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May, 2023
May 31 Modern media is a carousel. You either ride it up and down, round and round, like a child. Or you sit across the way and watch it spin, but only when you look up from a page of a well-written book.
May 29 The best restaurants specialize in one meal of the day. The most successful restaurants are open all-day long. The most sustainable restaurants offer two meals: either lunch and dinner or breakfast and lunch.
Decide whether you want to be a super successful specialist or not as successful but with more talents, interests, and time. But you do, don't serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The Moon Is a Woman
The moon is undoubtedly feminine, the Sun masculine.
The Sun gets all the credit and sits at the very center of our solar system, but the moon... she is the one who cares for us, comforts us. She is tidally locked, always facing us, always aware of how we are and what we need. She orbits us, while the Sun sits — distant, idle, and apathetic — and gives us his fusion run-off.
It is around the Sun that we physically revolve, but it is by lunar cycles that we emotionally flow. The moon is Earth's companion.
— — Notes
- Waves crashing on the shore
- Guiding explorers across the land at night
- Denoting the passage of time, beyond the time of day
- Mother Earth and the moon are like a mother and a grandmother, respectfully
- The moon is mysterious: we only ever see one side of her. The Sun concealed himself by putting off a blinding light, but within a year, he is on display from every angle.
May 28 Look deeply into a human eye and tell me that we don't have worlds within us. What is a pupil if not a black hole? What is an iris if not an event horizon?
And what gravity eyes have! We are drawn to them, drawn into them because of what's behind them: entire worlds.
May 27
Riff on Cliches
Riff on cliches. They're a hack to crisp, economic language. You can use all the associations of the cliche and then subvert the actual meaning with your own version or twist.
Don't just play the tired four-chord pop progression. Make your own jazzy remix of the familiar tune, and benefit from all the associations to convey a fresh idea, dense with meaning.
(Reference Scary Pockets)
May 23
Write Like a Coffee Shop
Write like a coffee shop. Become part of someone's routine. Make your ideas so infections that they are a source of energy for someone's day, or someone's week.
I am possibly a decade from having 1,000 paid newsletter subscribers (figure $60k/yr at $5/mo). But how many people spend an average of $3 on coffee per day?!
What's the coffee shops' secret? They become part of your routine — reliable, simple. And they create a place you want to be, a place you like visiting — comfortable, familiar, communal.
If you can write reliably, and if people know what to expect when they visit your shop, they may just make you part of their routine and stop in to join your community.
May 17 At my favorite coffee shop, I have to wait at least 10 minutes before I can drink my tea. And that time is a gift. Every few minutes, I'll smell it and experience it in that way, detecting whether it's ready for my tongue.
I always want to live in a way where I'm not in a rush to drink my tea. I want to always live a life where I smell my tea first and savor every morsel of flavored vapor.
Riff on cliches. They're a hack to crisp, economic language. You can use all the associations of the cliche and then subvert the actual meaning with your own version or twist.
Today is heavy because it's all you're guaranteed. Today is light because you have the freedom to determine tomorrow.
May 14 I hate the term "progressive" because it suggest that they're the only people in favor of progress. We all want progress. We just have different ideas about how to get there.
May 10 Imagine how our perceptions of the world and the constructs of our society would be different if, when we looked to the sky, we saw two stars orbiting each other in harmony, at the center of our solar system.
Maybe we'd be less selfish, more compatible, and more romantic. Maybe our lives would be more sustainable and we'd be less interested in consumption and fleeting pleasures. Binary stars exist with each other but not for each other. They collaborate to create something bigger than them both: their relationship.
May 9 I take pride in being misunderstood. It's evidence of a level of uncertainty, mystery, and adventure in my life that prevents who I am from being simplified to a tagline.
— —
I take pride in being misunderstood. It's not evidence of a lack of eloquence but of a level of complexity and uncertainty in my life that prevents who I am or what I do from becoming a slogan (tagline).
May 8 The liberal asks what's possible. The conservative asks what's practical. Without the one, we'd stick to the status quo, and without the other, we'd have no idea where to go.
May 7 Is there a belief or idea that helps you accept the hard truth of your mortality? What helps you feel more comfortable with the reality of death?
Dreams offer me some comfort.
Every night, when my body stops moving and when I lose consciousness, I have dreams, which are rich, vivid experiences that are concealed from my waking mind.
I'm not saying that I believe that death is like a dream. But the fact that I dream leaves the question open; I will never know what happens after I die, just as I don't know what will happen when I go to sleep at night.
My Summer Solstice
Summer doesn't start until I catch a firefly.
May 6 Concision ≠ Brevity
Concision means dense, economic, bang-for-your-buck prose.
Brevity means sacrificing accuracy and clarity to lower the barrier to entry.
May 4
Parts of Speech Ranked by Meaning-Density
- Verbs
- Nouns
- Adjectives
- Prepositions
- Adverbs
- Conjunctions
- Pronouns
- Verbs are the only words that can be complete sentences. (An imperative, with the implied subject of "you.")
- Adverbs often signal that you need a more descriptive, or a stronger, verb. They don't do much else.
The creatures of the air and sea map to the masculine and feminine energies, respectively.
May 2 No one has to fire Chekhov's gun. Your reader just has to wonder whether someone will fire it.
"In dramatic literature, this technique inherits the name Chekhov’s Gun. In a letter he penned in 1889, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov wrote: “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”" (Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer)
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