A lot of these are really tough questions, especially for those of us not in creative positions, trying to find our way back to creative outlets. I've done a decent job with the compassion part, but the 'life of creativity' has taking a back seat to survival more than I'd like.

They are hard questions, indeed. I admire that Gioia has the discipline to revisit them regularly. I think writing, as a creative endeavor, lends itself more to this revisiting than say, painting. Certainly it would be helpful to be in a community that reflects on the questions as a group.

This reminded me of a series of articles an Austrian newspaper recently did in order to celebrate its 35th birthday. Among these was one article where they asked various promiment people to send in one question that concerns them the most this moment in time (I guess this must have been done often by other media out there?). I found it rather poignant and interesting how these questions, their style, content, how much of an answer they contained within, gave an insight into the personalities behind them. I would love to see such a call to action/question happen here on kottke.org!
(the article in question, in case somebody is curious, in German, yes, the way they decided to show the questions annoys me as well). p.s. this is my first comment, I would have loved to comment earlier but life with two young kids has kept me from commiting until now. Love the fact that this is possible now. Thank you, Jason!

I imagine the pedant / dilettante dichotomy hits pretty hard with this crowd, I know it just did for me! I spent most of my life trying to avoid specialization (as Heinlein said, "Specialization is for Insects") changing my major countless times throughout undergrad only to end up with a PhD in a very narrow sliver of chemistry...