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The most important thing you can do as a creative person and lifelong learner? Abandon the notion of linear progress. austinkleon.com/2018/02/26/the… 
This was one of my favorite parts of @JamesWLoewen’s book: “progress” is a notion sold to us about America. We’re always progressing, always moving forward. (Yeah, right.)
Linear progress is also something sold to us by the education system: we will help you progress, and we’ll measure your progress, and when you’ve progressed enough, we’ll give you a piece of paper, etc., and you’re done.
But life, once you step outside these (artificial systems) is non-linear: the earth orbits the sun, you orbit your obsessions, the seasons change, winter turns to summer and summer turns to fall, etc.
If you adopt that notion of linear progress, if you expect that your life will just be one straight rocketship to the moon, you will be so disappointed and disoriented when you fall off course, when a tank explodes, when the moon moves and it turns out to not be where you plotted
But if you can adopt the seasons and cycles and spirals and orbits as your metaphors, you can get through more, you can be less thrown. You can take things in stride, and know that “this, too, shall pass.” (This is the great message of Thoreau and other writers.)
PS. This is one of the major themes of the new book. howtokeepgoing.net
