Category: <span>Blog</span>

Passion & Reason

Reason said that going into outer space was a bad idea.  Reason said that a human shouldn’t be able to run a 4 minute mile.  Reason said that there was no way that we’d take pictures from a different planet in our solar system and then send them back to earth. Reason says that art is probably not a viable career, and that we should pursue an education to be engineers and accountants. Reason says that a high school dropout with poor reading and math skills shouldn’t go on to be one of the world’s top earners and leaders, worth over 4 billion dollars (Richard Branson.)

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Creative Culture

Sometimes I think we spend a lot of time and effort on being a good cog in the system.  We concern ourselves with compliance and efficiency over creativity, innovation, and passion. It gets hard to innovate when your main concern is being a good cog.

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On Inspiration

I’ve been thinking a lot about inspiration lately, and how it affects the work we do, and how it connects with who we are. I enjoy doing a lot of creative “stuff.”  I enjoy taking photos, I write music, I design, I enjoy cooking, the list goes on.  I enjoy creating things.  It’s easy to say, ” I need to be creative to create things” but it’s difficult to stay creative.  I feel like I need inspiration to create. It was William Faulkner that said that he only writes when he’s inspired, and it’s a good thing that shows up every morning at nine o’clock AM.

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Life is to be lived…

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Invisible Man

Overhead lightning and a dust storm

I was out late in the evening, and this storm was dying, so there was an outflow band kicking up dust.  The storm was impressive as it moved it, but it was quickly dying.  I happened to get one of the last shots of lightning streaking overhead before it was gone.  After going back to this photo I realized that the color of the lightning in the clouds, with the color of the dust blowing in from the east made for a really neat looking sky.

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Hanging bands

A Culture of Compliance vs a Culture of Innovation…

  • February 18, 2015January 11, 2021
  • by jtruschke

I know that there are some that think that a culture of compliance is a good thing, some that even believe it is the most important thing.  Up to a point, it is important.  Up to a point, compliance can be useful, since it can help to keep standards high, and can help with consistency.  CAN.

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hanging lamp

Not a product.

  • January 28, 2015January 11, 2021
  • by jtruschke

I’ve always thought of what I do as a product.  A tangible object of some sort, whether visual, audible, or otherwise, to be judged by it’s “appearance.”  Whether it’s a photograph, a song, an infographic, a website, a drawing, or even the way I look every day.  It’s all been a “product” in my mind.

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Closing the Park at Disneyland

  • January 6, 2015January 9, 2021
  • by jtruschke

Early in 2016, our family took a vacation to California.  It rained the ENTIRE time we were there, but we loved it!  Being in AZ, we don’t see the rain that often, so while it seemed to scare off a lot of the Disneyland Park goers, we loved it!  We stayed late, and I was able to grab this photo on the way out one night.  It’s one that I’ve wanted to get for a while.

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