You know what’s fun? Things I used to enjoy. It sounds strange, and it doesn’t come naturally to me, but let me explain:
Category: Goals
A Love Note to Amateurishness
I’m an amateur word nerd. Nobody pays me to rave about etymology or to irritate my friends with my Wordle score every morning. But I like it that way. Being an amateur is wonderful. After all, the root of the word is “one who loves”. Is there any better reason to do something than…
Anatomy of a Failed Month
Not every month can be great, but last year I had one which was a total disaster. They say a picture tells a thousand words:
After adapting to a national lockdown in January, I found a great productive rhythm. But last month everything went wrong simultaneously. Let’s look back and analyze what happened….
Have I Really Missed My Chance?
Back in the 1990s, my teenage self always looked forward to Tuesdays. Partly, I just liked them. But Tuesday was also the day when a friend-of-a-friend updated his website, and this was always a treat.
Stop Trying So Hard
Most of the time I feel I ought to be trying harder. Sometimes, this feeling is correct: there are days when I need to put down the distractions and just get on with it, whatever “it” happens to be.
But often, I have the opposite problem.
What If I Don’t Know What I Love to Do?
Being skilled is a curse.
I don’t mean to sound conceited. (How could I be? One of my very best features is my world-beating humility.) It’s just that…when you can do something, it’s easy to feel like you should.
How to Let Go of an Old Life, or Neil Hughes and the Fiery Death of the Phoenix
Readers of How To Be Everything—Emilie Wapnicks’s guidebook to life—will be familiar with the Phoenix Approach, which describes how people occasionally reinvent themselves like the legendary phoenix rising from its own ashes.
This sounds exciting—and it is. But it turns out burning up and rebirthing out of the remains can hurt.
Making Good Choices
Making good choices is hard. In fact, there’s only one thing I hate more than not having any choice, and that’s having to make one at all.
How to Be Happy By Understanding Instrumental Values
You could make a strong argument that the universe is poorly designed.
Don’t get me wrong, I doubt I could do a better job. But, due to what appears to be a mistake in the grand universal design, nothing is purely, unequivocally good. There’s always a trade-off.
When Every Day Is The Same… Make Each Day A Little Better
Last year, life was tedious. It was like my own personal Groundhog Day, except I actually got older and I barely learned anything. Each day was the same: I awoke, I worked in my little office, I slept.
And repeat.