[cuspycode]

Very much worth reading overall, and this especially caught my eye:

You can still be noticing new things after days of trying to paint something people usually take for granted, just as you can still be noticing new things after days of trying to write an essay about something people usually take for granted.

I don't paint, but I did a lot of drawing in my younger days, and I noticed the same thing. And I do understand how this type of insight can be abstracted and be transferred to different circumstances. So I think art is very important, for reasons that are not always obviously apparent or easy to articulate.

[munificent]

One of my favorite things, perhaps the favorite thing I got out of landscape photography was that while I was doing it, I was dialed into the seasons, weather, sunrise and sunset times, and light like never before. Everyone sees the sky all the time, but I really saw it.