Blog

A post a day?

by MAÔ, posted in Writing

I use my iPhone’s Notes app pretty religiously. Here’s a screen shot:

IMG_2338

So, this awkward little snapshot into my thought processes is embarrassing. But the one post a day idea I jotted down on March 11 came back up on April 1st, when I was listening to the first conversation Seth Godin and Tim Ferris had, back in early 2016.

Seth said, “The first thing I would say is everyone should blog, even if it’s not under their own name, every single day. If you are in public making predictions and noticing things, your life gets better.

Because you will find a discipline that can’t help but benefit you. If you want to do it in a diary, that’s fine. But the problem with diaries is because they’re private, you can start hiding. In public, in this blog, there it is. Six weeks ago you said this; 12 weeks ago you said that. Are you able, every day, to say one thing that’s new that you’re willing to stand behind? I think that’s just a huge, wonderful practice.”

Now, will I post every day? Who knows. But will I try? You betcha!

March Reading List

by MAÔ, posted in Books

March, 2019

Books Bought:

  • The Essential Drucker – Peter Drucker
  • The Effective Executive – Peter Drucker
  • The Intelligent Investor – Benjamin Graham
  • Kraken – China Mieville
  • This is Marketing – Seth Godin

Books Read:

  • This is Marketing – Seth Godin
  • Kraken – China Mieville (unfinished)
  • The Aspirational Investor – Ashvin B. Chhabra
  • Tools of Titans – Tim Ferriss (unfinished)

For March, I didn’t get a whole lot done. Bought a few used books, read a little. March was a transitional month, one job shifting to the next. The last week in March was the first week of work, and it was a lot of hours in the new role.

This is Marketing – quintessential Godin. For whatever reason, any time I listen to him I generate ideas left and right. It’s motivational, and I enjoy everything about his work. I have The Icarus Deception around somewhere, and I may need to reread that as well soon.

Kraken, off to a strange start. The mystery grabbed me finally, about sixty pages in, but I don’t know if it will keep hold of me. I’m curious to see how it all plays out. It reminds me a bit of Christopher Moore, but with less humor. Maybe not less humor, but different humor. And I miss Leon already…

The Aspirational Investor came recommended, so I gave it a try. My money in the markets usually goes up and down, and I just put more in every month. At some point I may do more with it. That remains to be seen. This book was fine, but it wasn’t really new information. I did like the three-tier breakdown of risk, which I’ll likely use in my investments.

And then Ferriss, which I just pull from time to time. This month, reading about acroyoga has led me to further exploration of that activity.

Consuming film

by MAÔ, posted in Film

The early days of film showed us new possibilities in the world of reality. Images that moved as in real life – no longer just things of fanciful imaginations.

Now, the experience has evolved. And the way that we were cultivated to view cinema is changing as well.

Netflix came under attack recently from industry elites, such as Steven Spielberg, who said that Oscars should be limited to cinema releases, not the Netflix brand of entertainment. (I can’t help but imagine the discussion surrounding film as it related to theatre when cinema began its rise in popularity.)

The joke is, it is industry elites vs. streaming elites, when the real change is through the democratization of entertainment. What will make the most radical difference is how user-uploaded streaming is going to continue to change the face of moving image-making, and what that will mean for the industry.

 

The work’s the thing

by MAÔ, posted in Work

Remember who you are producing for. We don’t live to work better. We work to live better. Every job we do is a reflection of how much we appreciate ourselves. Not the company, or the product. And we may think that it’s an amazing company or product – which is why we align to it.

But there must also be balance. Don’t sacrifice life just to work. Be the living worker, and not a robot.

Journaling

by MAÔ, posted in Writing

First things first. I love journals. Have since at least 1990. I had just turned 7, and what I had asked for from my dad was a notebook/journal. I know this because I still have it. (Somewhere, possibly in storage. I swear I’ve seen it recently…) It is a faded green color, with an image of rough seas. A sail boat rides the swells. I can’t recall what the style of the picture is named, but you’d know it if you saw it.

From that point on, I’ve always written stuff. Nothing coherent. A few short stories, maybe a hundred or so poems. But, I jot notes down all the time. Song lyrics. Words I want to know more about, or topics. Quotes that inspire, motivate, or enlighten me.

I heard that Charles Dickens burned his notebooks and letters annually. I wonder what is lost or gained when we let go of those thoughts written down for later investigation.

April Fools’

by MAÔ, posted in Thoughts

I listened to Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin on the Tim Ferris podcast a few weeks ago. They spoke about Seth’s April fools’ joke of a few years prior. They discuss how, after emailing their lists that the blog would be coming to an end, they received angry notes from their followers. Followers that weren’t in on the joke, and how fear led them to respond.

The truth is, we mostly operate out of fear. It’s stepping away from our fears, and into that other that we find out what we’re here to do. That we’re not playing a zero-sum game, but rather a win-win infinite game – that’s just to be enjoyed.

Your joke:

A man goes to the barber and the barber asks, “How would you like your hair cut?”

The man answers, “In silence.”

What the reviewer sees

by MAÔ, posted in Advice

A book review is nothing more than emotional snapshot of how an author’s work speaks to the reviewer. 

Anyone can go through a book and mark syntax or grammatical errors. That is the purview of elementary educators. What we expect reviewers to do is to read a work and tell us whether the devices the author used worked for the reviewer. Do the analogies seem out of place? Is there too much ambiguity in story. Can the protagonist be understood adequately with the given backstory?

And these understandings of the author’s work is subjective on the part of the reviewer, and the subsequent review is then only useful to someone with similar taste and understanding as the reviewer has. 

Many things are more subjective than we consider, and we are often more opinion-based than we acknowledge. Remember that when making decisions.

Grief

by MAÔ, posted in Pathfinding

I began keeping this blog (the second or third time) as an outlet for expressing grief, while on my spiritual journey. At the time I wasn’t sure where I was going.

Mostly I still feel that way. But the complicated grief that I was struggling with has mostly faded away. Grief is an unusual thing – I like the saying by Jamie Anderson: “grief is just love with no place to go.”

Grief-Ive-learned

A lot of grief feels that way. Wishing my grandmother was here. Or working out the issues from my failed engagement. And now saying goodbye to my fur baby. Grief can be overwhelming. And it can be enlightening.

I just have to keep telling myself to “lean in”.

Tinkerbell

by MAÔ, posted in Thoughts

I had to say good bye to a friend this weekend. A friend of fifteen years. My cat Tinkerbell, aka Num Nums. I’d had her since 2004, and from house to house, job to job, she’d been my constant. 

She was an asshole. Everyone thought so, because she was. She was moody, more so than a typical cat. I refused to declaw her, because after she was spayed she hid under the bed for three days and wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t bring myself to cause any pain to come to her, so I left her claws in. I got scratched because of it, but not as much as some of my friends and family did.

Fifteen years she meowed at me, letting me know she needed food, or water, or that she had left me a hairball. She constantly went places she shouldn’t go, and I’d have to track her down – hoping I didn’t get fresh scratches. 

When I brought the dog home to meet her, she could care less. She had her space, and she’d tolerate him well enough. But she batted him in the nose more than once.

She passed peacefully in her sleep on Friday, and it’s just not the same without her.

Authenticity

by MAÔ, posted in Advice

“One must know what one wants to be,” the eighteenth-century French mathematician Émilie du Châtelet wrote in weighing the nature of genius. (From Brain Pickings).

Lots of smart people have spoken or written about being true to yourself. Why is that? What is so important about being your authentic self?

There are two elements to this. The first is: an authentic person is doing that thing which she was put here to do. The feeling of absolute joy that comes from being authentic is contagious, and that’s why authentic people are viewed as charismatic, agreeable, and engaging.

“Everyone has a purpose. And, according to Oprah Winfrey, ‘Your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you are meant to be, and begin to honor your calling in the best way possible.'” (Oprah’s new book, The Path Made Clear).

The other element is the concern of authenticity preventing some from showing up. As Seth Godin puts it in his interview on the Tim Ferriss show, “Which means, and this is someplace I’ve gotten in trouble before, authenticity is totally overrated, totally. That I don’t want an authentic surgeon who says, ‘I don’t really feel like doing knee surgery today.’ I want a professional who shows up whatever they feel like, right?“

While I view that as a valid point, and I greatly admire Seth Godin and all the work he’s done (I’ve read a number of his books, some multiple times), I believe that this example is more about a lazy authenticity, rather than it being authentic.

The surgeon in Godin’s example is (hopefully) being authentic in being a surgeon. That’s what fuels his life. If he come in and says he doesn’t feel like doing knee surgery today, then it’s not in line with his authentic self. Or, he didn’t want to be a knee surgeon to begin with.

Authenticity, in my view, is something that will give us energy.

Now I do believe that we may find ourselves aligned to our authenticity, while not fully being authentic. That’s why you see so many Generation X and Y switching careers, rather than staying in one for their whole life. (One of the reasons.) Because they are searching for authenticity. But in the job you’re doing – the one you’ve agreed to do for the time being – you still need to show up. To do your best.