54 Great Bits From The 27 Books I Read In 2018

This idea was originally inspired by Julien Smith, a much more prolific reader than I. Here are my lists from years past: 2012, 2013, 2014, 20152016 and 2017.  

Turns out I still like books, and other than getting to read more on public transit (thanks Japan life!) my reading habits didn’t change much in 2018.

I read slightly more fiction than usual in part due to two friends publishing their first novels (congrats Kyle and Sean!) and from feeling re-inspired to catch up on classics I missed out on in high school: instead of trying to read Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of All-Time, my new goal is to tackle a modified version of Joel Patrick’s Ultimate Reading List and read the 156 books that appear on at least two of eight different read-before-you-die lists. Check out my modified list (and my slow progress) here or connect with me on Goodreads.

But before diving back into that moonshot mission, I like to use the end of the year as an excuse to revisit my Kindle highlights, pick out some favorite passages, and remind myself how little of what I read I actually remember.

WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us by Tim O’Reilly

1) That is the essence of the Maker movement. Making for the joy of exploration. Making to learn. There’s no joy in our current education system. It is full of canned solutions to be memorized when it needs to be a vast collection of problems to be solved. When you start with what you want to accomplish, knowledge becomes a tool. You seek it out, and when you get it, it is truly yours.

2) I’m fascinated by a comment that Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, made to me over dinner one night: “If you want to understand the future, just look at what rich people do today.”

Dining out was once the province of the wealthy. Now far more people do it. In our most vibrant cities, a privileged class experiences a taste of a future that could be the future for everyone. Restaurants compete on the basis of creativity and service, “everyone’s private driver” whisks people around in comfort from experience to experience, and one-of-a-kind boutiques provide unique consumer goods. Rich people once took the European grand tour; now soccer hooligans do it. Cell phones, designer fashion, and entertainment have all been democratized. Mozart had the Holy Roman Emperor as his patron; Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Patreon extend that opportunity to millions of ordinary people.

Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon

3) You have to remember that your work is something you do, not who you are. This is especially hard for artists to accept, as so much of what they do is personal.

4) Today it is the amateur—the enthusiast who pursues her work in the spirit of love (in French, the word means “lover”), regardless of the potential for fame, money, or career—who often has the advantage over the professional. Because they have little to lose, amateurs are willing to try anything and share the results. They take chances, experiment, and follow their whims. Sometimes, in the process of doing things in an unprofessional way, they make new discoveries. “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities,” said Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki. “In the expert’s mind, there are few.”

Dune by Frank Herbert

5) “Do you see a way to go?” Jessica asked, mistaking his hesitation. “No,” he said, “But we’ll go anyway.”

6) “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Hey Whipple, Squeeze This by Luke Sullivan and Edward Boches

7) Here’s the formula I see work effectively over and over again: Do > Invite > Document > Share. Do something interesting, but on strategy, of course. Conceive the idea so that it allows people to participate, and find a way to invite them to join in. Document the event so it lives beyond the event and becomes content. Make it shareable across every relevant channel.

8) Now that you know you need to write like that particular brand, I also have to encourage you to write like people talk; in the copy you write for ads, in e-mails to clients, and letters to the editor, write like regular people talk. For some reason, when handed a pen and asked to write something that will be seen by others, 9 out of 10 people decide an authoritarian tone is somehow more persuasive than clear English.

There’s a cost to this, which the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto made clear in their famous 95 Theses: “In just a few more years, the current homogenized ‘voice’ of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.…[C]ompanies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.”

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

9)  The Pew Economic Mobility Project studied how Americans evaluated their chances at economic betterment, and what they found was shocking. There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation. Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class whites—by far the highest number in the survey—report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents’. 

10) The family-based hiring practices of the major industrial firms had their desired effect, and the results were predictable. All over the industrial Midwest, new communities of Appalachian transplants and their families sprang up, virtually out of nowhere. As one study noted, “Migration did not so much destroy neighborhoods and families as transport them.” In 1950s Middletown [Ohio], my grandparents found themselves in a situation both new and familiar. New because they were, for the first time, cut off from the extended Appalachian support network to which they were accustomed; familiar because they were still surrounded by hillbillies.

Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl

11) The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

12) Fifty years ago, I published a study devoted to a specific type of depression I had diagnosed in cases of young patients suffering from what I called “unemployment neurosis.” And I could show that this neurosis really originated in a twofold erroneous identification: being jobless was equated with being useless, and being useless was equated with having a meaningless life. Consequently, whenever I succeeded in persuading the patients to volunteer in youth organizations, adult education, public libraries and the like—in other words, as soon as they could fill their abundant free time with some sort of unpaid but meaningful activity—their depression disappeared although their economic situation had not changed and their hunger was the same. The truth is that man does not live by welfare alone.

Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

13) What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad goodby, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.

14) A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I’m going apply myself when I go back to school next September. It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don’t. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it’s a stupid question.

You Gotta Have Wa by Robert Whiting

15) Foreign players in Japan have long spoken of barriers, both visible and invisible, that effectively keep them from winnings titles, breaking records, or otherwise gaining recognition. The most frequent targets of their complaints have been from the umpires. As Leron Lee once said, “It’s almost a natural law for a gaijin that the higher your batting average goes, the wider your strike zone becomes. The umpires will see to it because you’re not supposed to outshine the Japanese.”

16) Although Imperial Army soldiers were heard to scream “To hell with Babe Ruth” in the jungles of the South Pacific, Ruth was still deemed to have a high enough standing with the Japanese that he was almost called upon to act as a peace negotiator in the fading months of the war. A U.S. government plan called for the Babe to be flown to Guam to make a series of radio broadcasts to the people of Japan. As Ruth put it, he was to appeal to their sporting instincts to give up, and to tell them what the U.S. had in store for them if they did not surrender. In the end however, the plan was scrapped as the U.S. high command opted for a more forceful approach: the A-Bomb.

Souvenir by Rolf Potts

17) After tipping some local servants to gain access to the Bard’s tomb and birthplace, the two American statesmen did something that to the modern imagination smacks of adolescent-grade vandalism: taking turns with a pocket knife, Jefferson and Adams each carved chunks from an antique chair alleged to have belonged to Shakespeare, and took the wood shavings home as souvenirs.

18) In an era before the availability of inexpensive snapshot cameras, postcards became a powerful medium for evoking what various corners of the world looked like, and how one might interact with them. Postcard entrepreneurs popularized notions of what sights were worth seeing in a given location, and postcard artists and photographers presented idealized visions of how it should be seen. Even as point-and-shoot snapshots gradually replaced postcards over the course of the twentieth century, tourist photographs tended to mimic the visual clichés of postcard images (a trend that has persisted into the age of digital photos and social media).

Draft No. 4 by John McPhee

19) “Penn’s daughter Margaret fished in the Delaware, and wrote home to a brother asking him to “buy for me a four joynted strong fishing Rod and Real with strong good Lines.…”

The problem was not with the rod or the real but with William Penn’s offspring. Should there be commas around Margaret or no commas around Margaret? The presence or absence of commas would, in effect, say whether Penn had one daughter or more than one. The commas—there or missing there—were not just commas; they were facts.

20) Shawn also recognized that no two writers are the same, like snowflakes and fingerprints. No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. An editor’s goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

21) “After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything. So we’ve got to do the right things.”

22) Now the sea would suck down, making cascades and waterfalls of retreating water, would sink past the rocks and plaster down the seaweed like shining hair: then, pausing, gather and rise with a roar, irresistibly swelling over point and outcrop, climbing the little cliff, sending at last an arm of surf up a gully to end a yard or so from him in fingers of spray.

American Terroir by Rowan Jacobsen

23)  If you have forty gallons of sap, you must boil off thirty-nine gallons of water to yield one gallon of maple syrup. That’s why maple syrup is so expensive and why the syrup market is dominated by artificial products containing not a drop of real maple. What you are paying for in the genuine artifact is a terrific amount of fuel, along with somebody’s long nights in the sugarhouse tending the sap as it boils.

24) We are some of the first people in history not to have built-in connections to the land we inhabit, not to be able to take comfort and pleasure in its verities. Paying attention to terroir is one of the best and most enjoyable ways to reestablish the relationship. It can teach us much about who we are, why we like what we like, and how we go about living on this earth. It can allow us to rediscover a romance that is exhilarating, fortifying, and real.

1776 by David McCullough

25) It was also a matter of record that Washington had been retired from military life for fifteen years, during which he had not even drilled a militia company. His only prior experience had been in backwoods warfare—a very different kind of warfare—and most notably in the Braddock campaign of 1755, which had been a disaster. He was by no means an experienced commander. He had never led an army in battle, never before commanded anything larger than a regiment. And never had he directed a siege.

26) Far more, however, would be said later and repeated endlessly of Hessians who supposedly, on the morning of the attack, were still reeling drunk or in a stupor from having celebrated Christmas in the Germanic tradition. But there is no evidence that any of them were drunk. John Greenwood, who was in the thick of the fight, later wrote, “I am willing to go upon oath that I did not see even a solitary drunken soldier belonging to the enemy.” Major James Wilkinson, the young officer who had been present at the capture of General Lee and who also fought at Trenton and later wrote an account of the battle, made no mention of anyone being drunk.

The One Thing by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan

27) “What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”

28) The inequality of effort for results is everywhere in your life if you will simply look for it. And if you apply this principle, it will unlock the success you seek in anything that matters to you. There will always be just a few things that matter more than the rest, and out of those, one will matter most. Internalizing this concept is like being handed a magic compass. Whenever you feel lost or lacking direction, you can pull it out to remind yourself to discover what matters most.

How To Write About Music by Marc Woodworth and Ally-Jane Grossan

29) In 30 years, unless you’re a genius (and probably not even then), no one is going to care about the quality of your work, and no one will accurately remember anything you published about some arcane album that nobody listened to … except you. You will care, and you will remember. So if you can’t satisfy yourself, you ultimately can’t satisfy anyone else. That said, nobody believes their own writing is brilliant; only crazy people think like that. So if you’re insecure about your work and you lack confidence in your ability, it might just mean you’re reasonable.

30) Swifties see the characteristic at hand for what it is: writing. Her songs are her point of view, making it her job to blow up the most minor event into something that more accurately represents the way she experienced it. As Tay quoted Neruda in her Red liner notes, “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” This is basic Nabokov shit, right? Everything hits harder in memory. Everything changes color. Her first album will tell you she is a natural crusher, daydreamer, hopeless romantic. Obsessing over the briefest of encounters is what we do. She was just born to translate it for millions of people.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (RIP)

31) Brunch menus are an open invitation to the cost-conscious chef, a dumping ground for the odd bits left over from Friday and Saturday nights or for the scraps generated in the normal course of business. You see a fish that would be much better served by quick grilling with a slice of lemon, suddenly all dressed up with vinaigrette? For ‘en vinaigrette’ on the menu, read ‘preserved’ or ‘disguised’.

32) Given these perils. . why? Why would anyone want to do it? Inarguably, a successful restaurant demands that you live on the premises for the first few years, working seventeen-hour days, with total involvement in every aspect of a complicated, cruel and very fickle trade. You must be fluent in not only Spanish but the Kabbala-like intricacies of health codes, tax law, fire department regulations, environmental protection laws, building code, occupational safety and health regs, fair hiring practices, zoning, insurance, the vagaries and back-alley back-scratching of liquor licenses, the netherworld of trash removal, linen, grease disposal. And with every dime you’ve got tied up in your new place, suddenly the drains in your prep kitchen are backing up with raw sewage, pushing hundreds of gallons of impacted crap into your dining room; your coke-addled chef just called that Asian waitress who’s working her way through law school a chink, which ensures your presence in court for the next six months; your bartender is giving away the bar to under-age girls from Wantagh, anyone of whom could then crash Daddy’s Buick into a busload of divinity students, putting your liquor license in peril, to say the least; the Ansel System could go off, shutting down your kitchen in the middle of a ten-thousand-dollar night; there’s the ongoing struggle with rodents and cockroaches, anyone of which could crawl across the Tina Brown four-top in the middle of the dessert course; you just bought 10,000 dollars-worth of shrimp when the market was low, but the walk-in freezer just went on the fritz and naturally it’s a holiday weekend, so good luck getting a service call in time; the dishwasher just walked out after arguing with the busboy, and they need glasses now on table seven; immigration is at the door for a surprise inspection of your kitchen’s Green Cards; the produce guy wants a certified check or he’s taking back the delivery; you didn’t order enough napkins for the weekend-and is that the New York Times reviewer waiting for your hostess to stop flirting and notice her?

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

33) His glass eye shone brightly up at me and was by far the most lifelike thing about him.

34) What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.

everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too by Jomny Sun

35) i love art. to experience sombodys art is to be invited into a silent conversation they are having with themself.

36) wat happens after we die

nobody knows. thats why it is scarey.

maybe the reason why we dont know is becuase it is so wonderful that nobody ever thought to turn back around to tell us.

Thoughts of An Eaten Sun by Kyle Tolle

37) How could she hold on to the memory of someone without also holding on to the grief of losing them? The grief and the memories were intertwined.

38) “I’ll accept my fate and meet the frigid end as soon as it’ll have me. Then I can join my family in rest. They lie many miles away, but my blood will seep into the world just as theirs does. When Iomesel is buried in ice, when the core of the planet is the only heat to know, our blood will mingle deep underground and the world might know family and its love doesn’t die with our bodies.”

The Artful Edit by Susan Bell

39) It’s interesting that the word editor—in the American sense—does not exist in other languages. For example, the policy in Latin America with magazines is that you pretty much sink or swim according to what you wrote. They correct spelling mistakes and obvious things like that, but they pretty much publish it the way you wrote it. The result is that any given magazine has a much greater diversity of voices than American magazines have. There’s a greater diversity of quality, too, but there’s a greater diversity of voices, unlike American magazines that all end up sounding as though they were written by the same person because the editor keeps rewriting the piece. Because they have a house style. Everything gets poured into the mold. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. Everything has to be in that beautifully polished prose. The editors sort of throw it into the Cuisinart and it all comes out sounding the same.

40) Also, to read pages horizontally is quite different from reading them in a stack, where you see only one page at a time. You can see proportions better when you read across, page to page to page, glancing back and forth, and stepping back to take in a view of the whole typographic design of a chapter. You will more easily see whether you’ve used too many tiny or lengthy paragraphs in one area. If you have a specific concern, use a highlighter or the bold key on your computer to make it stand out, then hang the pages up and observe where the color or bold type is either dense or absent—this may tell you if there is too little of one person, for instance, too much of one verb, too little dialogue, or too much of a leitmotiv. On hearing of the laundry-line method, Laura Kipnis, author of Against Love, said, “O no, I could never do that. I have to lay it all out on the floor.” She walks or crawls around on top of her pages, reading and moving them as pieces of a puzzle. Jim Lewis tapes his pages to the wall. He will print his manuscript out in a tiny, unreadable font size, so he can hang the entire book up. He will look at it like a painting or a map, searching for topographical imbalances. Whichever way you choose—cord and clips, wall and tape, or floor—it can be valuable when you edit to look at your manuscript’s topography.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

41) Spider said, “How’d he die?” “Heart failure.” “That doesn’t mean anything. That just means he died.” “Well, yes. He did.”

42) It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it’s true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It’s not even coincidence. It’s just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.

5/3/1: The Simplest and Most Effective Training System to Increase Raw Strength by Jim Wendler

43) When you’re choosing your assistance exercises, do yourself a favor and justify why you’re doing them. Don’t bullshit yourself. You must have a very strong reason for doing an exercise. If you don’t, scrap it and move on. Sometimes, instead of what you do in the weight room, it’s what you don’t do that will lead to success.

44) Starting too light allows for more time for you to progress forward. It’s easy for anyone – beginner or advanced – to want to get ahead of themselves. Your lifts will go up for a few months, but then they’ll stall – and stall, and stall some more. Lifters get frustrated and don’t understand that the way around this is to prolong the time it takes to get to the goal. You have to keep inching forward. This is a very hard pill to swallow for most lifters. They want to start heavy, and they want to start now. This is nothing more than ego, and nothing will destroy a lifter faster, or for longer, than ego.

Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

45) The driver looked as if he was half asleep but he passed the fast boys in the convertible sedans as though they were being towed. They turned on all the green lights for him.

46) It got darker. The glare of the red neon sign spread farther and farther across the ceiling. I sat up on the bed and put my feet on the floor and rubbed the back of my neck. I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

47) “If I am spared,” he always said to Constance, “I will write the book myself. If not, see that my notes are entrusted to some worthy cynic who will not be too concerned with the truth.”

48) I had to put down the shopping bag to open the lock on the gate; it was a simple padlock and any child could have broken it, but on the gate was a sign saying PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING and no one could go past that.

Football Scouting Methods by Steve Belichick

49) Too often the opposing team is given too much credit for being able to do many things offensively that it has not shown. Probably a better approach to game planning would be to play the opponent for what has been shown, but respect that opponent for what it might do. If an opponent gives you something definite to key and play, it seems logical to play the key with some caution, and not gamble that the key is completely foolproof. Play it until the key is proved wrong, or until something more has been added to neutralize the key. But to simply assert that another team could do one thing or another does not give that team the ability nor the techniques for such accomplishments. It must be remembered that the opponent’s practice time is limited also.

50) A quarterback uses several methods to go back to pass, he will usually have a reason for it. On some types of passes, he will go back one way, and on passes to a certain area he may use a different technique. As proficient as most professional quarterbacks are, there are several in the National Football League that generally tip-off the area to which they are going to pass, or the area where their primary receiver is. When they “back pedal,” they are usually going to throw the ball to the left, and when they run back side ways, they generally throw the ball over the middle or to the right. Since two of these passers are high in the list of those passers with the most interceptions, it seems that some of their opponents are aware of this.

The Judgement: Transmutation by Alexander Dennison

51) “Your incompetence created me.” She said bluntly. She stood to one side and the fragile glass that governed Ford’s sanity exploded, showering him once again with the tendrils of lunacy.

52) He realised afterwards that he was probably breaking so many laws at the same time when he revved the engine; theft, unsafe apparel and likely the most humiliating one – public indecency as his hospital gown swayed erratically in the wind.

Waking Up by Sam Harris

53) It is usually easy to detect social and psychological problems in any community of spiritual seekers. This seems to be yet another liability inherent to the project of self-transcendence. Many people renounce the world because they can’t find a satisfactory place in it, and almost any spiritual teaching can be used to justify a pathological lack of ambition. For someone who has not yet succeeded at anything and who probably fears failure, a doctrine that criticizes the search for worldly success can be very appealing. And devotion to a guru—a combination of love, gratitude, awe, and obedience—can facilitate an unhealthy return to childhood. In fact, the very structure of this relationship can condemn a student to a kind of intellectual and emotional slavery.

54) Imagine that several of your friends have already traveled to Mars this way and seem none the worse for it.

They describe the experience as being one of instantaneous relocation: You push the green button and find yourself standing on Mars—where your most recent memory is of pushing the green button on Earth and wondering if anything would happen. So you decide to travel to Mars yourself.

However, in the process of arranging your trip, you learn a troubling fact about the mechanics of teleportation: It turns out that the technicians wait for a person’s replica to be built on Mars before obliterating his original body on Earth. This has the benefit of leaving nothing to chance; if something goes wrong in the replication process, no harm has been done. However, it raises the following concern: While your double is beginning his day on Mars with all your memories, goals, and prejudices intact, you will be standing in the teleportation chamber on Earth, just staring at the green button. Imagine a voice coming over the intercom to congratulate you for arriving safely at your destination; in a few moments, you are told, your Earth body will be smashed to atoms.

How would this be any different from simply being killed?

To most readers, this thought experiment will suggest that psychological continuity—the mere maintenance of one’s memories, beliefs, habits, and other mental traits—is an insufficient basis for personal identity. It’s not enough for someone on Mars to be just like you; he must actually be you. The man on Mars will share all your memories and will behave exactly as you would have. But he is not you—as your continued existence in the teleportation chamber on Earth attests. To the Earth-you awaiting obliteration, teleportation as a means of travel will appear a horrifying sham: You never left Earth and are about to die. Your friends, you now realize, have been repeatedly copied and killed. And yet, the problem with teleportation is somehow not obvious if a person is disassembled before his replica is built. In that case, it is tempting to say that teleportation works and that “he” is really stepping onto the surface of Mars.

30 Things I Haven’t Learned In 30 Years

If you write online, there’s an unwritten rule that upon entering your thirties you must publish a list of life lessons learned over the previous decade. These usually involve chasing your dreamsfailing at them, and how shitty people are shitty and don’t matter.

About to turn 30 myself, I thought it’d be a waste of time to write another list of platitudes born from my specific life experiences, pretending they apply to everyone. In fact, if I had any advice for 20-year olds it would be to CliffNotes your way through your twenties by reading these 30-year old geezers’ lists and save yourself the trouble of figuring anything out on your own [note]My actual advice would be to please not do this[/note].

So to pay homage to my contrarian 20-something self, I thought long and kind of hard about the things I haven’t learned. This was unexpectedly difficult, as at the time of writing I’m in my twenties and therefore still know everything.

There’s no ethereal takeaway from this list (although I suppose that’s not for me to judge), but if anyone could help me learn some of the following before I turn 40 that’d be great.

1. How “Cool Runnings” didn’t win 1994 Best Picture.

2. When greeting someone, how the hell to know if it’s time for a straight handshake, hand grasp-hug, hand grasp-into-double clutch-snap-pound it, or any other variation I’m expected to know. 

3. Why my EpiPen can’t actually be the size of a pen yet/can’t look like I’m sporting…something in my pants all the time.

4. How to properly put pants back on the hanger clip thing at clothing stores.

5. At what age/body size is it no longer appropriate to stage dive/go into push pits.

6. How to do that thing where you blow on grass and annoy everyone around you.

7. Where all the single socks go.

8. That Cracker Barrel game. You know the one.

9. Where that trope of a shady guy selling watches from the inside of his trench coat came from (and why I’ve never been offered).

10. How to shotgun a beer and ‘just relax your throat, man.’

12. Why hostels don’t ask ‘snoring or non?’ upon check-in.  

13. Where I can live that has fall-esque weather 365 days a year.

14. How “Live A Life Worth Googling” hasn’t become an overkilled thing yet. 

15. If staying clean-shaven is less of a pain in the ass than keeping a full beard nice is.

15b. If the former is true, how to get that one spot on my neck without bleeding everywhere, every time.

16. How to appropriately maintain friendships on the other side of the world/when to stop asking more questions in an email exchange and just let the conversation die.

17. The right balance of wanting to go out and do-experience-do-do-do! and just enjoying a good book or NetFlix binge at home.

18. Why we make 18 and 19-year olds choose what they want to do with the rest of their lives instead of giving them time to figure out what they actually enjoy via gap years, or at the very least, not allowing them to declare a major until their junior year.

19. Why the curbs next to intersections look like trashcans to so many. 

20. Whether I want the flexible yet lonely and neuroticism-inducing life that comes from working at home or the social and secure yet menial tedium of an office environment.

21. How to make good money writing online without completely pulling myself away from writing online for fun.

22. The appropriate balance between accepting people as they are and identifying when they are in need of some positive encouragement and suggestions for change.

23. A way to journal that keeps up with the pace of my thoughts yet also keeps my handwriting legible.

24. When I actually like something because I truly appreciate its qualities versus liking it because of nostalgia or some other sort of personal attachment.

25. If it’s possible to actually ‘be in the moment’ beyond recognizing that, ‘Hey this is a moment I will nostalgize about one day, I should really pay attention to it and notice the little details around me like this tree, and the smell of the wind, and oh shit what did they just ask me?”

26. How to not only make other people believe that I don’t care what other people think (even those from my distant past), but actually believe it myself.

27.How to properly repent for my sins of pretension, snobbery, and being a bad host that I committed in my twenties

28. How to stop mentally berating myself for embarrassing social faux pas I committed 5-10 years ago.

29. How to do the family/house/dog thing and still find opportunities to slow travel.

30. At what age I’ll actually grow chest hair.

42 Things I Learned From 21 Books In 2016

Check out my lists from 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Idea originally inspired by this list of Julien Smith’s. 

Another year, another bunch of books read. I try to read at least 20 every year and to make some of those fiction. I’m much better at doing the former than the latter.

And like I do every December, I like to skim through my notes and list out my favorite two passages or things I’ve learned from each book I read.

Text in quotes is taken straight from the author:


On Writing Well by William Zinsser

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]1. “Still, plain talk will not be easily achieved in corporate America. Too much vanity is on the line. Managers at every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind.

Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; a muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too arrogant, or too dumb, or too lazy to organize his thoughts.

Remember that what you write is often the only chance you’ll get to present yourself to someone whose business or money or good will you need. If what you write is ornate, or pompous, or fuzzy, that’s how you’ll be perceived. The reader has no other choice.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]2.Nowhere else in nonfiction [than in travel writing] do writers use such syrupy words and groaning platitudes.

Adjectives you would squirm to use in conversation–‘wondrous’, ‘dappled’, ‘roseate’, ‘fabled’, ‘scudding’–are common currency. Half the sights seen in a day’s sightseeing are quaint, especially windmills and covered bridges; they are certified for quaintness.

Towns situated in hills (or foothills) are nestled–I hardly ever read about an unnestled town in the hills–and the countryside is dotted with byways, preferably half forgotten. In Europe you awake to the clip-clop of horse-drawn wagons along a history-haunted river; you seem to hear the scratch of a quill pen…. [and] chimneytops sing their immemorial song of welcome.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]3. “It is no accident that the first highways in America were called parkways.

That’s what they were envisioned to be: parks you could drive through.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]4. “I still quite often go for walks on the trail near my home, especially if I am stuck on something I am working on. Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment, the amazing complex delicacy of the woods, the casual ease with which elemental things come together to form a composition that is—whatever the season, wherever I put my besotted gaze—perfect.

Not just very fine or splendid, but perfect, unimprovable. You don’t have to walk miles up mountains to achieve this, don’t have to plod through blizzards, slip sputtering in mud, wade chest-deep through water, hike day after day to the edge of your limits—but believe me, it helps.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]5. “Being an executive does not require very developed frontal lobes, but rather a combination of charisma, a capacity to sustain boredom, and the ability to shallowly perform on harrying schedules.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]6. “[Philip] Tetlock studied the business of political and economic “experts.” He asked various specialists to judge the likelihood of a number of political, economic, and military events occurring within a specified time frame (about five years ahead). The outcomes represented a total number of around twenty-seven thousand predictions, involving close to three hundred specialists. Economists represented about a quarter of his sample.

The study revealed that experts’ error rates were clearly many times what they had estimated. His study exposed an expert problem: there was no difference in results whether one had a PhD or an undergraduate degree. Well-published professors had no advantage over journalists. The only regularity Tetlock found was the negative effect of reputation on prediction: those who had a big reputation were worse predictors than those who had none.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


How Soccer Explains The World by Franklin Foer

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]7. “As everyone knows, Italian men are the most foppish representatives of their sex on the planet. They smear on substantial quantities of hair care products and expend considerable mental energies color-coordinating socks with belts.

Because of their dandyism, the world has Vespa, Prada, and Renzo Piano. With such theological devotion to aesthetic pleasure, it is truly perplexing that their national style of soccer should be so devoid of this quality.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]8. “As the Protestants celebrate a goal, they’re egged on by the team captain, a long-haired Italian called Lorenzo Amoruso, who has the look of a 1980s male model. Flailing his arms, he urges them to sing their anti-Catholic songs louder. The irony is obvious: Amoruso is a Catholic.

For that matter, so are most of the Rangers players. Since the late nineties, Rangers routinely field nearly as many Catholics as Celtic. Their players come from Georgia, Argentina, Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Holland, because money can buy no better ones. Championships mean more than religious purity.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs by Tristan Gooley

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]9. “Rainbows do not exist without an observer and there are as many rainbows created by as many people looking in the right conditions, each one subtly different. The reason for this is that rainbows are formed in an exact position relative to each observer and they have a precise shape.

Whenever our shadow is shorter than we are tall, we can say with certainty that the sun is higher than 45 degrees. Therefore if our shadow is shorter than we are tall, we will never see a rainbow.” [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]10. “The easiest method for finding the North Star is by finding the easy-to-identify group of seven stars known as the Big Dipper to Americans and the Saucepan to many others.

Next you find the “pointer” stars—these are the two stars that a liquid would run off if you tipped up your “saucepan” by its handle. The North Star will always be five times the distance between these two pointers in the direction that they point (up away from the pan). True north lies directly under this star.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Wander Society by Keri Smith

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]11. “When we constantly fill up all our “empty” time with stimulation in the form of electronic devices, games, and distractions, our brains become disengaged and the thinking process is effectively halted.

We never get to hear our own inner voice—we don’t develop a relationship with ourselves and our minds. We don’t get to know who we are because we’re not listening.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]12. Per·e·gri·nate (verb): travel or wander around from place to place.[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck by Mark Manson

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]13. “The desire for more positive experience itself is a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]14. “The rare people who do become truly exceptional at something do so not because they believe they’re exceptional. On the contrary, they become amazing because they’re obsessed with improvement. And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. It’s anti-entitlement.

People who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re not already great—they are mediocre, they are average—and that they could be so much better.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


Born For This By Chris Guillebeau

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]15. “A few tips on figuring out which real world problems you can solve, and how:

1. Solving problems of daily life is usually the easiest and most successful approach

2. Solving specific, measurable problems is much better than attempting to create huge behavior change

3. To avoid getting off track, always ask, ‘Why should people care about this?'” [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]16. “In Alexandria, VA, a personal finance advisory company has an unconventional sabbatical practice of its own. The Motley Fool, which has around 300 employees, sends one of them on a “mandatory vacation” every month. In keeping with the company’s culture, it’s called a “Fool’s Errand”, and each month the lucky employee is chosen by lottery (with long-term workers receiving multiple entries based on their number of years service).

The winner gets two weeks off and $1,000 to spend however they like, but there’s one strict rule: the employee must leave immediately and have no contact with the office while gone. Winners are also encouraged to do something that contributes to the Motley Fool’s overall mission (“to help the world invest better”), but aside from not checking work email or phoning into conference calls, there’s no restriction on what people can do.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]17. “It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial.

The right condition for him is that in which his work is not only convenient but unavoidable.” [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]18. “I have been corrupted as much as anyone else by the vast number of menial services which our society has grown to expect and depend on. We should do for ourselves or let the machines do for us, the glorious technology that is supposed to be the new light of the world. We are like a man who has bought a great amount of equipment for a camping trip, who has the canoe and the tent and the fishing lines and the axe and the guns, the mackinaw and the blankets, but who now, when all the preparations and the provisions are piled expertly together, is suddenly too timid to set out on the journey but remains where he was yesterday and the day before and the day before that, looking suspiciously through the white lace curtains at the clear sky he distrusts.

Our great technology is a God-given chance for adventure and for progress which we are afraid to attempt. Our ideas and our ideals remain exactly what they were and where they were three centuries ago. No. I beg your pardon. It is no longer safe for a man to even declare them!”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


Stand And Deliver by The Dale Carnegie Institute

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]19. “For a speaker, sincerity is the wild card that trumps everything else. Deep, genuine sincerity is the first characteristic of all credible presenters. No audience can deny the truth of emotions that you feel at a deep level, nor would any audience care to deny them.

On the contrary, they want to feel what you’re sincerely feeling. They want to share the experiences of your life for the few moments that you’re standing before them.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]20. “Magic Formula (best for short, motivational talks):

1. Share a vivid, personal experience that’s relevant to the action you ultimately want your listeners to take. This should be a story that led to a positive change in your life. This will take the most time.

2. Call directly on the audience to take that single, well-defined action. Make it seem easy. This should take you only 2 minutes to explain.

3. Clearly and convincingly describe the benefit that listeners will get by taking the action. This will take the least time; as little as one second.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


Olympic Weightlifting by Greg Everett

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]21. “Proper [squat] depth is full depth; full depth means full depth. That is, full depth is not breaking parallel, nor is it breaking parallel—it is squatting to the lowest possible position without surgical alteration of body parts while maintaining correct posture.

To simplify, we want to close the knee joint maximally while maintaining upright posture and a correctly arched back.” [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]22. “Part of the myth that weightlifting stunts growth can be attributed to flawed logic, similar to that which persists with regard to gymnastics. Because elite gymnastics and weightlifters in lighter weight classes tend to be smaller in stature, many people assume that their training has limited their growth.

This is a classic logical fallacy—post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this). In other words, because following sport training these athletes remain short, it is assumed that this training was causative of the athletes’ stature. This chronology however, in no way demonstrates causation.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


God’s Debris by Scott Adams

godsdebris

[stag_columns][stag_one_half]23. “If the penny’s consciousness were like human consciousness, it would analyze the situation and conclude that it had free will.

When it wanted to come up heads, and heads was the result, the penny would confirm its belief in its power to choose. When it came up tails instead, it would blame its own lack of commitment, or assume God had a hand in it.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]24. “Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It is also a way of signaling the importance of another person by showing your willingness to give that person your rarest resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect.

Conversation reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce. Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Martian by Andy Weir

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]25. Despite the fact that we haven’t been there (on foot), most of Mars’ major topographical features have already been named, and many as long ago as the late 1800s.[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]26. ASCII can be used to communicate in a pinch when space and time are at a premium. [/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]27. “By using this principle you can make contents looks far more exciting:

Hang heavy items on the left side of the closet and light items on the right. Heavy items include those with length, those made from heavier material, and those that are dark in color. As you move toward the right side of the closet, the length of the clothing grows shorter, the material thinner and the color lighter.” [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]28. “Attachment to the past and fears concerning the future not only govern the way you select the things you own but also represent the criteria by which you make choices in every aspect of your life, including your relationships with people and your job.” [/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]29. “Certain things in life will cut you open like a knife. When that happens—at that exposing moment—the world gets a glimpse of what’s truly inside you. So what will be revealed when you’re sliced open by tension and pressure? Iron? Or air? Or bullshit?”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]30. “There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]31. Dentuso is Spanish slang for something with big, ugly teeth (like a shark). [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]32. “But he liked to think about all things that he was involved in and since there was nothing to read and he did not have a radio, he thought much and he kept on thinking about sin. You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?” [/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


Take Your Eye Off The Puck by Greg Wyshynski

takeyeoffpuck

[stag_columns][stag_one_half]33. “At the 2013 Sloan Sports Conference, authors Eric Tulsky, Geoffrey Detweiler, Robert Spencer, and Corey Sznajder presented evidence that showed carrying the puck over the blue line generated roughly twice as many scoring chances as dumping and chasing it.”[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]34. “Buffalo Sabres general manager George “Punch” Imlach was ticked off about how tedious the [draft] process was, so he decided to cast one of most hilarious protest votes in pro sports history. In the 11th round, with the 183rd pick, Imlach selected Taro Tsujimoto of the Tokyo Katanas in the “Japanese league”.

Technology being what it was in 1974, there weren’t many ways for the NHL to check the credential on this “star center”, according to Imlach. The league rubber-stamped it; rival NHL general managers immediately wondered who this mysterious rookie was.

Weeks later, Imlach came clean. There were no Tokyo Katanas–“Katana” being Japanese for “sabre”–and there was no Taro Tsujimoto. Imlach was exasperated by the length of the draft and decided to have a laugh at the its expense. So he made up the pick and submitted it.” [/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]35. Puss in Boots was a European fairy tale character around long before Shrek 2.[/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]36. [Wikipedia]: “The Great Stink was an event in central London in July and August 1858 during which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames.

By June the stench from the river had become so bad that business in Parliament was affected, and the curtains on the river side of the building were soaked in lime chloride to overcome the smell. The measure was not successful, and discussions were held about possibly moving the business of government to Oxford or St Albans.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


Beginning Songwriting by Andrea Stolpe

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]37. “There is one chord in a major key that doesn’t sound particularly happy or sad, but more suspicious, confusing, or even simply ‘wrong’.

This is the diminished triad that results by playing a triad starting on the 7 of the C major scale, the B. When we stack the B, D, and F, we call it a B diminished chord, or Bdim for short.” [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]38. “Crumpled Paper Songwriting Activity: Have each songwriter take out a piece of paper. On the paper, everyone writes something they deeply want to tell someone, but are afraid to. Crumple up the paper, and throw it in the middle of the room.

After everyone has contributed a paper ball, have the songwriters each choose a crumpled paper and unfold it. Each songwriter will write a song based on the idea they chose, perhaps even using the language on the paper as the actual chorus section of the song. Have everyone perform their songs next time the group meets.” [/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


Antarctica by Claire Keegan

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]39. Fred and Rosemary West were English serial killers that buried at least 12 victims in their garden and cellar in the 1980s and 1990s without their neighbors knowing. [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]40. “The air spiked her lungs. Clouds smashed into each other in the sky. She hung her head back to look at them. She wished the world could turn into a fabulous, outrageous red to match her mood.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


Jacob T. Marley by R. William Bennett

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[stag_columns][stag_one_half]41. No matter what version of this story I read, I will always picture Scrooge as Michael Caine and every one else as Muppets. [/stag_one_half] [stag_one_half_last]42. “Was he not enjoying the solitude he had sought his entire life? He was, and that was the bitter realization. For he was so competent, so driven, so independent that, in a temporal sense, he had never really needed anyone. This ability was now his cruse, for he craved a friend in his final hours.

His earthly assets, all of them, were down in the street in the counting-house, measured in ounces and pounds, and by morning, he would have lost his grasp on them. He did not even have a will, having been dissatisfied with simply giving his hard-earned estate to one who had not worked for it. He yearned for someone to tell him his life had been successful, to affirm that the single turn he had gotten upon earth had been well spent.”[/stag_one_half_last] [/stag_columns]


What was your favorite passage from a book you read in 2016?

365 Days of Being Grateful

As a kid, my least favorite thing about Thanksgiving was when some cheeseball would inevitably suggest that we go around the table and say one thing we were grateful for. I loathed having to take part in such a campy exercise, and I’d usually resort to my fail-safe answer of ‘modern technology’. 

Ironically, I now force myself to do that very eyeroll-inducing thing three times every morning.

Gratitude is one of the latest self-help trends. Being grateful supposedly improves your self-esteem, mental strength, relationships, productivity, helps you sleep better, and even keeps you from getting sick.  

Basically, if you believe everything you read, being grateful makes you superhuman. 

Despite many of these claims being backed by science, I was skeptical. Even though I was only a sporadic journaler two winters ago (compared to now), I was hesitant to add in yet another supposed-life boosting habit to my daily routine. 

Then, the subject of being grateful daily popped up on an episode of Tim Ferriss’ podcast (I can’t remember specifically which one, though he talks about it again in this episode). What he calls “five-minute journaling” was part of his own morning routine, which even spawned a similarly-named product.

Since following the advice in Ferriss’ first book changed the course of my life, in February 2015 I decided to give being grateful every day a try. In addition to just seeing what all the fuss was about, I used it as a way to also “trick” myself into journaling more regularly. Writing three things in my life that made me happy everyday seemed like a manageable minimum daily “standard” to meet, and if I did feel the need to vomit my soul onto the pages, I was already in position to do that, too.

Even after I began, I wasn’t convinced I would be able to sustain the habit for long–how many different things could I possibly be grateful for?

I get asked this a lot when I talk journaling with people. While at first I tried to avoid repeating things, eventually I gave myself permission to be grateful again for something I had already listed before. For instance, I couldn’t help but laugh at how many times I was grateful that I “caught up on sleep last night” or “let myself sleep in” when I flipped through the previous years’ pages.

What also surprised me was that it was never really difficult at all, and that I have more to be grateful for than I could have ever imagined beforehand. Some were esoteric and sappy; others were trivial and minute, but I can’t recall ever being unable to come up with three things. Soon, the habit became an unconscious one that I have stuck with for over a year now.

I’m not going to say that expressing gratitude has outright made me an overall happier person (and certainly not made my sleep better), but I don’t think pausing every morning to write down three good things in my life has ever started my day off on a bad note. Instead, my brain feels primed to look for more good things to be happy about during the rest of the day.

Finally, reading back through old entries helps me revisit times in my life just as if I had written detailed entries about the day’s activities. Seeing that I was grateful for X on a particular day triggers all sorts of great memories from that day that weren’t explicitly written down (similar to what the 1 Second Everyday app does).

For those that are still a little confused at what their own gratitude journal could look like, I wanted to share some (ok, many) entries of my own from my first year of “appreciation training”. I certainly don’t intend for anyone to read all or even most of these since it is such a large (and personal) list, but I wanted to include as many examples as possible to demonstrate the scope of just how many different things there are to be grateful about. Omitted are many of the duplicate entries (such as the many pertaining to sleep) and ones that make zero sense out of context.

I tried to organize them into different categories, but many of these distinctions are muddled and overlapping. Either way, most of them are as raw as they were when I initially wrote them and are representative of some of my best days, along with some of my worst.

And if the words ‘self-affirmation’ make you dry-heave, now would be the time to click away (or avoid reading the last section).

From Feb. 10, 2015-Feb. 10, 2016 I was grateful for:

META AND THE ESOTERIC

2/10/15: That I am trying this five minute journal thing.
5/12/15: The fact that the world is only imperfect relative to a perfect image that doesn’t exist (Owen Cook quote, not my own)
7/02/15: For everything I am and have, here and now, at 8:40AM MST on July 2nd, 2015 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, North America, Earth.
7/17/15: That I am finally truly grasping (I think) the concept of impermanence.
10/07/15: Those ‘where the fuck am I’ moments in life, like I had most of yesterday, but especially at happy hour at that table with people from all around the world

THE LITTLE THINGS

2/11/15: Living in a city where I know what is going on and where the places “to be” are
2/11/15: That I can go from listening to sports talk to Sinatra to standup in 20 minutes
2/25/15: My apartment and the pink sunrises I get to see in the morning while I write
3/17/15: That people loan me books
3/27/15: Folk punk
4/01/15: That I seemingly won’t ever get sick of eggs
4/05/15: ER Doctors
4/07/15: Getting out of bed early and getting shit done
4/10/15: Casual Fridays (what every day should be!)
4/30/15: My work laptop, despite its flaws
4/30/15: This journal, regardless of its origin
5/08/15: The rain (except when it congeals into slush that slides into my trunk when I open it)
5/18/15: Music I can listen to for 10+ years and not get tired of (Streetlight)
5/22/15: Four-day workweeks/holiday weekends
5/28/15: Days with few meetings.
6/03/15: Fat, thick, nasty, house basslines.
6/05/15: Taco nights
6/12/15: Cool, rainy mornings
6/12/15: Casual Fridays
6/12/15: Busy weekends
6/13/15: That I love something as much as I do music
6/19/15: The new meditation ideas I learned in Be Here Now
6/23/15: People like Ralph Smart
6/31/15: New music from great bands
6/31/15: Living in a country where women’s sports are celebrated (comparatively)
7/07/15: The amount of amazing road trips I’ve had in my lifetime
7/09/15: That I plan on getting my hair cut today
7/10/15: reddit and all it has taught me
7/10/15: Fridays
8/01/15: That the US’ domestic soccer league is such a great thing to attend
8/04/15: MC Lars being such a down to earth person and inspiration
8/04/15: That August is going to be a great month
8/07/15: That so many people I talk to have some sort of ‘tie’ to Panama
8/11/15: My laid back work environment and no boss this week
8/21/15: That creative genius is so easy to share via the internet
8/21/15: Long lunch breaks and visit to the library
9/04/15: That there’s still places like high country Colorado that still exist relatively undisturbed (all things considered)
9/06/15: That my car has seemingly gotten me all the way home without issue
9/12/15: For the awesome backyard I had to play in when I was younger, and that I have to sit and reflect on in and now.
9/12/15: Getting to experience cool, Ohio fall mornings for the first time in years, where you wake up and the windows are open and your hands feel borderline icy inside the house, but you’d much rather just throw a hoodie on than shut the windows.
9/12/15: Getting to watch Ohio State football with my family again.
9/13/15: Facetime and all the other technology we have today to stay in touch with friends, family, and SOs
9/14/15: The abundance of places like coffee shops that provide solitude, a cheap enjoyable beverage, and a place to be productive
9/14/15: Ohio in the fall
9/14/15: That I paid off my credit card in full yesterday
9/16/15: That there is a place 5 minutes from my parents’ where I can do Olympic lifting
9/29/15: Modern technology and how it can assist in travel
9/30/15: The advent of things like AirBnb that which have made comfortable (and sometimes stylish) travel so affordable
10/01/15: This childhood home I got to grow up in and still visit, particularly how it feels in the fall and winter
10/03/15: Ohio State football and the community that comes along with it
10/03/15: EPL being the adult version of Saturday morning cartoons
10/09/15: Not being deported
10/09/15: How similar hostel life is to college dorms
10/13/15: That everyone here vibrates with a similar “energy”
10/16/15: That my biggest concerns of late are things like “should I go snorkelling or swim in the pool”, “there’s so much glare on my computer screen” and “I hope my girlfriend I talk with and receive adoration from every day doesn’t lose interest in me in < 3 months”
10/20/15: That I am 3/3 with hostels so far, with no horror stories to speak of
10/21/15: That the U.S. isn’t the only country whose kids get to enjoy the benefits of marching band
10/22/15: That something like getting to go over the portfolios of other freelancers and take notes makes me excited to get out of bed in the morning
10/22/15: You know what? I am grateful that the WiFi has been out the past 18 hours or so at the hostel…it has allowed me to see that it really was affecting my mood
10/25/15: This hostel I am at where everything is close, I have met some awesome people, and I don’t feel overly stimulated or pressured to constantly be doing something…and the free coffee
10/26/15: That I’m on a schedule where I can stay up late talking to my girlfriend and then sleep in as needed without consequence, because I can always work more later in the day.
11/02/15: You know what? I’m grateful that sport serves as a connection to home for me here
11/03/15: That I realized yesterday why (part of the reason) I love travel, sports, and people is that I love being around people and events that exude pride about where they are from. I suppose this goes along with being attracted to presence.
11/06/15: The lows before the highs
11/8/15: That my screen is only damaged in the top right corner and not the whole thing.
11/09/15: The energy of cafes/delis/eateries near campuses no matter where in the world you are
AirBnB and the brilliant minds behind it. Along with that,simple quiet rooms, any bed above a twin, and laundry machines
11/16/15: Uber
11/18/15: That Medellin has built itself into what it i today after its past
11/18/15: That not everywhere in Latin America has to be balls hot/humid all the time
11/18/15: Awesome blog post comments from older people telling me I’m on the right path with how I am living my life
11/20/15: That meeting interesting people is and probably always will be as easy as checking into a hostel
11/23/15: Families that enjoy taking in students from all around the world
11/24/15: The view I have from my host family’s balcony that keeps distracting me from my journal
11/25/15: People like Casey Neistat that re-assure me that it’s ok to love work and be happiest when I am working
11/29/15: That I just had a steak as big as my foot and about as thick as a brick with two drinks for $13.
12/09/15: Facetime
12/10/15: Spontaneous invitations–I feel like those are rare in the States
12/10/15: That in Colombia you just pick your city based on what season you want to feel
12/19/15: That I am about to get another stamp in my passport
12/21/15: That you can cook eggs in the microwave
12/27/15: Panamanian hotel breakfasts and their, at-minimum, three types of meat
12/27/15: Things like Facetime, Maps.me, and Uber that have made this trip 1000x easier
12/28/15: That there are now a small number of non-U.S. cities I feel comfortable navigating by the back of my hand.
12/29/15: That I am going to work out today
12/29/15: That I am going to trim my beard today
12/29/15: That I might not leave the hotel today
12/30/15: That WiFi at this hostel or coffee shop didn’t work and I am able to slow down and just journal instead
12/30/15: That I am going to go to an old book museum!
12/30/15: That I have so many things to be grateful for
1/09/16: The Way of Life app which I think will increase my daily habits even more in 2016 (excited to see the data)
1/14/16: All the creators and inventors that have come before me and made this such a great time be alive in history
1/21/16: That I get to touch a barbell today
1/23/16: That hopefully before I die we will have self-driving cars for mass use
2/05/16: Your Import Car Dr. and their awesome service
2/01/16: Even though it has no bearing on me as a freelancer…snow days!
2/06/16: That my car problem was cheap compared to what it could have been
2/08/16: Coffee.
2/10/16: That I have no obligations or plans to day until 7:30PM

FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND RELATIONSHIPS

2/12/15: Being able to talk about sports with people from any corner of the world
2/19/15: Having a good relationship with my parents
2/19/15: Having friends that text me random questions
2/25/15: Friends I see only a few times this year but always hit it off with when I do
3/4/15: Dating someone I feel like I don’t have to impress with extravagant nights out
3/6/15: Having a friend I can talk to that instantly makes everything better
3/18/15: Parents that are accepting of my future travel lifestyle
3/22/15: Friendship that lead to random nights like last night
3/24/15: That I have random people ask me to look at their writing
3/25/15: I know people who have travelled that can give me backpack recommendations
3/25/15: That I have a knowledgeable and (seemingly friendly) CPA
3/26/15: My siblings
3/27/15: That people reach out to me for advice
4/10/15: My siblings
4/13/15: That my parents have become so supportive of my plan to travel
4/28/15: That I can argue with my brother and it not be a big deal.
4/28/15: Friends sending me old funny pictures
5/1/15: My friends
5/1/15: Nights like tonight where I have four things going on to choose from
5/10/15: Having a friend like Daniel that puts my little “problems” into perspective
5/11/15: My mom!
5/21/15: I have friends that want to share their writing with me
5/26/15: The opportunity to go to places like Portland and meet my friend’s friends
5/31/15: I have someone to be neurotic about
5/31/15: She is not my world and I have so much else going on in my life
6/1/15: Friends like Alicia
6/2/15: Elaine and our conversations and memories
6/5/15: Time spent with Elena
6/7/15: That I can make friends anywhere I go
6/13/15: That what I think are big problems in my head sound ridiculous when I say them to Elaine or Christina
6/15/15: That all my parents and siblings are still in my life
6/19/15: That I care so much (about the right people)
6/19/15: Getting to witness and be in my good friend’s wedding
6/30/15: Ben and I’s early morning phone calls
6/30/15: That I have friends like Ashley that can just drop in to talk about feelings and stuff
6/30/15: Early morning texts from friends
7/1/15: That I have friends to watch soccer with
7/1/15: That friends want me to look over their resumes
7/7/15: The look on a woman’s face when you tell them that you love them for the first time
7/8/15: That saying and hearing “I love you” for the first time is something that only happens a handful of times in one’s life
7/17/15: That in relationships I am an accountable person
7/29/15: That I can emotionally vomit to my girlfriend and it’s no big deal
9/5/15: That I have places across the country to stay with people and witness different lifestyles and ways of living (making me grateful of my own)
9/6/15: That after I stay with people or do things with them I get texts afterwards saying it was good to see me, etc.
9/8/15: Despite small annoyances, getting to live/belong to a such a sane and together family, one I am never really hesitant about introducing people to
9/9/15: That my parents both work two jobs…I guess I didn’t realize this in those exact words
9/11/15: That I can dip my feet back into the waters of weed/booze now and again (just to say I visit) and not drown.
9/17/15: That I have an awesome brother and sister-in-law with an awesome house to stay in and have a good time with others
9/18/15: Elena arrives tonight! And that this week has gone so fast and that we’ve had contact every day!
9/18/15: I get to sleep with my girlfriend in my childhood home tonight in my arms.
9/19/15: That saying bye in the airport was so hard
9/19/15: But that we are (I think) going about this whole thing rationally and maturely
9/20/15: That I’m not embarrassed in any way to take people to my home or introduce them to my family
9/24/15: That the amount of people I know that want to see me feels like a burden #firstworldproblems
9/25/15: That I know so many people still in the amazing city of Columbus
9/26/15: That my parents are getting their passport applications turned in today
10/1/15: That even though it’s gotten me behind on some work, that I am taking the time to try and sit/hang out with mom and dad.
10/3/15: That I get along with Ben’s friends
10/4/15: Really, the support from 99% of the people in my life regarding this trip
10/4/15: That my biggest “nitpick” about my family is that their energy/optimism level isn’t the same as mine, which is silly since not everyone can be like that.
10/4/15: That my girlfriend and I are equally sentimental to each other and equally committed in making this work. And that moments and what made us ‘us’ is as equally as important to her as it is me.
10/8/15: Friendly people in hostels that, whether they are doing it consciously or not, take me under their wing to a degree
10/8/15: That I have someone I am loyal to.
10/9/15: That feeling of knowing someone your whole life when really it’s been 24 hours
10/27/15: That there are people like Frank in the world where my brain actually feels alive after talking to
10/28/15: That the world is a small enough place that I spent the morning talking to the man in the bunk next to me who lives a mile away from where I did in Colorado Springs
11/2/15: That my girlfriend says sentences like “that’s why I had to stop playing Pokemon”
11/5/15: That I have friends that text me like I’m not 2000 miles away, but still hanging out with them every night.
11/11/15: Erin’s coming today!
11/12/15: That my sister and I have become closer
11/17/15: All the amazing characters I have met on this trip that may have sent me messages on Facebook or connected with me in some way
11/20/15: New friends that feel like old friends
12/6/15: That I have friends to share both my niche and major sports interests with
12/6/15: That I know people all over the world
12/6/15: The beauty and serendipity of fleeting human interaction–just how quickly most people enter and exit your life. I like the lack of attachment associated I guess? But then it just goes to make those fleeting instances into something more that much more special
12/10/15: That my family has so many Christmas traditions
12/14/15: That, as the Argentine girl volunteering at the hostel put it, travel is the best school.
12/18/15: All the great people I have met in Colombia
12/29/15: That I am going to see my family in <72 hours
1/8/16: That I love my family and I am always welcomed home indefinitely (within reason)
1/9/16: That I have so many friends I don’t skip a beat with and that I have to reminisce about the past with
1/15/16: That I have met–and allowed someone to remain in my life that makes me so incredibly happy
1/15/16: That the wait is over
1/19/16: That we decided to try long distance
1/19/16: That is wasn’t that hard all things considered
1/22/16: That I know so many great people here that it’d be a chore to catch with them all quickly
1/26/16: I have someone to be goofy with in the morning
1/31/16: That I get to live and further share my life with such an amazing person that I love so much
2/9/16: I get to live with and somewhat take care of a cat.
2/10/16: I know so many interesting people and places that would make good stories

OPPORTUNITIES

2/10/15: Getting to work for a big time client that I think can take me places
2/12/15: The amount of freelance work I have to do
5/4/15: That my job has enough variety to have me be cranky about not being able to get into a groove (sometimes)
5/6/15: That my biggest complaint about my job is that I have too many meetings
5/27/15: That my freelance clients have been imposing deadlines on me, making me a much more efficient writer
5/29/15: That I get to go to South Dakota
6/6/15: Getting to work international sporting events (World Archery Youth Championships in Yankton, SD) and interact with people all over the world.
6/10/15: That I have the challenge of managing someone
6/28/15: That I’m about to jump out of a plane
6/29/15: That I said ‘fuck it’ and went skydiving
7/1/15: When the muse visits
7/7/15: The investments my employer makes in me
7/23/25: That I get to go to a float tank for my birthday present!
7/30/15: That I get to go to Seattle!
8/5/15: Every freelance assignment I get
9/12/15: That I get to live under the roof of my adoring parents, rent free, for this period of time and that I am seeing them more now than if I were to come home for the holidays like I had been doing.
11/8/15: That I was able to end up yesterday in some place that I am knowledgeable about and is safe.
11/18/15: Living with a 60 (?) year old German-speaking Colombian woman in her beautiful apartment that she mops for seemingly four hours a day while listening to meditation music
11/19/15: How cheap travel is if I weren’t doing the Spanish schools
11/22/15: That today I am moving into a scary experience yet one that will be great for me
11/26/15: That, including work-to-be-done, I am something like $50 away from reaching my goal of quadrupling my income for the year.
12/13/15: That I have a life where I can just be like “ehhhh I think I’ll go to Curacao for a week”
12/16/15: The awesome people and places I keep encountering through AirBnb.
12/18/15: That I have the dilemma of taking more regular work for slightly less money
12/20/15: That Medellin/Colombia spoiled me
1/3/16: For the adventure behind.
1/3/16: For the adventure ahead.
1/8/16: That more and more my life is shifting toward just being filled with what I want to do, when I want to do it.
1/12/16: I am getting to experience cozy, snowy days inside my childhood home again
1/18/16: Freelance life and that this is exactly how I like to work and start my day
1/28/16: This period in my life and the the uncertainty before me
2/2/16: Freelancer life
2/10/16: That I live someplace that people want to visit
2/13/16: That COS (Even if it’s just COS) is exposing me to new things like kava

SELF

2/10/15: Loving who I see in the mirror each morning
3/15/15: How I can think I am socially hopeless not even a week ago and now feel close to my socially strongest
3/20/15: My openness to new music
3/20/15: Even though I go through periods where I have trouble staying with it, my overall persistence with meditation
3/23/15: That I don’t settle
3/24/15: That I put pressure on myself to be better
3/27/15: That I am not that jealous a person anymore (at least compared to who I used to be)
3/29/15: Realizing I need to cut out alcohol and certain groups of people
4/1/15: That I was just like “Ima write a poem” and then I did
4/8/15: My ability to be alone.
4/15/15: My resilience, even when I try and convince myself I am not.
4/17/15: That I question my value and place in the world
4/20/15: My life as it is now.
4/20/15: Being grateful for #1
4/20/15: That I pursue what I love most.
4/29/15: My body
4/29/15: My mind
4/29/15: My spirit
4/30/15: How much I’ve grown
5/1/15: That I have become self-aware enough to know to “reset” my brain (sleep, meditation, cutting out distractions)
5/4/15: That (I think) I am learning to do less, or at least put less pressure on myself to do more
5/5/15: That I feel like I am leveling up
5/7/15: My kickass morning routine
5/7/15: That I think I have finally eradicated a large portion of the jealousy I used to carry with me…some that mindset, some because I’m so happy with who I’ve become
5/14/15: My life
5/14/15: My energy
5/14/15: The fact that I will be ok, always
5/18/15: My strength to overcome negative emotions and thought patterns
5/29/15: That when I really like someone I put a lot of effort into dates
5/30/15: That I have someone I care for enough to worry about a couple of sentences I sent in a conversation over three hours ago
5/30/15: ^^That I’ll get over this, too.
5/31/15: I seek knowledge about my neurosis and how to overcome them
6/2/15: How diverse and well-rounded my life is
6/2/15: How fast I can bounce back from a “down day” and get the “spark” back
6/3/15: For my gumption/balls/idiocy to do what many talk about and never do and buy the ticket.
6/8/15: My analysis and self-reflection, even if it drives me batshit a lot of the time.
6/10/15: My height
6/18/15: The progress I have made with meditation
6/18/15: That people want me to do writing for them.
6/22/15: That I am starting to focus on doing less
6/25/15: Everything in my life
7/14/15: This moment in time where I have a guaranteed source of income, a solidified social circle, comfortable dwelling, and love.
7/15/15: That I am taking a step many only dream about
7/15/15: That it’s not easy to do (meaning I have had a good time here)
7/15/15: That I am able to recognize when it is time for me to go
7/22/15: That I’m not dreading turning 27 soon
7/22/15: That putting in my five weeks has started to make me look (even more) at what I value most
7/28/15: That leaving is hard, not easy
7/28/15: That I know how to pick myself up and feel better in just a few a days
7/28/15: That I have ties in both the MLS and Olympic worlds
8/10/15: That I find it relatively easy to get rid of my belongings
8/11/15: That I am a hopeless romantic
8/14/15: That I am a happy person overall
8/15/15: That I feel minorly obsessed with learning Spanish
8/17/15: That my childhood self would be proud of me
8/17/15: Who I’ve become and who I will be
8/28/15: MY LAST DAY AT USADA
8/28/15: That I don’t have to sit in a cube for at least a while
9/5/15: That I feel like I can help and inspire people
9/5/15: That I basically view my life as one big video game map to explore with a shit ton of NPCs to interact with
9/6/15: That I am not shy about eating or exploring places by myself
9/11/15: That I can see how I have grown every time I come back to this town
9/12/15: The heightened awareness and vivid clarity I gain from just 11 minutes of sitting, especially considering I still have many things to “learn” about meditation
9/14/15: That I’m not old enough yet where 3 beers gives me a *complete* hangover
9/17/15: That I will continue to pay off my credit card every month in full form here on out
9/18/15: That I am not going to get my haircut this week, as I feel like I lean on it too much as a way to draw satisfaction from an external source
9/18/15: That all things considered (and barring financial catastrophe) I am in a good spot
9/18/15: That I haven’t stressed hardly at all over my texts like the last 36 hours or so…hopefully this anxiety will just be another one of those things I’ll look back on and laugh about in the future.
9/19/15: That I am starting to get into a frugal mindset
9/20/15: That I enjoy reading classics
9/24/15: That I am a seeker: for what I love to do, where I love to be, and for someone great to love that is good for me.
9/24/15; How comfortable and confident I feel in (most) bar settings
9/28/15: The ability to think rationally (or what I think is) about short versus long term gratification
10/6/15: That I am somewhat wildly uncomfortable now, in that my tongue feels tied and my ears plugged whenever I try and talk to someone
10/6/15: That I made this happen…from daydreams in a cubicle to actually buying the ticket to eating steak for breakfast.
10/8/15: That I am ok with not vibing with everyone.
10/17/15: Fuck it, that I am going to change the world
10/20/15: I am going to throw myself into learning Spanish at all costs
10/21/15: That I am meeting more people at this hostel now and that really my social skills are to the point where most people I vibe with I will find, I moreso just need to relax and do me as opposed to exerting any sort of actual effort.
10/22/15: That I enjoy/don’t mind cooking for myself
10/25/15: That whenever I seemingly have (unwarranted) doubts about relationship things, a slew of tests or other forms of contact ease my worries (though even when there’s periods of times where there aren’t those types of things I feel more at ease)
10/27/15: That I am going to have a lifetime full of interesting stories and experiences–I have too much momentum and a taste for it now.
10/30/15: That every older person I meet (and I guess all ages) speaks with admiration about what I’m doing. I know it was just a decision, and I know it was a very good one for me to make, but it’s a little nice to have affirmation and support from strangers.
10/30/15: That my “low” moments don’t seem to last that long/I know ways to generally pull myself out
10/30/15: That I have something like writing I can always turn to when I’m say, happy, in need of a distraction, etc.
10/30/15: That I can’t imagine not writing now that I have begun
10/31/15: That even when I think my social skills have faded, I can switch back on and feel so damn comfortable in skin with complete strangers
11/1/15: That I am unashamedly independent and there are others like me
11/1/15: That all things considered, my Spanish is improving and at times it’s ‘unconscious’
11/2/15: That I get to tell people I am a writer
11/4/15: That I read things like The Zahir that tell me exactly what I need to hear right now in terms of letting go of the past, if you tell a story a certain way about the past you haven’t moved on, or if you say it another way then it’s like you’re talking about a different person, which shows you have moved on immensely.
11/10/15: Meeting a fellow digital nomad re-confirmed again everything I was reading/telling people last week
11/11/15: That I don’t feel good when I don’t work out
11/19/15: The amount of personal work I am getting done and how hard it is for me to tear myself away, the point where it makes me late for things
11/21/15: How easy it is for me via technology to “surround” myself with the voices and work of highly creative and inspirational people.
11/21/15: That I am in the midst of one of the most creative and productive times of my life at the moment.
11/24/15: That I have to try and start thinking in Spanish before I am even remotely awake
11/29/15: That everything will be ok work-wise and that I am crazy enough to take the leaps of faith I have taken in my life.
12/1/15: That I self-examine often why the fuck I drink. More and more I question it’s place in my life and I bet it will have an increasingly smaller place in my life as I get older.
12/2/15: That last night I am pretty sure I had my first dream sequence in Spanish.
12/3/15: That I am me.
12/11/15: That I made the choice to do this–all of this. Freelancing, quitting, travel…everything.
12/13/15: My propensity to seek out and try new things
12/13/15: That I am living my dream
12/14/15: How much I enjoy reading and doing my annual books post
12/20/15: That I can recognize (usually, I think) when I am just being hangry/annoyed by stupid shit like a sick guy on the plane touching my shit, taking my seat, and a rude customs agent
12/21/15: That I know what my mission: To help other people live better lives through writing
12/23/15: That I know when I go back I will be building myself on top of a stronger foundation
1/3/16: That I did this
1/8/16: That I do like cooking for other people now and again and that I can just look at a recipe and “go for it”
1/9/16: That I started meditating that autumn afternoon 3+ years ago
1/9/16: How overall I am pleased with myself and life situation at the moment
1/11/16: That I went ahead and shared my 2015/16 review post on FB even though it makes me feel like a narcissistic douchecanoe.
1/22/16: My life, always, but especially these days
1/23/16: That I can express my frustration at situation and not at people
1/27/16: That it’s my half birthday, I guess?
1/27/16: That the first 2.5 years I lived here I put myself out there or at least put myself in the right groups
1/28/16: That I overanalyze as opposed to underanalyze
2/11/16: A simple diet (and fast metabolism) that lets me snack seemingly all day with little consequence to my appearance
2/12/16: How energized I feel socially by having so much time to recharge and not be around people I don’t want to be around all day.
2/13/16: Fuck it, that I like cats and like caring for them

What are you grateful for today?

42 Things I Learned From 21 Books In 2015

Also check out my lists from 2012, 2013, and 2014. Credit to this old post of Julien Smith’s for the idea. 

Every year I make it my goal to read at least 20 books, and thanks to ample travel time in 2015 I was able to hit that mark for the third year running.

As I read, I like to take notes in Evernote which can be anything from quotes, the main ideas of a chapter, to entire passages. I can then easily skim over these if I want to remind myself of a book’s message or if I need to find something I want to reference in my own writing.

It’s also fun for me every December to look back on these notes and share two of my favorite snippets or observations from each, and also possibly introduce to someone a new book they might enjoy. Text in italics is taken straight from the author:

Rework by Jason Fried

1. The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you.

Rework

2. The startup is a magical place. It’s a place where expenses are someone else’s problem. It’s a place where that pesky thing called revenue is never an issue. It’s a place where you can spend other people’s money until you figure out a way to make your own. It’s a place where the laws of business physics don’t apply.

The problem with this magical place is it’s fairy tale. The truth is every business, new or old, is governed by the same set of market forces and economic rules. Revenue in, expenses out. Turn a profit or wind up gone.

Startups try to ignore this reality. They are run by people trying to postpone the inevitable, i.e., that moment when their business has to grow up, turn a profit, and be a real, sustainable business.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

3. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.

the-alchemist

4. Now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so.

Redefine Yourself by Michael Moody

 5. Editing a book  is every bit as exhausting, exciting, and rewarding as writing one is.

Redefine

 6. When changing a habit, most people try to erase the whole formula and completely remove themselves from the habit (not just the bad routine but the cue and reward as well). Unfortunately, the reward and cue are too ingrained in us to simply extinguish. Even if we try to escape it, there may always be something in our environment that triggers your routine. We need to insert a new routine, keep the old cue and deliver the old reward. 

Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

7. One night she came back from her daily walk stunned by the revelation that one could be happy not only without love, but despite it.

marquez

8. He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past. But when he stood at the railing of the ship… only then did he understand to what extent he had been an easy victim to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia.

The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

9. Nowhere is the appeal of the airport more concentrated than in the television screens that hang in rows from the terminal ceilings to announce the departure and arrival of flights, whose absence of aesthetic self-consciousness and whose workmanlike casing and pedestrian typefaces do nothing to disguise their emotional charge and imaginative allure. Tokyo, Amsterdam, Istanbul; Warsaw, Seattle, Rio…

The constant calls of the screens, some accompanied by the impatient pulsing of a cursor, suggest with what ease our seemingly entrenched lives might be altered were we simply to walk down a corridor and onto a craft that in a few hours would land us in a place of which we had no memories and where no one know our name. How pleasant to hold in mind through the crevasses of our moods, at three in the afternoon… that there is always a plane taking off for somewhere, for Baudelaire’s ‘anywhere! anywhere!’: Trieste, Zurich, Paris.

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10. Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements may seem, the pattern is at least familiar from our personal lives.

There, too, we may find ourselves anchoring emotions of love on the way a person butters his or her bread, or recoiling at his or her taste in shoes. To condemn ourselves for these minute concerns is to ignore how rich in meaning details may be.

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher

(Who knew I would have such an affinity toward a modern adapation of something written in old English…)

11. [They shoot, Greedo dies.

[To innkeeper:] Pray, goodly Sir, forgive me for the mess.

[Aside:] And whether I shot first, I’ll ne’er confess! [Exeunt.”

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12. Trooper: I prithee, speak, how long has thou these droids?

Luke: ‘Tis three, or mayhap four full seasons now.

Obi-Wan: We are prepar’d to sell them, should thou wish.

Trooper: Pray, show me now thy papers.

Obi-Wan: –Nay, thou dost

Not need to see his papers.

Trooper: –Nay, we do

Not need to see his papers.

Obi-Wan: True it is,

That these are not the droids for which thou search’st.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

13. If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do. My Princeton colleague Danny Oppenheimer refuted a myth prevalent among undergraduates about the vocabulary that professors find most impressive. In an article titled “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly,” he showed that couching familiar ideas in pretentious language is taken as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility.

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14. Mutual funds are run by highly experienced and hard-working professionals who buy and sell stocks to achieve the best possible results for their clients. Nevertheless, the evidence from more than 50 years of research is conclusive: for a large majority of fund managers, the selection of stocks is more like rolling dice than like playing poker. At least two out of every three mutual funds underperform the overall market in any given year.

More important, the year-to-year correlation among the outcomes of mutual funds is very small, barely different from zero. The funds that were successful in any given year were mostly lucky; they had a good roll of the dice. There is general agreement among researchers that this is true for nearly all stock pickers, whether they know it or not — and most do not. The subjective experience of traders is that they are making sensible, educated guesses in a situation of great uncertainty. In highly efficient markets, however, educated guesses are not more accurate than blind guesses.

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

15. Vonnegut invented the iPad and the internet before either existed (and featured it in this book).

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16. “For some people, getting pregnant is as easy as catching cold.” And there certainly was an analogy there: colds and babies were both caused by germs which loved nothing so much as a mucous membrane.

It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be by Paul Arden

17. Do not put your cleverness in front of the communication.

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18. Do not try to win awards. Nearly everybody likes to win awards…they create glamour and glamour creates income. But beware. Awards are judged in committee by consensus of what is known. In other words, what is in fashion. But originality can’t be fashionable, because it hasn’t as yet had the approval of the committee. Do not try to follow fashion. Be true to your subject and you will be far more likely to create something that is timeless. That’s where the true art lies.

The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna

19. Picasso had incredible talent, but the secret to his genius was this—Picasso’s life blended seamlessly with his work: What he did was what he was. What he did was what he was.

What if who we are and what we do become one and the same? What if our work is so thoroughly autobiographical that we can’t parse the product from the person? What if our jobs are our careers and our callings? In this place, job descriptions and titles no longer make sense; we no longer go to work, we are the work.

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20. So now what?

Just get up and work every day?

Yes.

Alone?

Most likely.

For what?

Unclear.

For whom?

Yourself.

For how long?

No one knows.

Why?

Because you’ve got to.

But what if I fail?

You will.

And then what?

You get to decide if you keep doing this.

Is this a bad idea?

There’s no such thing.

But what if it’s horrible?

Stop doubting. Start doing.

Will we have this conversation again tomorrow?

If you wish.

Where does it all lead?

Grab the nearest tool. Work. And in time, you will know.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

21. Part of the appeal of Jim Henson and the Muppets to the show’s creators, in fact, was that in the 1960s Henson had been running a highly successful advertising shop. Many of the most famous Muppets were created for ad campaigns: Big Bird is really a variation of a seven foot dragon created by Henson for La Choy commercials; Cookie Monster was a pitchman for Frito Lay; Grover was used in promotional films for IBM.

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22. When two people talk, their volume and pitch fall into balance. What linguists call speech rate—the number of speech sounds per second—equalizes. So does what is known as latency, the period of lime that lapses between the moment one speaker stops talking and the moment the other speaker begins. Two people may arrive at a conversation with very different conversational patterns.

But almost instantly they reach a common ground. We all do it, all the time. Babies as young as one or two days old synchronize their head, elbow, shoulder, hip, and foot movements with the speech patterns of adults. Synchrony has even been found in the interactions of humans and apes. It’s part of the way we are hardwired.

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

23. I glance over at Jamie. He is unflappable, never looks confused, but also never seems to entirely grasp what is going on around him. Maybe he should be a writer.

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24.  He is at least 80 pounds lighter. The suburban sprawl that used to spill over his substantial belt has been zoned out of existence, and standing in front of me is a guy in size 33 Wranglers, craggy, gaunt and gray, like one of those aging Grand Ole Opry stars right before they die of lung cancer.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

25. An editor is ruthless in making every word count. Instead of saying it in two sentences, can you say it in one? Is it possible to use one word where two are currently being used? There are two basic questions the editor should be addressing to the author: “Are you saying what you want to say?” and, “Are you saying it as clearly and concisely as possible?”

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26. What if businesses eliminated meaningless meetings and replaced them with space for people to think and work on their most important projects? What if employees pushed back against timewasting e-mail chains, purposeless projects, and unproductive meetings so they could be utilized at their highest level of contribution to their companies and in their careers? What if society stopped telling us to buy more stuff and instead allowed us to create more space to breathe and think? What if society encouraged us to reject what has been accurately described as doing things we detest, to buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like?

What if we stopped being oversold the value of having more and being undersold the value of having less? What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?

Escape Plan: Working on the Road by Nora Dunn

27. Traveling full-time can actually cost far less than it does to live in one place. This is due to a number of cost-saving factors, ranging from volunteering/working in trade for free accommodation, to using frequent flyer miles, spending time in places where the cost of living is cheaper (sometimes), and judiciously monitoring your spending (by not playing the tourist and treating your lifestyle as a vacation with tours, buying souvenirs, and other vacation-centric activities). 

In general, you will find that the faster you travel, the more money you’ll spend, and the less time you’ll have to balance your work requirements with soaking in the ever-changing sights.

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28. I carry a USB stick at all times with my pertinent information on it. Not only do I have digital photos of all my identification, but I also have important phone numbers, banking information, and passwords. It’s all encrypted, so if the USB stick goes missing, nobody can access this information without the master password.

Not only that, but I carry the USB stick in a special small pocket underneath my clothing, along with some local currency. It is a true last resort in case I lose absolutely everything.

Be Here Now by Jason Fried

29. So: I can do nothing for you but work on myself…you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!

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30. And you finally understand, the message you communicate with another human being has nothing to do with what you say, it has nothing to do with the look of the musculature of your face, it’s much deeper than that. MUCH DEEPER!

IT’S THE VIBRATIONS THAT EMANATE FROM YOU

If your vibrations are paranoid, that’s what’s being received. And when you’re around pets (birds or cats particularly) or very young children or very flipped out psychotics they will know you immediately you can come and say ‘hello dear, how are you?’ and the dog will growl….you can’t come on because they’re listening to the vibrations that hand is reaching out and sending.

And then you realize:

That every moment you are being a full statement of your being, and you’re sending out vibrations that are affecting everything around you, which in turn is affecting everything that comes back. And when you meet somebody who is caught in the world of WE and THEM, and you are HIM to that person and you get caught in his mindset, you are both just intensifying one another’s paranoia

Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday

31. Here’s the cycle again:

  • Political blogs need things to cover; traffic increases during election
  • Reality (election far away) does not align with this
  • Political blogs create candidates early; move up start of election cycle
  • The person they cover, by nature of coverage, becomes actual candidate (or president)
  • Blogs profit (literally), the public loses

It’s bloggers informing bloggers informing bloggers all the way down. This isn’t anecdotal observation. It is fact. In a media monitoring study done by Cision and George Washington University, 89 percent of journalists reported using blogs for their research for stories. Roughly half reported using Twitter to find and research stories, and more than two thirds use other social networks, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, in the same way.

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32. You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs.

If as a culture we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.

Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

33. “And yet,” Riviere observed on a subsequent occasion, “even though human life may be the most precious thing on earth, we always behave as if there were something of higher value than human life …. But what thing?”

NightFlight

34. “I tell you, Robineau, in life there are no solutions. There are only motive forces, and our task is to set them acting–then the solutions follow.”

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

35. It’s pronounced “so-sh” and not “sock” (like I was reading it in my head).

TheOutsiders

36. Not all books I missed out on in high school are worth going back and reading.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

37. In humorous writing, the exclamation mark is the equivalent of canned laughter (F. Scott Fitzgerald – that well-known knockabout gag-man – said it was like laughing at your own jokes)

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38. James Thurber was once asked by a correspondent: “Why did you have a comma in the sentence, “After dinner, the men went into the living-room?” And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. “This particular comma,” Thurber explained, “was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.”

The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

39. It’s easy to feel disappointed by life; success is never as fulfilling as you think it is going to be. But there is a reason for this. Successfully completing a lesser purpose doesn’t feel very good for very long, because it is simply preparation for advancing toward a greater embodiment of your deeper purpose. Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring, and useless. Then it should be discarded. This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake it for a sign of failure.
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40. Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship. If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe, and cheats his woman of an authentic man who can offer her full, undivided presence.

The Zahir by Paulo Coehlo

41. Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose–and commit myself to–what is best for me.

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42. I hear the applause, the theater is packed. I’m about to do the one thing that always gives me sleepless nights, I’m about to give a lecture.

The master of ceremonies begins by saying that there’s no need to introduce me, which is a bit much really, since that’s what he’s there for and he isn’t taking into account the possibility that there might be lots of people in the audience who have simply been invited along by friends.

Despite what he says, however, he ends up giving a few biographical details and talking about my qualities as a writer, the prizes I’ve won, and the millions of books I’ve sold.

He thanks the sponsors, turns to me, and the floor is mine. I thank him too. I tell the audience that the most important things I have to say are in my books, but that I feel I have an obligation to my public to reveal the man who lies behind those words and paragraphs.

I explain that our human condition makes us tend to share only the best of ourselves, because we are always searching for love and approval. My books, however, will only ever be the mountaintop visible in the clouds or an island in the ocean: the light falls on it, everything seems to be in its place, but beneath the surface lies the unknown, the darkness, the incessant search for self.

I describe how difficult it was to write A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew, and that there are many parts of the book which I myself am only beginning to understand now, as I reread it, as if the created thing were always greater and more generous than its creator.

I say that there is nothing more boring than reading interviews or going to lectures by authors who insist on explaining the characters in their books: if a book isn’t selfexplanatory, then the book isn’t worth reading. When a writer appears in public, he should attempt to show the audience his universe, not try to explain his books; and in this spirit, I begin talking about something more personal.

“Some time ago, I was in Geneva for a series of interviews. At the end of a day’s work, and because a woman friend I was supposed to have supper with canceled at the last minute, I set off for a stroll around the city. It was a particularly lovely night, the streets were deserted, the bars and restaurants still full of life, and everything seemed utterly calm, orderly, pretty, and yet suddenly…suddenly I realized that I was utterly alone.

“Needless to say, I had been alone on other occasions during the year. Needless to say, my girlfriend was only two hours away by plane. Needless to say, after a busy day, what could be better than a stroll through the narrow streets and lanes of the old city, without having to talk to anyone, simply enjoying the beauty around me. And yet the feeling that surfaced was one of oppressive, distressing loneliness—not having someone with whom I could share the city, the walk, the things I’d like to say.

“I got out my cell phone; after all, I had a reasonable number of friends in the city, but it was too late to phone anyone. I considered going into one of the bars and ordering a drink; someone was bound to recognize me and invite me to join them. But I resisted the temptation and tried to get through that moment, discovering, in the process, that there is nothing worse than the feeling that no one cares whether we exist or not, that no one is interested in what we have to say about life, and that the world can continue turning without our awkward presence.

“I began to imagine how many millions of people were, at that moment, feeling utterly useless and wretched—however rich, charming, and delightful they might be—because they were alone that night, as they were yesterday, and as they might well be tomorrow. Students with no one to go out with, older people sitting in front of the TV as if it were their sole salvation, businessmen in their hotel rooms, wondering if what they were doing made any sense, women who spent the afternoon carefully applying their makeup and doing their hair in order to go to a bar only to pretend that they’re not looking for company; all they want is confirmation that they’re still attractive; the men ogle them and chat them up, but the women reject them all disdainfully, because they feel inferior and are afraid the men will find out that they’re single mothers or lowly clerks with nothing to say about what’s going on in the world because they work from dawn to dusk to scrape a living and have no time to read the newspapers. People who look at themselves in the mirror and think themselves ugly, believing that being beautiful is what really matters, and spend their time reading magazines in which everyone is pretty, rich, and famous. Husbands and wives who wish they could talk over supper as they used to, but there are always other things demanding their attention, more important things, and the conversation can always wait for a tomorrow that never comes.

“That day, I had lunch with a friend who had just got divorced and she said to me: ‘Now I can enjoy the freedom I’ve always dreamed of having.’

But that’s a lie.

No one wants that kind of freedom: we all want commitment, we all want someone to be beside us to enjoy the beauties of Geneva, to discuss books, interviews, films, or even to share a sandwich with because there isn’t enough money to buy one each. Better to eat half a sandwich than a whole one. Better to be interrupted by the man who wants to get straight back home because there’s a big game on TV tonight or by the woman who stops outside a shop window and interrupts what we were saying about the cathedral tower, far better that than to have the whole of Geneva to yourself with all the time and quiet in the world to visit it.

“Better to go hungry than to be alone. Because when you’re alone—and I’m talking here about an enforced solitude not of our choosing—it’s as if you were no longer part of the human race.

“A lovely hotel awaited me on the other side of the river, with its luxurious rooms, its attentive employees, its five-star service. And that only made me feel worse, because I should have felt contented, satisfied with all I had achieved.

“On the way back, I passed other people in the same situation and noticed that they fell into two categories: those who looked arrogant, because they wanted to pretend they had chosen to be alone on that lovely night, and those who looked sad and ashamed of their solitary state.

“I’m telling you all this because the other day I remembered being in a hotel room in Amsterdam with a woman who was talking to me about her life. I’m telling you all this because, although in Ecclesiastes it says there is a time to rend and a time to sew, sometimes the time to rend leaves deep scars. Being with someone else and making that person feel as if they were of no importance in our life is far worse than feeling alone and miserable in the streets of Geneva.”

There was a long moment of silence before the applause.