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January 1, 2026 Merriam Webster’s word of the day is amortize. We have two definitions of this transitive verb: One, “to pay off (an obligation, such as a mortgage) gradually usually by periodic payments of principal and interest or by payments to a sinking fund.” At this juncture, I have no more amortizations of this…
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Anna of Wild Geese had a great video on the subject of creative impulsivity. One big thing Anna brought up is this toxic mindset of treating our ideas as scarce resources. We keep the ‘best’ for some other time. Thus, we don’t act on our ideas freely enough. Well, I definitely have zero reason to…
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December 2, 2025 I logged onto my Sublime app today, and in the Staff Picks was this: Warren Buffett said goodbye in his annual letter. This is what he had to say, “One perhaps self-serving observation. I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice:…
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November 2, 2025 I like this gal Anu Atluru that Sari is interviewing. This post tells me a lot already: “the hard skills are getting softer and the soft skills are getting harder.” Yeah, that’s about right. I was saying to Emily this morning that tradespeople (which include her by the way) are becoming less…
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“For when too large a proportion of the populace is supporting itself by the indirections of trade and business and commerce and art and the million schemes of men in cities, then the complexity of society is likely to become so great as to destroy its equilibrium, and it will always be out of balance…
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I want to focus on writing “good stuff.” What exactly does that mean? Find a formula that works, or ride the tried-and-true train to the bank? No, I just want to sit there and write something, then at the end of the day I feel like I said something good. Every day is different and…
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I’m on a never-ending quest for turnkey phrases, those magical combinations of words that drive themselves relentlessly towards unique expressions of ideas and memories. Once assembled, they’ll propel themselves forward like an unstoppable freight train, hellbent on smashing writer’s block, becoming my guiding light into the elusive territory of original expression. Every time I think…
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There must be a purpose when you write. It shouldn’t only be the topic that you wish to cover. Some of the best writing that I’ve encountered, whether my own or others, was a product of simply writing for a purpose besides covering one or more specific things. There are so many things that deserve…
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Many creatives I’ve met and studied have outlined, sometimes well-practiced and even calculated, creative processes. My methods, or seeming lack thereof, are more like a bizarre brand of madness. The way my brain works, my creativity often latches onto a certain concept, then so much energy goes into analyzing that concept from a high-level philosophical…
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We are all born creative. Creativity is inherently what makes us human. If you solve a problem, you are creative. If you turn your idea into something that you can share with others all the better. Sometimes you feel compelled to create at the worst possible times. But, if you put it off too long…
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Perhaps if the story I tell is too fantastic, no one will believe it. I was always taught as a writer to be able to help the reader along to suspend their disbelief. Honestly, I look at the world around me and see plenty of things I can’t believe are true. Yet they are. I…
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September 22, 2025 I’ve still been writing plenty. I need to have some constant. I really need to get around to the mini courses. Road maps for your curiosity, I guess I could call them. Focus on the process, not the end goal. But sharing my learning journey, in itself, might be enough. I’m still all about actionable…
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August 9, 2025 It took me until around 8am to get up today. I wandered around trying to figure out where all my cards were. I even went into the basement and realized none of them were down there. Apparently, everything I have left is in a single blue tote in the front room. This…
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Back in 2022, Substack writer Heath Racela got to meet legendary musician Ben Folds. Apparently, Folds holds master classes now, this one being in Concord, MA. The key take away that Heath mentioned in his write-up: “embrace the messiness of learning” Other keys: songs as a three-act story, “balance between the liberal and the practical”…
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“Cultural Moneyballism, in this light, sacrifices exuberance for the sake of formulaic symmetry. It sacrifices diversity for the sake of familiarity. It solves finite games at the expense of infinite games. Its genius dulls the rough edges of entertainment. I think that’s worth caring about. It is definitely worth asking the question: In a world…
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When I stumbled upon an early draft titled “Hierarchy of Ideas,” I realized that I had the bones of a schema that can sit alongside my CRAP framework as a kind of “compass” for orienting ideas. So, I decided to build my original ramblings into more useful, straightforward terms. I’ve thought a lot about what…
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Finally got around to parsing my notes from this solid book on writing. Here are the 11 points that I made sure to write down, reshaped and summarized for your reading pleasure. 1. Write short (and prune without mercy) Bernoff’s “write short” advice stings, because I’m allergic to brevity. Still, pruning works; like trimming a…
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“Bygones are forever bygones,” William Stanley Jevons once wrote. But human minds are not blank ledgers wiped clean at each decision. We’re accumulators — of sensations, biases, and half-baked rules of thumb — and we act on them whether or not they’re still relevant. In 1996, Louis Lévy-Garboua and Claude Montmarquette published a paper titled…
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Labubu isn’t just the next blind box toy collectible. According to Kyla Scanlon, it serves as a perfect specimen of a broken economy — where the only game most people can play is speculation, and anything can be for sale. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky figured out the psychology behind why people do such bizarre…
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“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly…