Reality Laughs

He asked, having not announced that he has a product for sale.

If I can give out any one career tip, it’s that poor communication skills need to be viewed as a debilitating weakness even at relatively junior levels of the organization. On par with being unable to show up to work on time, or completely lacking required skills.

Said another way, your inability to concisely summarize information in a way that’s appropriate to your audience makes you look like an idiot, and companies don’t like to promote idiots.

That’s from https://twitter.com/staysaasy/status/1777700319515890005

It’s what you DON’T talk about that is the most important part of the conversation.

I don’t talk — even to myself — about aging. I actively reject the topic and the implications.

It is a frantic refusal to look at truth.

Here is a Tweet from 4/8/24:

It’s never what you see. It’s what you’re unwilling to see. It’s what you refuse to see that sees everything.

Paul Portesi

But he has lots of variations on that idea.

Trust.

Rare, priceless, hard to accomplish.

And the other person has “trust” — not you. You don’t own it, you don’t control it, you don’t create the mindset of trust in your customer’s head

Yet simple. And easy, if you have made a decision to be trustworthy.

You cannot create trust. You can only behave in a trustworthy manner. Marcus Aurelius strikes again.

Jerry Seinfeld quote (allegedly) from Twitter:

“No one’s really that great. You know who’s great? The people that just put tremendous amount of hours into it. It’s a game of tonnage.”

Put in the work.

Ground to a halt. Fatigue. Mid-afternoon. I need a nap.

Be picky about what you read

Be picky about what you write

@dineshraju

This is a drum that needs to be beaten all the time.

As a man thinketh . . . .

Focus on what you want more of.

Ignore what you want to see less of.

If you dwell on “ain’t it awful” and conspiracy theories, guess what! You get more awful and the conspiracy theories come true. “They” are doing “that” to “us” kind of conspiracy theories, I mean. If you dwell on those type of thoughts, “they” have taken over your soul.

Displacement.

“Write well” does not correlate with “smart”.

“Smart” does not correlate with “got yer shit together.”

I have been self-delusional here. (A) That I write well. (B) That the correlation exists, implying I’m smart. This fallacy I’m seeing daily, now that I am willing to be humble. (C) And I certainly don’t have my shit together in any meaningful fashion.

But.

(D) So what?

Acknowledge these truths: I overestimate my skills and my intelligence. I’m average in the shit-together department. And it doesn’t matter — on a cosmic or lifetime scale.

I’m OK.

It’s 1 a.m. I can’t sleep (jet lag), and I’m at peace.

We are all privates in this army. Even me.

If I consider all of the things in the world I don’t know, and will never know . . . am I smart? Nope.

If I consider the new things I come across daily and struggle to understand—or am oblivious to their existence . . . am I smart? Nope.

If I consider how writing is a struggle and how often thoughts I want to speak come out obviously wrong or new and different thoughts erupt spontaneously from my brain . . . do I have any particular skill? Nope.

Through earnest and dogged persistence I have found a plateau on which I rest, mid-climb. Yet the mountains call me to rise and trudge upward. Why, I cannot say. Yet, climb I must.

This is for future me, in case I look here.

You’re in Milan again. It’s mid-day, rainy and chilly outside. You’re in an AirBnB in your familiar neighborhood. I will go get lunch soon.

An endless series of coffees has done nothing for me. I am jet-lagged despite a full night’s sleep.

And starting, ever so slightly, to perceive the shadows that I shy away from, driving me this way and that.

It has taken a lifetime. A spiritual awakening of the educational variety—that’s my path, apparently.

“One day, he decided to be happy.” This works when I remember to make that decision.

“One day, he decided to be at peace.” That should work, too. Because why not?