Year: 2020

  • Four Difficulty Levels of Life

    Four Difficulty Levels of Life

    There are several different difficulty levels on which you can live your life. They are ascendingly difficult, though the difficulty is really mostly in switching to that method of living. Once you get to the next level it actually becomes far easier. An analog would be financial investing– it’s hard to save a lot of…

  • Why I Moved

    Why I Moved

    I wasn’t planning on writing about this because I don’t think it’s all that interesting, but so many people have been surprised and asked why we moved that I guess it warrants a post! Five years ago I bought an apartment in Vegas. It cost $50k, was in a great location, and had two bedrooms.…

  • What It’s Like Living in a Bad Neighborhood

    What It’s Like Living in a Bad Neighborhood

    I live in two “bad” neighborhoods. One is my apartment in Vegas, and the other is our shared apartment in Hawaii. The way I’d define both areas is that they’re among the cheapest housing in their respective cities, and they’re bad enough that when an Uber driver understands where you are going, they feel comfortable…

  • Gear Post 2021

    Gear Post 2021

    This year’s gear post isn’t all that different from last year’s (can you guess why?) but there are enough new cool things that I think it’s worth doing one. Hopefully travel becomes a little more normal in 2021 and I have the opportunity to test out some more gear. Wool and Prince Button Down I’ve…

  • Gratitude 2020

    Gratitude 2020

    Usually in my annual gratitude post I write about people in my life. My family and friends are an easy source of unending gratitude. This year, though, I want to write about something a little bit different. This year I’m grateful for my country, the United States. This has somehow become a slightly polarizing sentiment…

  • Stability and Utility

    Stability and Utility

    As far as I can tell, money has two valid uses: stability and utility. It has a lot of other uses as well, like signaling and scorekeeping, but these are poor uses of money and focusing on them will reduce your ability to use money for better uses. Most people do a fairly poor job…

  • How to Be Secure

    How to Be Secure

    Why are some people secure while others aren’t? Is it because they deserve or don’t deserve to be secure? There are enough obvious counter-examples to that idea to dismiss it immediately. Is it genetic? Maybe partially, but many people have switched from being secure to insecure or vice versa. I’d argue that being secure is…

  • VR For Non Gamers

    VR For Non Gamers

    If you’ve read my blog for a while, you might be surprised to see a post that’s about video games. I’ve never written about video games before because I have never really played them. A couple years ago I had the idea that I should find a fun video game to play on airplanes just…

  • What You Should Know About Buying Light Bulbs

    What You Should Know About Buying Light Bulbs

    Last summer I got to travel to Uzbekistan with some friends from the area, and we were randomly invited to visit the house of one of the five richest families in the country. However incredible you may imagine the house, I promise you it was even more amazing. The courtyard could have fit several tennis…

  • How to Be Carefree

    How to Be Carefree

    One of the greatest luxuries in life is to not have to worry. This isn’t possible for all people at all times, but there are things all of us can do to be more carefree, especially those of us who have only “first world problems”. Be very deliberate about taking on obligations. The obvious example…