I’ve been looking for some kind of connective tissue between all of my interests and the countless projects that I take on. I’ve settled more or less on a weekly newsletter and, at some point, a blog.

The format is experimental. The content is experimental. I do not know what I’m doing.

My interests are incredibly diverse; so hopefully there’s a little something for everyone and I hope to make even niche topics fairly accessible.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate you and I know there are other things you could be doing right now.

Enjoy :)

I originally intended to share some content from one of the self-help gurus or entrepreneurs that I follow but I couldn’t resist the temptation to share one of my new guilty pleasures on YouTube.

Any Austin is a YouTube creator that, um…

searches for a politically correct phrasing

…autistically explores the nuances and intricate details of our most beloved video games. In the video below, he and a professional woodworker critique the carpentry craftsmanship in the famous role-playing game, Skyrim.

If that doesn’t sound nerdy enough. In another video series of his(also about Skyrim) he travels to the different cities and calculates their employment rates.

His channel is an interesting case study in turning your interests into your career. I love the idea that someone can garner an audience in such a niche interest and truly if you can create content around this, you can create content around anything.

A gentle reminder that creative possibilities are endless and there is an infinite source to draw upon.

A little backstory: I’m hoping to use the Myers-Briggs Personality traits as a lens to focus my self-help-related content. I’m starting with my personality type ENTP(Extroerted, Intuitive, thinking, prospecting,) because that’s most relevant to my life.

It was a pleasant surprise to see that this post got the most engagement and is a sign that I’m moving in the right direction.

This week I reread James Clears’ Atomic Habits for the second time. I’m curating a list of books that are worth rereading at least once a year and this is my first choice.

Atomic Habits is an elemental approach to self-improvement. It breaks down habit change into a formulation that allows you to redesign your life step-by-step like a line cook reading a recipe. The majority of the book explores the four stages of a habit:

He then teaches you some prescriptions for changing your habits at each stage and guides you toward designing your own.

If that sounds helpful I highly recommend that you purchase this book; it’s been a bestseller for a long time(and for good reason.)

What captivated me in this read-through was the idea that habits exist outside of us as part of our environment in a way. They are as influential to us as the weather or the city we live in. I see this book as a determinist’s manifesto of sorts.

How much of our lives is on auto-pilot?

How much of our lives do we actively decide on?

When you grab Starbucks every time you’re driving home, or when you crash on the couch in front of the Tv; how often are you weighing the pros and cons of your actions? How often are you making a choice?

This book asks you to step back from your life and examine it as if you’re a programmer working on your code. We are processes and programs, and the only way to make meaningful changes in our lives is to examine the scripts we’re running on.

Everyone struggles with negative self-talk to some degree. For me, these last couple of weeks have been especially difficult for me.

When I’m having a particularly bad self-talk day, there are a few personal philosophies that often come to the rescue.

If you’re being cruel to yourself, you have to recognize that you are in the best position to hurt yourself emotionally. You know your every insecurity. You know the exact way to twist the knife for maximum pain.

Imagine you’re back in high school and your worst bully has gained psychic powers and can read your mind and see your past. They’re ruthless. Every physical aspect you’re self-conscious of, every bad thing you’ve ever done, every insufficiency that plagues you in your day-to-day life is laid bare. They torment you, and you can’t even plug your ears because you can hear their voice in your head.

Of course, that’s you. We bully ourselves constantly and recognizing that is the first step towards self—compassion.

If you spoke to anyone else the way you speak to yourself someone would intervene(hopefully.)

If you were screaming at one of your friends,

“You’re lazy, you’re stupid, you need to lose weight, you’re wasting your life,”

and someone walked in on that…

you’d be ostracized!

Why should you be allowed to talk to yourself like that?

Just recognizing this is helpful, but a second step is to relay your inner monologue to someone else. Half of the time they don’t even need to respond; just by speaking your mind out loud you’ll see how silly and needlessly corrosive your internal narrative is.

This is where talk therapy is helpful, but if you don’t have access to a therapist, a close friend will do.

It can be difficult to be kind, but being kind is the right thing.

Being kind to yourself is no exception.