I’ve always been obsessed with the future. As a child, I dreamed of asking my house robot to fly my car for me. If you’d told me about an impending vast network of connected computers, I’d have been thrilled at the prospect. After all, what results could that possibly produce except uniting humanity through…
Tag: goals
What to Do When Trying New Things is No Longer Exciting
Suffering comes in many flavors, but one of the cruelest is when something we used to love becomes a chore. Disliking something that once brought me joy makes me feel sad, hopeless… and even a little guilty, as if I’m betraying myself somehow.
I feel lucky that, these days, most things I spend…
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.
Can I Be Happy with my Mediocre Life?
Hello! I’m of average height. My clothing is generally unremarkable. My ability to carry objects is middling.
… yeah, I realize this is an unusual way to greet you. I do that sometimes. So I suppose not everything about me is average.
But, statistically speaking, I have to admit that I am…
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.
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.
Why Goals Aren’t Enough—You Need to Set Directions Too
Recently, I caught up with a friend I don’t get to see often enough. Neither of us were in a Major Life Crisis, so we were doing that thing where we swap minor problems back and forth—everything from busyness to boredom to the various ways our ageing bodies are mysteriously misbehaving.
Naturally, we…
What I’m Doing in July 2018
[post status: a brief life update] When Walking on Custard came out in 2015 (aside: I cannot believe that was three years ago! What on EARTH is happening to the flow of time?!), I needed some sort of online home. I considered all kinds of wild, imaginative ideas, like interactive websites which would act as companions to the…