I want to expand a project on the web, and suddenly I find I have spent three hours messing around with WordPress.
Stop.
I am a slow learner but I am a learner. I do less of this than I used to. That’s progress.
My job? Write, organize my thoughts. I have a story to tell. Do that.
Someone else can build the platform.
I think, in one thing (a physical possession), I’m there. For now.
Enough is not a number. Funny, though, in this case, I made my decision based on a number. The number is an unspecified few thousand. And the number is higher (by about a thousand) than the number I had originally set in my head.
I said I would get a thing today at the store. I didn’t.
It is still today. Go get it.
EDIT: I went. (If you want to feel good, just do what you said you would do.)
Interesting side effects. This was a trip to the local Rite-Aid.
First: I went because I wanted to buy a simple, commodity product. They didn’t have it or at least it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that they had it. I bought a substitute. And got a small measure of hell for it when I got home.
Second: inventory is sparse in all departments. I went down one aisle and there was 20 feet of empty steel shelves. That’s expensive to leave commercial shelving empty in a big store. It’s 20 feet of things you will never sell. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t make, etc. Light bulbs? Pathetic selection and quantity.
Is Rite-Aid as a company suffering? Is this store in particular suffering? Is this only a temporary condition? Or is there a deeper problem? I must say that I hate going into this Rite-Aid and always have.
Time to do a bit of research. And maybe some tentative short-selling.
EDIT 2. The message boards say Rite-Aid (ticker RAD) is in trouble. The Rite-Aid website’s newsfeed is full of incoherent prose written by AI. People coming and going at the executive top level. A debt restructuring. Some sort of new mission for the company to be holistic or some bullshit.
Zombies are running Rite-Aid.
Isn’t this interesting is that reality laughs at a publicly-traded company? Well, not at a company as such, but at the people who volunteer to be part of a group that engages in commercial activities.
Lying (by the high-level executives and the Board of Directors) leads to collective ruin. It’s like the young Lieutenant, straight out of the Naval Academy, leading his platoon of Marines to disaster, ignoring the hard-earned, practical wisdom of his men. (Famously, newly-minted Marine officers don’t know how to operate a compass. Check out /r/usmc for a fun read.)
I’m sure there are people working at Rite-Aid who see what is happening and know how to prevent disaster. There’s not a damn thing they can do about it.
Get out, people. Save yourself. When zombies take over you must flee, lest you die or become a zombie yourself. If you’re optimizing to get the best severance package you’re optimizing for the wrong thing.
What’s within my control? Only my opinion when receiving data input from the universe.
Of existing things, God has placed some within our power, and others not within our power. Within our power he has placed the most important thing, that through which he himself is happy, the power to deal with impressions. For when that capacity is rightly exercised, there is freedom, serenity, cheerfulness, constancy, and there is justice, too, and law, and self-control, and virtue in its entirety.
Epictetus, Fragments, 4.
I have the Kindle app on my phone. My library has good books in it. Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, others.
The WordPress app is on my phone, too.
“The first thing to go is the reading” is something I was told early on. Maintaining a sound outlook requires daily maintenance, and reading daily is one of those maintenance steps. Skip the reading and you’re headed to hell. (Heaven and hell are states of mind.)
Self-remembering is the other thing needed to keep your mind on track. Look at it any way you want. The Fourth Way people have one way of describing the effort you take to awaken from your zombie slumber. Prayer is another word that can describe this effort to get out of your own brain to a higher level.
Writing these little things is a way for me, in the moment, to connect with something higher.
For that, my phone is a tool for healing and advancement. Imagine that I have access to ancient wisdom while waiting in line at the supermarket. What a blessing.
But the browser, the social media access, etc. available to me on the phone? Straight to hell. That’s why I have Freedom.to on my phone constantly. It’s like a safety on a gun.
From a conversation with someone.
Her father grew up in the Depression. Got a Stanford degree and went straight to the Army Air Force in World War II.
Her insight: in those days, everyone worked hard, and few went to college. Fewer still went to top-tier schools. He father was a hard man, from life experience. (Bomber pilot, shot down three times. Poor family in the Depression.)
Every man in his generation was a hard man. Worked hard. Didn’t quit. A Stanford degree meant something in that environment.
Now, everyone goes to college. A top-tier degree means nothing. And hard work, hard men? Rare. I am included in the cohort of people who have overvalued a degree from the “right” schools. Fortunately, I have learned through personal misfortune the importance of hard work. Iam not, but I aspire to be, a hard man.
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain (The New World #7)
Show me what you have done. Not what happened in your general neighborhood while you were standing around. Not a pretty piece of paper with your name on it. “I done this. I done good.” Show me that.
A postscript about fortune. My own personal misfortunes came from my own actions. I count these events to be of supreme value.
What doesn’t kill you will, if you learn the lessons, make you stronger. If you don’t learn the lessons, you will be a whiny victim for the rest of your life. Don’t do that.
Still doing it daily.
This happened today. A life insurance salesman wants to network. He didn’t present himself as a life insurance salesman, of course. They never do.
I talked to him. He set up a call with someone he knows that would be a good contact for me. Sure. I talk to that person.
His process is to be an Introducer. Introduce me to all sorts of people. He is a “shake the box and see what happens” marketer.
He has been on me to do more schmooze calls. I have put him off. Finally I sent him an email asking if he is real and what he is doing. And why. And followed up with a call.
I asked him whether we had a definite purpose with the schmoozing, and explained the four types of luck and how I don’t want to play in type 1 or 2.
His response was to say he’s “not a throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks” person. And then he proceeded to throw spaghetti against my wall to see if any of it stuck.
He is what he said he isn’t. He did what he said he never does.
This is the same as someone who loudly proclaims his own honesty. That is a clue that you are dealing with a dishonest person. An honest person just is.
How do you keep yourself open to serendipity from the universe without burning all of your time on bullshit activities with bullshit people? I confess I don’t have an answer.
Maybe “no meetings unless transactional”? Push all meeting requests to calls? And push calls to emails, emails to text messages, and text messages to nothing?
Anyway, that’s a business question.
Live your life by seeking what is real.
As soon as someone self-declares a personal attribute, assume the opposite is real unless a string of actions over time confirms the truth of the assertion.
And if you smell someone playing the type 1 or type 2 luck game, know that they don’t understand reality the same way I do.
Help them to see what you see, if you can, but if that doesn’t work stay away from them. Some people don’t have eyes to see, ears to hear.
This dawned on me.
Writing stuff here is a way of coaching myself.
Self exhorting self to action.
Self reminding self of insights, quickly written down before The Forgetter vanishes a lesson learned.
Note: not, by the way, self revealing self to self. Revelations about self can only come from outside of self. A catalyst of some kind is required, which may be from a book, a person, etc.
If I am open-minded and willing to accept truth, the catalyst will lead me to see who I am, or what I think. And then I can see who I am and make a change.
It’s hard to be open-minded. Willing? That’s easier. Even if I’m stuck, I can get unstuck if I am willing.
Life is 10,000,000 micro choices, one after another.
How am I going to choose a career, make a living, find a mate, raise a family?
It’s ridiculous to think you can make some sort of central planner’s five year plan for yourself. It’s daily, hourly choices. One at a time.
Find a North Star. Keep walking toward it, around obstacles, getting lost then back on course again.
What’s a North Star? Look for what people have valued since antiquity.
What am I living for? The Mark-Almond Band answers that question, if you listen carefully to the song.
Be a dad. That’s a good start. it’s been done before. That should be a good enough signal to you that it is a worthwhile path.
That song is a song of despair, but that’s wrong.
Why am I living, why am I giving all my life
To bring up a family, children, and wife
Listen my friend, its been done before
What am I living for?
There is no “living for”. That’s the ego talking. And the fact that it has been done before tells you that it is worthwhile for you. Ask a random dad whether being a parent is good. Odds are you will get a honest answer.