Museum of Passion

Every few months John Collison’s old tweet resurfaces in my mind and reminds me how amazing we have it: ‘The world is a museum of passion projects’

This seems most apparent to me with architecture - the kind you see in big old cities. It smacked me in the face when I moved to Chicago last year. You see the tall, decadent, ornamental skyscrapers draped along the riverwalk and wonder who the hell built them:

Then I took a trip to London for business recently and it hit me harder. In Chicago everything is <200 years old, over there it’s 500-1000 (!!) years old. The beautiful, daring, passionate architecture reaches it’s hand out through time and taps you on the shoulder; you can see where the big bold thinkers of yesterday borrowed and expanded and took inspiration from predecessors across dozens of generations:

It’s humbling for me to think about. It’s a miracle to behold. And just as with architecture the same is true for everything else - companies and inventions of course, theories about math and physics and the world, fashion and style and ideas - none of them came in the box.

It all had to be willed into existence. Don’t take it for granted.

There’s no such thing as adults, just grown kids with accumulated responsibilities. Genius may be abundant, the courage to action is in short supply; the courage to find a passion and give yourself permission to create with it.

Entrepreneurship and artistry are vehicles in the pursuit of passion, an exercise in free will, a conduit to connect with others. You can start a company. You can paint a picture. You can remodel a basement. You can play in a band. You can write a nice blog. You can pick up litter on the sidewalk. You can say hello to a stranger. It’s all passion projects.

Someone asked me recently what my hobbies are… I didn’t have a good answer. Tbh I haven’t really had hobbies since I began working on startups (they’re very all-encompassing). I guess maybe writing is a hobby. Or riding my bike. Or playing a little gee-tar. I’d like to have more serious ones.

No one says ‘scrolling Instagram’ or ‘watching Netflix’ or ‘ordering DoorDash’ is their hobby, but they’ve displaced would-be hobbies for a lot of us. A goal of mine for 28 is to spend as little time consuming and as much time producing as possible.

To contribute I guess. To pursue more passions.

It makes you wonder what hobbies the ‘greats’ entertained? How did Robert Hooke (St Paul Cathedral architect) spend his spare time? Were they more bored back then with less entertainment options? Or did rote/inefficient work mean they had less spare time?

A little cursory search² shows that many of the greats did in fact have interesting hobbies: Einstein played violin, Pasteur painted, Feynman played the bongos, Turing was an accomplished long-distance runner.

I suppose that means we have no excuse.

Peace,
Ramsey

1  Wrote another blog about this: https://www.ramseyshaffer.com/p/adulthood

2  Perplexity search for ‘greats’ with hobbies: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/i-m-writing-a-blog-below-i-d-l-YIKRlHeTQ1G.dk1ccteVig#0