Category: 30 Day Challenge

1. What If I Die First? What if I die before I get a chance to put all of this work together into something meaningful? That thought creeps in every once in a while. My work has been a long-term investment. I needed the ability to write fiction, to write comedy. I needed philosophy and…

1. No More Parties The best time in the world used to be hour two or three of a party when we were in our twenties. That was my time to shine; people were just drunk enough to want to talk about something real, and almost always somebody would find me and we’d have a…

1. And No One Laughed… The number one skill I would have sent myself out into the world with would have been the ability to write comedy. Humor would have been a great place for me to figure my life out in my early twenties. It probably would have made me a decent living as…

1. This Isn’t Even My Final Form My life is dedicated to the constructive use of our imaginations as we face a more and more complex world. Stories that are about people working together are dear to my heart. Growing up, the narrative was very different. Television shows were on at a specific time of…

1. Screw-Ups. “What’s a good apology gift?” I once saw someone ask in a post. The top answer was: “A change in the behavior that warranted an apology.” Most people will not change. Most people are professional mimics of the person they were yesterday. It’s uncommon to find someone who understands the process of change….

1. That’s Not What I Meant! “Writing doesn’t begin when you sit down to write. It’s a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.” -Julia Alvarez This section’s title comes from linguist Deborah Tannen who has written half a dozen books trying to explain to readers that each…

1. (Don’t) Punch The Ball Bearings Years ago I saw a video of monks who practice for years, punching bags of dry beans, to get their hands strong enough to be weapons. After several years of beans, they switch to a bag of gravel. After several years of gravel, they switch to ball bearings. This…

1. Divert All Remaining Energy To Shields! The biggest roadblock to improving our world, is that almost every person who could read this article (or anyone’s articles, or books, or courses etc.) and benefit from it: Is busy. Almost no one is sitting around with a wealth of time and energy and care, waiting for…

1. Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Lindsay Duncan, & Tom Hollander, In A Cute, Cozy Film About Time Travel! If I had the last 12 months to do over again, I think I would be able to be a lot happier than I was. This is the year we moved. We’d been planning to…

1. All The Words It Can Get Its Hands On It lingers with me, but partially because it’s the last words we said to each other. I’ll explain what was said to me, as my longest-running friendship dissolved for the second and final time, but before I say the line, first some framework: “Diplomacy needs…