# The Base Case By [N plus Oneth](https://paragraph.com/@n-plus-oneth) · 2023-11-25 --- **Where are we?** Perfect, starting with an easy one - we’re in a newsletter! **Can you just answer the question and not try to be clever?** Oh, you were using the royal “we” and wanted a less facetious answer? Fine, no more pedantic peasantry. We’re in a project of art. I mean that in the broadest terms, where “art” is work that makes a human connection and a “project” is a thing I’m working on. It isn’t one cohesive whole, so it’s not an “art project”. It’s not finished and the contents aren’t finely crafted, so it’s not a “work of art”. It’s just me and an ongoing attempt to put art out into the world. Still too figurative? I’m in Santa Cruz, California, writing this from a large wooden dining table that probably costs more than the remainder of this Airbnb’s furniture put together. **How did we get here?** Literally? My wife and I sold everything that didn’t fit in a mini-van and drove 23 hours to get here from Denver. Then, eventually, I sat down and started typing. Before I started typing, though, we resolved to use our new surroundings and minimal baggage1 to bring more intention to our creativity and consumption. For me, this meant more reading, drawing, and some writing.2  Then, I started reading [The Icarus Deception](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15843041-the-icarus-deception?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Ws28P1p5jw&rank=2) by Seth Godin, which is an enthusiastic exhortation of art’s value and a dire encouragement to make more. It’s also a powerful polemic, and I got mad.  I got mad at myself for accepting that art was for other people. I got mad that anytime I spent “creating” outside of work felt like a misuse of my time.3 I got mad that whenever I stopped doing work for other people, I was consuming other people’s art. I got mad that I wasn’t making my own art. **So, what now?** So, now, I’m going to make more art. Now, I’m going to try to improve my art. So, I’m going to share my art. Art is any work that makes a human connection, so anything that could be art but isn’t shared with other humans can’t, by definition, be art - it’s just practicing a skill. Since sharing transforms skills into arts, and I want to get better at art, I’d better start sharing. **What art are you going to make?** I’m going to make this newsletter and whatever else I can put inside it. I’ve been doing some pen drawings and fiction writing lately, maybe some videos, there could be a website for organizing it all, I’m really not sure yet. It’ll probably be rough. A few things could be interesting. Let’s see what happens. **Uh, you’d call this newsletter “art”?** Yes. I’m making it, I’m hoping it connects with people, and it scares me to share it. At the moment, that’s good enough - even if it's bad.4 Y**ou’re setting the bar at “Good Enough to be Bad Art”?** Yes. That’s better than “No Art”. Thanks for reading Nick’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 1 One mini-van’s worth of baggage, exactly. Behind the front seats was a mass of items whose density could only be achieved by two sporadically Tetris-addicted engineers. 2 Also, it meant less cooking, but we can get into that in a later edition. 3 And, let’s be clear, I’m incredibly lucky that my job involves so much creating, rather than rote drudgery or physical hardship. Realistically, I have no issues - but even great jobs are wrapped in cultural remnants of Industrialism convincing you that the path to fulfillment is laboring in exchange for the time and resources to consume other people’s art, rather than pursuing your own. 4 That’s why I left 3 intentional typos in this post - can you find them? I’m here to create, not copy-edit. --- *Originally published on [N plus Oneth](https://paragraph.com/@n-plus-oneth/the-base-case)*