A politician finally promised a base on the moon in return for electing them president.

For a moment, let’s put aside all the political pandering points and just look at the idea.  The dream consists of going back to the moon for  the first time since 1972 (Apollo 17).  It’s an audacious dream, probably a bit impractical, but one I think that’s desperately needed again.

We’ve forgotten how to dream big.  As a kid, I dreamt of being an astronaut one day.  From galaxy wallpaper to shuttle Legos, space travel became a minor obsession that filled my thoughts.

And then we grow up.  I lost that spark of imagination for a while.  The creative side of me focused on coloring inside the lines rather than drawing the image myself.  Give a kid a box of crayons and they immediately begin creating something.  Give the same box to an adult and they just look at you funny.

That’s why so many people laughed when they heard the idea for a moon base.  To me, those people are the ones who can’t dream anymore.  I’m sure President Kennedy’s critics tried to kill the dream of an Apollo program.  But he pushed through and convinced the American people it was the right challenge – the right dream for us.

Starting from practically nothing, President Kennedy and NASA took us to the moon.  Not only should we go back, we should use it as a jumping off point for the rest of the universe.  We need an audacious dream like this just to prove we can still dream.

And yeah, John Stewart’s name of Moonlandia is actually pretty cool.

“We as artists chose this path because it’s hard.  We pour our passions, our ideals, our dreams into the things we create.  But sometimes that’s not enough.  Passions lose steam and dreams get lost when the work gets too hard.  When that happens, we can get very frustrated – and that can either destroy you….or become the greatest asset you’ve ever had as an artist.  The men and women of the Apollo space program undoubtedly became frustrated at times.  But they chose to use that to push them forward.” – via Save the Artist

I wrote those words a few weeks ago and it’s amazing how many times I keep coming back to them.  Frustration sucks but it’s a good thing in the long run.

-> Creative Mornings Portland

“The schedule you juggle at work is unbelievable. You’re brilliant. You can project manage a $10 million dollar software rollout across 4 departments and 7 continents with a Microsoft Project Planner printout that is bigger than a Blue Whale. But when you sit down to think about scheduling a training plan for a marathon this year, you don’t know where to begin.

It’s easy though.

Start where you’re already great! Play to your strengths. Be a student of you.” – Jon Acuff

I’m starting to write my first book (well, really a collection of essays around one main theme, but more on that later) and found myself in this space.  I start at the computer screen and wonder how to make sense out of all of this.  Fight the an avalanche of support emails when an app goes down? I can do that no problem.  Plan out an entirely new creative community? Check.  Start writing for this new idea? I’m stuck on where to start.

And then I read that article from Jon and everything clicked.  I already know how to do this.  It’s just a matter of being my own source – of taking those skills in one part of my life and using them in a new way in a different area.  I mean, planning is planning, right?

• Love this design from Holstee.  Worth every dollar.
• It’s in Flash but still the best conference website out there – Story 2011
• Why big marketplaces work – Signals vs Noise
• Minimalism forces you to watch every pixel – Minimal Movie Posters
• The human part of a manifesto – Brains on Fire