Year: 2014
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Being Bad at Things Isn’t Cool
My stepfather was talking today about a friend of his who is a competitive arm-wrestler. That reminded me of something I’d tell people, back in high school: that I’d only won two arm-wrestling matches in my life, and both were against girls. The implication was that I was very weak. I took a weird sense…
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How I Decided to Move to Las Vegas In 12 Hours
My friend Leo suggested once that I write a post about how I make decisions. Since then I’ve been waiting for the right moment, one where I made a large decision in a very short amount of time. That happened today, when I decided to move to Las Vegas. From time to time I check…
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Playing Games
There’s a concept called Radical Honesty that was made popular by a book with the same name. The idea was that you were to be not only completely honest, but also completely forthcoming. If you met someone and they reminded you of Jabba the Hut, you’d be obliged to tell them so immediately. It may…
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Try Not to be Ignorant
When you write a blog that has a fair number of readers, you get a lot of comments on your writing. I just did a quick query, and I’ve had over 18,000 comments here, nearly all of which I’ve read. Most are positive and constructive, some are contrary but still constructive, and some are malicious.…
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A Weekend in Hong Kong
I spent the weekend in Hong Kong, which sounds a lot more extravagant than it actually was. Early last year there was a flight deal that offered a round trip flight to Hong Kong cheaply enough that the miles earned in the process were worth the price of the ticket, and the flight alone was…
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How to Think About Bad Days
I took a nap today. I slept for about an hour and a half, woke up, thought about doing something productive, and then went back to sleep. Sure, I’d gotten a handful of small things done before the nap, but overall it was a pretty unproductive day. Having unproductive days isn’t the end of the…
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Why You Shouldn’t Worry About the World
In 1894 there was a major crisis in London. It seemed that there was no solution in sight, and that the city was destined to be doomed. The problem was the incredible amount of manure being deposited onto the streets by the city’s horses. Horses were the way to get around, no one wanted to…
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Remember Why You’re Really Doing It
As you may know, my friend Sebastian and I have a bet going where we must write a blog post every single day for two years. We ironed out the terms and conditions, but one area was left slightly fuzzy– we both travel a lot, so what happens when time zones interfere? We agreed that…
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Why It Doesn’t Matter Where You Travel
It turns out that sometimes, in South America, four hour bus rides take seven hours. And sometimes the air conditioning doesn’t work, and it’s the middle of the day in the summer. Today all of those things turned out to be true. Unpleasant as the ride was, I found it relatively easy to focus on…
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How to Tell a Story
On the cruise a friend was asking me about my days in pickup. What was the worst rejection I experienced, he asked? That’s a path paved with so much rejection that it’s sort of like asking which leaf on a tree is the greenest, but one stuck out in my mind. I was at a…
