Pro tip: be really good at accepting people’s help.

As humans we can be fiercely independent critters but pride is irrelevant and unuseful.

Wanna know why? You know that good feeling you get when you yourself extend your hand to help, for no other reason than you’re a good person? That warm fuzzy you get when we make the world not all about us?

Don’t deprive someone else offering help that same kind of warm fuzzy feeling. It’ll make them feel good and very well may be the best part of their day.

PS- my dictionaries are telling me that “unuseful” is not a word. They can go fuck themselves. 👍

#protip #helpwanted

Taking a good photo and making it better.

1- I took the original as I was walking down to the garage on my way to work.

2- It’s not bad but I didn’t like the bottom greenery, it’s too big and blurry. The left side was also too busy so I cropped the whole photo tighter.

3- The garage’s gutter cluttered the picture, too, so I nuked it.

4- The colors were okay but they felt bland. I dropped the Shadows down to -0.35 and bumped the Saturation up to 0.21. Now I love it!

5- I did this all in Photos for macOS in less than 5 minutes. To remove the gutter I used the Pixelmator Retouch extension with the default settings. Yes, your whole life has been a lie.

6- Life is all about making things less complicated, less cluttered. Noise just distracts me from what’s important.

#photos #raindrops #protip

Less choice means more happiness.

#protip

Something like this is what I’m referring to: you’re pulled over along the side of the street at a mailbox, depositing your envelopes on a Wednesday morning.

It’s not Christmas card season but you still got bills to pay or ballots to send. You’re lost in your own world of stamps and bubble wrapped packages. Maybe the taste of envelope glue is still fresh in your mouth. Maybe not.

Regardless, then you pull out into traffic without signaling, without yielding, without common sense. Then you cut across two lanes without haste and turn right.

All of that. That’s being a moron.

It’s more than wearing blinders and seeing only your direct path. It’s putting a bag over your whole head and wandering around life clueless, bumping into people and obstacles like you’re at Funway on Saturday night.

Other people will be annoyed when you’re acting like a moron. Expect that. Underline it in your mind. You may even get the horn.

My point is, we’re all gonna act like morons. It’s what we do. I won’t hold it against you.

But when you see yourself, feel yourself acting like a moron, stop.

Don’t maintain. Don’t forge or plow ahead. Pull up life’s emergency brake, take the bag off, and wave meekly yet happily in complete defeat.

Hang your head if you must. Because people just want to know that you know that you were indeed being a moron.

The key is to stop though. Just stop. 👍

#protip

I have ideas all the time, things I wanna do around the house or to my truck, or books I wanna write or pictures I wanna take. If it’s a really good idea I’ll get excited about it. If I’m really excited with my idea, I’ll actually do it. If I have other things going on, I’ll adjust my schedule to turn my idea into a real thing.

If I can’t budge my schedule because I have other priorities, then I forget about my idea. I don’t write it down. I’ll just let it die in my head. Because if my idea is really good I’ll have the same idea again. If my idea wasn’t that good, it probably deserves to fade away.

When my ideas die, I don’t feed bad or feel like I’m not enough. I don’t get discouraged because I don’t have the time or whatever. I just let the ideas go. I can’t do everything I ever wanted and that’s okay.

And that one idea, if I didn’t have enough passion or drive to make it happen, isn’t going to change the world. It’s not gonna make me a whole person nor is it gonna be a silver bullet to end world hunger or a golden chalice to bring about world peace.

I may have read the gist of all of this somewhere else. I can’t remember. But letting ideas go is an idea I had (mine or not) worth sharing.

#protip

What you need to know today:

Be really good at throwing stuff away.

#protip

I’m sitting in the McDonalds on State Street in Geneva. Because Egg McMuffins.

This is also the place where Maggie’s mom and I told Maggie that we were getting divorced. It was the most painful conversation I’ve ever had. The most painful day ever. Watching her little face as the conversation went on.

It wasn’t a long conversation but it lasted forever to me.

A therapist said to do it in public so the hurt would live outside the home. Sometimes breakups really better are in public.

And as we were driving back to the house I thought to myself, “I’m never going to that fucking place again.”

But here I am. Cuppa years later.

Because one of the best things I learned was to “give it some time.”

For as long as it takes. Don’t make up your mind. Just put it down. Don’t rush healing. Let the pain fade. It will if we don’t force its end.

#photos #protip

My favorite Freakonomomics^[1] podcasts is from a few years back. It’s beautifying titled, The Upside of Quitting.

It’s also the only podcast I’ve listened to more than twice. The episode is one of those things that changed everything. It’s become part of my spiritual condition. The notion that I can quit has become part of who I am.

Winners never quit.

That’s all fine and good if we play football but not if we’re dying inside because our life is horrible.

- If we’re in a relationship where we feel suffocated or maybe where we feel lonely, we need to quit. Get out of it. Things aren’t going to change or get any better just because we’re sad.

- If we go to a job every morning and feel miserable, we need to quit. Desperately pleading to the almighty or flat out ignoring the crisis won’t make our misery stop. It’ll be on our minds tomorrow. Before we even get to work.

- If mowing our yard is simply dreadful, we need to quit cutting the grass and get somebody else to do it. Spending a Saturday with yardwork nagging at our soul will only end up ruining our whole weekend.

Suffering isn’t a badge of honor or something to be proud of. It’s bullshit. And we won’t sleep any better until we quit believing that anything but first place will do.

There’s something to be said for loyalty and persistence for sure but quitting when the situation demands it is something that’s often overlooked or ignored altogether. Sometimes it’s easier to just stay stuck than revolt. But staying stuck is not something we’ll ever want to tell our grandkids about. Wouldn’t it be grand to tell them the story of the great revolution that made the world magical again?

Quitting is decisive and final.

It’s not fruity, metaphysical, or abstract. It’s concrete and effective. We feel release when we quit. All the hurt will stop.

Sometimes it takes time to quit, especially when we’re in the middle of something big or entangled in something painful. When I stopped drinking it took months.^[2] Getting ready and absolutely wanting to quit was most of the battle.

The road we walk is ours. Our future is up to us and not our partner, not our boss, and not the dandelions. We don’t have to be along for just their ride.

And we have to firmly believe that we deserve nice things as well. I’m telling you now that you do. The moon and the stars are all hanging in the sky just for you.

#photos #flowers #protip #freakonomics

1. Not familiar with Freakonomics? Don’t worry, it’s hosted by Steven D. Levitt, who is… “not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head.” Find it on your local NPR station. ↑

2. I started wanting to quit drinking in June 2011. Needed to in August. Should have in December. And finally did in February. ↑

If you use a micro-framework for your code then you get a micro amount of functionality.

#devhell #protip

The goal of brushing my teeth isn’t to get my teeth brushed.

It’s to brush my teeth.

#protip