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On Vacation, All by Myself – New York Times

Charming and slightly sad story of a 15 year old who decides that he needs a vacation. I just love that he takes off to savor the freedom of doing what he wants, but is outraged by the idea that he might be running away. Even at 15, it is quite clear in his head that he simply needed a vacation – and one that wasn’t being directed by other people. I totally remember feeling what he describes. I’ll be looking forward to reading Pete Jordan’s new book, “Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States.”

NYTPeteJordan

NOT knowing what I’d eat — or if I’d be eating at all — I decided to play it safe and dumped two dozen red multivitamins in a sandwich baggie. I stuffed the baggie into the pocket of my corduroys.

Then I pulled on my coat, grabbed a rolled-up sleeping bag and the brown paper bag that contained my clothes, and left the note on the kitchen table.

As I slipped out the front door of my family’s small San Francisco apartment, I shouted “See ya later!” to my brother Joe — the only person at home. From the living room, he called back, “Where ya going?”

“Out,” I said, then closed the door behind me.

I was 15 years old, and it was August. The note on the table read: “I’m taking a vacation. I’ll call when I get there. Be back in about three weeks.”

At the crummy summer camp I’d attended when I was younger, every hour of the day was scheduled, which I didn’t find very relaxing, and on family vacations — where a consensus was needed to do anything — I always had to tag along after my four older siblings. I rarely got to do what I wanted.

So I caught the streetcar to downtown and boarded a Greyhound bus.

I rode five hours, out from under San Francisco’s persistent fog cover, to Lake Tahoe — which had what I considered to be the two key ingredients of an ideal holiday locale: fogless weather and miniature golf. Upon arrival, I folded my coat under my arm and called home, collect. My mom sounded worried.

“Are you coming back?”

“Of course I am,” I said.

“You’re not running away?”

“Running away?” I was insulted. Living in Haight-Ashbury — a magnet for runaways — I’d met plenty of teens who’d fled home to live on our streets and sleep in our parks. This sojourn usually lasted only until a squad car pulled up to the corner where my friends and I were hanging out. The cops would pluck the runaway from the crowd, stick him in the car and ship him back to his suburb/state of origin. It was exactly that environment that I needed a break from.

“I just wanted to get away for a while,” I told my mom.

“Well,” she replied, “just keep in touch then.”

After buying and applying some sunblock, I hiked straight to the miniature golf course. As far as I knew, it was the closest one to San Francisco. Continue reading →

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100 Tips to Improve Your Life

I think this list is pretty good. The link at the bottom leads you to all the details.

While not specific to creative professionals, the list includes tips that are likely to boost overall effectiveness and the impact we are able to make with our ideas. For this reason, we re-post the list and encourage you to browse…

1. Find Inner Serenity by Making it Easier to Find Your Keys. For most people, getting control of clutter brings a greater sense of calm and decreased frustration.
2. Surround Yourself With Progress. When you complete a list of action steps, your instinct might be to throw the list away. After all, the work is completed! However, some creative professional teams take a different approach; they relish their progress. Some go so far as surrounding themselves with it.
3. Empty Your Inbox in 30 Seconds. Is your inbox filled with thousands and thousands of unread messages? Before you give up hope, there’s an instant way to clear your inbox of old emails in less than 30 seconds.
4. Instantly Build Self Confidence. These tips will get you riding high in no time.
5. Reduce Your Trash To Almost Zero. Follow the No Impact Man experiment to reduce our trash as close as we can to zero.
6. Feel like a million bucks for cheap. Feel healthier and more energized right away without spending a fortune.
7. End Laundry Chaos. More than 20 tips to help you keep your laundry chaos to a minimum.
8. Learn the Secrets of the Super-Organized. A few simple habits keep clutter and chaos at bay.
9. Check Email Once a Day … or Once a Week. Simple tips that will reduce interruption and increase your productivity.
10. Become an Early Riser. 10 benefits of rising early, and some practical tips on how to do it.
11. Learn Lessons from Google About Self-Image. How you think of yourself greatly affects how successful you can be. Google has got self-image down to a science.
12. Make a Good First Impression. Research shows that people decide what kind of relationship they want with you in the first ten minutes of a meeting, so making a good first impression really matters.
13. Know the Hype Behind Bottled Water. Have you ever stopped to think about just how incredibly odd it is to buy bottled water?
14. Leave Work at Work. Want more time for your family or personal life? Here’s how not to think about your job 24/7.
15. Create a Landing Strip to Become Organized. We come from work exhausted, often carrying our work bags, groceries, and the mail. A landing strip will help you avoid disorganization from the time you get home.
16. Understand Time to Increase Return on Investment. Time is your most valuable resource. Understanding these ideas will help you make optimal decisions.
17. Give Your RÈsumÈ a Face Lift. Even if you can’t hire a fancy designer and are stuck with Microsoft Word, a few tweaks can turn your blasÈ rÈsumÈ into an elegant and functional showpiece.
18. Boost Your Energy Level. Feeling energetic is a key to happiness and to self-esteem, so take steps to keep your energy high.
19. Actually Execute Your To-Do List. Many productivity systems will tell you how to organize your tasks, but what happens if you don’t feel like doing them?
20. Keep Your Desk Clean and Tidy. Do you spend waste more and more time looking for lost items instead of being the brilliant creative person that you are? Here’s how to get your desk clean, clutter-free, and keep it that way for good.
21. Learn the Truth About Baby Carrots. Baby carrots not really young carrots! They are also less nutritious and less flavorful than regular carrots.
22. Try Quick and (Almost) Painless Ways to Kill Distractions. Are you spending more time dealing with emails, IMs, phone calls, and random stray files than actually working? Here are ten actions you can do right now to kill distractions and get back to work.
23. Reduce Your Carbon Emissions. The most important lifestyle changes you can make to reduce your carbon emissions are listed here.
24. Put the Action Method Into Practice. After a couple years of studying how creative people stay organized, we developed a simple and easily customized method for managing projects. A good portion of 2006 was spent putting the Action Method into practice.
25. Gently End Procrastination. Need an easy way to remind you when you should be working and when you should be playing? Try using teaming up Flextime with Growl. Here’s how.
26. Read Your RSS Feeds Faster and More Productively. Four simple tips for reducing the time you spend on reading feeds.
27. Use Catchphrases to Change the Way You Think. By keeping certain ideas active and accessible through review and repetition ñ whether itís ìSay yes,î ìFake it ëtill you feel it,î or ìPeople succeed in groupsî ñ you can shape the way you think.
28. Photograph Your Mementos to Free Up Clutter. Taking digital photos of your mementos can get rid of clutter, free-up storage space, and provide you with a simple way to walk down memory lane.
29. Save Trees With Ease. Want to avoid all the paper towels, paper napkins and other tree-killing stuff there’s no need to use? Read here.
30. Organize Your Cluttered Desktop and Regain Your Sanity. Is your desktop littered with zillions of random files and folders often litter my desktop. Learn how 5 ordinary folders can keep your desktop immaculate.
31. Eat Slower. Why eating slower is better for your health, your sanity, your digestion, and more.
32. Maximize Your Lunch Hour. Your lunch hour should be the least “productive” moment in your day. If it lasts a mere 20 minutes-or just doesn’t exist anymore-here’s how to turn it around and make it joyful.
33. Increase Workplace Productivity by Not Being a Jerk. You get more flies with honey, as the saying goes. This is a brief outline for how to work and play well with your coworkers (and get more done).
34. Find Cheap Gas Instantly. If soaring gas prices are draining your wallet dry, here’s five ways to find cheap(er) gas anywhere.
35. Find Your Purpose. We’re all searching for our purpose. It seems tempting that having it appear by divine intervention would be great. Maybe not.
36. Make a GTD System for about $20. Putting together a functional GTD system for the price of a week’s worth of Starbucks.
37. Avoid costly DIY mistakes. You can end up costing yourself more in the long run if you don’t watch out for these mistakes.
38. Think About Whether You Can Afford NOT to Pursue Your Dreams. Pursuing dreams is crucial, even when it means taking a hit or entering financial uncertainty.
39. Plan for Success. Waiting for your ship to come in is a waste of time.
40. Improve Your Mind by Reading the Classics. How to use the wisdom of the classics to become a better writer, thinker, and speaker.
41. Break Habits of Highly Ineffective Emailing. A list of what not to do when emailing, avoiding these habits will take you a long way toward better, more productive email.
42. Make Your PDA Green. If you’re worried about e-waste and the toxins produced by burying and burning old cell phones and PDAs, you may want to try my green hipster’s pda.
43. Learn to Go From Solo to Successful Collaboration. Self-starters are often successful doing everything themselves. However, when forced to grow beyond the one gal/guy-show, many creative professionals are unable to take the leap from a solo success to a successful collaboration.
44. Create a Morning Routine. Developing a routine in the morning could lead to greater sanity and happiness, and achieving your goals.
45. Learn How to Survive a Road Trip. Road trips always begin on a high note, but by the end even Mother Teresa would be willing to shove her grandmother out of the car. Here are 9 tips to help keep you sane and happy on any road trip.
46. Share To Make Ideas Happen. The philosophy to “share ideas liberally” defies the age-old instinct to keep ideas secret. However, the creative person’s tendency to jump from idea-to-idea-to-idea causes most ideas to die in isolation. Creative professionals should take every opportunity to communicate new ideas broadly, seek feedback, and develop a sense of accountability.
47. Use Space Under Stairs for More Storage. Very cool under-stair storage where each step is a drawer.
48. Know What’s In Store If You Have a Toddler. New parents often wonder what’s in store for them once their kid is able to move around on their own. Here’s what you can expect.
49. Work in Multiple Positives. These hyper-productive activities will benefit you in multiple ways at once.
50. Use a Super Slim Wallet. It’s time to shrink down that backbreaking Constanza wallet. Here are 8 ways to radically slim down your wallet.
51. Advertise Action to Yourself. We live in a world of choices. When we buy, we have to make a choice between varieties, brands, and sizes. Similarly, when we work we have to decide what to focus on and how to use our time. While prioritization helps us focus, our minds still have the tendency to wander. We are most likely to focus on whatever catches our eye. Along the lines of “out of sight, out of mind” we learn that “right before our eyes, actions thrive.”
52. Gain Muscle in Minimal Time. How Tim Ferriss gained 34 pounds of muscle in 4 weeks.
53. Choose Living Over Sleeping Sometimes. Despite the importance of healthy sleep habits, there are times when it’s good to throw caution to the wind and invest in your life in other ways.
54. Make Reference Items Helpful. We spend too much time discussing, storing, and organizing notes. References are only valuable if you refer to them. Even with a well-organized system for managing references (either digital or paper), how often do we actually use them? How do we make reference items helpful?
55. Eat Sustainably. If you are interested in how to eat sustainably, read about it here.
56. Lose Weight Without Exercise. How to lose 20 lbs. of fat in 30 days with a sensible diet.
57. Find Calm & Sanity Through the Environment. If you’ve ever thought a more environmental life might also be a calmer, saner life, you’re right.
58. Learn About the Successfully Self-Employed. Is freelancing for suckers? Are you already an expert? This series explores the levels of the free-agent — and how to understand what each one means.
59. Learn GTD the Easy Way. An online primer of all the chapters of Getting Things Done.
60. Set Goals So You Actually Accomplish Them. Setting goals is hard. Following through is even harder. Using a framework that builds on your personal view of the world can make the process easier. This series helps outline how.
61. Reduce Gamer Clutter. If you are a gamer, these are a number of suggestions to help you keep your entertainment system under control and the gaming clutter to a minimum.
62. Stick to a Schedule of Regular Exercise. Exercising regularly boosts moodóright awayóand also makes it easier to sleep, keeps your weight down, and gives you energy.
63. Cut Back on Computer Cables. Follow these 8 simple steps to get rid of the birds’ nest of cables behind your computer.
64. Pay the Price to Be an Entrepreneur. The price of access can be steep, but once you’re flying down the road — it’s well worth it.
65. Single-task. Increase your productivity by learning not to multi-task.
66. Get Outside Your Comfort Zone. Comfort isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
67. Drop Ideas That Fail. Ideas are a commodity. Being able to execute them well is what creates success. Hanging on to an idea, even after it his proven to be ineffective is the downfall of many aspiring entrepreneurs.
68. Learn to Calculate Risk. Risk and reward go hand-in-hand. Knowing what to expect can help reduce risk and shape your reality.
69. Don’t Settle for Just One Path. Variety is the spice of life. So why do you have to be just one thing when you grow up?
70. Get Rid of Paper Clutter. A four-part series dedicated to reducing the paper clutter in your home.
71. Set Up Action Areas. Boxes need to be mailed, errands need to be run, cookies need to be eaten, orders need to be fulfilled, but by whom? Whoever has a chance! The Behance team got tired of limiting our action steps to just an area on paper – why not make “action areas” out of physical space?
72. Find Hidden Clutter. Ten places to start looking for hidden clutter in your home.
73. Get a Promotion. 20 tips that landed the writer an IT promotion — most could be used in any field.
74. Dispose of Old Electronics. The best ways to dispose of old electronics.
75. Increase Your Intelligence. A list of 5 simple activities that will boost your brain power.
76. Present Yourself. Creative achievements seldom happen in isolation. A big part of making ideas happen is controlling how you come across to others. Of course, the Creative’s tendency is to say, “who gives a crap what other people think.” While there is merit in never compromising oneself for the sake of another’s opinion, creative professionals need to make an effort to be understood. You need to present yourself effectively to engage others and get the support (and the business) you need to push ideas forward.
77. Follow George Orwell’s Rules for Effective Writing. Becoming a better writer will create better career opportunities and increase productivity.
78. Lay Your Energy Line. Creative teams juggle multiple projects at once. The constant streams of ideas lead to more ideas. As energy is spread across projects like peanut butter, prioritization is all but lost. Energy Lines are a simple way to prioritize and use design to guide creative energy.
79. Focus on Continuous Improvement. By mastering the optimization mentality you can become an expert in your chosen field.
80. Motivate Yourself. This post will teach you to recognize the primary motivation killers and how to beat them.
81. Become a More Light-hearted Parent. We all want a peaceful, happy atmosphere at home ñ and you canít nag and yell your way there.
82. Give Up Nagging. Itís no fun to nag, and itís no fun to be nagged. Give your relationship a lift by putting an end to the irritating nag cycle.
83. Learn to Sacrifice Temporary Pressure for Long-term Goals. All success requires sacrifice. Do you have the determination to endure temporary punishment to reach your dreams?
84. Learn the GTD Workflow. An excellent into to GTD for the novice, a great refresher for the experienced.
85. Use the Power of 10 Minutes. 10 Minutes can be even more productive amount of time than 50 minutes, if used properly.
86. Triple Your Workout Effectiveness. Do you exercise regularly but don’t get the results you want? Here are some simple but powerful ways to boost that workout.
87. Work 8 Hours Straight Without Hating Yourself. There is an art to taking breaks that can help you work longer, and more productively.
88. Learn Whether You’re Waking Up at the Wrong Time. Everyone’s internal clock can tell us when we should be working. Are you listening to it?
89. Reduce Wasted Plastic Cups and Bottles. If you want to toss fewer plastic cups and bottles in the trash, you may be interested this ultra-cool reusable cup and water bottle.
90. Avoid Entrepreneurial Burnout: Fill Your Tank. Many times entrepreneurs suffer from going to hard with their vision, without thinking about keeping the work pace sustainable.
91. Take Steps to Boost Your Happiness in the Next Hour. You can make yourself happier ñ and this doesnít have to be a long-term ambition. You can start right now.
92. Learn to Capture Ideas and How to Manage Diarrhea of the Brain. Sometimes our best ideas come at the worst possible times. These tips will help to make sure none of those precious ideas fall through the cracks.
93. Know the Signs That a Pink Slip is Coming. If you can answer yes to THREE or more of these questions, you may want to think about sprucing up your resume and dry-cleaning your best interview attire.
94. Try No TV. In an extreme experiment to reduce waste to near zero, No Impact Man turned turned off electricity, which means no TV. Read about how to entertain a little girl with no TV.
95. Accelerate Your Mortgage Payments to Save a Bundle. See how much money you can save by adding just a few extra dollars a month to the principal.
96. Use a Today List to Get Stuff Done. Helps you focus on what needs to be done today.
97. Use Money to Buy Happiness. Some of the best things in life arenít free, so spend money in ways to bring you more happiness bang for your buck.
98. Save the Lives of Animals With One Change. If you want to help save the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals just by not using plastic bags, perhaps the easiest environmental step, read here.
99. Get the Most Out of Your Rebates. Follow these tips and we can all fight the Man and wrench our hard-earned money back from those big, faceless corporations.
100. Eliminate All But the Absolute Essential Tasks. Is your to-do list overwhelming you? Here’s how to simplify it to the core tasks.

Link

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In the Land of the Lotus Eaters – New York Times

On the islands farther from anywhere than anywhere, Hana is a community farther from anywhere than anywhere…

hanafisherman

THE ocean crashed hypnotically as the Venus of Hana yoga gently gave her commands. “Let the sun rise over the crater,” she said, her arm arching into an ethereal halo over her head. She read a poem by Mary Oliver, sang awhile and instructed us to extend our buttocks toward Hana. We closed our eyes, dimly aware of the wind rustling through banana leaves.

Then our yogi, Erin Lindbergh, summed up how it feels to spend a slow Sunday morning on the edge of the earth in a tropical nirvana where all of nature seems to be on Viagra. “There is a bowl of flowers in your heart,” she said.

Nearly 40 years ago, her grandfather — Charles A. Lindbergh — became one of a multitude of seekers to be smitten by Hana, on the east coast of Maui. He is buried in a swamp mahogany coffin at the Hoomau Congregational Church in Kipahulu, not far from his granddaughter’s yoga studio, his now-mossy grave rimmed by beach rock. Like the manic hordes who form a human chain in rented Mustangs and PT Cruisers on the Hana Highway, fleeing chain-hotel sterility on the “other side” of Maui, the legendary pilgrim of the skies was restlessly searching for serenity, a sacred sense of apartness.

To his granddaughter, who recently moved from Montana, and bears an uncanny resemblance to her grandmother Anne Morrow Lindbergh, this remote fleck of paradise some 52 miles, 617 hairpin curves and 56 one-lane bridges away from the nearest city possesses mana, “a life energy,” an unseen spiritual force.

“Hana appeals to the calmer side of one’s being,” Sunni Kaikala Hueu, a Hana native, has written. “Some say that Hana is almost medicinal in nature — a quiet vibration that is felt.”

The vibes can be profound, all right. Where else but in Hana — its fabled highway the approximate width of a suburban driveway — is it possible to encounter traffic jams beside “hidden” waterfalls as tourists pose for Coming of Age in Samoa shots with cellphones? Where permaculturally inclined off-the gridders live in New Age treehouses and make bike-powered smoothies, while across the street in a community kitchen, a tiny 80-something kapuna in pink pedal-pushers peels boiled taro the old-fashioned way: with an opihi, or limpet, shell. Continue reading →

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21 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle

from Co-op America

21 Things You Didn’t
Know You Can Recycle

CAQ73 Garbage. Americans produce more and more of it every year, when we need to be producing less.

Even the most waste-conscious among us can feel overwhelmed by the amount of household waste that goes beyond what municipal recyclers and compost bins can handle.

That’s why our editors have spent the summer investigating the state of waste management in our country, and putting together information for you, our Co-op America members, explaining how we can get serious about the three R’s – reducing, reusing, and recycling. Supporting members of Co-op America can expect to receive this issue of the Co-op America Quarterly this fall. If you’re not already a supporting member, join us now to get this special issue mailed to you.

1. Appliances: Goodwill accepts working appliances, www.goodwill.org, or you can contact the Steel Recycling Institute to recycle them. 800/YES-1-CAN, www.recycle-steel.org.

2. Batteries: Rechargeables and single-use: Battery Solutions, 734/467-9110, www.batteryrecycling.com.

3. Cardboard boxes: Contact local nonprofits and women’s shelters to see if they Boxcan use them. Or, offer up used cardboard boxes at your local Freecycle.org listserv or on Craigslist.org for others who may need them for moving or storage. If your workplace collects at least 100 boxes or more each month, UsedCardboardBoxes.com accepts them for resale.

4. CDs/DVDs/Game Disks: Send scratched music or computer CDs, DVDs, and PlayStation or Nintendo video game disks to AuralTech for refinishing, and they’ll work like new: 888/454-3223, www.auraltech.com.

5. Clothes: Wearable clothes can go to your local Goodwill outlet or shelter. ShirtsDonate wearable women’s business clothing to Dress for Success, which gives them to low-income women as they search for jobs, 212/532-1922, www.dressforsuccess.org. Offer unwearable clothes and towels to local animal boarding and shelter facilities, which often use them as pet bedding. Consider holding a clothes swap at your office, school, faith congregation or community center. Swap clothes with friends and colleagues, and save money on a new fall wardrobe and back-to-school clothes.

6. Compact fluorescent bulbs: Take them to your local IKEA store for recycling: www.ikea.com.

7. Compostable bio-plastics: You probably won’t be able to compost these in your home compost bin or pile. Find a municipal composter to take them to at www.findacomposter.com.

8. Computers and electronics: Find the most responsible recyclers, local and national, at www.ban.org/pledge/Locations.html.

9. Exercise videos: Swap them with others at www.videofitness.com.

10. Eyeglasses: Your local Lion’s Club or eye care chain may collect these. Lenses Glassesare reground and given to people in need.

11. Foam packing: Your local pack-and-ship store will likely accept foam peanuts for reuse. Or, call the Plastic Loose Fill Producers Council to find a drop-off site: 800/828-2214. For places to drop off foam blocks for recycling, contact the Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers, 410/451-8340, www.epspackaging.org/info.html

12. Ink/toner cartridges: Recycleplace.com pays $1/each.

13. Miscellaneous: Get your unwanted items into the hands of people who can use them. Offer them up on your local Freecycle.org or Craigslist.org listserv, or try giving them away at Throwplace.com or giving or selling them at iReuse.com. iReuse.com will also help you find a recycler, if possible, when your items have reached the end of their useful lifecycle.

14. Oil: Find Used Motor Oil Hotlines for each state: 202/682-8000, www.recycleoil.org.

15. Phones: Donate cell phones: Collective Good will refurbish your phone and sell Cellphoneit to someone in a developing country: 770/856-9021, www.collectivegood.com. Call to Protect reprograms cell phones to dial 911 and gives them to domestic violence victims: www.donateaphone.com. Recycle single-line phones: Reclamere, 814/386-2927, www.reclamere.com.

16. Sports equipment: Resell or trade it at your local Play It Again Sports outlet, 800/476-9249, www.playitagainsports.com.

17. “Technotrash”: Easily recycle all of your CDs, jewel cases, DVDs, audio and video tapes, cell phones, pagers, rechargeable and single-use batteries, PDAs, and ink/toner cartridges with GreenDisk’s Technotrash program. For $30, GreenDisk will send you a cardboard box in which you can ship them up to 70 pounds of any of the above. Your fee covers the box as well as shipping and recycling fees. 800/305-GREENDISK, www.greendisk.com.

18. Tennis shoes: Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program turns old shoes into playground and athletic flooring. www.nikereuseashoe.com. One World Running will send still-wearable shoes to athletes in need in Africa, Latin America, and Haiti. www.oneworldrunning.com.

19. Toothbrushes and razors: Buy a recycled plastic toothbrush or razor from ToothbrushRecycline, and the company will take it back to be recycled again into plastic lumber. Recycline products are made from used Stonyfield Farms’ yogurt cups. 888/354-7296, www.recycline.com.

20. Tyvek envelopes: Quantities less than 25: Send to Shirley Cimburke, Tyvek Recycling Specialist, 5401 Jefferson Davis Hwy., Spot 197, Room 231, Richmond, VA 23234. Quantities larger than 25, call 866/33-TYVEK.

21. Stuff you just can’t recycle: When practical, send such items back to the manufacturer and tell them they need to manufacture products that close the waste loop responsibly.

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39 Ways to Live and Not Merely Exist

I think these ideas are something everyone should read. If the people in charge did these things, we wouldn’t have terrorists and if the terrorists did them, we wouldn’t need security. If we didn’t have terrorists, well, we wouldn’t need to suspect anyone, would we?

“The proper function of man is to live – not to exist.” — Jack London

Too often we go through life on autopilot, going through the motions and having each day pass like the one before it.

That’s fine, and comfortable, until you have gone through another year without having done anything, without having really lived life.

That’s fine, until you have reached old age and look back on life with regrets.

That’s fine, until you see your kids go off to college and realize that you missed their childhoods.

It’s not fine. If you want to truly live life, to really experience it, to enjoy it to the fullest, instead of barely scraping by and only living a life of existence, then you need to find ways to break free from the mold and drink from life.

What follows is just a list of ideas, obvious ones mostly that you could have thought of yourself, but that I hope are useful reminders. We all need reminders sometimes. If you find this useful, print it out, and start using it. Today.

1. Love. Perhaps the most important. Fall in love, if you aren’t already. If you have, fall in love with your partner all over again. Abandon caution and let your heart be broken. Or love family members, friends, anyone — it doesn’t have to be romantic love. Love all of humanity, one person at a time.

2. Get outside. Don’t let yourself be shut indoors. Go out when it’s raining. Walk on the beach. Hike through the woods. Swim in a freezing lake. Bask in the sun. Play sports, or walk barefoot through grass. Pay close attention to nature.

3. Savor food. Don’t just eat your food, but really enjoy it. Feel the texture, the bursts of flavors. Savor every bite. If you limit your intake of sweets, it will make the small treats you give yourself (berries or dark chocolate are my favorites) even more enjoyable. And when you do have them, really, really savor them. Slowly.

4. Create a morning ritual. Wake early and greet the day. Watch the sun rise. Out loud, tell yourself that you will not waste this day, which is a gift. You will be compassionate to your fellow human beings, and live every moment to its fullest. Stretch or meditate or exercise as part of your ritual. Enjoy some coffee.

5. Take chances. We often live our lives too cautiously, worried about what might go wrong. Be bold, risk it all. Quit your job and go to business for yourself (plan it out first!), or go up to that girl you’ve liked for a long time and ask her out. What do you have to lose?

6. Follow excitement. Try to find the things in life that excite you, and then go after them. Make life one exciting adventure after another (with perhaps some quiet times in between).

7. Find your passion. Similar to the above tip, this one asks you to find your calling. Make your living by doing the thing you love to do. First, think about what you really love to do. There may be many things. Find out how you can make a living doing it. It may be difficult, but you only live once.

8. Get out of your cubicle. Do you sit all day in front of computer, shuffling papers and taking phone calls and chatting on the Internet? Don’t waste your days like this. Break free from the cubicle environment, and do your work on a laptop, in a coffee shop, or on a boat, or in a log cabin. This may require a change of jobs, or becoming a freelancer. It’s worth it.

9. Turn off the TV. How many hours will we waste away in front of the boob tube? How many hours do we have to live? Do the math, then unplug the TV. Only plug it back in when you have a DVD of a movie you love. Otherwise, keep it off and find other stuff to do. Don’t know what to do? Read further.

10. Pull away from Internet. You’re reading something on the Internet right now. And, with the exception of this article, it is just more wasting away of your precious time. You cannot get these minutes back. Unplug the Internet, then get out of your office or house. Right now! And go and do something.

11. Travel. Sure, you want to travel some day. When you have vacation time, or when you’re older. Well, what are you waiting for? Find a way to take a trip, if not this month, then sometime soon. You may need to sell your car or stop your cable bill and stop eating out to do it, but make it happen. You are too young to not see the world. If need be, find a way to make a living by freelancing, then work while you travel. Only work an hour or two a day. Don’t check email but once a week. Then use the rest of the time to see the world.
Continue reading →

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Why We Cuss by Stephen Pinker –Fucking Brilliant!

From The New Republic

Why we curse.
What the F***? by Steven Pinker
Fucking became the subject of congressional debate in 2003, after NBC broadcast the Golden Globe Awards. Bono, lead singer of the mega-band U2, was accepting a prize on behalf of the group and in his euphoria exclaimed, “This is really, really, fucking brilliant” on the air. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is charged with monitoring the nation’s airwaves for indecency, decided somewhat surprisingly not to sanction the network for failing to bleep out the word. Explaining its decision, the FCC noted that its guidelines define “indecency” as “material that describes or depicts sexual or excretory organs or activities” and Bono had used fucking as “an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation.”

Cultural conservatives were outraged. California Representative Doug Ose tried to close the loophole in the FCC’s regulations with the filthiest piece of legislation ever considered by Congress. Had it passed, the Clean Airwaves Act would have forbade from broadcast

the words “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “asshole”, and the phrases “cock sucker”, “mother fucker”, and “ass hole”, compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).

The episode highlights one of the many paradoxes that surround swearing. When it comes to political speech, we are living in a free-speech utopia. Late-night comedians can say rude things about their nation’s leaders that, in previous centuries, would have led to their tongues being cut out or worse. Yet, when it comes to certain words for copulation and excretion, we still allow the might of the government to bear down on what people can say in public. Swearing raises many other puzzles–linguistic, neurobiological, literary, political. Continue reading →