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Jul 2
To deal with the depths, live with clarity.

To achieve breadth, live with congruence.

To deal with the darkness, live with detachment (acceptance).

Jul 3
Nothing you write will be right the first time. Every first draft is disposable.

Yet every one is essential.

Jul 4
Snaefellsnes Beach

There is this 2-mile stretch of black sand beach on the northern coast of the Snaefellsnes peninsula, which jets out from the western side of Iceland. It’s more of a place in time than in space — a place in memory. If I couldn’t remember the feeling of my feet going numb, I would mistake it in my mind for a dream.

• Perched in the clear horizon: the portal to the center of the Earth

Don’t use a full stops after fragments, or at least use them sparingly. Please.

Would you rather stick your reader in bumper-to-bumper traffic ahead of the Holland tunnel, forcing them to stop and read your ad-copy fragment billboards that line the turnpike? Fast wifi. Best cheese. Breast reductions covered by insurance. Or, would you rather set your reader loose on the freeway, coming off cruise control to change lanes and only ever stopping to turn off at scenic viewpoints?

A pice of art does not have a theme in it. The piece of art is of the theme. Like crop circles, the art’s commentary on the theme is revealed only as a whole, from an arial view.

(Explore the difference between symbols (the concrete, the crops), motifs (repeated patterns in the crop circle), and theme (a statement of the whole piece of art about a known concept).

Line edit by sifting the essence from the ornaments.

Jul 6
All the worst parts of capitalism are due not to it but to consumerism. If we didn’t value shit at a premium and saw shit for what it is, then our lives wouldn’t be so governed by whats on store shelves, billboards, and Super Bowl ads.

I’m a free-market democracy, the consumer has complete power, the final say. If you don’t like what you see, don’t buy it.

Jul 8
We rise and fall to the level of our expectations.

(We rise and fall to meet expectations.)

Jul 9
Recalling a dream is no different than recalling a waking experience from memory. They feel like the same mental operation — the details just as clear, the feelings just as pronounced.

That means failing to remember your dream is like failing to recall an experience in waking life. You can multiply your memory, the breadth of your experience by recalling your dreams. While their events have no impact on the world, the contents of dream-memories can prompt insights as well as any waking memory.

You wonder why Canada is economically subordinate to the U.S. Then, you stand beneath skyscrapers that say in big letters “TD Ameritrade,” “CBIC,” and “[American Bank]” and jaywalk while 50 Toronto natives wait at the crosswalk for another two minutes watching two total cars go by.

If you’re not willing to jaywalk on across an empty street, you may not have what it takes to be an economic world power.

Jul 11
Essence and Ornaments

The essence (of a sentence or paragraph) is the core meaning/information/message.

Ornaments improve the reader experience and help them feel and relate to what you’re saying. But with too many ornaments, you risk muddying the meaning.

Jul 12
The moon is so much closer to us than the sun — literally and figuratively. When you watch and listen to the tide come in, that’s the moon hugging the ocean, kissing the shore.

[[The Moon Is a Woman]]

Jul 13
A rock balance is so grounding and brings you so close to nature. You’re using the raw components that’ve emerged from years of natural processes to create something that only humans could possibly create. It’s human order against the canvas of nature’s order, or her chaos.

A rock balance by a river is like if Michelangelo’s David stood in a marble quarry.

Jul 14
Mortality is the source of meaning and morality in life.

What we do only matters because we are aware that we will die, and we only have an interest in doing what is right because 1) we don’t want to endure the consequences of immoral actions, with our finite time; and 2) we don’t want to harm others, who also have finite time.

If we were immortal, nothing would matter, and nothing would be immoral, because every moment would be a baptism, beginning an entirely new, infinite lifetime.

[[Eden Is Hell Too]]

Jul 15
Three (overly simplified) rules for effective facilitation:

1. Be the first to share.

2. Ask thoughtful questions that are provocative but not prescriptive or accusatory.

3. Otherwise, shut up and listen.

My three rules for effective facilitation:

• Be the first to share (to share something real).
• Ask thoughtful follow-ups that keep the conversation on course.
• Otherwise, shut up.

Not all “great people” lead great lives.

That’s what we lose when we get lost in the weeds of perceived gender inequalities. Behind nearly every great man is a great mother. We get caught up on the wrong metrics — money, fame, notoriety. Maybe all the mothers want is to be great mothers. Maybe they don’t want to compete with the “great men” who spend their lives chasing accolades and missing birthdays.

I happily embrace the feminine energy of an inscrutable legacy. I don’t need credit for the great things I do. I don’t care whether I’m remembered. The only thing I care about is becoming the best possible version of myself, while doing right by everyone I interact with along the way.

Make me the Moon, so that I can cuddle with the ocean and make waves that kiss the shore. Don’t let me become the Sun, which sits so distant and apathetic. I want to offer more to the world than the energy from my fusion run-off.

I have no kinship with the men who seek a stone-etched legacy. Strip me of money, fame, and notoriety; leave me with a sense clarity, strong relationships, and meaning. I would die happy.

Jul 16
When I delude myself, I elude my Self.

The heart holds your darlings. The head hunts them.

Jul 17
Once you have a big enough archive, you need to start curating yourself. If what you’re writing is evergreen, then send people to it year-round, year after year.

You can’t expect someone to stumble into and scroll through your archives. Craft a compelling reason for why it’s worth reading now, and send that out. May your archives be read, not just this week’s newsletter.

Jul 19
Before BitCoin, we already had a cryptocurrency. It was social media accounts, where “followers” and “likes” made up the metadata and the social graph was the blockchain.

If you could trade Twitter accounts on the NYSE, it’d be equivalent to trading crypto: for both, there is no underlying asset to determine value. For BitCoin and for Twitter accounts, their value rests solely on the public’s perception of their value.

Jul 24
Success is never absolute; it is always measured relative to our expectations.

Ex:

• Public companies guide down their earnings expectations so that their stock doesn’t plummet off the news of their next quarterly report.

[[Defining Success and Managing Expectations]]

More than creatures of habit, we are creatures of expectation.

[[Defining Success and Managing Expectations]]

Stop measuring success. Start feeling success.

[[Defining Success and Managing Expectations]]

Jul 26
The ultimate sense of security it so feel at home within yourself — even when you are abroad, in uncomfortable, unfamiliar territory. Self-assurance and autonomy are that feeling: I am always at home.

The shortest path to greener grass is to tend to your lawn.

[[The quickest path to greener grass is to tend to your lawn.]]

There is no best way to go, but there is a worst way: to follow.

Jul 28
Strangers aren’t strange. Deep-sea creatures, hairless cats, mycelia, and Mars are strange. Strangers are human.

[[Experiment: Micro-Dose Discomfort]]

The creatures at the bottom of the ocean are strange.

Closed Loops and an Open Circle

There is a solution to every problem in the world. Yet, for the most important questions in your head, there are no answers.

Think of “revision” etymologically — as a prefix and a root: re•vision.

Look again.

Revision means revisiting what you’ve written and looking at in full, to see if the full thing should be different in some way. Revision is structural. It’s an arial view — the forest, not the trees or the leaves.

There are three levels of editing, each one with a narrower scope than the rest:

1. Revision = “Structural Edits”
2. Edit = “Line Edit”
3. Proof = “Proofread”

Jul 29
I have faith but no religion, self-awareness but so salvation.

The best writing — whether fiction or nonfiction — is like a Russian nesting doll. There is a clear, coherent image at every level of granularity. (And each smaller layer unpacks and composes the largest idea.)

Oppenheimer convinced me that we will kill ourselves.

“God is dead, and we have killed him… Must we not become gods ourselves [to be worthy of this crime]?”

Maybe we have become gods; we can bend the world to our will. What happens after you become God? Maybe you “become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

I’ve always idolized Prometheus. But maybe Zeus was right.

[[Oppenheimer convinced me that we will kill ourselves.]]

Capitalism only works when money is merely a metric of value and a means to many ends.

Capitalism fails when money becomes the object of value — when it becomes an end.

[[Stop measuring success. Start feeling success.]]

Jul 30
I write to clarify my thinking, to discover what I believe.

There is a Goldilocks zone of clarity required for me to write about an idea. If I’m too clear on it, I have no motivation to write about it — because I’ve always learned what I need. If the idea isn’t clear enough, I need to think about it more before I write.

The trick is to write while I’m still in the Goldilocks zone, so that other people can benefit from my learning process.

Extending the Icelandic saying:

“If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” If you like the weather, pray.

[[Feeling Fire and Ice]]

When you’re consoling/supporting someone, share your experiences, not your opinions — and never accusations.

[[My three rules for effective facilitation:]]

Jul 31
Stereotypes are not truths. But they are tools.

Weddings evangelize the religion of marriage.