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Two Strikes and You’re Back Into Pickup
Becoming disappointed in yourself is a unique region in the realm of disappointment, because no amount of time and understanding makes it go away. The only remedy for it is to change yourself– in fact, this is one of the best sources of motivation for self-improvement. I’ve recently become disappointed in my self, illustrated by…
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The Isolation
A couple days ago a guy named Sebastian Marshall wrote an excellent post called, “The Million Dollar Question“. It spoke to me in a way that blog posts rarely do, and prompted me to write this post. In the post, Sebastian is sitting by a train station, watching normal people go by, happily executing their…
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What a Wonderful World
The market is tanking, we’re treading water in expensive wars, unemployment is high, people are eating garbage, school is failing us, our government is dysfunctional, pollution is rampant, kids are hooked on drugs, and our prisons are packed. Many things are going horribly wrong with this world, and I’d even say that some metrics we…
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The Order In Which I’d Tackle Life
Just as there are a million ways to drive from Los Angeles to New York, there are a million ways to get from where you are now in life to where you want to be. But, like the road trip, some ways are better than others. As I’ve tackled different problems in my life and…
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Help Me Speak at SXSW in 2012
Last year, Jason Boehle generously shared his speaking slot at SXSW with me. I had a great time, met a lot of great people, and, according to the feedback we got, gave a good talk. This year I want to do an updated version of my Risk Speech. To get there, I need people to…
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My Workflows for Writing and Programming
I always find people’s workflows interesting. It’s such a personal process, unaffected by outside demands, that I think it sometimes reveals something about its creator. A lot of readers write or program, so I thought that my processes might be interesting. Writing Most people who write WordPress blogs write them in the built in WYSIWYG…
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Polarizing Purchases
A new friend asked me how I save money for travel. I get this question a lot, in different forms: how did I buy a Ducati? How can I afford not to work (people assume that because I don’t have a job that I don’t work)? How do I travel constantly? These questions stab at…
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The Standby Trick
Standby flying has always been a bit of a mystery to me, as I’ve heard stories of people flying standby to foreign countries for half the cost of a reserved ticket, but never seen a way to do it. Even after interviewing a few ticket agents, it seems impossible to do this these days, but…
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The Only Meditation That’s Ever Really Worked For Me
The thing that really scares me is spontaneous personal expression. For example, I can actually freestyle pretty well, but I’ve only done it for an audience a handful of times. Doing it for one person is even scarier. Rapping someone else’s lyrics for any audience doesn’t raise my pulse at all, but having people hear…
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How To Get Paid to Go to Las Vegas (Once)
My flight is at 7:25. At 6:30, instead of being at the airport, I’m mashing on the buttons of a video poker machine at The Tropicana, playing $125 hands of video poker. I haven’t become a compulsive gambler– I just found out about a casino loophole worth hundreds of dollars, and I’m trying to cash…
