Jan. 9th, 2014

marsden_online: (write)
What makes a place more than a shell of ordered construction materials? Use and purpose; a past, present and future; history and memories; hopes and dreams. People.

These things make a house a home, a restaurant a favourite, a business an attraction.

Not "if we build it they will come" edifices of steel and concrete and glass designed to hold someone, anyone for a period of time and then have all trace of the occupants scrubbed away in preparation for the next. Not malls, travelled by hundreds of people everyday but where next week a favourite business might be gone, replaced by something completely different with no sign it was ever there. Instead places built (or used) with purpose, meaning something special to somebody.

Buildings like people can have scars (or tattoos) and each one is a story. Like people (or as an extension of people) their purpose can change without losing the sense of what has gone before. (Buildings can even undergo more extreme "surgery" than people - completely torn down and *rebuilt* while still retaining the sense of place, purpose and history.)

A real building is like a tapestry woven with threads from people's lives. Places where each owner has left their mark, even if the who and the why have been forgotten. An extension here, an alteration or repair there, people say "oh that used to be the so and so" even though they do not remember it themselves.
marsden_online: (Blueknight)
I have been rereading Wait but Why's post on How to Beat Procrastination in procrasipreparation for writing what is now the next post and something jumped out at me which didn't before.
It’s not that procrastinators don’t like the concept of doing. They look at the bricks on their calendar and they think, “Great, this will be fun.” And that’s because when they picture the moment in the future when they sit down and knock out a work session, they picture things without the presence of the Instant Gratification Monkey. Procrastinators’ visions of future scenarios never seem to include the monkey.

Another way I have seen this described Read more... )

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