In this response video, Tom Guarriello, Ph.D., addresses Paper Lilies (Bryony) after she posted a video about feeling stuck and lacking goals. Tom begins by highlighting the concrete change in her situation—her subscriber count has grown to 2,909—suggesting she may be overlooking progress. He then explores her feelings of guilt about still living at home, probing family perceptions and the emotional weight of that circumstance. Tom critiques the conventional belief in linear, long‑term planning, arguing that modern success often emerges from reacting to opportunities rather than following grand 5‑year plans. He introduces the metaphor of point‑to‑point navigation in a fog, proposing that individuals adopt flexible “orienting principles” (e.g., only taking work that demands their most creative effort, staying within a certain distance from family) to guide decisions. He emphasizes choosing creative, fulfilling work over conventional jobs, and stresses the importance of learning by doing rather than over‑planning. Tom discusses Paper Lilies’ experience with a rejected RCA application, using it to illustrate that failure is inevitable and essential for creative growth; he encourages normalizing failure and becoming comfortable with it. Finally, he praises her spontaneous foray into filmmaking, suggesting that experimentation and hands‑on learning are her strengths, and offers supportive encouragement for her continued exploration.
Chapters
Paper Lilies, hi, it's Tom. I watched your video about your emo video about not having any goals, and you know, you asked for serious response, so I decided that I'm gonna respond to your video seriously, and to do so I made a few notes just so I so you just don't miss anything about some of the thoughts I had about what you'd said. The first of which was, you said, "I'm basically in exactly the same situation now as I was a year ago," which I thought was a pretty startling statement for you to have made. And because, you know, you may not think it's significant, but a year ago there were not 2,909 people who were interested enough in your creative endeavors to be subscribed to your videos and to really eagerly await the things that you produce routinely. So, um, you know, that strikes me as a pretty different place than you were in a year ago. Uh, so, um, you know, I just wanted to point that out, that you know, maybe you're missing some details about how you're not in exactly the same place as you were a year ago. Then you said, "Now it's been a year and a half and I'm still living at home and I'm really not doing anything." And then you sort of laughed in a— what looked to me to be kind of a mildly embarrassed way. And, you know, I wondered if that wasn't a reflection of maybe you feeling a little guilty about still living at home and, you know, maybe not getting on with your life. And I wondered if, you know, maybe you should just think a little bit about, about that sense of, you know, am I really feeling guilty about I'm not doing anything? And that made me think about the fact that You mentioned that you didn't tell your family that you were making videos for a long time, you know, until you had to go to the V&A to see the painting, the portrait of you. And I wondered if that didn't maybe reflect a little bit of a sense of that what you're doing here is wasting time, you know, instead of doing the serious work of getting on with your life, you know, that you always have to speak about those things in a deeper register and with more kind of of, you know, adult emotion. You know, that you shouldn't be getting on with your life instead of wasting your time here. So think about that and kind of, you know, are you feeling guilty about the fact that you're still at home? And what do your parents think about you still being at home? You talk to them about what they think about you still being at home and what they think about what you're doing? It's just a thought. Then you said something that I think was really quite important, which was that, you know, a year and a half ago you had a plan, and the plan was really comforting to you, as all plans are. You know, all of our lives we've been told that the way to make things happen is to plan them, and that, you know, plans go like this, right? The fantasy of plans go like this: they're a straight line and they go from beginning to end, and they always go upward, progress, straight line like that. That's our notion of what plans are. Well, that's a fantasy, right? That's a dream world. And I wondered, you know, if we aren't in a very— if plans ever worked like that, they certainly don't seem to work like that today. For example, do you think that Steve Chen and Chad Hurley had a plan 2 years ago to create YouTube the way it's become today? I don't think so. If you listen to them tell the story, it was, um, it was serendipitous and it was reacting to opportunity. You know, I really think that we're in a world today of reacting to opportunity rather than being in the world of grand plans. You know, you're not old enough to remember the two grand planning organizations of the 20th century, and, and those were the, the Soviet Union and the American corporation. These were the two bastions of the 5-year plan. They had a 5-year plan and everything was going to go according— well, 5-year plans turned out to be a disaster because we had a hard time with— now we have a hard time with 5-week plans. Forget about 5-month plans or 5-year plans. So, um, so, so what does that mean? I think that, that now instead of being in a world of big plans, we're now in a world kind of like point-to-point navigation. You know, you sort of go from here to here and you look at what it's like here, and then you go, okay, well, what does the landscape look like from where I am now rather than where I thought I was going to be in making some grand plan, you know, a year ago about about what my life was going to be like or what my business was going to be like or, you know, what our country was going to be like in the case of the Soviet Union. So, and that's kind of a little bit like, you know, boating in the fog. You know, you go from where you are now, you can't really see the dock. You know, you look and you kind of go, "Well, I can't see the dock, but what I can, but I hear there's a buoy out there and it's ringing, you know, it's pinging. I'm going to head for that." Okay, now I see there's another— there's a beacon over here and it's flashing. I'm gonna head for that. And, you know, point-for-point navigation, which is, you know, on that grand plan scale, instead of being like this, it's sort of like this, you know. We kind of do those things rather than this thing. So point-to-point navigation is, is really important. So in order to have point-to-point navigation, you have to have some sort of orienting principles. You know, like for example, if you're in the fog, you know, I know I need to go west and I know I need to go a little north. Those are my orienting principles— west and a little bit north. Well, what kind of orienting principles might you develop to help yourself to get from point to point in the process of determining what you'd like your life to be like? So for example, how about an orienting principle that might be something like, I'm only going to do things that demand my most creative efforts. Just play with that as the possibility of an orienting principle. What would that mean? That would mean that, you know, instead of taking a job at Booth's, for example, as a clerk, you might take a job as a junior film editor somewhere because it would require your creative efforts. You know, it helps you to sort things out into yes and no piles. No, I'm not going to be a clerk at Booth's. Yes, I am for now going to take a job that's going to help me to— does it help me to— does it demand my most creative efforts? Yes, it does demand my most creative efforts, so I'm going to try that one. Another principle might be, I only want to work 2 hours away from my family. I don't know if that's true or not for you, but you could then figure out kind of plans and these principles, rather. And then instead of goals, you know, goals are like these big— They're, you know, they're goals. You have these principles that help you to move in the direction that feels like it's taking you where you want to go. You have to be playful with these ideas in your own mind. You said when you were talking about graphic art, "But then I did a little bit, but I didn't like it." Ah, now there's— that's the clearest way always to judge the rightness of a plan. You know, I remember interviewing— I've interviewed hundreds of people for important positions of all kinds in my career. And sometimes I'm sitting there and I'm interviewing a person, and this is obviously not the right person for this job. This person is just not well suited for the job or the company. And in those situations, I've sometimes said to the person, "You know, the important thing is not to get the job, but the important thing is to enjoy the job after you get it." You know, sometimes we focus so just laser-like on the getting of the job or the having a goal or having a plan or knowing what we're gonna do. In fact, we miss the fact that, well, you know, once you get this job, you have to do it every day. So experiencing whatever the not-rightness part was about graphic design for you, experiencing that that wasn't right, that's an important piece of information for you to think about. Now, the little section about the RCA, I think, was very, very important. First of all, you know, you applied 2 years ago, and, you know, it's interesting that you'd almost forgotten that you'd applied until you were cutting up the box, and suddenly the cutting up of the box reminded you that what had happened there had been a rejection, and you say, uh, that you'd experienced as a failure. And you say, I take failing very, very, very hard. 3 verys. Now that's critical. First of all, you know, um, anybody who's involved in doing anything creative is destined to fail. You have to fail. Creativity is doing things that are original, that are expressive. And original and expressive is hard. If you don't fail, you're not trying hard enough to be original and expressive. And in fact, when you listen to and talk to creative people, they tell you that they learn most from what they fail. Embracing failure is extraordinarily difficult for us. But it's really, really important if we're going to be involved in doing something creative. So, um, somehow or other, you are going to have to help yourself to get more comfortable with failing, because failing is the only way that you're going to be in a creative life. Um, and, you know, I, I think you sound like that's the direction that, that you're going to. Just a couple more quick things. First of all, you say, I don't know if I want to be a filmmaker because I only just picked it up because I got broadband, basically. Well, you know, for something that you engaged in so casually, you've certainly done well. Your films are interesting to many, many people. Excuse me. And I find that pretty encouraging that you can just pick something up like this and trying it and have it be so important to so many people and so successful. So, you know, look, maybe you're the kind of person who learns best by doing things rather than by thinking about them. And, you know, not all of us are, are well designed to sit in a corner somewhere and think about goals and come up with a perfect plan and to do— most of us have to try things and experience it in order to really get a sense of what to do. So Our time's about up for today, so, you know, I hope some of that is helpful for you, and I really respect you for putting out that thoughtful video about what you might want to do with your life, and I'm looking forward to hearing where that goes for you. So thanks a lot. Bye-bye.
