A Little Kindness

I will come right out and say it - it's been rough lately. Everyone I know seems to be slowly spiraling further down the hole rather than climbing out of it, and while I started to feel this way at the beginning of October, the last few weeks just have seemed nothing short of bleak and heavy.

It's one of the reasons that I was trying to avoid getting too sucked into the tidal wave of bad news dominating headlines, news networks, and what you see in never-ending doomscrolling.

But no matter where you turn to or consume information from, things seem awful. A glance at CNN while I write this reveals:

• The war in (fill in the blank).
• Political wackiness in the (fill in the blank) party.
• Corruption in (fill in the blank) state.
• Corruption in (fill in the blank) corporation.
• Bombings.
• Daylight savings time.
• Racism.
• Terrorism.
• Antisemitism.
• Shootings.
• Radical (fill in the blank).
• The economy.
• Some (fill in the blank) financial crisis.
• You should/shouldn't return to office debates.
• Climate change.
• Climate disaster.
• Pandemics.
• Something (fill in the blank) celebrity said.
• Something (fill in the blank) professional athlete said.
• Something (fill in the blank) politician said.
• (fill in the blank) health crisis.

Heck, why not - let's have AI create a new Beetles song in 2023.

It's all wacky times now. It feels like a "good news network" is needed more than ever.

Andrew Wooldridge posted something recently that I thought captures it incredibly well:

We have never been more connected.
We have never been more lonely.
Social networks once helped us make connections; now, they foster hate, fear, and isolation.

So here I am, spending a lot of time reflecting on this, writing in my journals for myself, trying to carve up some good vibes, and just thinking a lot.

I had the fortune to listen to Per Håkansson speak this year at DO Lectures, who has a wonderful blog called "Fewer Better Things." While I don't ever see myself going to the extreme he has to eliminate everything, he describes this idea as "living every day with clear intentions."

How you structure your day is how you structure your life.
Having a clear intention with every day before you wake up makes everything simple.
Suddenly time, attention, and creative energy are on your side.

And in "The Corrosive Element in Our Lives", John Weiss writes:

How do we not waste our life?
It's never too late to change course.
To avoid being forever trapped in a wasted life of denial, unrequited love, and regret.
Look back to remember and learn.
Then, adopt a positive outlook. Say your apologies. Forgive yourself, if necessary. Set a better course. Make the best of what remains of your day.

A common theme around the idea of taking control of your own life story and empowering yourself to shape your life narrative feels more powerful than ever to provide a path forward in a world that often seems chaotic and uncontrollable.

Whatever path we take, we are constantly confronted with the same question eventually: Does my path (my life) make a good story? Does my narrative make sense? Is the narrative the one I hoped for, or at least, is it a damn good one, worth telling?
And if the answer is "no," we are consumed by the regret, disappointment and bitterness of "the unlived life." If the answer is "yes," we can at least die knowing we gave it our best shot.

Here are a few things that I'm thinking about on how to focus on the rest of 2023.

• Meaningful gatherings.
• Cut out negative influences.
• Be real to myself.
• Be more compassionate towards myself.
• Write a story worth telling.
• Exercise regularly.
• Eat quality food.
• Drink coffee.
• Enjoy the occasional whiskey.
• Be kind.

Maybe some of this resonates with you; maybe not. Just know that you're not alone out there, and there IS good to be found in this world - you need to be looking for it. Or creating it.

And on that, I'll wrap up this one on a sad note, as we saw the passing of actor Matthew Perry this week at the age of 54. In a strange way, we all lost a friend with his death, but in his own words, after struggling through addiction, on what he wanted to be remembered for in his life story:

"When I die, I don't want Friends to be the first thing that's mentioned. I want helping people to be the first thing that's mentioned"

Take care, everyone.

If you enjoy these posts, you can buy me a coffee ☕️, check out my store or just share my work. If you'd rather just keep up with my daily ramblings, follow me via your favorite RSS reader, via Mastodon or keep reading my posts on this blog. Your support is much appreciated!

Shop 🛍️

Over the last weeks, I've added a few more fun shirts to the collection.

Though, the classics "Nope" and "Own Your Shit" still seem to be the best sellers. 🧐

Mind Benders 🤯

Something I've been missing from my life right now has been time to think, process, and play. I keep revisiting this post from James Clear on "Creativity", in particular this idea around giving yourself space to create junk:

In any creative endeavor, you have to give yourself permission to create junk. There is no way around it. Sometimes you have to write 4 terrible pages just to discover that you wrote one good sentence in the second paragraph of the third page.

Creating something useful and compelling is like being a gold miner. You have to sift through pounds of dirt and rock and silt just to find a speck of gold in the middle of it all. Bits and pieces of genius will find their way to you, if you give yourself permission to let the muse flow.

In may ways, it reminds me of the Pixar Rules of Storytelling rule #17:

No work is ever wasted. If it doesn’t work, let go and move on. It’ll come back around and be useful later.

It's a good reminder to take some time for playful exploration, make some junk, and store it away for some other day.

Quotables 📚

I enjoyed this personal and moving keynote from Anil Dash from the Oh the Humanity! conference. It's also a solid lesson in storytelling and will go into my stash of great presentations to learn from.

Brain Dump 🧠

Here are a few articles and videos that resonated with me over the last week:

• Easily, my favorite read of the week was this one from 2013 written by Moxie Marlinspike on career advice. I won't spoil the journey this one takes, but I will reiterate its closing advice on 'make it uncomfortable and make it count.' — [via Career Advice]
• A completely fascinating website in which you enter your birthdate, and it allows you to explore the journey of your life in numbers and dates. It is a bit sobering to see that 78% of the world population is younger than me — [via Population.io]
• With the rise of deep fakes, generative AI, etc., there's an overwhelming sense that the 'death of information is your mortal enemy.' This thoughtful post goes into how you can't disprove or prove most things these days. — [via The Death of Information]
• Some good news for coffee lovers: 'participants who drank copious amounts of coffee, which they defined as four or more cups per day, were twice as likely to avoid becoming physically frail as they aged into their 70s.'. Drink up, friends! — [via A Massive New Study of 12,000 People Just Gave You a Really Good Reason to Drink More Coffee]
• Ted Gioia, who I've recently discovered and highly recommend reading his blog, writes that 'most people look for solutions - but few seek out problems,' and how 'genius is not having all the answers; everything starts with asking the right questions.'. Check out his 12 favorite problems. — [via My 12 Favorite Problems]
• Nothing beats a great font, so this article on the sheer joy derived from a monospaced font was so interesting. — [via Why I like monospaced fonts]
• A thought-provoking post about how, in 2023, there isn't a place to 'write in long-form in a private space that you share with your friends' and the junk that social media has turned into. — [via Journaling in private with my friends]
• For those of us who have been writing online for some time (my original blog, The Furrygoat Experience, started in 2002), the idea of Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere isn't new, but is interesting now that social media is a hot dumpster fire. (side note: It is really fun to see that the web archive captured my old favorite cannoli recipe)— [via The poster’s guide to the internet of the future]
• Benedict Evans on leaving Twitter (or X or whatever it's called now), and even though he built a career on it, why it's no longer an option. (I have deleted my Twitter account now, and only really on Mastodon) — [via Leaving Twitter]
• 'Pushing for a lower dev estimate is like negotiating better weather with a meteorologist' is a wonderful way to phrase it. As someone who has had to give estimates and receive them, you learn pretty quickly that 'development team doesn't control the actual effort - only by a tiny part. The development team uses their knowledge and data to forecast expected effort. They use established team velocity, review data on complete stories, and continuously improve their process every sprint'. — [via Pushing for a lower dev estimate]

This Weeks Vibe 🎸

I've been thinking a lot about what has been called "the most iconic music image of all time," "Blown Away Guy". In many ways, it describes what 2023 has felt like:

"a man is shown desperately clinging to the armrests but defiantly looking ahead at the source of the music through sunglasses, though calmly catching his drink before it slides off the end table."

And it's variant ad for the UK:

Finally, I'm going to close out the one with a fantastic post from Warner Crocker, in which he sums up this video of Dame Judi Dench perfectly.

Sometimes all you need are the words. And sometimes the marriage of the words and a performer create a joyful coupling beyond just the meaning, but illuminating them just as brightly.

Be well. ✌🏻