Month: August 2021

As usual, Marcus Aurelius is prescient:

Evil: the same old thing.

No matter what happens, keep this in mind: It’s the same old thing, from one end of the world to the other. It fills the history books, ancient and modern, and the cities, and the houses too. Nothing new at all.

Familiar, transient.

Meditations 7.1.

Remember that next time you get riled up.

It’s true even for manufactured bad shit: the panicky messaging designed to make you cower and submit to another’s will. It’s the same old thing.

And it’s like drugs: after a while the populace builds up tolerance to the hysteric messaging. Something more is required to get the same effect. Another panic. Another literally Hitler. It’s the same old thing.

Ignore the messages. Look at what’s happening in the real world. (This is hard because facts are distorted or filtered so you’re not getting the whole picture, so look and listen and ask yourself “What might be there that I’m not seeing?”).

Once you start seeing the mask drop, you cannot unsee it.

You’re being told to believe, to obey. You’re being given a picture to look at: there is danger, here is safety. Be safe by doing what we say, by believing what we tell you to believe, by hating who we tell you to hate.

That’s their world. They would make it yours.

Reality laughs.

Reality just laughed in Afghanistan. It will laugh again and again.

Learn. Learn from the ancients. Learn from your own observation.

One more thought from Meditations:

Discard your misperceptions.

Stop being jerked like a puppet.

Limit yourself to the present.

Understand what happens—to you, to others.

Analyze what exists, break it all down: material and cause.

Anticipate your final hours.

Other people’s mistakes? Leave them to their makers.

Meditations 7.29.

Marcus Aurelius:

If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

Meditations 6:21.

It’s the jolt that you get when you’re snapping back from fantasy/ignorance to reality that really hurts.

The more you seek reality and stick to it, the smaller the deviation and the impact when reality’s gravity pulls you back. Make a jump from an elevation of 3 inches? It is nothing. Three feet? It’s a thing, but accomplished with ease with a bit of care. Thirty feet? Possibly fatal, certainly painful.

The ultimate snap back to reality, of course, is death. The greatest peril to you is in ignoring your inevitable death. Keep that single thought in mind (“I will die, and I don’t know when”) and you will be amazed at the clarity it brings.

And you would think it brings terror and inaction (“What’s the point?”). Quite the contrary. For me it has brought freedom from fear and impelled me forward to new ventures with glee and abandon. What’s the worst that can happen? I die? I’m already going to die!

Andy Frisella’s math: for would-be entrepreneurs. Out of a random sample of 100 people:

• 70% are pussies. They don’t want to put in the work. They just want the reward. They quit early. These are the tippy-tap people who don’t hammer the nail all the fucking way into the fucking wood.
• 20% aren’t lazy. They work. But they can’t handle obstacles. The first obstacle they hit takes them out.
• 8% work hard. They can take a hard blow and keep going. But the day-to-day grind slacks off over time. They don’t have the discipline to execute every day. They stop executing, whether out of boredom or being pulled by the first taste of success.
• 2%. That’s who is left over.

Be in the 2%.

You may quibble with the numbers but the filters are real and I think his order of magnitude ranking is correct.

Execute. Keep executing. Don’t quit.

I rate myself flipping back and forth between the 8% and the 2%. On the other hand the fact that I’m still cranking 30 years later tells me I trend more to the 2%. But wow I have my moments in the eight.

The opposite of the dawn patrol: waking up arbitrarily in the middle of the night. This sometimes happens to me after about 4.5 or 5 hours of sleep. I’m rested enough but it’s not a full eight.

The world is not exactly full of optimism and joy in times like this. Every thought that pops up is negative. That’s how the night shift differs from the dawn patrol: running before dawn is a time of hope, happiness. I know from experience that the night shift thoughts are just noise. Nothing ever comes of the fear and frustration that the noise creates. But still . . . .

Ah, well. It’s going to be dawn in a few hours anyway.

A spoonful of peanut butter and a drink of water. Let’s see if that helps me go back to sleep until it’s time for dawn patrol.

You are the measure of your success.

No comparison to someone else. It’s you compared to you.

It’s every day. One day at a time. In the day you’re in, right now—how are you feeling? Successful?

Maybe you compare today you to yesterday you. That might work. But I think that checking in with yourself, right now, it’s easy to figure out if you’re successful. Are you doing what you should be doing? You’re successful.

You’re successful because what you’re doing sucks and there is a mile of suck still to go but you’re doing it because it’s yours to do. And you’re doing it. Acknowledge that, while you are shoveling loads of suck. You are doing it. You hate it, but in that moment you are successful.

Mark it. The second act started on May 1, 2021.

Bangin’.

Why? Because what the fuck else is there to do with my life that could possibly top it?

Dawn patrol.

The background traffic roar . . . .

I want quiet.

It is time to leave this place. Or learn to accept the noise.

Is an opportunity someone else took. Not an excuse for your inaction.

Take action. Make your own luck.

Be a doer, not a shit-talker.

The world rewards actions, not excuses. The world rewards actions, not affirmations.

Attack the process. Do what needs to be done in this day, the day you’re in. It really is one day at a time. All of it.

Say it. Be it.

There is only one project I will work on until it is finished. When pulled away by unavoidable distractions I will deal with them efficiently and definitively. Then I will return to the project.

Let’s go. Let’s try this One Thing Strategy.