Our picture of what is normal isn’t true to how most of us actually are. The brilliance of Leo Tolstoy as a writer can be primarily put down to one thing. And that’s that he was able to capture the normal abnormalities that are the inner workings of our own minds. …
(The following is from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and the part is almost in its entirety because a) it kicks ass and b) could be my favourite passage in the book): Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a …
The aphoristic, short, sharp and punchy style of writing that makes so much of Shakespeare’s writing meaningful and powerful is something he shared with the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. All three of them wrote about not fearing that which is uncertain, taking responsibility for and expressing reason and accepting …
I forgot what he said exactly but Henry David Thoreau said that wood is the gift that gives warmth twice –once when you chop it down and once when you burn it. But he miscalculated. By a lot. Norwegians are on to it, because they say that it gives warmth …
Joshua Spodek wrote the best-selling Leadership Step by Step and his blog’s one of the three sites I check every day¹: We’ve all got something we want to get better at, but sometimes we’ve got no idea how to start. And that’s what Joshua’s SIDCHAs (Self-imposed, Daily, Challenging and Healthy Activities) are …
Here are some palindromes¹: • ‘Are Mac ‘n’ Oliver ever evil on camera?’ • ‘Dammit, I’m mad!’ and: • ‘Desserts, sis? (sensuousness is stressed).’ Now, not only are those great, but on the same site as where those are from (palindromelist.net), today I also found something called ‘The Longest Palindrome’. …
A couple weeks ago, I made it to 100 written and published posts in the first 100 straight days of this blog (it’s 120 in 119 now). That was significant for me because one, in the previous 3 and a half years, I had written and published exactly 0.00 things of nothing, …
Think of a common and realistic love story. One where boy meets girl. Girl likes boy (a bit). Boy really likes girl. Boy gets awkward. Girl wants to know why he’s awkward. Guy tries explaining and makes things more awkward. But whatever, girl appreciates his effort and it makes her …
The words ‘I’m’ and ‘bored’, when put together in that exact order, make up my most hated expression in the English language. (Sidenote: This is what it translates to, in case you’re wondering.) Any library has thousands of books (e.g. my local one has 88,000), each with thousands of words, about thousands of …
Occasionally I’ve done things which could be seen as cool. And other times I do things which are nerdy. I care less about that now though, than I used to in my mid-20s (but maybe more than I will in my mid-40s). Those tags of being “cool” or a “nerd” …
