Newsletter

Seeing as you folks are reading my newsletter, I know I am preaching to the choir, but this article, summarises my thoughts on social media excellently! from the Art of Manliness, At first, it wasn’t so bad. But then I started noticing that I wasn’t seeing all the updates from pages I followed on Facebook. Come to find out, Facebook started changing their News Feed algorithm so that only the content Facebook thought you’d be interested in the most showed up in your feed. Facebook claimed they were just trying to help users sift through the firehose of information being blasted at them. Critics argued Facebook was just trying to keep people more engaged on Facebook because that makes money for Facebook. And that they were trying to force pages to pay money for their content to show up in the News Feeds they had once shown up in organically. I was just ticked that I wasn’t seeing all the stuff from Facebook pages that I had deliberately opted into getting updates from. ...

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.” ...

Lots of fantasy, a lovely book of poetry, a beautifully written nonfiction book. All this, on July’s list of books :) July Love Looks Pretty on You, Lang Leav (must read. in my imagination, leav is a talented younger sister, who has been through a lot more and writes her advice just for me, in her poems) Working, Robert Caro (if you haven’t read the Power Broker, you should if you haven’t read the Lyndon volumes, you should this book is Caro’s account of the work, that went into those works. the ceaseless toil, the thankless years, the people and their stories Caro is Caro, master of the craft. There are only a few explicit lessons here. but plenty if you care enough to read between the lines plenty if you make this an annual read, like i will) ...

Last weeks post seemed to have hit a nerve. Most of you seem to have opened it rather quickly. And then a few of you, complained! Rather quickly. “All this is well and good, but I want to say No, to other people! ” Well, I can help you with that too! Eric Barker, of Barking Up the Wrong Tree fame, has an excellent post on how to do just that! This is how we do it. ...

Another James Clear pick today. How do you make it easier on yourself to say no? To stick to that diet? To stop goofing off and buckle down and study or work? Because, The ability to overcome temptation and effectively say no is critical not only to your physical health, but also to maintaining a sense of well–being and control in your mental health. We do this, by assertion rather than denying ourselves day in and day out. Not that I can’t do this. Just that I don’t. I am a person who eats good food. So I don’t eat junk food. I am a person who wants to be a programmer. So I don’t browse the web aimlessly all day. I am a person who wants his mind in his control all the time. So I don’t drink. ...

Or how do you actually go do anything else you committed to do for yourself? I always got confused on what to do when the going got tough and life happened and my goals then got waylaid. Other than feeling lost and giving up on projects and promising to do better tomorrow, or next time? (which took a looooooong time to come) What could I do? James Clear offers a lovely heuristic, that I have been applying to my writing since the year began. (along with Seth’s advice to queue things up) ...