Intermission

I started this blog as more of an open letter to myself than anything else. Whether my offspring is able to utilize it in the future or not is still to be seen. I just needed a place to record all of the shit that was bouncing around my head, and I put myself on a schedule (one published post every Thursday) to make sure I didn't start it and then leave it alone for weeks. In the course of the 5 (now 6) posts/weeks that I've been doing this, I've learned WAY more than I thought I would. While I think this blog is far from over, I wanted to take some time this post just to recap some of what I've learned in the course of writing what I have so far. So I did - check it out:

I'm no longer sure how I feel about being funny.

My initial plan for the blog was a pretty much a productivity blog in the tone of cracked, because the whole learning how to be a better person thing appeals to me, and it had to be funny (duh). However, I'm starting to wonder not only if I'm good at writing humor, but if I even enjoy it. As stated above, the blog is essentially an open letter to myself. The reason I wanted it to be funny was because I thought no one would want to read it if it wasn't funny. Just in case you missed it, I'll say it again. The blog is essentially an open letter to myself. The reason I wanted it to be funny was because I thought no one would want to read it if it wasn't funny.

Humor has always been my primary defense mechanism. The bottom line is, I was scared, and I kind of still am. Publishing what you think is scary. Publishing what you think in the form of humor is less scary. If someone doesn't like it, then maybe they just have a different sense of humor, or maybe they have no sense of humor. It's not like they don't like ME, they just don't like my jokes. The bottom line is, it comes from a tendency to think that what I have to say isn't worth reading unless it's funny. I even marked one post that had a more serious tone with a disclaimer that it wasn't funny, so just skim or skip it. Man, fuck that. My first post said that I didn't care whether anyone read this or not. I need to stand by that instead of trying to please everyone but myself. I like humor. I might still write funny posts. I might write almost all funny posts, and I'll certainly keep using serious cat, because he's the man. But I won't try to be constantly funny on my own personal letter to myself so that other people like it.

  I like quotes a lot

This one isn't profound as the previous one, but I learned that I really like quotes (like, a lot). I think I kind of already knew that I really liked them, but when I actually started writing about how much I liked them, it kind of sunk in. When I was a teenager, I had a composition book in which I had scribbled some quotes that I liked, mostly about suicide and people's last words and such, but that was my thing. Anyway, I've been thinking about that book a lot recently. I think I should start another, less death-centric book. Quotes are obviously really important to me, and it would be really nice to have a little book with some of my favorites in it. Also, I think that writing things down with a real pen in a physical book is something that I think is really cool (he says, typing on his laptop). I'll be doing more writing of that type now as well, because my little sister just bought me a really cool year planner/journal that I'm planning on using as much as I remember to.

I like parentheses a lot too

Much of my editing time seems to be spent removing parentheses, and attempting to keep the removed parentheses from turning into run on sentences (which is another problem in and of itself - like I said, I'm not particularly good at writing). I think it comes from (in addition to my almost supernatural mid-sentence interrupting ability in real life) my snarky nature. I have little snide remarks for everything (even my own writing), and if I put them all in (like I usually want to), then my posts would be far (even) less aesthetically pleasing than they are. It's how I write because it's how I think. I'm not really sure what to do with this information now that I have it, but hopefully I'll be able to learn (at some point) how to keep from punctuation abuse (or not, whatever).

Writing about what you think teaches you what you think

I think that this goes back to how this blog will always be far more useful to me than it will be to anyone else. Sometimes I'll be halfway through typing a sentence about my opinion on something and I'll realize that I never realized that that was my opinion before. It's bizarre, but it's another reason that I'll keep writing on this thing. Plus, it means I'll never run out of stuff to write about. There's always something else to write about when you rarely know what you're going to write about when you sit down.

Edison was right

I never realized how true it is that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, but most of what quality writing is (from my own limited experience) seems to be sitting your ass down and trying really hard to make some quality writing. There are different techniques - some people use outlines, some use free writing, etc. But no matter what the technique is, butt-in-chair time is what produces good writing.

People are really nice

People read my blog. Not a lot of people, but some. I put these posts on Facebook, and some people take time to at least click and read. Some people even like the links on Facebook, or comment on the blog. That's really nice. I'm asking people to read my online brain dump, with admittedly mediocre writing, and some people are actually doing it. A friend of mine even told me in person while I was at work that she really enjoyed one of my posts. That's pretty cool! I imagine it might be a different story if I was walking around downtown forcing papers on people and requesting their opinions, but nonetheless, what I'm taking from it is that people are pretty rad, so thanks for being rad!

Excuse me, ma'am. I wrote a thing. You can leave any comments or suggestions
behind this bush tonight, or you can call my pager, the number is on the back.

 

I'm not particularly good at writing

A long time ago, I was admiring a painting with a friend who was a damn good artist. I expressed that it would be impossible for me to make a painting that was as beautiful as the one we were looking at. He told me that anyone could make a great painting if they're willing to put in the time. Of course, I could put in a lot of time into a painting, and end up with a shitty painting that took me a really long time to do, but it's true that some artists spend months on a single painting. In order to make something great, you have to put in the time to shape it and make it great. The same that is true of painting is even more true of writing. It doesn't take a talent, or an advanced skill. Almost anyone can form a coherent sentence, and everyone has interesting thoughts in their heads. It just takes time to put them all down and organize them, and edit them, and reread them, and edit them again, and take out that one part that doesn't fit, and reread the whole thing to make sure it still has something resembling flow.

My overall satisfaction with an individual post seems to be directly proportional to how much time I spent with it after I was "done writing," which means that me happening to make a decent post every now and again is more a matter of how much work I put into it than how wonderfully talented I am. Now, when I say I'm not particularly good at writing, or that I'm not wonderfully talented, I don't mean I'm BAD at writing (though, if I am, the comments section is just below this post), just that I'm not particularly good. I think that there are definitely remarkably good people out there who can consistently churn out high quality "completed" first drafts. Those people are probably the ones who have been writing long enough to hit their "10,000 hours," or at least who have had more practice than me. So, regardless of how I feel on a day to day basis about my writing, the only way to get to where I want to be is just going to be a lot of writing, so, well, here I am.

Thanks for reading! Next week's blog post will be about whatever the hell I feel like writing about when I start typing it up. Until then, friends.

Reading Books - A Case for the Good Shit

In my last post, I briefly mentioned the importance of reading real books, as opposed to the little snippets that we all get in this remarkably overstimulating age. I wanted to expand on that, because I've seen a lot of "pro-reading" articles and posts around our world wide web that say some pretty stupid things. Some take the attitude of "I don't care what they're reading, as long as they're reading," which is well intentioned, but hilariously misguided. I think that it comes from having a culture of semi-literates, which has caused those of us who DO read books to join forces in the name of literacy (which is a Good Thing), but in doing so, we have allowed some questionable factions into our alliance. So, with the caveat that at the end of the day, I am a full, card carrying member of the pro-literacy alliance, I wanted to say a few things that I've found to be helpful for choosing reading material for myself, and some of the characteristics that I look for when recommending reading material to others.

Popcorn Nonfiction < Popcorn Novels < Good Novels < Good Nonfiction

When it comes to reading material, the first thing to do is decide why you're reading. If you're just reading to have something relaxing to do (a time sink), then damn near anything will do, and usually it's the thing that's closest to your hand. This is how People sells magazines, and I've managed to leverage this force to get literally DOZENS of views every time I put out a post. I have to say that while I've used this force, I can't really recommend wasting reading time on whatever happens to be most convenient, especially if you're reading online. You'll end up in clickbait purgatory reading "The 5 most notorious Super Bowl halftime nip-slips"

How have I only heard of ONE of those?

Popcorn nonfiction is the worst. There is literally nothing worse you can read than clickbait and celebrity gossip. Go watch TV or something. You're rotting your brain. In this category we can also put any lies masquerading as truth, like books on palm reading or Scientology.

In order to keep us from falling victim to articles and books about thetans or the 15 best haircuts for '15, we have to put up a line of defense. This is where our popcorn novels come in to play. Popcorn novels are fun! They have swords, or guns, or magic (or if you're a girl, penises and candlelight and stuff), good wins, or loses if the author is trying to be gritty - whatever. The point is, they're fun! They don't make you a better person or teach you anything, but they're not supposed to. They're just there to be a good time, like "escorts" for your brain. Keep them around and pull them out when you start getting the urge to read about Scorpio's compatibility with Aries.

Next on our list we have what I refer to as "good novels". These are your "To Kill a Mockingbird"s and your "Grapes of Wrath"s. These are the ones that you feel like you should be reading when you're reading your popcorn novel. To me, they're a little more valuable than popcorn novels, not only because they might teach you a thing or two about how to live, but also because they can be a good source of heroes. In addition, they also give you something you can talk to smart people about. After their guard is down, you can throw them in your van and beat them until they tell you what they know. I figure it's cheaper than college.

While I do certainly feel that quality fiction is worth reading from time to time, the best fictions will never rise to the level of quality work about reality. Because of this, when people ask me what my favorite books are, I go to "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and "How the Irish Saved Civilization" (some of my favorite books) long before I ever get to "Of Mice and Men" or "The first 26 pages of 1984 - I keep meaning to finish it..." (some of my favorite novels). The reason is that novels will always just be stories. Now, I love stories, stories are great, and as I said above, in the best of them we can find helpful hints on dealings with people, and how to live our lives in general. But if you're reading to learn how to live, in the best of non-fiction, the lessons are better organized, easier to apply, and more helpful in general. Also, no novel is ever going to teach you a specific skill. Sometimes, you even get meaningful stories that actually happened (which is why history is the bomb - best of both worlds).

What to read

So you've decided why you're reading, and decided what category to choose from. As far as popcorn novels go, it really doesn't matter. Something with cool cover art or something. Good novels can be found here. If you go along the right side of the page, just skip over the Scientology ones, and know that while Ayn Rand's work is pretty good, her presence on the page is more indicative of what type of person votes for what the best novel is on the internet than what the best novels are.

If you want to read the best work about real stuff, look to your heroes again, or to your future ideal self. What would THAT person read? What would he know? For me, my ideal self has great dealings with all kinds of people. He is knowledgeable in a wide variety of subjects, from Roman history to nutrition. So when I pick a topic that I want to read about, I find a few books on that topic on Amazon, and then I read the most helpful review and the most helpful critical review for each. It's pretty easy to tell which one to read after that.

As always, thanks for reading! I hope you found something helpful, or at least amusing. Catch you next week.
Remember, reading good shit is awesome. Fill your mind with excellence, not with garbage.

Timing is Everything

This is the first blog post I have written that has almost no joking around in it. It may have been something I ate, and I'm sure I'll be back to my normal, snarky self by next week. In the meantime, know that any and all serious posts on this blog will be marked by Serious Cat, so that my humor-loving readers know to skim or skip.





Almost 800 years ago in China, a man named Dogen arrived from Japan. He had made what was then a difficult and dangerous journey to study the Ch'an school of Buddhism, and to find the answer to a question that had haunted him for most of his life. He searched in the foreign land for enlightenment and the answer to his question for over two years, until he met an old master named Rujing. Dogen studied under Rujing for some time. One day in the meditation hall, among many other monks, Dogen heard his teacher say "Let body and mind fall away." Upon hearing this, Dogen achieved the enlightenment he had traveled to China to achieve. No one else in the room did. They were all in the same place, doing the same thing, hearing the same words. Why did only one of them achieve enlightenment?

As humans, we sometimes want everything to work with one model. We want there to be one answer to life. When we're young, we search frantically, in religion, in philosophy, in science. We ask our parents and they don't know what the answer is. Sometimes when we grow up, we forget about our question in the hubbub of daily life. Then, when we're old, we wrack our brains trying to figure out what we missed in all the time we were here. Sometimes we come up with an answer, and we tell our children and grandchildren, because if WE knew that when we were young, we would have been unstoppable.

But then, something remarkable happens. No one cares. No one cares that this answer took 60, 70, 80 years to come up with. No one cares that this secret can send them to amazing success. The young person we used to be, the one still searching for the answer, hears it and brushes it off, because that CAN'T be the answer. He keeps searching. The busy adult has no time to listen, let alone understand.

So what happened? The timing is off. The young person needs the answer to his question, and he's in a big question/big answer headspace. Maybe his answer for now is that there is no answer, and that frees him up to live his life. Maybe our busy grown up just needs to have someone put a hand on his shoulder and remind him to breathe. Those aren't necessarily the answers to everyone in those situations, but maybe they are for them.

I truly believe that each one of us has something that we need to hear, or something that we need to do, that will get us closer to being the person that we want to be. Maybe it's something brand new and exciting, but maybe it's something that we've heard before, but we weren't ready for. For years, I needed to hear someone tell me that consistency is more important than intensity. I was always rushing after one thing for a few months, and then dropping it and moving on to the next. No one told me directly, or so I thought, so I had to figure it out for myself. When I came up with the saying, I immediately liked it, because it not only addressed some of the issues I was having, but it also rhymed. The words just came to me one day as I was looking at some favorite quotes of mine (have I mentioned that I'm a quote fanatic?) and came upon Aristotle's "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

How many times had I read those words without really understanding them? I don't know, but a lot. I was really stunned that the answer was but one between-the-line reading away the whole time. But maybe that was the first time I was really ready for it. Maybe it washed over me all of the times I'd read that very quote before because I hadn't had enough trial and error yet. Which makes me wonder: if I wasn't such an avid quote collector and reader, how long would it have taken before I just happened to come upon that quote, or another that said something close? It also makes me wonder if I could have been ready for it earlier had someone brought it to my attention that that was something that I needed. From this experience, I realized two things - one that I was already doing, and one that I needed to do.

Thing one - Being a quote fanatic is a Good Thing. It keeps you on the lookout for tidbits that can help you be a better, cooler, more successful version of yourself when you're ready for them. It makes you remind yourself of the things that are important to you. It helps you catch yourself when you go off track, or even when you overcorrect a little. However, I give you two caveats. First, one man's trash is another man's treasure (and vice versa). Only save quotes that are helpful and profound to you. Just because someone else thinks that it's worth saving to wikiquote doesn't necessarily mean it makes your quote journal. And second, quote study will never take the place of reading real books, and of course, real success blogs. Also, in the spirit of both caveats, look for quotes in places other than lists of quotes. If you find something profound in a magazine article, write it down on your list of quotes.

Thing two - I need a mentor. I have heroes of course, and two or three people who are partial mentors, but I think it would help me a lot if I had someone who could help me with information timing. There's so much knowledge in the world, and with the internet, almost all of it is available within a few seconds. I really wish I had someone who was well versed in the skill of the century, and could help me separate the needles from the chaff, as the saying goes. I may continue the mentor discussion, and hopefully progress, in a future blog post. In the meantime, I would encourage you to seek out the same.

The most important aspect of both things is timing. Quote study is like looking at a list of time bombs. What may help you one day, you might grow out of. And, of course, what you aren't ready for one day, may be exactly what you need the next. A good mentor is only valuable because of timing. We all have vast information at our fingertips, but if someone can tell you what you need to do next, to get you to where you want to be, then that's something hugely valuable. Timing is everything. Timing is why Dogen was the only person to realize something amazing when his teacher said to let body and mind fall away in a room full of meditating monks. Timing is why I didn't get that consistency is more important than intensity until I was ready for it. What are YOU waiting for? Find it, and move on to the next big thing.

Thanks for sticking with me through this very unfunny post. Until next time, I wish you the best in all.



Note: Dogen later returned to Japan and founded the Soto school of Zen (Zen is the Japanese pronunciation of Ch'an). The Soto school is the largest branch of Zen in Japan, and if you've ever heard of or studied Zen, it is due in no small part to our boy Dogen.

Less Deciding, More Happiness: The Skill of the Century

If you've spent more than 5 minutes alone with me, and we were wearing clothing, then you probably know that I love quotes - particularly quotes that say big ideas in few words. I have quote apps on my phone. I rattle quotes off to my family over the phone. I collect lists of quotes and post them on Facebook or write them on my inner thigh in sharpie. So when I heard Graham Hill say "Editing is the skill of the century," I immediately locked myself in my laboratory for days, refusing food and water, and sleeping only 30 minutes a night.

"Editing is the skill of the century." It's like a bodybuilder's bulk and cut cycle, with the 20th century being a hundred year long bulk. Now that the 21st is here, it's time to cut out what's useless and only keep the best parts of life. Hill's focus is on stuff. "Less stuff, more happiness," he says. While cutting useless stuff out of your life is a worthy goal, a whole lot of people, most of whom are much smarter and more eloquent than I, have written more than I'll ever have time to read on the subject of having less stuff (maybe someone should edit an essential "less stuff" collection that I would have time for). In light of that, I decided to focus on another area our skill of the century can help us - decision making.

Decision fatigue is a well documented phenomenon. There's even a Wikipedia article about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue). Essentially, the more decisions you make, the worse your decision making ability becomes. It can be assumed that taken to an extreme, if you were forced to do nothing but make decisions all day, by the time you go to bed, you might have so little decision energy left that you decide to wear a suit of armor instead of pajamas. In order to help you avoid this, I've put together a few ways I've found to help edit my decision making down.

Pick a Brand 

When you have tuna on your list, do you buy it in a can or a pouch? In water or oil? Dolphin safe, or with bits of REAL dolphin? I personally get Starkist canned chunk light in water, but maybe you only like solid white. Either way, you should pick what you want one time, and from then on you won't have to make that decision. Do the same thing for mayonnaise, bread, lube, whatever. That way, you can save valuable decision making energy for the things that really matter, like hours of smartphone internet research while standing in the coffee aisle of your local high end grocery store, trying to narrow down your top 5 whole bean medium roast arabica blends.

The reviews said that there were distinct
blueberry notes. This just tastes like coffee!

Pick a Uniform

I'm not here to tell you how to dress. This isn't a fashion blog. But if you get out of bed in the morning and you have to decide what pants you're going to wear, what shirt you're going to wear, what belt you're going to wear, and what you're going to do with your hair, by the time you get to your socks you'll be so exhausted you might do something stupid, like wear thin little dress socks with your manly steel-toed work boots.

I'm fortunate enough to have a job where I have a uniform. 6 out of 7 days, I don't decide what I wear. I wear black work pants, a black button up shirt with my company's logo, and my non-slip black leather boots. On day 7, I trade the shirt in for a t-shirt, or a black button up WITHOUT my company's logo.

Now, I'm not saying you should dress as boring as I do. Different social situations call for different levels on the casual-formal sliding scale, and weather calls for different levels of warmth. But have a few outfits that you can just put on without having to decide what goes with which. Meeting with the leader of the free world today? Go with the suit. Lunch with a friend? The casual outfit will be fine. Girlfriend coming over? Try a simple black banana hammock and a zip-up leather mask, or nothing at all! But whatever you do, don't waste your life sitting in front of your closet wracking your brain, trying to figure out what you can wear today.

Pick a Routine

Routines are useful for all kinds of things. You can have a morning routine, a bedtime routine, a getting ready for work routine, whatever. Routines exist in a decision-free zone. Once you've made the decision to do the routine, everything within it is scripted. Probably the most pure example is a workout routine. You go out and lift a predetermined weight a predetermined number of times, or you run a predetermined distance. In between bouts of activity, you rest for a predetermined amount of time. Try adding some routines to your life. They don't have to be perfect, or even fully formed. When you wake up, maybe you start your coffee, then take a piss and brush your teeth while it's brewing, and then come back and pour yourself a cup. That's a great start to a morning routine. The more routines you drop in your day, the fewer meaningless decisions you have to make, and the more decision energy you have for the important or unexpected decisions in your life.

This site says I can meet and bang hot singles in my area for free. But will
my porn addiction REALLY allow enough time for sex with a real woman?

Pick and Commit

The recurring theme here is to make a decision once, and then not worry about it after that. That means you have to commit to your decisions. Don't be swayed by the guy on youtube trying to sell you his workout, and don't be seduced by the sexy mermaid on the Chicken of the Sea can. By all means, if what you're doing isn't working, then reopen the issue and make a better decision this time around, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Until next time, thanks for reading! If you have any other ideas for decision editing, let me know below.

Hero Collecting

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that all of our heroes will let us down. We find out that this one's an alcoholic, that one abandoned his kid, and the other one used to have a mullet. The thing that we have to learn after that, is that that's OK. We can still want the work ethic of the first without his vices, the charisma of the second without his child-abandoning tendencies, and even the physical strength of the third without his dark past of questionable stylistic choices.

This leads me to my main point - you should be a hero collector. When you have a wide range of heroes to pick from, you can really isolate the traits you want. When I'm in a tough spot at work, I ask myself what my old GM would do. When I'm struggling to get the mental energy to work out, I think, "Would Rocky just sit here when there's training to be done?" How laughable would I seem to Voltaire when I feel like playing a phone game instead of reading, when the only thing that ever stopped him was lack of access to books?

When you have lots of heroes, life gets a lot easier. Having heroes makes you feel like Simba looking up at his ancestors in the stars. You know that you can't fail with such greatness watching over you. Emerson said to go where there is no path and leave a trail, but I say to hell with that (for now - he's right, we're just not there yet). If you were trying to build a shed, would you ignore the lumber yard and hardware store, and try fashioning your own axe to fell trees? Work with what you've got. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

So where do you find these giants? I try to find them everywhere I can. I have role models for as many aspects of my life as possible. Ross Enamait is my working out in cold-ass weather hero. My father is my hero when it comes to cooking or making smart financial moves (although I have a secondary financial hero as well). Zen heroes? I have 3 or 4. Juggling heroes, writing heroes, parenting heroes, style heroes. They're in books, on the internet, in your every day life from family time to grocery shopping (see someone at the store who's hair you like? Snap a picture and show it next time you get your hair cut). Seek them out and add them to your collection.

Once you have some heroes picked out, Bruce Lee them. Accept what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own.

What is useful? We're looking for behaviors here that we can emulate. So if hero A is really strong, how did he get that way? Did he do heavy barbell training, or was he out swinging a pickaxe or hammer all day for his job? How did Hero B become so successful in business? Did he have a day job at first to finance his entrepreneurial dream, or did he set out on his own all at once? It's not always best to look at what they're doing now. Look for what they did to get where they are.

What is useless? Traits other than the ones we're trying to emulate, things that they were given rather than earned, vices, negative thought patterns. You may want James Bond's skill set, charisma, sense of style, and way with women, but you probably don't want to be as miserable as he is.

I keep ending up drunk on scenic beaches with beautiful women who want to nail me.

What a bullshit life.

Which brings us to the final part of the Bruce Lee equation - adding what is uniquely your own. This is when our Emerson quote comes into play. Once you've gathered your heroes, decided what you want from them, figured out what you need to do to get what you want from them, and started doing those things, you end up with... you! Has anyone gathered all of the traits that you want in one place? Why not be the first? Go on, trailblazer. Be the first person to ever bench 300 lbs, run a successful retail store, and get a novel published all in one life. Be the first person to win a pro boxing match and read the entire Story of Civilization by Will (and Ariel) Durant. Be the first person to play Magic: The Gathering and have a girlfriend.

Of course, the most important thing to remember from all this is that this is not wishing that you were like someone else. This isn't wishing that you were as strong as Dan Green, or as good a guitar player as Tommy Emmanuel. This is about finding out how your heroes got to their own heroic status, and doing what worked for them. This is about taking action. If you sit around thinking about people that are better than you all day, you're not going anywhere. Life is about doing shit, but that's a blog post for another week. Until next time, I wish you the best of luck (which you should be making yourself).

The Reasons for Putting My Knowledge on a Blog

Hello, future subscriber. So it's past the year 2020 and you are discovering this blog for the first time. This blog has thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of posts, and you aren't sure where to start. Allow me to help. This is the first post you should read (that is, if I haven't in subsequent years put up a post titled "read this first" or some such nonsense). If, on the other hand, you're reading this next Tuesday, and this is still the only post I've put up, you should probably also start here, although I'd imagine you won't be as confused as our future friend with the jetpack and flying car.

You may wonder what the purpose of this blog is, and why you should read it. Allow me to begin by saying that I am starting this blog for purely selfish reasons, and I don't really give a damn whether you read it or not*, but as this is a public blog, you are free to do so. The purpose of this blog is fourfold. Purpose one is to have a place to record things that I learn about how to live life better, for future review when I forget what the hell I'm doing. The second purpose is that I've recently come into possession of a very small human who looks a lot like me, only with different genitals. Since she apparently has no clue how to be a human, I thought that I would create a bit of a how-to, so that I won't have to do much real parenting, and will therefore be free to continue my life of cocaine fueled orgies solitude, undisturbed in my search for enlightenment. Purpose three is that several people, such as my brother, his wife, my mother, and other people who love me for some reason but wouldn't know good writing if it smashed them in the face with the first volume of Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, have told me that I write well. These same people have told me that they would like me to do more writing, quit my dayjob, and be forced into a life of abject poverty, subsisting on only Maruchan ramen and grocery store brand cola. Since I am a member of the 1% (not the top 1% in income, but the people who actually like their jobs), I thought that instead of being a full time writer, I could appease my family by starting a blog, and gently explaining to them that one can't make a living with only 27 pageviews (18 from my brother's wife, and 9 from me previewing my own posts). The fourth and final purpose of this blog is to practice my writing, so that one day I can trick OTHER people into thinking that I'm a good writer.

If you haven't guessed already, the blog will be one part thoughts on best practice for life (time management, efficiency, kicking bad habits), one part lessons from daily life (like a diary, but only the good parts), and one part success book motivation ("I challenge you to not only read this entire blog, but to give me all of your money as well"). In addition, it will all be written in the tone of a 14 year old boy who thinks no one understands him. I'll try to avoid religion and politics for the most part, but if I do dabble, hopefully I'll figure out how 'tags' work so no one has to read those posts against their will.

So, here goes nothing! Wish me luck.



*thank you very much