It has come to this: a newsletter. Ellen Li has started a damn newsletter. What’s next – a podcast? (I love podcasts. Don’t threaten me with a good time.)
Jokes aside, I write a lot. Mostly in private. This newsletter is a selective extension (not a replacement) of that.
I think (and write) about defining, living, and building towards the life of my dreams. I’m not a serious person but I take this pretty seriously.
Some of my writing is about day-to-day life stuff: projects, travels, friends, health. I also write about whatever I find interesting: love, attention, martial arts, design, tech, art, community, money, minimalism, philosophy, identity, etc. I write short stories too.
But when it comes to “lifestyle design” and cultivating a life on my own terms, I’ve learned the hardest parts are hard to face. It’s even harder to write about, and sometimes perplexing to read. It’s never good vs bad; it’s the person I’ve been vs the person(s) I want to be. It’s past vs futures. It’s me vs me.
The work is conflicting and multitudes. It’s constant introspection and testing of values/beliefs, both by choice and by circumstance. Pain, doubt, and fear are inevitable, but in that process, there is also the opportunity for gratitude and self-compassion. The work is the cultivation of optimism (a choice), love (a choice), creation (a choice), and courage (a choice).
Growing stronger, without growing colder, is a practice. I don’t talk about it much, but I think (and write) about it more than anything else.
This is more a journal than a newsletter. If you’re interested in these shower thoughts, you’re invited to kindly request access by contacting me directly. You know how to reach me.
If you like these quotes, you might like my writing. If you hate these quotes, you will definitely hate my writing:
“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” (Lao Tzu)
“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” (C.S. Lewis)
“The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.” (Anais Nin)
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” (Edmund Burke)
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” (Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club)
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” (Abraham Lincoln)
“All the time you’re saying to yourself, ‘I could do that, but I won’t,’ — which is just another way of saying that you can’t.” (Richard P. Feynman)
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.” (Jean-Paul Sartre)
“We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.” (Richard P. Feynman)
“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.” (Franz Kafka)
“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.” (Haruki Murakami, After the Quake)
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” (David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest)
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” (Anais Nin)
“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” (John Maxwell)
“Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)
“Remember to speak from the scar, not the wound.” (Autumn Asher BlackDeer)
“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.” (Markus Zusak, The Book Thief)
“I am and always will be the optimist, the hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improblable dreams.” (Matt Smith)
“Faith and fear both require you to believe in something that hasn’t happened yet.”
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” (Nelson Mandela)
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” (Isaac Newton)