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Commentary is informational

When people analyze and critique stuff, what they say is far more informational about them than the things they are talking about. Did you say something about a politician or a book? You are telling me about yourself.

That is something I have been aware of for a while, thanks to Paul Portesi. But it was always an outward-looking tool, not an introspective tool.

It’s time to watch what I say when I analyze and critique stuff. What does my commentary say about me?

My commentary can by definition say nothing about external things because it’s out of my control. My commentary shines a light on my thinking and opinions, and reveals what I am doing with the things under my control.

Being able to see myself in action is the truly useful information.

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Everything I’m good at I used to suck at

The Internet brought me this blog post. “What To Do When You Feel Inadequate” is a title that speaks to everyone, I will assert with confidence.

His first point? “Everything I’m good at I used to not be good at”.

Remember that.

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Stanford degree or hard work?

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.

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Modern tools can kill or cure

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.

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Only our opinions are under our control

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.
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Do what you say you will do

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.

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At some point you have enough

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.

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The Tens

Still doing it daily.

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Always getting ready

Watch out for doing stuff in the name of “getting ready” or “getting smarter” or any other phrase you can think of.

You’re doing things today for stuff that might or might not happen tomorrow. And what you do today, in preparation, may or may not be relevant to what may or may not happen tomorrow.

Nothing is at all wrong with being prepared, having contingencies, etc. Risk only exists in the future.

But don’t be dumb about this. Don’t be like those preppers who stockpile 50,000 rounds of ammo to be ready when the SHTF. If and when the SHTF, your 50,000 rounds of ammo won’t matter. There are hidden risks in SHTF situations that you are not accounting for and you can’t even see. And there are some risks that don’t even exist yet so they can’t be seen.

Action now. That is what matters. Take territory, consolidate your position, and build buffers. Move forward, become antifragile, move forward again.

Being antifragile is action, reaction, movement, adjustment. Stay put, hunker down, protect? That’s fragile, but it looks robust to you. “This extensive fortification you built looks good, Monsieur Maginot. France is secure. Let’s go have a cocktail.”

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Finish what you start, because people are counting on you

A great real-life vignette in a short blog post to show the point.

There is a reason this man is a success: he sees and he acts. He has eyes to see, ears to hear.

You might quibble with my use of the word “success”. Where he lives, what he does for a living, what he believes. These things might not meet your criteria for success.

You would be wrong. You are judging his life by your personal yardstick. And when you do that, you close yourself off to learning new things.