sam winchester, laptoppin it up :)

I feel like it's either extremely obvious that I've watched all 15 seasons of spn (11 of them as they were airing on tv) or somehow Not Obvious, despite the fact that I semi regularly reference it in one way or another.

god. anyway. sam. I will never recover from the poetic tragedy of sam. praying while being marked down as lucifer's vessel. the constant focus on wanting to be clean, the way free will versus pre-determination is in a constant state of narrative friction just by his character existing. the scope of horror in being damned and doomed before you were even born, by your own mother. wow. character of all time.

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app

My brother

7/30

We’re a week in! I’ve been heavily enjoying my time writing each one and I hope you’ve been enjoying reading each day. The more I go the more I learn about myself, I wonder what the 30th will look like. My writing, to me, is a mystery. I don’t know where this ability of mine came from but if I had to guess, it would be the result of hundreds of conversations I had with my brother, who’s birthday is today, concerning well about anything. There isn’t anything we hadn’t talked about, and in doing so my brain took to those topics at quite a young age but I don’t think it was just a few conversations we had, no it stems much deeper than that.

During the financial crisis, my father who had worked in Ireland for several years could not find work in his field of expertise, construction. As a result, he had to move back home and find work there, which he did. I cannot blame my father for leaving when I was so young, he had his hands tied. My brother, being very early in the stage of adolescence, was left with the task of bringing up 9 year old me. Where could he even think to begin? He didn’t want this but he was left with this overbearing responsibility. It took time because I was, for lack of a better term, a shithead. Perhaps in my method of garnering attention I would purposely seek to put my brother in positions of discomfort, also known as misbehave. I would tell on him for things he didn’t even do and would find ways to rebel in any way I could. If only I understood then what I understand now. Maybe I would never understand now if it wasn’t for his unrelenting efforts. What I didn’t understand back then was, my brother was going through school, going through puberty, going through a mixed bag of emotions and needed time to himself to grow and mature in his own way, oh how I didn’t let that happen. I forced my way into his life. My mother left me with him when she left for work, my actions were his responsibility. I never really took the brunt of any consequence after I had done something mischievous, that was my brother. And so after a few years of this,  a resentment grew, we were never close when I was young and that I deeply regret because as much as I needed him, he needed me.

However there came a point, a switch clicked inside my head and I decided to simply stop. I don’t really know what brought this on, maybe a perspective of maturity just seemed nice to me. It was at the age of 11, 12, 13 our relationship slowly started to develop again. We hung out a lot more, we talked a lot more and the shaping of my belief system was taking place. My brother, for a kid his age, was wise. He would talk in a way that would captivate my young mind and plant pieces of information like seeds that would grow into beautiful forests. For example, My brother always looked at life as bigger than himself, we are all meant to do something, we all have a specific purpose we are born for. I believe you can find remnants of that in my writing, in fact you could probably go look at a few of my past blogs and see for yourself. Yes, that stuck with me. The round table analogy, our minds and hearts, that was my brother. Although he included the soul onto that table. The question of, do we have souls?, will get talked about another day. The point is, in every word I write, In every metaphor I use, you will find a fraction of my brother in them. Just like how you’ll find that my brother is a fraction of me.

My brother and I, our brains are not wired for the education system as I’m sure a lot of others aren’t. We are people purely driven by passion but the difference is no one taught him that that’s ok and it haunted him for a good while after results day. That was a sad week. When the results came home, there was nothing but tears, in the worst way possible. However what my brother doesn’t know is, because he persevered through that storm, on his own. Because he took that pain and didn’t let it rot him to the core. Because he was strong, he taught me it was ok to follow my dreams. He taught me that I don’t have to do the best in school, because as long as I am strong and my faith in my passion doesn’t waiver. I’ll be ok. He unknowingly set this whole project up. A good role model is a good role model when they don’t even realise they are role models, when they just act in a way so inspiring that it forces others to notice. That is what my brother is, my role model. I will chase this passion of mine for the rest of my life because of him and now I am offering the advice, in written form, to all of you, my readers. He could have easily rotted in a hole and become a statistic but he chose the higher road. He chose the harder road and that inspiration still flows through me, even today. So, my brother, on that faithful results day, you didn’t fail. You succeeded in creating this. In creating who I am today. I am indebted to you for the rest of my life. Happy birthday brother and I wish nothing but success for both of us, so we can both make the world a better place, one word at a time. I love you - S

No Returns, No Exchanges

Disclaimer: I have debated for quite a while whether or not I should post this blog.  Social media is such a curated space for joy and happiness, it can feel oppressive at times.  There is so much life-changing positivity, from engagements to new jobs; and don’t get me wrong, that happiness is great to see.  But on the other hand, all of that positivity makes me feel like sharing any kind of negative information is attention-seeking and an immense overshare.  So let’s ask ourselves why I feel that way.  Why is happiness celebrated while the sad, sometimes harsh realities of life are thought to be oversharing?  More specifically, why do we feel like life-changing news can only be shared when it doesn’t make other people uncomfortable?  Our expressions of pain should not be regulated by the comfort levels of the people who surround us.  There comes a time when not sharing something begins to feel like hiding something, and hiding something turns to shame.  That is a feeling that I refuse to welcome into my life right now.  So here we go. 

It has been a while since I posted anything… a really long while.  It has been rare, these past few years, that I have even felt I had anything much to say let alone write anything, mostly because my life has been fairly normal, fairly unextraordinary, and I am rather blessed to be saying that during such a difficult time for so many. The few moments where I have felt like I had something to say have been fleeting, and after a good 2am word vomit on paper, I have filed these musings under “not to be seen by the light of day” which is probably for the best.

 Sometimes in the past I would find myself wishing I had something interesting going on in my life, something worthy of commentary… I don’t know, I was thinking like a cool hobby, an interesting skill, a kick-ass career, or a run in with Tom Hardy like I’d always dreamed of… something.  

 Well, to whoever is in charge, this is not what I meant, and I would like to request a refund. 

 Because as its final parting kick in the ass 2020 decided to gift me with breast cancer.  This isn’t a bad punch line, it’s just the truth.Let me give you a second to process that one.  I certainly needed a few.

 The thing is, a little itty bitty 3-centimeter tumor- that’s not something I can give back, as much as I might want to.  It’s not a too-large sweater you can return with a gift receipt, and it’s not a bad haircut you can complain about and get your money back (though it certainly will include one in a week or so!)

 A lot of you already know this story and frankly it’s not one I can tell with much finesse or humor, so I will keep it brief.  It was a dark and stormy 6pm when I found a lump in my breast in the shower back in November.  My initial thought was “you’re a crazy lady and a hypochondriac, let’s give it a few weeks since this is probably nothing.”   A few weeks, when my imaginary lump seemed to not actually be imaginary, I figured okay, it’s time to see my doctor, it’s probably nothing but we need to make sure.  I was in fact so unconcerned about it that I didn’t even see my regular doctor. I figured I just needed a medical professional to feel me up and let me know what to do next.  I didn’t even bother mentioning it to my parents. (For context of my laissez-faire, when I was 14 I found a lump in my breast that turned out, after little fanfare, to be a cyst which was unceremoniously drained on a cold metal table by a male doctor in a somewhat traumatizing but ultimately benign event.  That’s a longer story for later). 

 Cue a physical exam, confirming I was not crazy and there was a lump, but it was probably nothing; an utltrasound, confirming the lump was a shape that they did not like, but it was probably nothing; and an ultrasound guided biopsy, in which the probably nothing was sampled.  The week between Christmas and New Year’s was spent impatiently waiting for the news, increasingly feeling that my probably nothing was maybe, actually something.

 On December 28 around lunch time I received a phone call in the middle of the work day from the radiologist, who while very nice, was someone I had only met once while she shot a needle in and out of my boob.  She asked me how I was doing and then told me my test results were in.  “I’m sorry to say it’s not good news,” she said.

 And believe it or fucking not my immediate thought was “It’s not good news… it’s great news!” My brain supplied this as if on autopilot like some kind of 90s game show host, knowing fully well that I would not be so lucky because we are not living in a Brooklyn 99 episode.  It’s weird where your brain goes under duress.

 It was one of the most uncomfortable phone calls I have ever had, wherein I found myself trying to reassure a complete stranger that I was okay and I’m pretty sure I even said, “it is what it is.”  I was told a breast surgeon and oncologist from my provider network would be in contact and the call ended. Ultimately, I was diagnosed with Stage 1B Triple Negative Invasive Ductal and Lobular Carcinoma.  No returns, no exchanges.

 I am two months into my diagnosis, and 1/8 of my way through chemotherapy, the first part of a three series treatment (to be followed by surgery and then likely radiation.)  This Friday, after my second chemotherapy treatment, I will begin to lose my hair.  Anyone who knows me at all knows that the hair loss will be a pill likely far harder for me to swallow than the chemo itself.  And while the look may have worked for Demi Moore in GI Jane, I do not have her bone structure, nor her body.  I anticipate I will look more like the yellow peanut M&M, which while obviously the best M&M of the bunch, I think we can all agree is not a cute look for me.

 I do not say this to be melodramatic, I just say this because I am cynical and pragmatic by nature: I am not particularly surprised that I have cancer.  And this is for several reasons, some of which probably deserve a longer blog later.  To put it simply, I have been surrounded by cancer, both by choice and by cruel fate and happenstance, my entire life. 

 Cruel Fate and Happenstance: Having several relatives who have gone through cancer, and a mother with a BRCA 1 genetic mutation (which I had a 50% chance of inheriting, and in fact did) I always figured it would eventually happen to me.  The odds this condition dealt me? “About 13% of women in the general population will develop breast cancer sometime during their lives. By contrast, 55%–72% of women who inherit a harmful BRCA1 variant… will develop breast cancer by 70–80 years of age.”  That 55-72% is the kind of percentage you want winning the lottery, but the lottery this most certainly is not, and that much I understood. So, I always figured something like this would probably happen.  Did I think I would be 28? No. But I figure that just makes me an overachiever. 

 Choice: I volunteered at a cancer support non-profit from the time I was 12 to the time I was 22, and I wrote my college senior thesis in anthropology on women with ovarian cancer, the cancer that killed my aunt Lizzy when I was 4 years old.  I have likely read more books on cancer than your average newly diagnosed person, which I find to be both a blessing and a curse.  On one hand, I know some of what’s coming.  On the other hand, I know some of what’s coming.  Of course I don’t think any of these things gave me cancer but you might say I have been training for this my whole life.  I think this joke is far funnier than pretty much everyone I say it to except my immediate family, because the Tenney/Koss folk are very big on gallows humor, in which case this is hilarious.  Comedy is our family coping mechanism, and I am guilty of occasionally forgetting not everyone is wired like that.   

 So where are we right now? Taking it day by day.  Do I frequently find myself wallowing in self-pity these days? Sure.  But all the same I feel truly lucky.  This is a feeling I am trying to hold on to, because I think the other options might be truly unbearable.  Why? Well, I found this tumor.  I’m 28-years-old, which means I am hardly old enough for a regular mammogram and MRI.  My last yearly physical was a TeleHealth appointment (hence no actual physical) and I will be honest, I never made a habit of regularly checking myself like I should have.  But this tumor just presented itself casually during a shower.  Breast cancer, when caught early, is highly treatable and curable, and I am fairly confident, knock on wood, that is where this particular nightmare is headed.  The fact that it was caught early: pure luck. 

Another reason I feel lucky is for the most part, I feel like I actually have the stability to handle the oncoming struggle.  I have a large and wonderful support system, an incredible and supportive partner, a savings account with actual savings in it, and a job where I am cared about as a human.  If this had happened to me three years ago, almost none of these things would be true.  There will never be a good time to have cancer, but some times are apparently better than others.  Of course, the ongoing pandemic means I can’t have people go with me to chemo, or my wig fitting, or my surgery consultations, and alone a lot of this seems much more daunting and difficult than it might otherwise have been, but I am trying to make a habit of counting my blessings, and despite this terrible thing I’ve been given, my blessings are many.

 There isn’t a “right way” to have cancer, but I think there might be a “right way” for me.  I am a private person and I find sharing some of these details difficult and more than a little uncomfortable, but I am also intimately familiar with the healing nature of writing and comedy, so I am going to give it a shot.  

 And now that I think of it… the peanut M&M is going to make a really great Halloween costume. 

It’s that time of year, everyone! We’re so excited for this year’s Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Month! This year, four of us are hosting, and we’re so excited to see what everyone creates to celebrate 5D’s!

Now, finally, after a lot of chatting and planning, we’re ready to share the themes with you!

Day 1 (July 7th): A Hero of Planetary Proportions

From humble origins to historic achievements, this hero’s got quite the track record. Rev up 5D’s month with us! How do you celebrate Yusei’s birthday?

Day 2 (July 8th): A Well-Loved Story

From the Fortune Cup, to the Dark Signers, to the WRPG, to Crash Town, to the Ark Cradle; this beloved story was a ride from start to finish. But which part was your favorite?

Day 3 (July 9th): Easy Listening for the Busy Duelist

Got a playlist you want to share? It can be for a character, a season, or the overall series. Come on Eileen, share it with us!

Day 4 (July 10th): Friends From Unexpected Places

Everyone has a favorite series, all the way from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! to VRAINS. But what would happen if our 5D’s heroes came across duelists old and new? Whether you prefer to rev it up, high five the sky, or get your game on, show us what you come up with!

Day 5 (July 11th): King for a Day

He’s fast! He’s furious! He’s a little bit of a (jack)ass, but you’d better believe he loves his friends (and his cup ramen)! Got any favorite Jack moments? Show the King some love today!

Day 6 (July 12th): Darling, Dearest, Demented, Dead

There were seven Dark Signers. Who’s your favorite?

Day 7 (July 13th): To Redeem or Not To Redeem?

Which character deserves to be redeemed for their crimes? Or, maybe they don’t? Tell us what you think.

Day 8 (July 14th): The Good, The Bad, and The Western

Let’s see how some of the characters would look in Crash Town, or in the wild Wild West in general! Break out your desert ponchos and give your favorite character a duel gun!

Day 9 (July 15th): The Blooming Black Rose

This bright red beauty is easy to fall for—no witchcraft necessary! Fierce, powerful, and loyal, Aki makes for a quite the opponent! What’s your favorite thing about the Black Rose?

Day 10 (July 16th): Free Day I (Me, Myself, and I!)

Our first free day! Use it however you want, or use it as a day to introduce yourself!

Day 11 (July 17th): If Things Had Been Different...

We’ve all thought about what would happen if our favorite series was... in a coffee shop?! Here’s where you can give us your favorite AU, any crossover, or maybe even give us a glimpse of the timeline Z-ONE came from! Anything is on the table for this one.

Day 12 (July 18th): I Can Go the Distance

Lovable and hardworking, this Satellite sneak makes for a family man and a skilled duelist! Do you have a soft spot for this mother bird? Show us what you love about Crow!

Day 13 (July 19th): Psychic Heaven or Psychic Hell?

The Arcadia Movement is a controversial subject. Is it a cult, or is it something else? Show us, or tell us, what you see.

Day 14 (July 20th): Family, Found

Which Team are you on?

Day 15 (July 21st): A Sparkling Piece Of Self

We all make OCs—and for many of us, they’re the start of friendships, self-journeys, or simply fun and mindless explorations into another world! If you have an OC, share them with us! We’ll give them all our love. ️

Day 16 (July 22nd): Tiny, But Mighty

If you spend a day with him, you’re sure to have your hands full, as this little machinist packs punch as big as his heart! What do you love about Rua/Leo?

Day 17 (July 23rd): The Little Fairy Queen

The duel spirits whisper eagerly about this one: she may be small, but she’s no easy opponent! Bow down to the queen! Show some love for Ruka/Luna!

Day 18 (July 24th): My Own Worst Enemy

Divine. Rudger. Rex. Z-ONE. There are so many antagonists to chose from! Let us know which one is your favorite!

Day 19 (July 25th): Synchro Sweethearts

Do you have a favorite Synchro Monster? Is it one of the Signer’s legendary dragons, or is it something else? Show us! Synchro Monsters aren’t banned here!

Day 20 (July 26th): Free Day II (Support Your Fellow Creators!)

Our second free day! Use however you please, or use it to shout out your favorite fanfics! Give some artists, or some writers, some well deserved attention.

Day 21 (July 27th): Canon? Never Heard of Her.

There are always things we wish we could change—especially in this fandom! *cough4Kidscough* If given the chance, what would you change?

Day 22 (July 28th): Those Unruly Satellite Kids

Team Satisfaction, or the Enforcers? Either way, we love our favorite duel gang, and we think they need some more attention.

Day 23 (July 29th): Good Captains Go Down With Their Ships

We ALL have a favorite ship. Which one is yours?

Day 24 (July 30th): Scars and Lumps and Bruises

All of our favorite characters have felt some kind of pain or anguish. Which moment stood out the most for you?

Day 25 (July 31st): Bright Crimson Bonds

The Crimson Dragon gave us bonds that can’t be separated. Take today to honor this mighty god!

Day 26 (August 1st): When The Day Met The Night

This day is all about contrasts! There’s plenty of light vs dark to play with in this series—characters, settings, and plot lines! Carly vs her Dark Signer counterpart, or Yusei vs Z-ONE, or maybe even Yusei vs Jack. What do you think when you hear ‘contrasts?’

Day 27 (August 2nd): The Ringleader, Unsatisfied

Once full of unbridled confidence, this brooding team leader is still seeking the meaning of satisfaction. He’s trying his best, though! Do you have a favorite Kiryu moment? Throw some love in this ex-Dark Signer’s direction!

Day 28 (August 3rd): You Deserve More Fanart.

You heard the title! There are many characters in the series: who do you think is under-appreciated?

Day 29 (August 4th): Man of Wires, Nerves, and Steel

Armed with nothing but a big ol’ smile and a supercomputer of a brain, Bruno inevitably stole our hearts and kept them until the bitter end. Share some of your favorite Bruno/Dark Glass moments with us!

Day 30 (August 5th): Free Day III (What’s On Your Mind?)

Our last free day! Share something with us—anything you want! We’re excited to have you here and celebrating Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Month with us!

Day 31 (August 6th): Going My Way!

We’ve reached our journey’s end. What does the future hold?

Chapter 13: Monster Madness (Loki x OFC Pairing)

"How the mighty have fallen," a voice woke me up some time later.

I opened my eyes to see another familiar face and grinned wickedly. "Finally, a reason to rip you apart after all this time."

The woman on the other side of the glass smirked at me and crossed her hands over her chest in defiance. "I'd like to see you try."

"Then I'll save the plucking of your eyes for last just so you can," I sneered.

She looked me once over and shook her head. "You still don't look a day over expired last month. I don't know what the man behind me sees in you."

"That's the best you got? What are you? Fifteen? You think I care about how I look at this stage in my life? I can understand why you do though, you still age, how's that going for you? The crow's feet, the weak bones, the sagging boobs, sometimes it's good to be dead than to be you."

The dark haired, skinny bitch of a woman in front of me glared furiously at my deflection of her insults. "They should've put the muzzle back on you instead of him."

I glanced past her at Loki who still had the muzzle and cuffs on but looked slightly better than before, the lights weren't as bright as when I last saw him and I inwardly relaxed, as long as he was still kicking so would I. "Tough titties, toots. How else will your new friends get answers out of me? Or did you forget to use your head on this like you always do? That's why you can't raise an army, zombies only want someone with brains."

She made a move to lunge at the cell but was stopped by Feist clearing his throat from the deck above the cells. "No attacking the guest of honor, Alicia."

"Especially when she can snap you in half like the twig you are," I added. "Of the two of us, which do you think they'll show mercy to in the end? The one that follows or the one that betrays?"

She scoffed at my warning. "They won't do a damned thing, they don't trouble themselves in our affairs."

"Of course not, but tell me something, how do you think I got where I am and none of y'all can ever top me? How do you think I got my immortality exactly?" I stood up and walked toward her slowly with whitened eyes and pressed myself against the glass.  Power surged through me, causing any machinery near me to go berserk, sparking and malfunctioning as alarms went off and my arm shot through the glass holding me in and reached for her soul and a bloodcurdling scream ripped from her throat simply by me holding onto it while her body went rigid from the pain. "Look at me now and tell me I'm on the short end of the stick here." I let go of her however when I could hear a thump from behind her despite her loud and earpiercing screams and saw Loki on his knees in his cell, hands pressed against the glass in an effort to stay up. I took one step back despite the fact the glass cell I was in was pretty much useless now, Alicia dropping to the floor hard but unfortunately still alive. As soon as she could grasp her surroundings however, she no longer held any confidence or smugness, only fear when she looked at me.

"What are you?" she gasped.

"I'm the boogeyman of monsters and the nightmare of gods and you'll just be another soul to eat when this is over. You want to send in another lackey for me to play with, that's on you for thinking she'd ever play nice, you didn't do your research on that one," I stated the last bit to the leader of the base that was still watching. "Or maybe you are and just wanted to see what I can do when provoked but don't want me thinking I can get away with it even when it's what you want. That's it, isn't it? You think you're so clever hiding us away and making someone that matters to me suffer but you mad scientists are all the same, you're just another scared little mortal in a labcoat." I stepped over the broken glass and out of my cell. I looked down at the broken woman that still couldn't stand on her feet after I reached into her. "Walk it off, sweetheart, you ain't special here."

"She is still needed for her abilities as are you, Noelle. I would suggest you stay where you are or your beloved Frost Giant will have a meltdown," the lab rat threatened.

I raised my hands in mock surrender before dropping one hand on wiring to his cell, death magic following it to the lights that exploded in a shower of golden sparks but ultimately no longer emitting heat that was slowly killing Loki. "I warned your top ranking soldier this would happen if you endanger him like this, this is still on you for not listening." I looked back at Loki who was starting to get to his feet, already looking better with the lights off. "Go ahead, make my millennium."

"She was one of the few here that didn't fear you till now, what did you do that broke her or scared the others?"

"Come closer and I'll show you," I hissed. "Or better yet, send another traitorous necromancer in for me to play with. Two bodies with one stone."

"You're in no position to be making demands here."

I cackled. "The commander said something similar to that, see you're all alike, when you have something original come find me."

"We have you, don't we?"

"I'm here because I let you take me here, don't think for one second this was entirely by your hand, I pretty much just proved you can't contain me, not this time."

At that point, the commander and his team invaded the room Loki and I were held in, all holding rods that could electrocute on contact. They wanted me alive after all, even though guns didn't do shit, they used them to kill with and didn't want me dead.

"I'm not really a fan of shock therapy."

"The others told me you're just as dead as your army and electricity does marvelous things to the dead, some would say it can wake them with the right voltage," Feist was saying.

"Did you get that from Mary Shelley? Because you totally missed the whole point of the story then, it's not the giant corpse that's the monster but the graverobbing mad scientist that wanted to play God. You're all the same whether its fiction or fact, you all want more than you can possibly hold onto and aren't meant to obtain and in doing so you destroy everything you touch, all in the name of science." I lunged for the commander as he was closest, dodging the lightning rod and snatching a small remote control hanging from his ammo belt and crushing it in one hand. Loki's electro disc thing on his neck fell off as well as his muzzle then while I grabbed another guy's rod from him and gave em a taste of their own medicine, zapping a few before wrapping an arm around one dude's neck and holding him in front of me like a shield.

"You got nowhere to go from here, Noelle. You're completely surrounded, the majority of the people in this building are either HYDRA or your people on our side, you don't even know where we took you, where you are right now. Just give up now and save us all the trouble," Feist called down to me.

"Is that right? You really think that, do you?" I asked incredulously. Death magic gathering in my limbs for my next move. "There's so many things wrong with what you just said, I'm going to start saying Hydra whenever something else is wrong with someone's statement." Machinery all around started glitching as I pushed my power into the electrical lines of the building, my magic couldn't outright kill people but it did kill inanimate things not made of blood and flesh like machinery and things run by electricity. Natural magic as death magic was clashed with manmade things like that.

"Then enlighten me, tell me what's wrong with what I said."

"I'm not trapped in here with y'all...you're all trapped in here with me." A surge of power went through me into the building, causing the lights to either explode like it did in Loki's container or just shut off, computer systems malfunctioned, including the one linked to Loki's cell, sparks flying everywhere, alarms going off. I threw the guy I was using for a shield into the other team members of the commander as a distraction and darted away into the darkness.

"Spread out, she can't have gone far!" the commander shouted above the chaos. "She wouldn't leave Loki behind like that."

He was right, I wasn't leaving without Loki , especially since he had the whole teleportation thing going and I wanted out asap. I waited in the darkness for an agent to get close enough before grabbing him from behind and tearing him apart, his screams and gun going off as he tried to defend himself before going out in a spray of blood. Of course two more team members went to where his body was left but I had moved on to another loan team member. One by one, they went down with blood and bullets everywhere until it was just the commander left.

"Come out and face me, you coward," growled the commander, gun in one hand, hunting knife in the other.

"I'm the coward? Who here needed a team of 6 to try and take down one dead girl? Only cowards use quantity over quality."

He shot where he thought I was according to where he heard my voice but lucky for me, metal and glass make echoes. He kept shooting at where he thought I was till he was right where I wanted him to be.

"Guess again," I hissed in his ear from behind him. He spun around with his knife this time but I had dropped to my knees so his knife went above my head completely and with a knife I snatched from another agent, slashed him deep in the stomach several times, going right through his bulletproof vest and into flesh and guts. He dropped his knife to try and hold in his innards  before dropping to his knees and falling to his side right after. I stepped over him to Loki's cage and easily pulled the malfunctioning sliding door open for him, grabbing hold of his cuffs as he stepped toward me that released him instantly from my touch.

"You're covered in blood," he noted once he got a good look at me in the darkness.

"You're welcome," I replied dryly. "Can you get us out of here before the backup generators kick in?"

"Where do you have in mind?"

"Hawthorne Hotel, might be a bit obvious for the Avengers but it's all I can think of."

"Done." He took my hand in his and right as more agents and the first necromancer I saw coming in here came running in to surround us, green magic swirled around Loki and me and we were suddenly where I belonged.

COPY WHAT MADE LISP

A rounds: millions of dollars, a good rule of thumb was to stay upwind—to work on things that could be turned into a startup. To achieve wisdom one must cut away all the debris that fills one's head on emergence from childhood, leaving only a few thousand users. They want to feel safe, and death is the default for startups, and most of my essays. Is the mathematician a small man because he's discontented? At our end, money is almost a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction. It's something the market already determines.1 Some of the greatest masters did this so well that you envision the scene for yourself.

You're not just looking for good ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas, because their subconscious filters them out. Graduates of elite colleges would have been unbearable. At YC we tell startups they can blame us. That's premature optimization. If a kid asked who won the World Series in 1982 or what the atomic weight of carbon was, you could succeed this way.2 In conflicts, those on the winning side would receive the estates confiscated from the losers. The optimal solution is to have the right kind of friends. CS major and you want to work in this field at all. I was convinced the world was created by the middle class. The Northwest Passage that the Mannerists, the Romantics, and two generations of American high school students have searched for does not seem to exist.3

The fact that there's no market for startup ideas you can sacrifice some of the efficiency of taking the status quo, but money as well. If a new company that grows fast.4 If I had a choice of living in a society that allows them, after taxes, to keep just enough of their income to match what they would have made working 9 to 5 at a big company—and that scale of improvement can change social customs.5 Off the top of the field, what's the test of doing well? It's all evasion. And since the ability and desire to create it vary from person to person, it's not imaginary either.6 But because the product is not appealing enough.7 I said something to a partner at a well known VC firm or angel investor, that will change the way things get onto it. If you're so fortunate as to have to do 7. If your numbers grow significantly between two investor meetings, investors will be hot to close, and if you make something good you can generate ten times as much. Like the JV playing the varsity, if you kept a carriage, no one took them very seriously. They always get things wrong.

Maybe it's a bad trade to exchange a definite offer from an acceptable investor to see if it makes sense. In principle they could have; the king could have invented firearms, then invaded his neighbor. Architects started consciously making buildings asymmetric in Victorian times and by the 1920s asymmetry was an explicit premise of modernist architecture. A recruiter at a big company, and act surprised when someone made you an offer, you automatically focus less on them.8 They've forgotten most of them happier.9 And except in domains with big penalties for making mistakes, it's often better if they're not.10 Once you're living in the future and build what seems interesting.

To say that a certain kind of work that doesn't scale. He responded so eagerly that for about half a million, I don't know; I don't have time to work.11 But there is not much going on, especially measured by the word. In 1976, everyone looked down on a company operating out of a garage, including the founders.12 In other words, those workers were not paid what their work was worth. The question is whether the author is incorrect somewhere, say where. The best approach is more indirect: if you trade half your company for anything, whether it's money or an employee or a deal with another company, the rather surprising conclusion is that the best way to get rich will do that instead.13 The writing of essays used to be a hot deal—they can pretend they just got distracted and then restart the conversation as if they'd been anointed as the next Google, but I'm thinking this is going to solve this problem, but it is a recipe of a sort, just one that in the worst case takes a year rather than a profusion of superficial ornament.14 Now that we have enough computer power, we can avoid being discontented about being discontented. Getting the first substantial offer can be half the total difficulty of fundraising. Why?15

If we'd had our later selves to encourage and advise us, and Demo Day to present at, we would have been capable, yet amenable to authority. Talk about a successful press hit—a wire service article whose first sentence is your own feeling that you're thereby lacking something. Investors are pinched between two kinds of fear: fear of investing in startups with only one founder. The conspiracy is so thorough that most kids who discover it do so only by discovering internal contradictions in what they're told. If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of it. One reason we want kids to be told. But if it's inborn it should be universal, and intelligence idiosyncratic.16 How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company, or just a niche product?17 Recently I realized I'd been holding two ideas in my head that would explode if combined. You'll need an executive summary and maybe a deck. This is one way I know the rich aren't all getting richer simply from some new system for transferring wealth to them from everyone else. I'm not sure of this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are compulsive negotiators who will suck up a lot of people to supply each startup with what they need.

So as animals get bigger they have trouble radiating heat.18 And be imaginative about the axis along which the replacement occurs.19 But I didn't realize there were power plants out there generating it. That doesn't mean people are getting angrier.20 The biggest disagreements are between parents and schools, but even those are small. Innocence is also open-mindedness. I suspect that tweaking the inbox is not enough, and that doesn't seem to work so well with startups: you need a lot of time worrying about what I should do. Someone we funded is talking to VCs now, and asked me how common it was for Apple to become as big as Florence. These things don't scale linearly. The work at an early stage startup often consists of unglamorous schleps. If you ask adults why they lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is.

Notes

Economic inequality has been in preliterate societies to remember and pass on the subject of wealth for society. Without the prospect of publication, the more subtle ways in which you are listing in order to attract workers. We have no connections, you'll find that with a real poet.

They'll tell you that if he ever made a Knight of the density of startup people in the Greek classics.

Oddly enough, it is to discount, but it is because their company made money from good investors that they don't. This is true of the economy. Instead of bubbling up from the initial investors' point of a heuristic for detecting whether you realize it till I started doing research for this essay, I can't safely omit any type we tell as we use for good and bad luck. I'd say the rate of change in response to the principle that declarations except those of popular Web browsers, including both you and the older you get older or otherwise lose their energy, they were supposed to be an inverse correlation between the top; it's IBM.

Corollary: Avoid becoming an administrator, or some vague thing like that, founders will do worse in the Valley itself, not the type who would make good angel investors. You know what kind of protection against abuse and accidents. I calculated it once for that reason. Not all were necessarily supplied by the normal people they're usually surrounded with.

And that is not a programmer would find it was so widespread and so depended on banks, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The Old Way.

Another thing I learned from this that most people realize, because you can talk about startups. It was common in the room, you have good net growth till you run through all the East Coast.

This phenomenon may account for a public company CEOs were J.

As willful people get serious about tax avoidance. 35,560. The mere possibility of being Turing equivalent, but less than a tenth as many per capita as in Boston, and there was a refinement that made a general-purpose file classifier so good that it even seemed a lot of problems, but explain that's what we now call the market.

It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we realize, because any VC would think twice before crossing him. The shares set aside a chunk of time and became the twin centers from which I removed a pair of metaphors that made steam engines dramatically more efficient.

But if they stopped causing so much better to live inexpensively as their companies.

Digg's is the only cause of economic inequality start to rise again. Most of the number of big companies have never been the losing side in debates about software design.

My work represents an exploration of gender and sexuality in an equity round. You could also degenerate from 129.

Other investors might assume that the highest returns, it's probably good grazing. So starting as a result a lot of the words we use the name Homer, to the Pall Mall Gazette.

That would be a constant.

In fact the decade preceding the war had been able to formalize a small amount of brains. They don't know how many computers the worm might have. And in any era if people can see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. It seemed better to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's hard to say that was more rebellion which can vary a lot more frightening in those days, and spend hours arguing over irrelevant things.

Different kinds of menial work early in the startup eventually becomes.

Xenophon Mem. One professor friend says that I didn't. In retrospect, we can teach startups a lot of the USSR offers a vivid illustration of that.

Math is the same ones. So managers are constrained too; instead of hiring them. No VC will admit they're influenced by confidence. By all the East Coast VCs.

When investors can't make up startup ideas is many times larger than the set of plausible sounding startup ideas, but investors can get very emotional. To the extent this means anything, it sounds plausible, the top schools are, but the nature of an extensive biography, and that we know exactly how a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this essay wrote: One way to make 200x as much income. First Industrial Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1973, p.

If big companies don't advertise this. Only in a deal led by a combination of a startup in a couple predecessors. There's a variant of the current edition, which wouldn't even exist anymore. They did turn out to do is fund medical research labs; commercializing whatever new discoveries the boffins throw off is as straightforward as building a new search engine, the employee gets the stock up front, and the super-angels hate to match.

“How The Whole Hearted Live”

Homework: Watch “The Power of Vulnerability” by Brene Brown

Homework: Answer the question, “Why aren't you enough?”

Jesus. 

My thoughts: A tangle of yarn. One giant pencil scribble, half erased. Afraid of being perfect, afraid of being unclear, afraid of not making sense, afraid of not getting it all out. 

Afraid. 

Maybe that’s where it starts. 

Maybe it starts with fear. 

“The Power of Vulnerability” by Brene Brown. 

This video moved me. 

I didn't think it would.

I thought it would be another TED Talk, based in research, based in fact. 

And then I heard the word “courage.” 

I heard the word “compassion.” 

I heard the word “connection.” 

And then I heard the words “how the whole hearted live.” 

A face. 

A neon sign, three letters; blinking in my brain, drowning in my heart.

MOM. 

I find it hard to talk about her. I don't like to talk about her. To talk about her is to be vulnerable, to talk about her is to uncover a piece of me, that I buried long ago, that I tried to forget, a piece of me I tried to kill. 

“The Power of Vulnerability.” 

I guess that’s the whole point. 

“How the Whole Hearted Live.”

There is a reason her face flashed to my mind. Brown eyes. A ready smile. My favourite person. My ray of light. 

Today I want to talk about my mom. 

“Courage.” 

courage (n); “from the Latin word cour”. 

“To tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.” 

I want to believe I have courage. I would like to say that I am courageous. I don't really know if I am. I know that I am brave. But I don't really think I am courageous. I am not open. I am not unapologetically me. I feel the need to hide, to shift myself, to shrink. 

Courage: The strength to have 2 mastectomies and not get plastic surgery. To walk out of the house with no hair, no wig and not care. To have black fingernails and a yellow complexion and wear lipstick anyway, just for the hell of it. To fall up the stairs at a movie theatre cause you’re having trouble walking and laugh it off. To be completely unapologetically you, and laugh in the face of cancer, the face of death. 

That’s what courage is to me. 

“Compassion.” 

“Be kind to yourself first, and then to others.”

“We can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly.”

I want to believe I’m compassionate. I care for the people in my life. I care for those around me; love deeply, give deeply, feel deeply. I try to reserve judgement, to work for the better of others; to put others before myself. 

This is what she taught me. She taught me to love deeply, to give deeply, to feel deeply. To “never judge a book by its cover,” to always give back, to treat others how I would like to be treated. 

And how did I treat myself? Not how I want to be treated, that’s for damn sure. In the end, I was not compassionate. I was selfish. I hurt those around me. I hurt my Dad. I hurt Him. By hurting myself, I stole my own compassion. I stopped fighting for myself, and in doing so, I stopped fighting for everyone around me. I stopped giving. I stopped loving. I stopped caring.

I knew she was fighting for me. 

“I have a 13 year old daughter. I just want to be there for my daughter.” 

But maybe, just maybe, she was fighting for her too. To see me grow, to love me more. Maybe she wasn't just fighting for Dad, for me, for more time with us. Maybe, just maybe she was fighting for something more, for the chance to live. 

“Connection.” 

“A result of authenticity.” 

“Willing to let go of who you think you should be to be who you are.” 

Not me. 

I have no connection.

For 7 years I have been trying to kill connection.

From the moment I stood by a hospital bed, and held a cold hand. From the moment I said “Mommy, don't forget to wait for me,” I have been trying to murder connection. To drown love. To hide.

In my pain I preserved my love. In running away I tried to save myself. I drowned love, but I drowned myself too.

In skinny I hid my authenticity.

In becoming a ghost, I sought to run from myself; the little girl in a Wicked Witch costume, laughing from a photograph. I didn't know who she was anymore. There was no Scarecrow anymore. No brown eyes. No ready smile.

So I killed her. I killed her and ran. I pushed the pain down into the very depths of me, and lived within the words, “I’m fine.” I drowned it, each time it would resurface, so no one would see.

I drowned it in the toilet, and just kept flushing. 

“Vulnerability.” 

“What made them vulnerable is what made them beautiful.” 

I cannot describe to you, I cannot put into words, how beautiful she was to me. I can’t begin to describe to you the person that she was. There are no words. Her courage, her compassion, the fullness with which she lived her life. 

“How the Whole-Hearted Live.”

Maybe those are the only words. 

“Vulnerability.” 

“A willingness to be vulnerable is necessary.” 

How? 

  “Why do we struggle with vulnerability?” 

1. We Numb. 

“You can’t selectively numb the bad stuff.” 

“We numb joy, gratitude and happiness.” 

Me.

I numbed me. 

Her. I tranquilized her. The little girl in the photograph. I didn't want to be her anymore. 

I just didn't want to feel her pain.

I lost myself, in the toilet, on the scale. When you’ve thrown up for 4 hours, you can’t feel anything.

Your emotions lessen.

You are excited about a binge. You feel joy when you get the pile of donuts, happy when you see the cheesecake. Or you think you do. But it is a false joy, a shadow happiness. And when you feel sick, it is an induced sickness. Not real, not authentic, not vulnerable.

So you flush it away, and drown the little girl again, so she doesn't have to feel what she’s really feeling; lost, abandoned, and excruciatingly alone. 

If you drown it, it doesn't exist. 

Right?

“How do we numb?”

“We make the uncertain certain.” 

“We blame.” 

I blamed my body. I took control of my body; I made my body certain, my port in the storm.

Forget connection. 

Forget compassion.

Forget courage.

But not bravery.

I think I was brave. I know it’s sounds crazy, but I was pretty f*cking brave.

It takes a lot of bravery, a lot of inner strength, to face that toilet every day. To do it every day, without fail.

But not courage. I didn't have courage. Just control, or so I thought. 

2. We Perfect.

Duh.

“Children are hard wired for struggle.” 

“Children are not meant to be perfect.”

Children must be taught, “You are worthy of love and belonging.” 

Neon sign. 

Three letters. 

MOM. 

She died.

Who is worthy? Who belongs? Who is loved? 

Not me. Not Morgan. 

Girl just flush the toilet. 

3. We Pretend.

We pretend “what we do doesn't have an effect on people.” 

I ran. 

I was abandoned. I ran. I hid. I drowned. I killed.

I pretended. 

I lost myself inside the mirror, the scale, the endless lists of calories. 

I just ran. 

We pretend “what we do doesn't have an effect on people.” 

A face. 

Blue eyes. Worry lines. Dark Circles. Gumballs at the clock-tower.

“Morgie, I’m just trying to understand.”

We pretend “what we do doesn't have an effect on people.” 

A face. 

Brown eyes. Freckles. Strong arms. Coffee in bed. 

“Hello Flower.” 

I just ran. 

But ran to what?

“There is another way.” 

“Love with our whole hearts.”

A face. 

Brown eyes. A ready smile. 

Neon sign. Three letters.

MOM. 

“To feel this vulnerable means you’re alive.” 

Maybe it starts here. 

Maybe it doesn't start with the word “afraid”.

Maybe it simply starts with living. 

by Inga Berenson It was a hot summer morning. I was nine or ten, riding my pony from our farmhouse toward the barn where my father was working. This was the first time I had gone riding since a string of bad falls had caused me to lose my nerve, but I loved riding, and was determined to be back in the saddle. So far, things were going well. The gravel road between our house and the barn was about a mile long, and I was halfway there. My usually cantankerous little mare was being perfectly docile, but I was approaching the house of a quirky neighbor who kept a menagerie of animals – donkeys, zebras, buffalo, and a gaggle of dogs that barked at every passing car. I was mostly worried about the dogs and how my pony would handle the barking – it sometimes made her nervous, but there was no dog in sight as I rode past the house. I was thinking I was home-free until I heard a commotion from the paddock across from the neighbor’s house. I looked around and saw a giant draft horse push through a dilapidated wire fence and come galloping toward me, neighing and grunting in what I later understood to be equine lust. In an instant he was beside us, rearing and pawing his great, hairy hooves in the air near my face. I thought that was the end of me and my pony. Then all of a sudden I heard my mother’s voice. I looked around and found her running toward us, yelling and hurling gravel at the big horse. She distracted him just long enough for me to hop off. My pony raced off into the safety of some low-hanging trees, and the neighbor came running out of his house to capture his oversized horse. As I stood there, weak-kneed from my near-death experience, I saw my mother’s car parked a few yards down the road, the driver’s-side door still open, and I knew what had happened. She had been worried about me, so she had followed from a distance, just to be sure I made it okay. I’ve been thinking about that story a lot lately. It was about four years ago that my daughter first told me she thought she might be trans. I believe her story is a classic example of social contagion, since she had never expressed any discomfort with her sexed body until she got Tumblr and DeviantArt accounts and began spending all her time on her phone. Since then, I have felt a bit like my mother, standing in the middle of the road, hurling gravel, trying to protect my daughter from an ideology that has sought to convince her that she was born in the wrong body. I am fortunate. Unlike some of my friends with kids who became convinced they were trans, I feel reasonably confident that my daughter will not medically transition. She desisted from a social transition more than a year ago, and she told me recently that she no longer identifies as trans. However, she still has many friends in the gender-queer community, and I know we’re not out of the woods. When she turns 18 in a few months, she may exercise her right as a legal adult to start medical transition, and there won’t be anything I can do to dissuade her. This worries me greatly. So, as a matter of self-preservation as much as anything, I’ve been asking myself, what if she does transition? How will I cope? The short answer is I don’t know, but I certainly won’t disown her or ask her to leave my home. In fact, of all the many gender-critical parents I know who have trans-identified children, I know absolutely no one who has disowned their child or kicked them out of the house. I’m sure it must happen, but I don’t know any. Of course, all parents say things they regret – especially during the highly charged arguments with teens who are demanding immediate medical interventions. In one such argument, one of my best friends even told her then-trans-identified daughter to get out, but she immediately regretted it, took it back, apologized, and asked her daughter to stay (which she did). I also know at least three mothers who have lost contact with their trans-identified children, but in those cases, the kids themselves severed the relationship, not the parents. In fact, the mothers continue to try to reconnect with their children, despite being repeatedly rebuffed. Although I know I won’t disown or reject my daughter, I also know that I won’t affirm her decision to transition. It’s not really that I’m deciding not to; I simply cannot bring myself to do it. It would be dishonest for me to call her my son when I don’t believe she’s male. Plus, I don’t think it’s helpful for me to allow my daughter to dictate how I define words like “male” and “female.” Does this mean I love my child less than the mothers who affirm their children? Since I cannot occupy the mind of any of these other mothers, I guess I’ll never know. But I do know that my love for my child is so deep and strong that the idea that she has been misled to believe that her body is wrong depresses me to no end. I am angry — bitterly, bitterly angry that this ideology has taken up almost four years of her life so far and god only know how many more years it may take. Maybe the reason some parents affirm their children’s transgender claims and some parents question them lies in the parents’ own experiences of puberty. When my daughter felt embarrassed about shopping for bras at 13, I was not surprised because I remembered that feeling vividly. I hated it. I hated knowing that people could see my developing breasts and the outline of the bra straps under my shirt. I especially hated the very feminine bras – the ones with lots of lace and little pink bows where the cups joined in the middle. They made me feel vulnerable and exposed and miserable.  I also know I got over it – for the most part, anyway. Trans activists claim that the number of trans-identifying people has increased so rapidly not because there are more trans people today than in the past but because society has become more accepting and they are no longer afraid to come out. But if this were the case, why are the greatest increases occurring in the population of female teens? Why aren’t middle-aged women like me queuing up for hormones now that we can come out? To me, the answer is clear. Women like me had a chance to come to terms with our bodies and accept ourselves as we are. My daughter didn’t have that chance because an insidious ideology was waiting in the wings to convince her that her feelings about her body meant that it was wrong. But maybe the mothers who readily affirm their children’s trans self-diagnoses didn’t have this experience at puberty. Maybe they were lucky enough to sail smoothly and happily from childhood through puberty, unambiguously pleased to watch their bodies go from child to woman – so, when their children expressed unhappiness about their developing bodies, they were genuinely puzzled and could only agree their kids must have been born in the wrong body. Whatever the reason for the difference between those parents and me, I resent the fact that the mainstream media will tell their stories, but they won’t tell mine. I resent the fact that my daughter looks at those parents and wishes I could be like them — because I never can be. If my daughter does eventually decide to take hormones or undergo surgery to medically transition, the only way I could fully support it is if I had clear scientific evidence that she had a condition requiring such an invasive treatment. If there were a definitive medical test – a brain scan, for example – that proved my child’s distress arose from an incongruence between her brain and the rest of her body that could only be alleviated by transition, I think I could go along with it. But there is no such test because individual brains don’t break down neatly into pink and blue categories. Sexually dimorphic brain features are subject to averages just like other physical characteristics. In general, men are taller than women, but if you plot their height on a bell curve, you will see lots of overlap between the sexes. You’ll also see outliers on the “tails” of the bell curve—6’4’ women, and 5’1” men. This is true with psychological and neurological traits, too. Also, trans activists justify their born-in-the-wrong-body claims by pointing to a few studies which indicate that the brains of trans-identified people are more similar in some respects to the opposite sex than their natal sex. But these studies do not control for many factors, including sexual orientation, and we know already that people who are same-sex-attracted have some brain features more similar to the opposite sex. Without tools to reliably predict who will benefit from transition, I simply cannot support medical interventions for young people whose brains have not fully matured (generally understood to be around age 25). I want desperately for my daughter to accept her body and to avoid the irreversible changes and the many health risks that are inherent in medical transition. But she will soon be 18 years old, and she will have the power to transition no matter what I want – even though she is still at least seven years away from brain maturity. There’s a real chance that she could. Would that be the end of the world? No, I know that it wouldn’t. As worried as I am about this outcome and as fixated as I’ve been on preventing it for four years, I do have to remind myself that her transitioning would not be the worst thing that could happen. Plus, I will still be able to hold onto the hope that she will detransition before the hormones can cause too much damage to her long-term health. Every day it seems that I read about a new detransitioner. More and more young people are saying enough is enough. They are reclaiming their bodies and their lives, and I find their stories inspiring. A few days ago I watched a video in which four young women, who formerly identified as trans, answer questions about their experience and share their insights. Their video gave me hope for a couple of reasons. First, they acknowledge the role that social contagion plays in driving the huge increase in kids (especially girls) who are identifying as trans today. It takes real courage to speak up and share stories that contradict the popular understanding of why people transition. These stories not only challenge the narrative of why people transition; they also show that, for many young people, transition does not make their lives better. But another reason that video gave me hope is that I can see these girls are all okay. In fact, they’re better than okay. They are strong and smart, and they are living with purpose and a sense of future. They reminded me that transition – even medical transition — is not the end of the world. Three of the girls were on hormones for more than a year. Their voices are changed, but they are healthy and well, and that’s a beautiful thing. Detransitioners have been giving hope to me and other parents for many years, but the relationship between the groups has been difficult at times. Some detransitioners have understandably resented how parents sometimes try to use their stories as cautionary tales to warn their kids about the dangers of medical transition. A big part of the problem is the language people sometimes use when talking about medical transition. For example, referring to the bodies of detransitioners as “mutilated,” their voices as “broken,” or their stories as “heart-breaking” has not been helpful. One of the most powerful and positive messages of the gender-critical movement is that no one is born in the wrong body. Gender-critical parents like me are constantly trying to encourage our kids to accept their bodies just as they are. Yet I believe we need to extend that same acceptance to all bodies – even bodies post transition. To feel good about themselves and their lives, all people need to be able to accept themselves physically and mentally, and words like “mutilated” don’t help them do that. Online, the interactions between detransitioners and parents has also been a little rocky at times because parents sometimes overstep boundaries that detransitioners need to be healthy. Parents often reach out to detransitioners for help with their personal situations – to seek parenting advice and guidance. But most detransitioners who speak out publicly are quite young; they don’t have children and they aren’t parenting experts, nor is it fair to saddle them with the responsibility of helping us. They’re dealing with their own issues, are often most focused on helping each other, and they don’t (and can’t be expected to) understand the situation and struggles of parents. What’s more, many have written or vlogged about their own, often fraught, relationships with their own parents, so when other parents reach out to them, they can feel “triggered” by being reminded of their own family relationships. These young people are still maturing and processing what their transition and detransition mean to them. They need time and space to be able to do that, and desperate appeals from parents they’ve never met, for help with kids they don’t know, could interfere with that process. Also, detransitioners are not a monolithic group. Not everyone who detransitions regrets transitioning. Deciding that transition is not right for you and regretting transition are not necessarily the same thing. Detransitioners who do not regret their transition naturally resent it when people use their stories to make a case against medical transition. At the same time, those detransitioners who are willing to speak out about the harms of transitioning and the power of reidentifying with your birth sex can be powerful allies in the fight to raise awareness about the regressiveness of gender ideology and potential harms to other young people – whether we’re trying to raise this awareness in the culture at large or just in our own homes. I hope my daughter will listen to the stories of some of these detransitioners and decide to first try some other strategies for becoming comfortable in her natural body. If, however, she does eventually transition, I hope she can be honest with herself about it and accept that she can never be male – however much she may be able to look like one. I follow several gender-critical trans women on Twitter. Although they have sought medical intervention for palliative reasons, they acknowledge they are male and support sex-based protections for women. They don’t demand that the world repeat the mantra that trans women are women. They have a healthier outlook on the world and a healthier sense of self because they aren’t trying to change anyone’s perception of material reality (like male and female).  I appreciate the courage they are showing. Their stance as gender critical has cut them off from the support of the larger trans community, which regards them as heretics and traitors. And it must be noted that they’re not universally accepted among women who are gender critical, some of whom regard them with suspicion. Of course, my daughter may never come to recognize the bill of goods she’s been sold. She may transition, remain transitioned, and remain committed to an ideology I find regressive. If that’s the case, it will be my life’s task to love her and support her in spite of these things. But that doesn’t mean I will ever abandon my own sense of reality, because doing so would be inauthentic, and parents should not have to subordinate their own authenticity to their children’s quest for it. What I can do is look after her, help her financially to achieve non-transition-related goals, cook her favorite foods, hold her hand when she’s feeling down. I can even go out of my way to avoid gendered language so as not to provoke or upset her, but I simply cannot utter beliefs I don’t hold. Our relationship needs to be based on mutual respect. I must respect her autonomy, but she must also respect mine. Also, I want my daughter to understand that it’s ok for other people (even her parents!) to disagree with her and hold different views; that doesn’t mean we don’t love her. Far from it. I want my daughter to be strong and resilient enough to face the reality that life will be full of other people who disagree with her for any number of reasons. I’d rather she learn resilience than fragility that is triggered whenever she encounters disagreement or disapproval from others. I feel such a sense of solidarity with the other gender-critical moms I’ve met here on 4thWaveNow, on Twitter, and in real life because they’ve seen what I have seen – that this ideology has made our children less resilient, it has alienated them from their families, their former friends, and, worst of all, their own bodies. Most of us have watched as our children went from well-adjusted kids to teens preoccupied with online worlds, feeling oppressed and seeking medical transition. For our efforts to call attention to the regressive nature of the ideology, we have been called “bigots,” “transphobes,” even “Nazis.” So-called gender therapists gaslight us and pretend to know our children better than we do. And some journalists, blind to their sexism, have dismissed us (in one case, as merely a “bunch of mothers”), despite the advanced degrees and professional careers many of us hold, not to mention the voluminous research we have done to educate ourselves about this particular subject. And, yes, we have made mistakes. We are certainly not perfect. There are so many things I have said to my daughter that I wish I could unsay or at least say differently. There are so many times when my strong emotional reaction to things she was telling me created a barrier and shut down communication between us. Of course, she has said things that hurt me too, but as her mother and the adult in the relationship, I rightfully bear a larger share of the burden to try to make things right between us. I can’t change the past, of course. What’s done is done. But I do know this: My mother has been dead for more than 20 years, but I think about her every day. She was far from a perfect parent, but she loved me fiercely. The love she gave me in the first 30 years of my life still sustains me today. I know that now, in a way I didn’t fully understand when I was younger. I don’t know what the future holds for my daughter. My fervent hope is that she will reject the idea that she needs to change who she is, but whether or not she does, I hope one day she will look back on my resistance to her transition as the act of love that it is. I hope that her knowledge and memory of the fierceness of my love will sustain her, as my mother’s sustains me.

Day 11-13: Maintaining the light through the darkness. The limbic system, brain dysfunction, colour & music therapy.

That gorgeous photo above is a piece of art in the patients lounge. There’s something about it, so inspiring and uplifting. I loved it so much I bought an unframed version off amazon to take home. I purchased some other art I also found uplifting or which brought me joy, to help change the atmosphere of my home and signify a new beginning in my healing journey. As mentioned in my previous post about the four quadrants of healing, the Dr that gave this talk emphasised the importance of being in a positive environment, as well as changing your environment if you’ve lived in the same space whilst being sick. As I cannot change the position of my furniture or even purchase new furniture, I thought art was a really good start in bringing change and more positive vibes. 

The books in the second photo are one’s my Dr has kindly leant me. I’ve read the first 6 chapters of “Letting Go” and I have to say it is brilliant. The author has a series of books which all connect to mindfulness and raising your consciousness. It’s all stuff I find incredibly interesting anyway, so reading it is easy. Due to my liver being my worst affected organ and as I’ve explained, I experience anger and other negative emotions that I find hard to let go. I’m good at internalising my emotional pain. I also take on the worries of others (being an empath) and I do not cope well with stress. This book will help me work through a lot of that and train my mind to better deal with emotional turmoil and any resentment, bitterness, guilt, anger, or hatred I may be harbouring. The third book “wired for healing”, I have only read the Introduction. But my Dr has explained to me how the limbic system is so badly affected for those that are chronically ill and how it plays such a pivotal and vital role in recovery. So again, I would highly recommend this book on learning about EMDR-DNRS limbic system retraining techniques. 

The second book “the book of awakening,” I am yet to read but it sounds like something that woud resonate with me. I am incredibly grateful to have been given such an abundance of information to help my entire body heal to its greatest ability. It just goes to show how much information is out there that we are yet to learn. 

Aside from that great stuff, my body has hit struggle town again. I wasn’t doing well on Monday. So we started colour therapy. I wore special glasses that completely covered my eyes and only showed certain colours . Each colour targets a different organ/body system as well as working on different emotions. For example: Yellow- digestion, Blue- expression, thyroid and Red- adrenals, liver. I can’t remember what blue, green, purple or orange are for. So whilst I looked at these colours, one at a time, sometimes 2 colours blended together, he did other things on my body and gave me remedies on the spot. He said that my body is toxic to the colour blue. Meaning I have far too much of it in my system. Blue being the colour for expression, he said that I simply express myself far TOO much, which is funny because most patients are quite deficient in this colour and it’s evident if you meet me in person that I am quite extroverted.

The next day (Tuesday), I was feeling great! I was back to my old self, chatting away to people, super happy and experiencing minimal symptoms. So we worked on my brain. He got me to stand up and do some basic exercises that showed the left side of my body is lacking connection to my brain (the movements were more difficult or not as fluid as the right side). Therefore, my brain’s ability to communicate to the left side of my body is not good and both sides of my brain struggle to communicate with each other. He said this is why it can be difficult to spit out words or remember something as one side of the brain is needing to find the appropriate information from the other side of the brain and they are not working together efficiently. (something like that anyway)

After doing these tests, (one of them was to do with balance and balancing on my left foot I would fall straight away, on my right I wouldn’t last very long), he got me to take these tablets and chew them up. They tasted disgusting. My friend who just finished treatment there likened the taste of these tablets to a hamster cage. It really did taste like that. But once I’d taken them, within 30 seconds, my ability to balance and do all exercises he had previously given me, had improved by 80%. He explained that this specific tablet (it had a scientific name) targeted a certain part of the brain and for some reason improved these symptoms. But neuroscientists and Dr’s cannot pin-point exactly why this specific concoction improves this function in the brain so dramatically, it just does. 

My Dr drew a diagram on his computer to explain the parts of my brain that don’t function correctly and why (but I cannot remember enough information to put it into words). What it means though, is that I have to do brain exercises twice a day to restore this function. Very basic things, but I am finding them difficult. My eyes strain and the front of my head hurts like I’m getting a headache, even though I’m only holding these positions for 10 seconds at a time. I got my partner to do them as well and he felt no strain or pain, so it must be due to these deficiencies in my brain function, like a muscle that hasn’t been exercised for a long time. I also have to do these small hand and arm movements, as fast as possible. Watching how fast my Dr could do it and how fast I could do it, I could tell the connection between my brain and limbs, was lacking as I was far slower and literally could not go faster no matter how hard I tried. 

I went home feeling good and happy. Progress is being made, I’m learning more and working on so many different aspects of my body that will all come together to catapult my healing. I started to get real tired an hour after being home though. Usually after 4-6 hours of detox therapies, I have to nap for an hour before dinner. Then I’m fine to function, watch tv, potter around the house before bed etc. This night was different. I slept on and off for 3 hours on the couch and could not wake myself up. I was incredibly lethargic and exhausted. I was also very irritable, certain noises that don’t usually set me off would feel like a hammer hitting my brain and I was quite snappy with my partner. 

Then when I went to bed I became wired and couldn’t fall asleep until late. Waking up today and having had 6 hours sleep, I thought I felt OK. My mood was a little flat, I told my partner how I was finding treatment was taking a toll on me emotionally now. It feels a little like groundhog day, coming in and doing the same detox therapies over and over (even though they always change your schedule and you don’t do them in the same order). I guess my mindset was just a little negative (which is not normal for me). So off I went to treatment, telling myself to just get through the day and then I only have 2 more days left until the weekend, where I will get to rest. 

I arrived at 9am and did Bemer (8 minutes), then sauna (30 minutes). I was feeling fine until 15 minutes into sauna. I suddenly felt toxic, unwell and like I was heading towards passing out. I was chatting to a girl in there and trying hard to persevere. Usually I can do 30 minutes easy and have sometimes stayed in longer because I was too busy talking to the others in there. At 20 minutes I commented to the girl I was in there with that I was feeling really unwell. I tried to change positions and distract myself by continuing our conversation about our pets back home and their funny antics. But at 25 minutes my body was really giving up and I was worried I was about to pass out or lose it or something. So I got out, got dressed and went back down stairs. 

I ate some chocolate from my bag, thinking maybe I was low on sugar, went back to the therapy desk and was informed I could start ST8 (30 minutes). I stood there for a moment and said to the therapy assistants “I can’t do this. I feel really unwell and I’m worried ST8 will make me worse.” They empathised and told me to take a break if I wanted. So I sat on one of the couches and was trying to work out what was going on. It’s really difficult to describe, I felt halfway to passing out, halfway to throwing up, like the inner core of my brain was freaking out, neurologically I was frayed. Something was just “wrong” and I didn’t want to make it worse. I started crying and I don’t know if it was from my brain malfunctioning, or from a sense of panic because I didn’t know what was wrong with my body. 

My partner talked to the staff and they asked my Dr if he could change my appointment to earlier. I couldn’t see how I could wait 3 hours to see him. Luckily he changed his appointments within 10 minutes and saw me next (how nice is that!). SItting in his office I was weepy, tears rolling down my face and my voice shaking. I haven’t cried in his office yet so I guess I’d done well to hold out until week 3. I explained all my symptoms from the night before until now and he got me up on the table. 

Basically, 2 of my supplements were reacting badly with each other in my body. You cannot predict this, as it’s about my bodies chemistry and ability to interpret the frequencies of the treatments and then putting multiples together can increase the chance of a reaction. My thyroid supplement was going haywire next to my liver supplement. So he had to do some things to my body so that that reaction would not occur. My kidneys are also now struggling. So he created a new tincture to support my kidneys and it tastes just as bad, if not worse than my liver support concoction. 

Whilst lying on the table I felt a sense of relief and I felt safe. I knew I was in safe hands with my Dr and whatever was wrong with my body, he would be able to alleviate it. He gave me all different remedies on the spot, through the testing he was doing on me. The more he gave me the better I felt. When I first got up on that table I felt like I was lost, something was wrong with my brain and I was no longer “present.” I just felt toxic, ill and scared. My personality started to return and we started cracking jokes again. Then the toxic feeling passed and I felt calm and ok. 

To help calm my body and put it back into some sort of equilibrium, we did music therapy. He explained that sounds have a frequency and certain frequencies have the ability to heal different parts of the body. There is a specific musician who has created healing music by getting the sounds up to specific frequencies. So I had headphones on as he changed the song every few minutes. It was music I had never heard before, but I’d liken it to things you’d hear in a hippie shop, while you’re getting a massage or on hold (so no singing, just instruments). Some of the songs made me feel upbeat and happy, others relaxed, one song I felt like I was going to cry. 

That might sound weird, or like a load of crap, but he gave me information to explain it all properly and I’m explaining it in a very basic way, as best as I can remember. I never give the entire picture or description because I simply can’t remember and lack the vocabulary of explaining the correct terminology (because I’m not a doctor lol).

My Dr did a lot of things on me today and said basically the sauna tipped my body over the edge and it just needs a break. It’s doing a lot, he likened it to running a marathon everyday. So all my therapies were cancelled for the rest of the day and I don’t start until 1245pm tomorrow, where I will only do about half of the detox therapies. I don’t get charged per day, I get charged per therapy, so missing out on therapies will not waste my money. I’m really glad they do it that way. 

I hope my body picks back up and I come through the end of the week strong!  

13 Lessons From Think And Grow Rich Napoleon Hill

13 Lessons From Think And Grow Rich Napoleon Hill

The older I get, the more I try to learn new information for personal development in a way that takes the least amount of time and energy.

How? By not trying to reinvent the wheel.

For instance, with the coronavirus crisis, it seemed that everyone became an instant stock market “guru” overnight.

Emails bombarded my inbox telling me what stocks to dump and which ones to go “all in” on.

With so much noise and confusion, I simply looked at what the top investors in the world were doing.

For example, I noticed that Warren Buffett began buying different airline stocks (Delta, Southwest), GE Electric and Goldman Sachs. It’s safe to say that if I invested in single stocks (which I don’t), I would’ve been wise to follow his lead.

My main two avenues of education now come from:

listening to podcasts

reading

Speaking of reading, one of the first books I read when it came to investing and learning about money was Think And Grow Rich Napoleon Hill wrote in 1937.

One amazing fact was that until Napoleon Hill’s death in 1970, Think and Grow Rich sold over 15 million copies. That’s impressive.

Before we get too deep into his book, let’s first take a look at some of the groups of people that read and why they do it.

Millionaires Read A Lot

It should come as no surprise that millionaires and billionaires have certain habits that make them wealthy.

Research shows that the majority of them devote at least 30 minutes daily to read 3-5 or more books a month.

What are you reading?

If rich people read more and you want to become rich, then don’t you think you should start doing the same?

Millionaire reading stats

Here’s a few millionaire stats I found while searching the web:

From Dave Ramsey:

“President Harry Truman once said, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” One of the reasons millionaires become millionaires is because of their constant desire to learn. To them, leadership books and biographies are much more important than the latest reality show or who got kicked off the island. When they have free time, they use it wisely—by reading.”

From Medium:

You may not have heard of Arthur Blank, but you’ve definitely heard of the store that he co-founded: Home Depot. Blank reads two hours a day and has amassed a current fortune of $1,300,000,000.

Mark Cuban reads 3 hours a day. That adds up to about 1,000 hours a year. Say the average book takes 5 hours to read, that means Cuban is reading 200 books a year.

New York Times best-selling author, Tim Ferriss, says that he reads 3 to 4 books a week. That adds up to 150 to 200 books a year.

From Millionaire Foundry:

88% of self-made millionaires read at least 30 minutes every day, focused on self education.

From the Huffington Post:

When Warren Buffett was once asked about the key to success, he pointed to a stack of nearby books and said, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

Buffett takes this habit to the extreme — he read between 600 and 1000 pages per day when he was beginning his investing career, and still devotes about 80 percent of each day to reading.

From the book Rich Habits:

Successful people read for self-improvement. They are perpetual students. Each day they devote blocks of time to better themselves by studying subject matter that will improve them in some way and better enable them to perform their jobs.

Think And Grow Rich Inspiration

Think and Grow Rich is one of those books you see most often on the recommended reading list of people who have achieved tremendous amounts of success and wealth.

The first word of the title, “Think” shows us that it’s mainly about developing a mindset.

The book is centered around the thirteen steps to riches which he claimed to be the secret to building wealth.

In 1908, Hill was hired by a magazine to seek out and interview famous people to learn about their success.

One of the first people he interviewed happened to be one of the wealthiest men in the world at that time, Andrew Carnegie.

Not only did Carnegie share his secrets to success with Hill, but he also connected him with over 500 other successful business leaders to learn their secrets, too.

Some of those “other” famous people included:

Alexander Graham Bell

John D. Rockefeller

Thomas Edison

J.P. Morgan

Henry Ford

Wilbur Wright

Theodore Roosevelt

Howard Taft

Some twenty years later, Napoleon Hill turned the lessons he learned into the thirteen steps to riches, which he outlined in Think and Grow Rich.

13 Lessons From Think And Grow Rich Napoleon Hill

image courtesy of www.fearlessmotivation.com

If you plan on reading the book (which I recommend) then you’ll notice it’s broken up into sections that cover the 13 principles based on interviews Hill had with successful people.

If you don’t plan on reading it, then here’s a detailed summary of the book that should get you up to speed on what it’s about.

#1 Desire

Hill first mentions the principle of “Desire” as it’s no doubt the most important one.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I wish I had more…”

Maybe it was more money, time or success.

It’s not about wishing but about wanting. If someone wants to achieve success and wealth, there has to be a burning desire within them to cause them to take action. That’s the key – taking ACTION.

That’s the entire focus of Grant Cardone’s book, The 10X Rule.

How many people want to lose weight or get “ripped” before their beach vacation? Probably most, right? But….how many actually take action? Very few.

One of the first things I ask new members of the Passive Investors Circle is, “Why do you want to start investing in real estate?”

Those that truly desire to and have specific reasons end up seeing success in a few short months.

#2 Faith

If you want your desire to come true, you must exhibit faith. Faith is the trust you have in yourself that your desire/goal is achievable. Hill noticed that when you do this, it starts manifesting into its physical self.

If you want to get what you desire but are lacking in the faith department, try improving it through self-suggestion.

Practice convincing your mind of the opportunity to realize that goal, and after a while, your mind will start to subconsciously act on behalf of your belief system. In a nutshell, you become what you think about.

“If you can DREAM IT, you can DO IT.” – Walt Disney

#3 Auto Suggestion

Hill once pointed out: “If you do not see great riches in your imagination, you will never see them in your bank balance.”

Hill’s techniques of auto-suggestion are more commonly today known as meditation or visualization. The more specific we can realize our desires, the more likely it’ll happen.

If you desire to get rich, then see yourself in possession of that money. But it’s not enough to just wish for riches. Hill recommends that you must also fill yourself with the willingness to work for it, and make sure that the effort and reward are so closely linked that you never lose sight of what you should be doing.

#4 Specialized Knowledge

Have you ever heard the phrase, “There’s riches in niches“? With today’s technology, any information we could ever imagine is at our fingertips.

For instance, if I search for the best college football team in 2019, then the LSU Tigers will be on top of the list. 🙂

But if all we had to do was acquire knowledge and it would ensure success, then teachers and professors would be the wealthiest people of all. However, that is as far from the truth as possible.

The simple fact of having knowledge won’t make you anymore intelligent or successful. It’s what we do with that knowledge that makes the difference.

Hill suggests we focus on specialized knowledge which in turn will make us an expert of whatever we want.

For instance, when I started this blog, I didn’t know much about real estate investing. I made it my goal to try to become the expert in this area so I can teach other doctors and high-income professionals about it.

#5 Imagination

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” –Napoleon Hill

The power of imagination is the key to getting the life you want.

Where desire is the catalyst for achievement, imagination is necessary to give it physical form.

At Walt Disney, they created Imagineers to perform the Imagineering. This is the creative engine that designs and builds all Disney theme parks, resorts, attractions, and cruise ships worldwide, and oversees the creative aspects of Disney games, merchandise product development, and publishing businesses.

If it works for Disney, shouldn’t we try it too?

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” – Albert Einstein

#6 Organized Planning

Are you ready to compete in your first fitness competition? Great, what’s your plan? What, you don’t have one?

If you want to succeed in achieving what you truly desire, Hill states that we must have a concrete plan to help get there. From becoming a golf pro to a brain surgeon, without a plan, the likelihood of failure is high.

If you want to become financially independent, you have to work a plan just like this one:

7 Steps – How To Become Financially Independent

Spend time putting pen to paper and writing down your plan. Once you do, the chances of it becoming a reality increase.

#7 Decision

The enemy of those of us that desire success is the exact opposite of decision….procrastination.

Unfortunately, most of us are hard wired to wait until the last minute to do something. If I tell you I want you to write a one page report on everything you know about how to invest money and it’s due in exactly ten days, guess what? More than likely you’ll finish it on day #9 (or the morning of day 10).

Research shows that successful people make BIG decisions fast and change them slowly whereas unsuccessful people make BIG decisions slow but change them constantly.

The point is to get used to making decisions quickly but don’t give up on them too quickly.

The #1 cause of failure: Lack of decision making

#8 Persistence

If you’re like me, you’ve experienced your share of failures.

When I started off investing in real estate, I thought I knew what I was doing but boy was I wrong.

Related article:  RealtyShares – What I Learned From Losing $50,000

Too many people give up on their first attempt at trying new things so their likelihood of succeeding is next to zero.

In order to succeed, there should be an unwavering quality to remain persistent to the desire you want.

If you really want something out of life, you got to work hard, and expect to get knocked down/fail but show persistence until you reach your goals.

#9 Power of the Master mind

“Without counsel, plans fail, but with many advisers, they succeed.” – Proverbs 15:22

“Where no counsel [is], the people fall: but in the multitude of counselors [there is] safety.” – Proverbs 11:14

As someone that has attended several mastermind meetings, I can tell you firsthand that I was at first a bit skeptical. I’m not into mystical terminology and “mastermind” initially sounded alarm bells in my head.

What’s a mastermind? Hill described the Mastermind principle as:

“The coordination of knowledge and effort between two or more people who work towards a definite purpose in a spirit of harmony…no two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind”, also known as, the Mastermind.

By creating this so-called “third mind” then the minds within the group become something more than the sum of their parts and greater things can be achieved.

For instance, I recently attended a mastermind meeting for other dental practice owners. It’s amazing what happens when one person poses a problem to the group and how lots of people (both men and women) can work much quicker and smarter to resolve it than one person only.

#10 Sex Transmutation

When I first read Think and Grow Rich, I was surprised to see a chapter dedicated to sex, especially on how it relates to having success.

Hill goes on to tell us that sexual impulse is one of the most important/strongest desires we experience as human beings. And because of this, we should learn how to channel those desires towards enhancing our creative works.

It’s all about channeling sexual energy towards your goals as it allows you to be more creative during the process.

Hill found that an above-than-average sexual nature is a typical feature of highly successful people from those that he interviewed.

#11 The Subconscious Mind

“You are what you think.”

Hill states that the subconscious mind registers all of our thoughts both positive and negative in nature. You can’t think of something positive and negative at the same time.

In other words, you can’t think about being appreciative for something (i.e. health, family, etc) at the same time you’re thinking negative thoughts.

Because of this, we should continuously focus our thoughts on only positive things.

Your subconscious mind does what YOU tell it today. If you want wealth and success, focus on only feeding your brain affirmations and thoughts that will guide you down that path.

#12 The Brain

In Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill compares the brain to a radio as they both operate at a specific set of frequencies.

You’ve heard of having brainwaves before, right? These brain frequencies are our emotions such as:

love

hate

despair

fear

confidence

A radio can only provide sound when the transmitter and receiver are set to the same frequency. I was recently reminded of this while watching Stranger Things with my kids as characters in the show used ham radios in a handful of episodes.

In the same way, if you want your brain to provide wealth, then you have to make sure that your emotions reflect that frequency.

#13 The Sixth Sense

The sixth sense is thought to be a mysterious sensing ability that can give you thoughts and ideas to help you become a receiver of information instead of only a transmitter.

Similar to Hill’s other mystical theories, the reader chooses to either accept it not.

Maybe this is something like having a “gut feeling” when faced with uncertainty?

The Secret Of Think And Grow Rich Napoleon Hill

The #1 secret of the book is not so secretive….it’s this:

You are in total control of the one thing that enables you to have the life of your dreams.

Whether that’s financial freedom to spend more time with your family, a pair of matching McClarens, or 3,000 units of real estate.

So what is that one thing we’re in control of?

It’s your mindset of course!

The secret of Think and Grow Rich is that your thoughts control your mindset, which creates your reality.

So if you want an abundant mindset, make it a point to broadcast feelings of appreciation, fulfillment and joy.

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Pop Picks – February 11, 2019

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we’ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

Archive

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also reread books I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star.  The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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It's all there if you want it

That's the name I've given to this instrumental jazz song I'm listening to in my favourite pub. I’m calling it that because it's literally the most "deep" name I could think of on an empty stomach. I guess it's more than that though . I've been thinking a lot lately about how people name songs , and recently when I had to come up with titles for some old songs that I had written , it really got me thinking about a few things ...

Concept versus lyrics

This is my first stumbling block to be honest. Do I pick a few lyrics that have a particular weight attached to them , or do I try and extract the entire feeling or theme of the song and derive my title from that ? There are certainly good examples of both. I can't , for the life of me, picture Love Me Do being called anything other than exactly that. I mean have you ever even heard the song ? It's a perfect synopsis of what you're in for to be frank , and it is a perfect pop song (harmonica 4 lyfe!). However, the Beatles do all sorts of things that the rest of us, simply just can't or shouldn't pull off. This version of the band, may have written the best pop songs of our life time (and thus it's a high water mark for that reggae metal "experiment" you’ve been working on in your basement) simply put, you can’t pull this off very often unless your the Beatles.

 And let's be honest , when it's done in a lazy way, it kinda sucks , kinda sucks big time bud. Your honor, members of the jury, please consider exhibit b.... Roxanne. First off, let me say,  Sting can slap the bass better than most people on this planet  not Sir Paul of course, but most . Secondly, his name is Sting, and that in itself is hard to stomach. But imagine, long before drinking games helped us through this 3 minuted and 13 second “song”, sitting in the POLICE studio, take upon take, after literally saying "Roxanne" thousands of times, and wracking your brains about what to call your new "creation". I propose , like me , you'd advocate for anything other than the laziest thing you could think of.

“What should we call it fellas?” 

“Just joking, clearly it will be Roxanne. Anyone have any cocaine?” - Sting

 In this case , redundant seems like a compliment, and I'd suggest, it actually makes the song worse . I hate it .

On the other side of proverbial coin, consider how fucking good something like Blackalicious' Alphabet Aerobics is. If you have never heard the song (you need to ! ) , It's basically an amazing feat of rhyming in which the beat slowly speeds up as the lyrics start flowing , phonetically , from a to z , coming to a crescendo at z. Not once do they mention either "alphabet" or "aerobics" at any point of the song, but hearing the title once lets you know exactly what you're in for... and it's clever enough that if you don't get it right away, you will by the time they get to at least "e" or "f". This is some good shit all around . 

On the other hand , you ever heard "break stuff" by limp Bizkit ? Yeah exactly.

So I guess the conclusion to draw here is, both are valid , but I will say, I think that there is a certain charm and extra thought put in to having to conceptually come up with a title , as opposed to just extracting lyrics from the song (I'm looking at you "For Those About to Rock.... We Salute You")

Heartbreaker is my favourite song

I’d like to magically whisk you back to a simpler time, if I could. The year is 1998, and lets just say things are a little different than you're probably used to. Internet service providers measured your usage not by Gigabytes, but instead by time used on the internet. Download speeds being what they were,a person was lucky to get 3 songs downloaded a night, and that’s provided no one interrupted the download by picking up the phone mid file transfer. 

So picture it, you’ve got Lime wire all fired up, you’ve searched your song out, and in a measly two hours, you are going to rock the fuck out to “HEartbrEeaker.MP3″.

Two hours later, and a couple refreshes of IGN64,com and you’re almost there.

98% “Wow...modern technology is really something” you think to yourself “couple more days, I’ll have enough to burn a CD” 

99% “For the love of fuck Dad, don’t pick up the phone... we’re almost there ....”

100% “Alright, best get Winamp booted up so i can listen to this tune RIGHT AWAY”

You turn your Sound Blaster speakers to a 7, and whambasco...... 

DIONNE FUCKING WARWICK!!??

Yeah that’s right of course we were all hoping for the sweet sounds of Led Zeppelin, but unbeknownst to 16 year old you and I, there is a Dionne Warwick song of the same name..... and Pat Benatar, and Mariah Carey. And you’re not getting your 2 hours of download time back... it’s gone... forever. 

So really, just about all we can take from this is, be fucking original with your song name! You don’t want to be the asshole at the party explaining to every second person there that you “also wrote a song called trapped in the closet” and that it’s “art”. You’re ruining the party and bumming everyone out. 

Be Serious, or don’t , but for the love of all things sacred, don’t be too precious

This is a tough one, to be frank. Like most of what I’m talking about in this blog, it really comes down to personal opinion and or taste. So to each their own, and all that.

I think one thing we could all agree on (or at least will for the sake of making this easier to write) is that there is a fine line between deliciously clever, and steaming pile of horse shit. There is an art to making a title clever, but also not making it cringeworthingly cheesy and embarassing. Take for example the Built to Spill song Carry the Zero. The song is brilliant and lazy all at the same time. It is clever because in math, you can’t carry a zero, and the song is about failing, so it all kind of makes sense in a cute kinda way. It’s pretty perfect.  

In the trash heap directly in opposition to the brilliance that is one Mr. Doug Marstch, is Skater Boi by Avril Lagvigne. Its completely unfair to compare the titles of a pop artist’s songs (which were mostly written for her), to one of the best indie rock bands of all time, but here we are, doing it. One can only assume the “Boi” is skateboard talk for “boy” and maybe I’m grasping at straws here, but I think it’s probably supposed to be edgy. Maybe, time has been unkind to Mrs. Lavigne but the title was never edgy (we made fun of it as the “target audience”,  16 year old kids that rode skateboards),  

On the other hand, there’s another pitfall I think we’ve all seen made here and there. Taking yourself a little too seriously. Remember that song “ I Just died in your arms tonight” ? I can guarantee no one has ever seen that title without having heard it and not thought “oh would you just fuck off with that shit you knob”. Literally no one, ever. 

If it wasn’t so bad it would be funny, but it is, and it’s not. 

At some point Cutting Crew (of course I googled it) thought this was a song about feelings, and just putting it all out there, an artistic statement. Can you imagine? 

Throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks

I don’t know what I’ve accomplished here. Quite frankly, I don’t think much.  I was thinking of my favourite artist of all time Elliott Smith today. He has a variety of songs that he didn’t even bother to name. No. Name #1, No. Name #4, Waltz #2. etc. Whoa dude what are you doing, trying to make this blog irrelevant or something??!!  Maybe he just got sick of thinking about all these friggin factors when he was writing his songs. Maybe that’s the whole point... who actually cares what a song is called. Just name it something and write the next one. 

Still though... Skater Boi is so chuddy right?

10 Ways to Make Videos Your Customers Can’t Resist

Maybe you know someone who has lost whole afternoons to YouTube. What is it about those videos that’s so hard to resist?

Matthew Pierce has some ideas. He’s a learning and video ambassador for TechSmith Corp., a company that makes visual-communication software. In his Content Marketing World talk, How to Make Your Videos as Engaging as Possible, Matthew covers ways to make irresistible videos. I touch on 10 of them here.

1. Tell a story (including conflict)

Give your videos a story structure. Matthew identifies story elements as setup, confrontation, and resolution. You may think of them as setting, conflict, and denouement. Rising action, climax, and falling action. Beginning, middle, and end.

However you think of your story structure, include conflict: tension, something at stake, something to overcome. Here’s an example Matthew gives.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

16 Visual Storytelling Tips to Give Your Content Marketing a Boost

The Content Marketer’s Guide to Story Structure

2. Evoke emotion (appropriately)

While tugging at heartstrings can backfire, many of the most effective videos from brands include an emotional appeal. Think of the Super Bowl ads, Matthew reminded us. Are you picturing horses? Puppies? Babies?

This Budweiser commercial goes straight for the heart. The company clearly expected the audience to relate to the main character, a stranger in a sometimes unfriendly land, someone passionate about his vision for the future. Oh, and he loves beer. Meet Adolphus Busch.

Matthew offers a similar point made by Jodi Harris in this CMI article: “Video can convey an appropriate emotional tone in a way that text alone can’t manage.”

Matthew’s advice: Figure out which emotions make sense for your brand and for the purpose of your video, and plan accordingly. He mentioned his company, TechSmith, as an example:

Use emotional appeal that makes sense for your brand and purpose, says @piercemr. #video Click To Tweet

I work for a software company. I don’t want people crying in association with my product. What I want them to feel is excited, accomplished, like ‘Man, look what I created. I can take on the world.’

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: What to Do After You Press Record: A Formula for Videos People Love

3. Use humor (advisedly)

“Humor is hard,” Matthew says. “It doesn’t always go well. You’ve got to know your audience.” If you’ve ever told a joke that no one laughed at, you know what he’s talking about.

One brand that got humor right, he says, is Kmart with this 2013 Ship My Pants commercial, which racked up some 13 million views on YouTube in one week.

Getting the humor right – making people laugh – doesn’t guarantee business success, though. It’s not clear whether this video achieved its mandate: to boost the use of Kmart’s shipping service.

If you’re going to use humor, Matthew says, “make sure that it leads to customer action.” No matter how entertaining your video may be, if it doesn’t inspire people to do something in line with your strategy, its value to the company is questionable.

If you’re going to use humor in your #video, make sure it leads to customer action, says @piercemr. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Comedy Pro Reveals How to Bring Funny to Content

4. Pay attention to audio (even though some viewers won’t)

Yes, lots of people watch videos with the sound off, but take care with what they’ll hear if they listen. Bad audio can kill the experience of watching a video. And, Matthew says, it’s easy to get bad audio.

He has three main recommendations:

Record in a quiet room.

Use a good microphone.

Use the right music – or none.

If you’re going to use music, unless you’re unusually talented at creating your own, buy it. And, because it so powerfully sets the tone, choose it with care. “Music has consequences,” Matthew says.

If you’re going to use music, choose with care and buy it, says @piercemr. #video Click To Tweet

To illustrate the dramatic impact of music, Matthew points to an episode of the web show Film Riot, an online filmmaking-education series. This episode, How to Manipulate People With Music, delivers a short scene – one man handing another a package – twice in a row. Only the music changes. The music alone transforms the scene from “death time” to “sexy time.”

5. Use color intentionally (as filmmakers do)

How you use color can detract from or enhance people’s experience of your videos. For example, Matthew points out, the filming of O Brother, Where Art Thou? happened in Mississippi in the summer when everything was green. Since the fictional events occur in the drought-stricken era of the Great Depression, the directors digitally altered the film to change the greens to browns, as shown here, to create the mood the story demanded.

For lots of examples of the use of color in movies, including more details on O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2:24 to 3:20), see this 13-minute video: 10 Best Uses of Color of All Time.

As you plan your videos, even if you don’t aspire to an Academy Award, choose colors with care.

6. Keep things moving (a lot)

You probably don’t need to be told to keep things moving in your marketing videos. But how much movement is enough?

While there’s no rule, TV shows and movies change angles or scenes every two to three seconds. Viewers have come to expect frequent changes between scenery, close-ups, background activity, and so on.

Modern screen-based expectations aside, humans are simply wired to pay attention to movement. As Matthew says,

Our lizard brain says, ‘Keep scanning, there’s going to be danger. Where’s the danger?’ We’re tuned in to things that move. It could be a lion or something else dangerous. Maybe it’s a source of the food that we need to survive. When you’re making a video, tap into that old brain to draw people in.

Matthew helped make this video about Chad Jordan, the creator of a popcorn shop in Lansing, Michigan. Notice how much the camera moves and how often the scene changes. As Matthew explains:

Even when Chad’s talking, we’re not staying too long on him. He’s the subject. He is the focus of this story, but we’re showing him only in bits and pieces. That’s more interesting than Chad sitting in our studio chatting at you. I loved listening to him, but you want to keep things moving and changing.

7. Include faces (friendly or not)

From the time we’re born, we’re drawn to faces. We see faces, Matthew notes, even in things that have no face, such as the moon. When faces come into video, people are attracted to them. Thus, he offers this advice:

Put some faces in there. We have this inclination. Oh, there’s a face. I need to look at it. Is it a friendly face? Is it not a friendly face? What is an insurance company going to show you to represent its brand? Papers? No. They’re showing faces.

When you hear the names Progressive and Allstate, two companies Matthew mentions, do you picture insurance policies? Or Flo and the Mayhem guy?

8. Use captions (created by humans)

Matthew recommends adding captions to all your videos – burning in text overlays that spell out what people are saying – because some of your audience may not listen or may not be able to listen.

Add captions to all your #videos because some of your audience may not listen, says @piercemr. Click To Tweet

Even those who do listen absorb spoken information more readily when it’s reinforced visually.

Resist the urge to plop in the captions generated automatically by YouTube, Facebook, or other applications. If you use automated tools as a starting point to provide text, have someone savvy with language rewrite it or at least correct it.

Here’s a screen shot from a CMI video showing an overlaid caption that highlights something being said by Cleveland Clinic’s Director of Content Marketing Amanda Todorovich: “If you don’t have time for content creation, maybe you shouldn’t do it at all.”

If you don't have time for #content creation, maybe you shouldn't do it at all, says @amandatodo. Click To Tweet

I’d call that a statement worth calling attention to.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Content Creation Robots Are Here [Examples]

9. Include a call to action (that you plan for)

However great your video, it serves your organization poorly without a clear, relevant call to action – and not one that you tack on as an afterthought. As Matthew says:

Plan for the outcome. What do you want people to do when they finish watching? If you wait until the end and say, ‘Oh, now that we’ve made this video, we should have people fill out an email address,’ that doesn’t work.

Consider building in interactivity. There are simple ways and complex ways to do this. Simple ways include going to YouTube and creating hot spots. “You could put links right in your video or give people something to click to open an email or go to your social channels,” Matthew says. “It could be as simple as that.”

The main thing is to leave people wanting to do something – and knowing what that something is and how to do it. “Give it to them on a plate,” he says.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 5 Interactive Calls to Action That Prospects Can’t Resist

10. Follow through (to keep people engaged)

After people see your video, then what? “You might want to retarget people, have pixels follow them around,” Matthew says. “Or you might want to show them another video, or take them to a landing page, or take them to your store.”

Think about the follow-through options you might build into the experience. What would your ideal viewer want to do next? How can you satisfy that desire?

That next thing doesn’t have to be part of the video; use your creativity to explore ways to help people discover that thing. Whatever it is, make it, too, irresistible.

After people see your #video, then what? Offer some options, says @piercemr. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 10 Tips (and a Ton of Tricks) to Maximize Your Video Content Investment

Conclusion

These 10 points touch on only a portion of the advice that Matthew shares in his two talks at Content Marketing World. There’s no end to the ways that marketers can make videos engaging.

What’s working for you? What gets your viewers hooked on your videos and keeps them coming back for more?

Here’s an excerpt from Matthew’s talk: 

Want to get all of Matthew Pierce’s tips. Watch his presentations through Content Marketing World’s video-on-demand access for 2017. And make plans today to attend Content Marketing World 2018. Register today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post 10 Ways to Make Videos Your Customers Can’t Resist appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/01/videos-customers-resist/

What We Are Listening To: Our Favourite Podcasts on Business, Investing, and Learning

If you don’t know who Charlie Munger is, then here’s a quick introduction. He’s a billionaire and he’s 93 years old. He’s not the oldest and he is not the wealthiest but when it comes to being the “oldest billionaire”, he doesn’t have any competition.

In other words, he has the two most coveted things in this world – wealth and a long life.

His advice to us – minimize stupidity. Remarkably simple, isn’t it?

The most effective way to follow Charlie’s advice is to learn from others’ mistakes. That’s where books come into the picture. They’re the best source of vicarious knowledge.

When humans first discovered that they could persist their words and other information in physical form, it was revolutionary. According to some historians, between the years 3500 BC and 3000 BC, ancient Sumerians from Mesopotamia civilization invented the first system for storing and processing information outside their brains.

In the timescale of millions of years of human evolution, this invention is pretty recent one. Irrespective of how trivial the ability to read/write sounds, it was nothing less than a disrupting technology when it came out. Probably thousands of talented Sumerians, who were employed for memorizing information, lost their jobs.

You don’t have to teach an infant how to swallow liquid or give walking lessons to a toddler. These skills are built into the human genome. But reading isn’t part of our DNA.

The point I am coming to is this: the human brain isn’t naturally built to read. It’s an acquired skill like driving or playing Tennis. Reading involves vision which engages a certain part of the brain which in turn exercises a specific section of our neural machinery.

Although our brain processes signal received from all senses, each of the five senses is wired to different sections of the brain. Which means, reading lights up only the visual component of our brain’s circuitry.

When the brain receives the same information from different senses, it processes them slightly differently. And the interpretation changes based on which instrument (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) was used to record the information.

Eyes usually get preference over others. McGurk Effect is the proof that our brain gives different weightage to each sense organ.

What would happen if you could involve multiple senses to absorb knowledge?

For one, our brain would frequently run into conflicts. Eyes would tell one story and the ears will say something else. But that’s not a bad news. Fortunately, unusual insights are almost always preceded by conflicts.

So I would like to argue that to learn better, one should be open to the idea of absorbing knowledge through multiple senses.

Making use of multiple senses fires up neurons in different locations inside our brain. This creates the possibility of fresh connections between previously unrelated brain cells. These unprecedented linkages enhance our brain’s ability to perceive the world and generate brand new insights.

Guy Spier, in his book The Education of Value Investor, mentions that someone gifted him an audio CD of Charlie Munger’s talk at Harvard on the 24 standard causes of human misjudgment. And there was an 18-month period, writes Guy, “during which this was the only CD in my car’s entertainment system.”

Guy probably listened to Charlie’s talk hundreds of times.

So to experiment with this idea, I have been trying to learn through my ears. One way to do that is to listen to the audiobooks. For that, I subscribed to Audible and listened to quite a few audiobooks.

My experience with audiobooks led me to the conclusion that listening to biographies and fiction is quite enjoyable. And there are again evolutionary reasons behind it.

If you recall our earlier discussion in this post, the technology of writing and reading came into existence quite late in the history of human evolution. The human brain hasn’t yet adapted naturally to the idea of learning things by reading. However, for millions of years, the knowledge was transferred from one person to another by narrating stories. So sound was the primary mode of sharing and propagating information for the majority of human history.

Which confirms my personal observation about my inability to absorb any information in audio form if the content is not in a story format.

The human brain started comprehending complex matters precisely because of the invention of the written word. We learn to do complex algebra and calculus in school because the process involves delegating all the steps to paper. If you had to do it all in your head, it would be impossible. Our brains aren’t wired to do that.

But the idea of podcasts has kind of broken this barrier. For some strange reason, our mind would find it extremely entertaining and engrossing when it’s privy to a conversation between two fellow humans.

A monologue, when it’s not a story, is boring. On the other hand, listening to a dialogue, even if the topic is fairly complex, isn’t that taxing to the mind. Maybe that’s the reason podcasts are rapidly gaining acceptance and popularity as a very effective medium to share knowledge.

For past one year, I have been listening to podcasts. I have learned a lot. It feels as if two wise people are sitting behind you and informally discussing their experiences. I find it fascinating.

So I thought of sharing the podcasts that I regularly listen to. I am also including some of my favourite episodes of each to get you started.

1. How I Built This

It’s a show hosted by Guy Raz. In his words, “How I Built This is a podcast about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.” Unlike many other podcasts, the length of each episode is relatively short i.e. 30-40 minutes. My favorite stories in this podcasts are –

Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airline. Airlines is an industry marred by abysmally poor economics. In its entire history, on the whole, the airline industry has destroyed shareholder wealth. Southwest is the only airline in the world which has remained profitable for an almost entire period of its 40+ years of operation.

Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, which was bought for a billion dollar by Amazon. After listening to this conversation, I picked up Tony’s book Delivering Happiness and enjoyed reading it.

Manoj Bhargava, founder of 5-hour energy. This guy lived as a monk for 13 years and then went on to create a billion-dollar business in less than a decade. He’s now devoting a majority of his time for tackling the hardest problems our world is facing like bringing electricity to those who don’t have it yet, converting seawater to freshwater and a few more.

John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods Market grocery chain, which was recently acquired by Amazon. Amazon acquires a company only when Jeff Bezos realizes that he can’t replicate what the acquiree is doing which speaks a ton about what John Mackey has accomplished.

Joe Gebbia is the co-founder of Airbnb. Today Airbnb is disrupting the hotel industry. Airbnb has now has more rooms than the biggest hotel chain in the world.

2. The Knowledge Project

Shane Parrish has been relentlessly sharing multidisciplinary ideas on his blog for almost a decade. The knowledge project podcast is another feather in his cap. The publishing schedule is quite infrequent and irregular, nevertheless, there’s enough wisdom here to keep you busy for weeks. My favourite episodes are –

Interview with Sanjay Bakshi. Being a Safal Niveshak tribesman, it’s almost impossible that you haven’t heard of Prof. Bakshi. He teaches a course on behavioural finance and business valuation in MDI Gurgaon, a prestigious MBA college. There’s chock full of investing wisdom in this interview. I recommend that you listen to it multiple times.

Interview with Naval Ravikant. Naval is the co-founder of AngelList. He’s been an investor in many unicorn startups including Uber, Twitter, Yammer, and many others. This 2+ hours of conversation between Shane and Naval was simply out of the world. I have already listened to this one twice and want to listen to it again few more times. Naval has been interviewed in Tim Ferriss show also and that conversation was equally amazing.

Interview with Morgan Housel. I became a fan of  Morgan Housel when I first read his incisive posts at Collaborative Fund’s blog. I have read, at least twice, every single article that he’s written in last one year. He’s perhaps one of the best investment journalists out there. His insights on investing and business are truly jaw-dropping. When I start reading his posts, I always sit tight in my chair lest the Eureka moment throws me off on the ground.

3. The Tim Ferriss Show

Before I tell you what I like about this podcast, let me be honest about two things that I don’t like in this one. First is the excessive promotional content in each episode (from financial products to undergarments) which isn’t really wrong or unethical but a big put off for a new listener. Second, a lot of episodes aren’t interviews but random ranting from Tim which kind of dilutes my original purpose of listening to a podcast i.e. being privy to a dialogue, not a monologue. So if you can get past these two small irritants then there’s quite a bit of wisdom to be gained from Tim’s show. Here are few of the episodes which I liked –

Interview with Derek Sivers. Sivers is a fascinating personality. He was a musician who accidentally created a multi-million dollar company called CDBaby. He later sold the company for USD 22 million and gave away the money to a trust dedicated to musicians. I loved Sivers’ book Anything You Want and go back to all his TED talks again and again. There are actually two episodes with Derek Sivers. Like Scott Adams, Sivers has spoken to James Altucher also.

Interview with Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and the first investor in Facebook. Thiel has written a book called Zero to One which mind stretching insights about future. He’s a true contrarian and he starts every decision by asking, “What important truth that I know which most people disagree with me on this one.” A fascinating conversation. Thiel interviewed with James Altucher also, so do check out that episode also.

4. The James Altucher Show

James Altucher is a prolific blogger and podcaster. His podcast has already crossed 250 episodes and his guest list is pretty awesome. James’ book Choose Yourself had a profound impact on how I think and it’s a book that I recommend very frequently. Here are my picks from Altucher’s show –

Interview with Yuval Noah Harari who shot into limelight with his book Sapiens when it was recommended by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, and Bill Gates. I have read Sapiens twice already and, ignoring my bias about non-narrative audiobooks, have listened to the audio version also, more than once. Harari is an outstanding thinker and a gifted writer. I challenge you that once you read Sapiens, two things will happen to you. One, you will immediately want to read it again and you won’t be able to see the world with the same eyes as you do now. His second book Homo Deus is equally fascinating.

Scott Adams is the creator of famous cartoon strip Dilbert. Adams’ story is a remarkable tale of series of lifelong experiments that he undertook to tilt the odds of success in his favour. He consciously pursued a strategy which eventually catapulted him to wealth and world fame. His insights on the science of persuasion are just out of this world. Scott Adams has appeared in Tim Ferriss show also. I loved Scott’s two books – How To Fail… and Win Bigly.

5. Masters In Business

Barry Ritholtz hosts this show. The archive contains more than 100 episodes but I have just started listening to this podcast.

The first one which I listened was a conversation with Marc Andreessen, creator of first internet browser Mosaic and founder of Netscape. Marc is also the co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. It’s was a fascinating dialogue. The breadth and depth of Marc’s knowledge about how the world works are truly remarkable.

Vishal shares that a few other wonderful podcasts from this series includes the ones with Ed Thorp, Howard Marks, and Michael Lewis.

A couple of Indian podcasts around investing we like are the ones from Stoic Podcast and Shyam Sekhar. Lastly, don’t miss Vishal’s recent interview on a podcast.

I use a podcast aggregation app (Podcast Addict, on Android) to subscribe to these podcasts. There are many other similar apps which you can use. I find Podcast Addict quite good because it has useful features like playback speeds (slowing down or speeding up), bookmarking, adding notes, skipping, downloading for offline consumption, creating playlists etc.

Listening to podcasts is a great way to make use of your commute/travel time especially if you use public transport or taxi. I call this mode of learning – university on wheels.

I hope you’ll try out this mode of learning and if you’ve already been doing it, I would love to know about your podcasts list.

Take care and keep learning.

The post What We Are Listening To: Our Favourite Podcasts on Business, Investing, and Learning appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

What We Are Listening To: Our Favourite Podcasts on Business, Investing, and Learning published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

What We Are Listening To: Our Favourite Podcasts on Business, Investing, and Learning

If you don’t know who Charlie Munger is, then here’s a quick introduction. He’s a billionaire and he’s 93 years old. He’s not the oldest and he is not the wealthiest but when it comes to being the “oldest billionaire”, he doesn’t have any competition.

In other words, he has the two most coveted things in this world – wealth and a long life.

His advice to us – minimize stupidity. Remarkably simple, isn’t it?

The most effective way to follow Charlie’s advice is to learn from others’ mistakes. That’s where books come into the picture. They’re the best source of vicarious knowledge.

When humans first discovered that they could persist their words and other information in physical form, it was revolutionary. According to some historians, between the years 3500 BC and 3000 BC, ancient Sumerians from Mesopotamia civilization invented the first system for storing and processing information outside their brains.

In the timescale of millions of years of human evolution, this invention is pretty recent one. Irrespective of how trivial the ability to read/write sounds, it was nothing less than a disrupting technology when it came out. Probably thousands of talented Sumerians, who were employed for memorizing information, lost their jobs.

You don’t have to teach an infant how to swallow liquid or give walking lessons to a toddler. These skills are built into the human genome. But reading isn’t part of our DNA.

The point I am coming to is this: the human brain isn’t naturally built to read. It’s an acquired skill like driving or playing Tennis. Reading involves vision which engages a certain part of the brain which in turn exercises a specific section of our neural machinery.

Although our brain processes signal received from all senses, each of the five senses is wired to different sections of the brain. Which means, reading lights up only the visual component of our brain’s circuitry.

When the brain receives the same information from different senses, it processes them slightly differently. And the interpretation changes based on which instrument (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) was used to record the information.

Eyes usually get preference over others. McGurk Effect is the proof that our brain gives different weightage to each sense organ.

What would happen if you could involve multiple senses to absorb knowledge?

For one, our brain would frequently run into conflicts. Eyes would tell one story and the ears will say something else. But that’s not a bad news. Fortunately, unusual insights are almost always preceded by conflicts.

So I would like to argue that to learn better, one should be open to the idea of absorbing knowledge through multiple senses.

Making use of multiple senses fires up neurons in different locations inside our brain. This creates the possibility of fresh connections between previously unrelated brain cells. These unprecedented linkages enhance our brain’s ability to perceive the world and generate brand new insights.

Guy Spier, in his book The Education of Value Investor, mentions that someone gifted him an audio CD of Charlie Munger’s talk at Harvard on the 24 standard causes of human misjudgment. And there was an 18-month period, writes Guy, “during which this was the only CD in my car’s entertainment system.”

Guy probably listened to Charlie’s talk hundreds of times.

So to experiment with this idea, I have been trying to learn through my ears. One way to do that is to listen to the audiobooks. For that, I subscribed to Audible and listened to quite a few audiobooks.

My experience with audiobooks led me to the conclusion that listening to biographies and fiction is quite enjoyable. And there are again evolutionary reasons behind it.

If you recall our earlier discussion in this post, the technology of writing and reading came into existence quite late in the history of human evolution. The human brain hasn’t yet adapted naturally to the idea of learning things by reading. However, for millions of years, the knowledge was transferred from one person to another by narrating stories. So sound was the primary mode of sharing and propagating information for the majority of human history.

Which confirms my personal observation about my inability to absorb any information in audio form if the content is not in a story format.

The human brain started comprehending complex matters precisely because of the invention of the written word. We learn to do complex algebra and calculus in school because the process involves delegating all the steps to paper. If you had to do it all in your head, it would be impossible. Our brains aren’t wired to do that.

But the idea of podcasts has kind of broken this barrier. For some strange reason, our mind would find it extremely entertaining and engrossing when it’s privy to a conversation between two fellow humans.

A monologue, when it’s not a story, is boring. On the other hand, listening to a dialogue, even if the topic is fairly complex, isn’t that taxing to the mind. Maybe that’s the reason podcasts are rapidly gaining acceptance and popularity as a very effective medium to share knowledge.

For past one year, I have been listening to podcasts. I have learned a lot. It feels as if two wise people are sitting behind you and informally discussing their experiences. I find it fascinating.

So I thought of sharing the podcasts that I regularly listen to. I am also including some of my favourite episodes of each to get you started.

1. How I Built This

It’s a show hosted by Guy Raz. In his words, “How I Built This is a podcast about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.” Unlike many other podcasts, the length of each episode is relatively short i.e. 30-40 minutes. My favorite stories in this podcasts are –

Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airline. Airlines is an industry marred by abysmally poor economics. In its entire history, on the whole, the airline industry has destroyed shareholder wealth. Southwest is the only airline in the world which has remained profitable for an almost entire period of its 40+ years of operation.

Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, which was bought for a billion dollar by Amazon. After listening to this conversation, I picked up Tony’s book Delivering Happiness and enjoyed reading it.

Manoj Bhargava, founder of 5-hour energy. This guy lived as a monk for 13 years and then went on to create a billion-dollar business in less than a decade. He’s now devoting a majority of his time for tackling the hardest problems our world is facing like bringing electricity to those who don’t have it yet, converting seawater to freshwater and a few more.

John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods Market grocery chain, which was recently acquired by Amazon. Amazon acquires a company only when Jeff Bezos realizes that he can’t replicate what the acquiree is doing which speaks a ton about what John Mackey has accomplished.

Joe Gebbia is the co-founder of Airbnb. Today Airbnb is disrupting the hotel industry. Airbnb has now has more rooms than the biggest hotel chain in the world.

2. The Knowledge Project

Shane Parrish has been relentlessly sharing multidisciplinary ideas on his blog for almost a decade. The knowledge project podcast is another feather in his cap. The publishing schedule is quite infrequent and irregular, nevertheless, there’s enough wisdom here to keep you busy for weeks. My favourite episodes are –

Interview with Sanjay Bakshi. Being a Safal Niveshak tribesman, it’s almost impossible that you haven’t heard of Prof. Bakshi. He teaches a course on behavioural finance and business valuation in MDI Gurgaon, a prestigious MBA college. There’s chock full of investing wisdom in this interview. I recommend that you listen to it multiple times.

Interview with Naval Ravikant. Naval is the co-founder of AngelList. He’s been an investor in many unicorn startups including Uber, Twitter, Yammer, and many others. This 2+ hours of conversation between Shane and Naval was simply out of the world. I have already listened to this one twice and want to listen to it again few more times. Naval has been interviewed in Tim Ferriss show also and that conversation was equally amazing.

Interview with Morgan Housel. I became a fan of  Morgan Housel when I first read his incisive posts at Collaborative Fund’s blog. I have read, at least twice, every single article that he’s written in last one year. He’s perhaps one of the best investment journalists out there. His insights on investing and business are truly jaw-dropping. When I start reading his posts, I always sit tight in my chair lest the Eureka moment throws me off on the ground.

3. The Tim Ferriss Show

Before I tell you what I like about this podcast, let me be honest about two things that I don’t like in this one. First is the excessive promotional content in each episode (from financial products to undergarments) which isn’t really wrong or unethical but a big put off for a new listener. Second, a lot of episodes aren’t interviews but random ranting from Tim which kind of dilutes my original purpose of listening to a podcast i.e. being privy to a dialogue, not a monologue. So if you can get past these two small irritants then there’s quite a bit of wisdom to be gained from Tim’s show. Here are few of the episodes which I liked –

Interview with Derek Sivers. Sivers is a fascinating personality. He was a musician who accidentally created a multi-million dollar company called CDBaby. He later sold the company for USD 22 million and gave away the money to a trust dedicated to musicians. I loved Sivers’ book Anything You Want and go back to all his TED talks again and again. There are actually two episodes with Derek Sivers. Like Scott Adams, Sivers has spoken to James Altucher also.

Interview with Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and the first investor in Facebook. Thiel has written a book called Zero to One which mind stretching insights about future. He’s a true contrarian and he starts every decision by asking, “What important truth that I know which most people disagree with me on this one.” A fascinating conversation. Thiel interviewed with James Altucher also, so do check out that episode also.

4. The James Altucher Show

James Altucher is a prolific blogger and podcaster. His podcast has already crossed 250 episodes and his guest list is pretty awesome. James’ book Choose Yourself had a profound impact on how I think and it’s a book that I recommend very frequently. Here are my picks from Altucher’s show –

Interview with Yuval Noah Harari who shot into limelight with his book Sapiens when it was recommended by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, and Bill Gates. I have read Sapiens twice already and, ignoring my bias about non-narrative audiobooks, have listened to the audio version also, more than once. Harari is an outstanding thinker and a gifted writer. I challenge you that once you read Sapiens, two things will happen to you. One, you will immediately want to read it again and you won’t be able to see the world with the same eyes as you do now. His second book Homo Deus is equally fascinating.

Scott Adams is the creator of famous cartoon strip Dilbert. Adams’ story is a remarkable tale of series of lifelong experiments that he undertook to tilt the odds of success in his favour. He consciously pursued a strategy which eventually catapulted him to wealth and world fame. His insights on the science of persuasion are just out of this world. Scott Adams has appeared in Tim Ferriss show also. I loved Scott’s two books – How To Fail… and Win Bigly.

5. Masters In Business

Barry Ritholtz hosts this show. The archive contains more than 100 episodes but I have just started listening to this podcast.

The first one which I listened was a conversation with Marc Andreessen, creator of first internet browser Mosaic and founder of Netscape. Marc is also the co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. It’s was a fascinating dialogue. The breadth and depth of Marc’s knowledge about how the world works are truly remarkable.

Vishal shares that a few other wonderful podcasts from this series includes the ones with Ed Thorp, Howard Marks, and Michael Lewis.

A couple of Indian podcasts around investing we like are the ones from Stoic Podcast and Shyam Sekhar. Lastly, don’t miss Vishal’s recent interview on a podcast.

I use a podcast aggregation app (Podcast Addict, on Android) to subscribe to these podcasts. There are many other similar apps which you can use. I find Podcast Addict quite good because it has useful features like playback speeds (slowing down or speeding up), bookmarking, adding notes, skipping, downloading for offline consumption, creating playlists etc.

Listening to podcasts is a great way to make use of your commute/travel time especially if you use public transport or taxi. I call this mode of learning – university on wheels.

I hope you’ll try out this mode of learning and if you’ve already been doing it, I would love to know about your podcasts list.

Take care and keep learning.

The post What We Are Listening To: Our Favourite Podcasts on Business, Investing, and Learning appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

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Attention Seeking Behavior: Why Some People Go Looking for Drama

It’s all around us, and we’re not talking love. From the chronic liar to the online troll, here’s the 101 on attention seeking behavior.

Is no amount of attention enough to satisfy you? As a teenager, I used under-the-radar methods to get noticed, such as: lying, playing the victim, being moody. But if you’re into the more in-yo-face variety of attention seeking behavior you might: dress provocatively, say things like, ‘maybe I should just kill myself,’ argue all the time.

Either way, attention seeking behavior sort of makes you the center of things. Which sort of feels rewarding, in a crooked sort of way.

Despite this…

Wanting attention is kinda, actually, pretty, VERY normal

We all have needs, and we want confirmation that we’re loved and cared about. That we matter. Cos’ we’re human. For example, think of a baby wailing for food… in that situation getting attention, or not getting it, could literally be the difference between life and death.

And as teenagers/young adults we want to impress our friends by doing crazy stuff, like drinking ourselves into A&E once a month. And we believe our relationships are renditions of Romeo & Juliet. *‘Arrghhhh, my heart!’*

Also, having an attention seeking personality is LESS of a character weakness and MORE to do with how our brain is wired by our life experiences. For example, neglected children are more likely to be attention-seekers as adults. They naturally associate getting attention with survival, to an extreme degree.

On top of all that, humans are social creatures. We’re all programmed to operate on traded attention because if we’re unable to get ANY attention, this is dangerous.

So perhaps we can agree… although it is quite complicated *like people*, attention seeking behavior isn’t all that strange or unhealthy.

It’s just a matter of how we go about it

And I like to think of this as the choice between two options:

#1 You either mostly earn attention.

#2 Or mostly feed on it.

Feeding is a quick-win strategy…

It’s getting that 2,000 likes on a selfie of your body only-5%-covered-with-clothes *and feeling important and productive as a result, despite not working on your exciting idea for a food-based-makeup biz that could actually do some great things*.

Your Instagram page provides you lots of positive feedback for working way underneath your potential. And, like feeding on an addictive drug, you can never quite get enough… until you forget that you’re actually considerably intelligent and creative. *And if that Instagram account dries up you feel like garbage*.

Feeding on attention robs you of doing great things that require hard work. It also makes you vulnerable to manipulation by people who know you are insecure *despite all of the attention you get*. For example, you might end up with a partner who lies to you. You may even search out people who don’t like you, in an attempt to get the ‘ultimate validation.’ [Read: We accept the love we think we deserve: A real life example]

All this drama is fun for a while, but who goes to the amusement park every day? Anything, even something fun, quickly becomes a living hell, rather than a thrill, when it controls your life. By contrast, earning attention happens when you work consistently to develop your skills/yourself as a person.

Strategies for understanding attention seeking behavior

Okay, with that said, let’s dive into some strategies. Consider these things and you can turn your attention cravings from a dirty high into jet fuel…

#1 Getting your needs met. Achieving happiness and fulfillment is an art. There is no equation for achieving these—that’s completely up to you. Explore and find out what makes you feel like you’re getting most of your needs met. Look deep inside and be truly honest with yourself. [Read: How to be happy again: 20 ways to draw happiness from within]

#2 Not lying. The hardest thing is to tell the truth when it’s inconvenient. But this is when it’s especially important. Doing this one thing massively improves your life long-term, even if it creates problems short-term.

On the opposite end, lying creates webs of misunderstanding and chaos that become almost impossible to make sense of. [Read: How to stop lying to yourself and everyone around you]

#3 Not being a hater. We live in an age of trolling. When somebody has lots of light on them, attention-seekers may want to bring them down, to make that person feel small or to show them up. Rather than building themselves up, the hater focuses on what others are doing.

#4 Checking arrogance/narcissism at the door. Arrogant or narcissistic people feel like the world revolves around them. Or that they’re just better than everyone else *others seem weak or pathetic*.

Arrogant/narcissistic people may feed on compliments and on being talked about. But without this they feel worthless. Checking this way of thinking, when it pops up, brings you a bit closer to earth. [Read: 23 signs of narcissism people overlook until its too late]

#5 Not caring what others think about you *self-worth*. If you feel you need fame in order to feel like you’re worth a damn, fame actually won’t fix that insecurity.

Entrepreneur Gary V said it best—he simply cares more about what he thinks of himself than what others think of him. Seriously, not BS, he really cares more about his self-opinion than the opinion of others about him and doesn’t give a f*** about how they judge him. Developing this way of thinking does crazy things for you. *As long as you’re not an A-hole about it, needless to say i.e. respect the lives of others*.

#6 Being the private hero of your own story. When you get attention you become the center of everything. Until, like Bella from the Twilight series, you dive from cliffs just to get your ex to come save you. But truth is there are more important personal challenges, such as past traumas or phobias or fears, which you avoid.

The key with facing fears is to start low and with yourself, not with changing others. Gaining these ‘private victories’ over yourself *inner resistance* adds up over time invisibly until they reach a tipping point. And that’s when people say things like ‘she was an overnight success.’ [Read: Be your own hero: What it means and how to take control of life]

#7 Developing intense focus. The opposite of distraction is deep focus. This involves focusing on one thing and cutting off all other distractions for around 90 minutes at a time. This practice builds up the ability to focus on one thing without needing constant novelty. There’s a book about this called Deep Work and another called The Shallows.

#8 Knowing ‘negative’ emotions are addictive. Whether that be a scandal, betrayal, gossip, or something that makes you feel like the victim… drama causes your body to secrete endorphins, which reduces feelings of pain and gives you pleasure. Drama also triggers your body to release dopamine, which makes you feel euphoric.

Rewards, baby. All kinds.

Until you no longer know why you always provoke your partner and get them fired up into a rage with your attention seeking behavior. As much as you moan and complain about drama, it feels addictive, and like winning, to the attention-seeker. [Read: People pleasers and 20 common signs most people don’t see]

#9 Using your neediness to win. This is about playing on your strengths and shoring up your weaknesses. For example, there are tons of successful business people who love attention. But, rather than using that personality trait doing things beneath their full potential, they direct it towards some challenging goal.

While you can’t change your brain-wiring, you can create new habits that deactivate older ones. You can get out of your own way by: taking responsibility, completing difficult projects without giving up, and looking deep into yourself.

#10 Letting your scars complete you. No one’s without insecurities. But we all make a choice to:

#1 Accept our scars and rise with them.

#2 Or let them control and destroy us.

It’s important to dive into your insecurities and to see where feelings of inferiority stem. However you go about dealing with your insecurities, making sense of it gives you unexpected empowerment that makes you more solid and secure. [Read: How to be an adult: 15 mature ways to grow up and behave like one]

#11 Forgiving/moving on. Everyone will have some kind of developmental trauma. It’s a part of becoming socialized. However, one ideal I stick by is that holding onto bitterness and blame poisons me and limits my own growth.

Sometimes forgiveness is really hard to do but going through the process teaches me about who I really am/can be. It also involves becoming more thick-skinned and less of a pushover or separating myself from a person/group of people.

#12 Distancing yourself from drama. Yeah, attention seeking behavior and drama is fun, but it’s the intense-kind-of-fun that self-destructive addicts experience. Sure, you get a high perhaps unlike any other high out there. However, inevitably your life splits apart bit by bit. Until all you’re left with are regrets and a whole lot of undesirable consequences **cough* crazy baby mama/daddy *cough* jail time *cough* friends who get you into trouble*.

With attention-seeking behavior, simply participating in it draws you into its gravity. I actively cut out drama-seeking people from my life. [Read: Superficial person alert: 36 shallow traits they just can’t hide]

#13 Knowing who you truly are *listening to that inner compass*. This one sounds like a cliché. But we all know what it means. In fact, you’ve always known it, but maybe you drown out this wisdom with social media apps, Netflix, YouTube, and online gurus *I know I’ve done this*.

Gaining self-awareness about who you REALLY are, not what sounds cool, what you think might be accepted, what might make you successful, or what you think should be fun. None of that. It’s about that voice that’s truly yours, even when you think it sounds sort of dumb and inferior.

Listen to that voice, especially when it tells you you need to do something difficult or unusual or alien or important or *insert adjective.

[Read: How to be comfortable with yourself: A guide to not giving a f*ck]

Attention seeking behavior is normal and healthy when you understand who you are. The important thing in using this basic human need to make your life more dope. Which takes working hard to know who you are/what you’re capable of.

The post Attention Seeking Behavior: Why Some People Go Looking for Drama is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.