30
thew.me
thew.me
No story survives contact with the players: they will always outsmart you and come up with a novel solution to your best-designed traps. You must learn to be gracious when this happens and improvise a satisfactory result. Characters on a page are a little easier to control, but will also push back when you write them.
My parents adopted two of my brothers. People refer to adoption by saying they're "not really your" kids: I am not sure why. They really and truly are my brothers.
You cannot choose your immediate emotional responses but you can choose your overall outlook. Your overall outlook colors those emotional responses; a peaceful mind handles stresses and uncertainties much better than an anxious one. Thus, don't assume that there exists only one perspective on truth, but search for the perspectives that make life easier.
The now is all there is. You can't daydream your life away in the past or the future. In that sense: really experience this moment. However, all of your ideas have been done better by geniuses in days long past, in histories which did not become our particular present. In that sense, the present is overwhelming you with details which are not essential. So don't forget to practice history and have an outlook on the future. Just don't live in those places.
If I ever find myself frustrated with someone else, it's usually because they are doing something which I myself am guilty of doing. I think we often get mad at our own sins seen in other peoples' acts. Adopt this stranger as your brother, and that stranger as your sister.
You have a thousand bad _____ which must come out before the good work will start coming out. Fill that blank in with paintings, songs, poems, programs, thrown frisbees, approaches to management, whatever. Be skeptical when anyone speaks of talent.
I've changed my mind about this one because of a service called Timehop. Every day it grabs any photos, social media updates etc. from 1 year prior and stuffs them in an email (or push notification in the app). It's a great way to remember, and appreciate, what you've been doing and where you've been. A shitty little photo from a concert will take 15 seconds from "the moment" but give me that enjoyment back down the line, sometimes tenfold. (Since the additional marginal enjoyment of those 15 seconds is small, but the marginal enjoyment of reliving that experience a year later is much larger.)
Overall though I really liked the post.
If there's one development in concert-going over the past decade that I really loathe, more than the consolidation of ticket sellers, the subsequent rise in ticket prices, the steady increase in the cost of beer, my own age and sore back after 4 hours, everyone else's insistence that they need to photograph (or worse, VIDEO) a show has got to be the top of the list.
And while I appreciate your edge case here that Timehop provides, most of those photographs are just being uploaded to Facebook to show off how vastly interesting they are to everyone who's not there. Cultivating other people's FOMO.
Ok, enough of my old man kvetching. I genuinely do think it's cool that Timehop let's you relive those little moments as much as I genuinely regret the loss of my enjoyment of living those moments at the time they are happening.
Too true. I guess it's also a bit of a tragedy of the commons. I don't feel like my 15 seconds of keeping a phone in the air is all that problematic for those around me - but it quickly gets out of hand when the entire audience feels the same way. (And doing it much longer/more frequently than just a single snap once or twice a show.)
Something I've learned:
Everyone is the main character in their own story. Once you understand this, peoples' motivations make a lot more sense. Let people be their story's hero. Be your story's hero. But don't be other story's antagonist. Try to be the ally in other stories. You will end up with a lot of trusty sidekicks.
Prime example: If given the opportunity, people will surprise you. Leaving yourself open to these surprises is a kind of risk. Taking that risk is how you believe in people.
Yes, they certainly will, and yes, it's most definitely a risk. Unfortunately, that surprise, when it does come, is rarely good. Also, taking that risk too often can lead you to believe in people if you're lucky in your acquaintances; it can just as easily (if not more so) lead to the exact opposite if you're unlucky.
A lot of good points in this post, but on this we must respectfully disagree. Yours truly, an almost-36-year-old with Miller High Life by the gallon.
"Let people leave your life when they need to. Leave a light on for them in case they ever decide to return. Collect those lights and regularly remember why you keep them lit."
> Every photograph and video you take at a concert or other live event will probably be terrible. Just enjoy the moments, don’t feel pressured to document them.
I would also add that while singing along at concerts certainly has its time and place, actually listening to the artist singing is better.
Also, I was fairly miffed when I went to a concert a while back and had the singer drowned out by five guys singing along really loudly right beside me. (We were quite far back from the stage.) It's great that they're having a good time, but they probably could have had just as good a time going to karaoke or something. Although you would lose the feeling of "being there".
Depends on the venue and the artist. There are some artists that I like to see live because they're good at creating high-energy environment, and the endorphin release I get from singing along is part of that high-energy environment. Other musical performances I attend based on my appreciation of the music and less the act. Generally speaking, if I don't have a seat, there's a good chance that I'm going to spend most of the set singing.
If you're thirty it's time to pick a dark liquor and drink it straight. You can still drink beer, and yes you should have moved beyond beers that don't advertise what type of beer they are by now, but when out with other adult company drink a dark liquor (but no more than 2 or 3 drinks, "getting wasted" is not something adults do).
Give me a good craft beer, a nice gin, or a good bottle of red any day of the week.
My life isn't missing anything by having a nice martini or port while everyone else has a Glenfiddick.
That said, I don't think your lemon juice example holds up - many of the most enjoyable things in life don't come naturally, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to acquire the taste for those things. Great alcohol, great food, great sex - most are not a "natural" taste growing up, and you can't fully enjoy them until you've acquired that taste. Having a dark drink on the rocks or with a splash of soda is definitely a great way to acquire the taste - and unlike lemon juice it's actually very enjoyable.
As good ol' Doc Holliday said: "In vino veritas"
My favorite drink is Diet Coke with peach schnapps.
I turned 30 ten days ago and have thought about this one a lot recently. It's an interesting transition, because when you enter your 20's you typically have no stuff and thus everything is valuable. Your parents old couch, your roommate's spatula he left behind when he moved out, ect. Getting out of that mentality took me longer then it should.
My prime example is a guitar. Once you move from the starter knockoffs, you should start investigating the more expensive models to find what you like. Don't wander through life buying mediocre.
(This isn't to say you can't find more affordable quality or satisfaction, but at some point may wish you had ponied up for that PRS or Gibson after having purchased numerous used guitars whose sum exceeds the value of what you really wanted :)
I've tried, and tried and tired, but I can't do mornings. I hate them for it.
I totally agree with this. The people I admire the most are the kindest people I have ever met. I really aspire to be one of them.
I would add exercise to the list for sure. The energy and cognitive boost absolutely required to be at your best as you age.
Don't regret anything you did. You did it in good faith (see above) with what information & resources you had at the time.
The things you'll regret are the things you didn't do. I might not be proud of some of the things I did do, but I don't regret them. Never regret something you did; at one point its what you wanted.
At times in my life I've behaved like a completely immoral asshole. Are you seriously suggesting that I shouldn't regret these times, just because I wanted to be an immoral asshole at the time?
If you act like an evil bastard, you most certainly should regret it. You were bad, and you should feel bad. That feeling bad is part of what keeps you from doing it again.
Also, it's not unsolicited when people are voluntarily reading what he wrote.