-
Willing Things into Existence
When I was really young, I would occasionally take over my friend’s paper route when he was busy. Not being much of an early riser, I never got to eat breakfast on mornings where I delivered the paper. That, of course, was a problem that could easily be solved, if I just had a toaster…
-
Setting a Lower Bound
Variance is a natural part of life, and it’s not a battle that can ever be won. Some days you’ll perform amazingly, and others you’ll be a lot worse. We’d all like to have as many amazing days as possible, but focusing on those days too much can end up doing more harm than good.…
-
Love Work II
Work is almost synonymous with stress in our culture. If you’re working hard, you’re exhausted, stressed, and stretched thin. So you only work a fixed amount of hours per day if you can manage, you get weekends off, and then once in a while when you need to restore what work has taken from you,…
-
The Battles Within
A wild horse is a beautiful thing on its own, but isn’t very useful to a person. To create a symbiotic relationship with the horse, the owner must break the horse, training it to give up some of its wild instincts and replace them with conditioned responses. I rode a horse a few weeks ago…
-
No Such Thing as Not Sticking to It
A while back I wrote about how I was going to be neat and tidy henceforth. I’d clean my RV twice a day, keep my travel stuff organized while on the road, and basically be the opposite of what I was before. I stuck with it for a few weeks, but then, in a hurry…
-
Free Improvement
Right after I write this, I’m going to go eat at Chipotle. On the train ride over there, I’ll be doing Mandarin flashcards on my phone. The ride is less than ten minutes, but I usually have to wait five minutes for the train back, so that’s twenty five minutes of flashcards. It’s usually cold…
-
What to Do if You’re Forced to Go to School
You know that dream where you’re at school with no pants on? I don’t have that one, but I have one that’s almost as terrifying: that I’m in school WITH pants on. I dropped out after a year and a half and am extremely glad I did so. I think that too many people are…
-
Dealing in Harsh Criticism
Here’s my theory: harsh criticism is one of the most valuable commodities out there, and you should be collecting as much of it as possible. Secondly, people enjoy giving harsh criticism, but only if they know it will be appreciated. If they think you might react poorly, you’ll never hear it. Sebastian and I pretty…
-
What’s the Real Worst Case?
Over the past few days there was a “mistake fare” going on with some European airlines which enabled you to book amazing US -> Europe -> Asia multiple stop tickets for $130-400. Friends and I booked three different trips, because deals this good come along about once a year. The deal was a little bit…
-
The Smiling Maid
I’m in a bus going up the Chilean coast. The ride is almost twenty-four hours long, which means I have no excuse to not get a solid blog post written. If only I had an idea… For the past few hours I’ve been staring outside, trying to come up with that perfect idea. I watch…
