web novels, poetry, prose.
When you ask people for their opinions on what you should focus on you get varied responses. Some people tell you to niche. Others tell you to have varied taste and dip into a little of everything.
I’m telling you to do both; at different times.
This whole “focus” thing to me is about stages. It’s not as black and white as people make it out to be. Without going into a lot of detail, there are three [main] stages to this “focusing”. Continue Reading →
One thing I learned from dancing is that there are three types of people in this world.
The ones who stress first and stress later aren’t that bad; they just think they are. They stress before doing anything, while doing anything, and even after doing anything. It’s kinda pointless really, all that stressing won’t help much. Continue Reading →
Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2).
“Two fax machines can [at most] make one connection, five can make 10 connections, and twelve can make 66 connections.”
Metcalfe’s law is the only reason I use Twitter, Google Buzz, and Facebook.
Some people argue that they use Twitter and Facebook because of how easy it is to share and receive information. And I agree, but I would rather go into the root of all of this and say people use them because they make it easier to connect.
That’s all. Simply, to connect. And, the faster and easier it is, the better.
What is hope?
The dictionary defines it as
A belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.
The Greeks even have stories about hope (and about the first woman) called “The Creation of Pandora” and “The Opening of the Box”. It’s like a Greek version of “The Creation of Eve” and “The Eating of the Apple”. Briefly, the stories are told like so:
Prometheus was a Titan who really liked humans. He helped them in any way he could. When he saw them shivering at night and eating raw meat, he knew they needed fire. But the gods did not allow man to have fire. They knew that man would misuse it and destroy with it. Prometheus was sure that the good man did with fire would outweigh the bad, so he stole fire from the gods and gave it to man.
Zeus decided to punish Prometheus with trickery. He called Aphrodite to pose while Hephaestus made a clay figure of a woman. Then he brought the statue to life. The gods granted the woman with many gifts including beauty, charm, cunning, wit, eloquence, deceit, skill, and curiosity. Then Zeus gave her a box and told her she was never to open it. Zeus then offered Pandora as a wife to Prometheus.
The Titan wanted her, but he refused because he knew it must be a trick of the gods. Zeus became angry and punished Prometheus. The Titan was chained to a rock. There, a vulture came daily to feed on his flesh. Prometheus’s brother, Epimetheus, accepted Pandora as his wife, and the couple settled down for a happy life. But Pandora always wondered what was in the box Zeus gave her. Finally she couldn’t hold her curiosity down anymore. She opened the box, and from it flew hate, anger, sickness, poverty, and every bad thing in the world. She slammed the lid down and managed to trap the final evil still in the box: hopelessness. So today, even when the going gets tough, every human still has hope.
Do you know something. I hate this story. Not only because I’ve come to realize that men throughout history have desired women and came to resent them for it (look for the hints in the story), but because I think hope, not hopelessness, is also an evil.
Yes, hope is an evil, and probably one of the worst because it deceives us into thinking that it’s not one. Hopelessness on the other hand is a blessing in disguise. Continue Reading →
GOAL : 56 hours sleep for February 2010
ACTUAL: 57 hours sleep for February 2010
You remember all that stuff I said about January being the hardest month (the last week especially)? Well, throw that out the window; February is by far the worst Dymaxion Sleep month I’ve ever had. And again, all the thanks goes to one thing, my social life.
February was filled with showcases, performances, and classes to teach. At first my whole flexible schedule thing worked out, and I finally thought I was able to have a social life and sleep two hours day (ain’t I stupid). I guess my social life has a thing against my sleep habits; I had back to back shows, back to back classes, back to back meetings, and anything else back to back.
I found myself sometimes not skipping one nap but two! If you ever practised polyphasic sleeping, especially Uberman or Dymaxion like me, then you’ll understand the importance of what I just said. Continue Reading →
I read about 21 books per week.
Do you know what will make you happy for the next ten years? How ’bout five? four? three?!
If you’re anything like me, then you’ll truthfully answer no (if you’re not, then you’ll lie and say yes). None of us can predict what will make us happy in the years ahead of us. How could we?! We live in a constantly changing world where we experience new and fascinating things every single day. Look at the divorce rate, a lot of people thought they would be happy forever right? Look at the economy, a lot of people thought they were financially set for life right? In fact, look at yourself right now, did you know yesterday that you would be sitting there reading this? No matter how hard we try to foresee the future, at the end of the day we’re all ‘just human’. Continue Reading →
I am a skeptic.
I am a skeptic in the fact that I don’t believe what a lot of people say until I have tested it out for myself. It’s not their fault, it’s just how I am.
And so far, this has done wonders for me. I’ve been able to do things like sleep two hours per day; live an ubervegan lifestyle and not consume white potatoes, white rice, and sugar for example; go on for two years without watching television (still going), and recently I’ve turned my attention on the issue of being extremely productive.
If you go out looking for ways to be productive you’ll generally find the same information repeated everywhere:
1- Never check email in the morning.
2- Batch similar tasks together.
3- Stop checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn every five minutes.
4- Set a specific end period for a task.
5- Etc., etc., etc..
Now I don’t have an issue with the general message that people are conveying; the message of self improvement and general productivity. However, I don’t (and never will) think that anything worth doing, like self improvement, is easily accomplished by following a few ‘simple’ steps.
Simplicity is one of the most complicated things you’ll ever pursue in life.
But through ‘self-experimentation’ I’ve found a thought provoking idea that’s worth thinking about.
Calmness and productivity are not achieved by how much “time-saving” techniques you apply; they’re better achieved through how many “attention-saving” techniques you practice.
This whole Google Buzz thing has had me thinking about privacy, again. Mainly how it relates to our current, past, and future societies. Through it all, I’ve come up with one conclusion; we don’t want privacy. Jonathan Franzen said it best:
“Americans care about privacy mainly in the abstract.”
Yup, ladies and gentleman, if you say you want privacy you’re bullshitting yourself, and only yourself. So, back up, put down your “privacy or death” signs, and do something more productive with your time. Continue Reading →
Bloggers are better than teachers.
And you know what? I mean it. I truly believe bloggers are better than teachers. Just think about it. Bloggers continually teach others through their blog posts for free. We don’t ask them to do it, we don’t pay them to do it, they just do.
Bloggers can’t go around holding a strike here and there whenever they think they’re not getting paid enough (what’s below $0.00/hour?… joking), they can’t go whining to their spouse that someone is not matching their 401(k) or 403(b), they don’t have compensation plans, or health plans. They continue to provide new information for free out of pure passion. Something a lot of teachers are missing. Continue Reading →