you have to navigate by sight to find the openings: that is the foundation of hope.

This guy, Cory Doctorow, a former science fiction author turned activist, is fascinating. I'm going to follow his work more closely.

Tired, a bit rushed, so I'm looking to throw something together quickly for this blog.

Maybe an old video? Something from the archives?

Then I remember:

If I cut corners here, I'll cut corners afterward. Then again after that. And soon enough, the entire day will be done half-heartedly.

Do, or don't do. But if you do, do it right.

Take the time to ask yourself: what do I really want to say? What comes naturally?

It doesn't need to be long, or clever. Only true.

It's my experience that one thing done right, sincerely, all the way through, pulls everything else along and can change the course of a day.

The dishes. A drawing. A blog post.

And there we are, reconnected.

--

Related:

• The Accumulation Trap
• You Write Too Much

I'm restarting my "Today" document.

It's a short note on my phone that I read every morning.

It contains:

• What I do each day if possible (meditation, mini-workout, daily video, post for ChezFilms) with advice or an idea if needed.
• Long-term directions: ideas to implement regularly regarding presence, social life, creativity.
• A few short-term ideas and reminders, for work or ongoing projects for example.

There's no point accumulating notes if they're not being used. In this sense, the "Today" note is a way of communicating with myself. I keep everything in it that seems important and that I don't want to let myself forget.

It's a very short, living note that I update regularly: what remains has been polished through multiple readings and rewrites, and is therefore generally very strong and very clear. New ideas are added from time to time—which either stand the test of time or don't.

--

Related:

• Taking notes to move forward

It happened to me for the first time the day before lockdown.

I'd been meditating for two years and that morning, almost by accident, I stopped the voice in my head.

No more inner chatter, no more constant judgment, no more anxious rumination. Silence.

I was stunned.

It had surely happened to me before but this was the first time I noticed it—and that it lasted. I could maintain this silence.

I spent the day wandering the streets, exploring this new way of experiencing things.

So it's possible to interact with the world without a little voice judging everything? It's possible to look at an object without hearing "I like it or I don't"? To choose the next direction without verbal deliberation? To make a decision without the verdict of an inner judgment?

Exploring further, I understood that verbal thought wasn't the source of action. It's not what "thinks out loud (in your head) to make a decision." Decisions are made elsewhere. It only comments.

And it's perfectly possible (desirable?) to live without this commentary.

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Cory Doctorow coined the term "Enshittification."

On Adam Conover's podcast, I thought he'd give a brief overview, plug his book of the same name, crack a few jokes, and that would be it.

What I found instead: one of the richest and most relevant discussions on technology, intellectual property, and the modern world I've heard in a long time.

Cory explains that the process of enshittification happens in five stages:

1. Create a great product to attract users.
2. "Lock them in" by making it difficult or costly to leave.
3. Degrade the user experience to make it more attractive to business customers.
4. Lock in the business customers in turn, due to a lack of alternatives.
5. Degrade the experience for everyone to capture the remaining surplus value.

Much like banks ("too big to fail"), large platforms derive their power from how hard it is for their users to leave ("too big to care").

This gives them free rein to transform—and ultimately degrade—the customer experience for their own exclusive benefit. Here are 3 examples:

• Google intentionally degraded the relevance of its search engine to multiply ad impressions (+ searches to find a result = + ads).
• In Finland, prices on electronic shelf labels in supermarkets change around 2,000 times a day to ensure the adjusted margin is never lost.
• In the USA, most nurses are freelancers who find work through a platform. The app has access to their credit score, allowing hospitals to offer lower wages to nurses in financial difficulty.

In this process, an app is, according to Cory, a "website wrapped in intellectual property": the law strictly forbids customizing, extending, or adapting an application, under penalty of heavy fines.

Therefore, the user has no way to fight back and "de-shittify" their experience. They are a prisoner.

"Imagine if the person who built your house was the only one allowed to repair it."

Solutions?

The EU's efforts to regulate technology (particularly regarding interoperability) are a good start, he says. But the so-called "Euro Stack" meant to replace the GAFAMs will only be useful with the right migration tools that allow public services to avoid starting from scratch—tools that are impossible to design without reverse engineering.

Ultimately, he believes that large corporations are obsessed with IP (intellectual property) under the illusion that it allows them to bypass the less controllable human factor. But:

"The recipe for making something is far less important than the knowledge needed to follow it."

In the "old abandoned projects I'm finding images of" series:

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I wanted to make a series (yes, I was ambitious when I was young) of animated short films called "Tales for Sad Children," the first installment of which would have been titled "The Password."

The idea was to use 3D (Maya, back then) to create a paper world where the story would take place.

"Some evenings, as a game, Bastien's dad would turn into a monster. And when Bastien's dad got too scary, or hurt too much, there was a password. When you said it, Bastien's dad would stop being a monster. But one day—it was evening—Bastien forgot the password."

You don't know the future.

You don't know whether your plan will work or not.

And if it works, or if it fails, you don't know whether you'll feel what you expected to feel. ("This is everything I wanted but I feel empty.")

And even if everything went as planned, you don't know the consequences of the consequences. The positive or negative occurrence that transforms over time. The blessing that becomes a tragedy, or vice versa.

So much so that it's almost presumptuous to claim we know.

Saying "I'm going to take this action" or "I'm going to go in this direction" because we imagine it will have such and such consequences in the future... is an illusion.

Control is an illusion.

You don't know what inexplicable detour, seemingly useless, will be necessary to lead you where you need to be.

The true guide seems to be instinct. Excitement.

Ignoring these calls to stubbornly push toward what's planned, toward what's reasonable, toward what's well-regarded, is to oppose the flow. To swim against the current. To resist.

And to resist is to suffer.

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Related:

• What do you do when you're doing nothing?
• Two ways to solve problems