Category: Writing

Sometimes you need pay.

All the time. You always need money.

But, money isn’t hard to come by. It’s just a function of what you’re willing to do. Can you clean toilets for $8 an hour? Absolutely! Will you…?

I have this heavily highlighted, dog-eared copy of Rolf Potts’s Vagabonding. Picked up in 2003, I recall thinking at that time that I was looking forward to traveling around the world. It took me years to first make it past the Americas, but I’ve seen larger swaths of the globe at this point.

But this passage is one that always sticks in my memory: “Of all the outrageous throwaway lines one hears in movies, there is one that stands out for me… It comes from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, when the Charlie Sheen character – a promising big shot in the stock market – is telling his girlfriend about his dreams.

‘I think if I can make a bundle of cash before I’m thirty and get out of this racket…I’ll be able to ride my motorcycle across China.’

… Charlie Sheen or anyone else could work for eight months as a toilet cleaner and have enough money to ride a motorcycle across China.”

William James and Carl Lange purported that “We don’t cry because we’re sad; we’re sad because we cry.” 

That our emotional experience is a consequence of our physiological responses to a stimulus, rather than the other way around. 

Put simply, where goes our body, so goes our emotional state.

If you can change your location to what you consider a happier state, then you can become happier.

How many of us blindly walk through each day, just doing what we’re told? Doing what we’re expected to?

Or just trying to eke out a living.

But eking out a living is not the same as living. 

Happiness isn’t an endgame. It’s a means of conveyance.

Some of us seem happier than others, but the appearance of happiness isn’t what we’re after. And it isn’t always accurate, either.

If you can make steps towards happiness, sometimes, that’s enough.

There are none identical, before or after, and you have this one chance to live it not only the way you’re intended to… but also in the manner you see fit.

Thoughts are a complicated metric.

To adequately put them to use, we must first decide whether it is actionable, and then whether it’s meaningful to act on it.

And that is something we may pr may not do well.

You have to start figuring out ways to complete projects.

What tends to feel a little complicated doesn’t have to be.

Break it into tiny bits. Set times, and stick the routine. Track your progress.

And just start.

We’d all do good under the tutelage of a mentor. Whether we know it or not. 

We need cheerleaders, sure. Those who support our decisions no matter what.

But we also need someone who will give it to us straight. Because we can get tunnel vision, and sometimes that means we can’t make a decision with a clear head.

A good mentor can smack some sense into you.

All people are fallible. There are no exceptions to this universal human trait; we are created equal in this regard.

With those elected to office, we expect officials to set aside these fallible tendencies while performing their duties.

Yet this expectation itself may be our greatest fallibility.

If a suboptimal result occurs, it’s important not to lower your expectations on your next endeavor.

Putting forth your maximum effort is more valuable than managing expectations.

The act of trying your hardest matters more than anticipating the outcome.