Three Key Words

Here I am waiting for Melissa to finish with her root canal. Poor girl got depression and didn’t brush her teeth for a few weeks. Now we’ve gone all over the towns of Zipaquirá looking for an emergency dentist, open on a Sunday—the holy day in this Catholic region. After taking a little bus (buseta, sounds like bruschetta), we found a dentist open in a nearby town. Well, we met him at his home.…

How many players play your video game? How many citizens vote in your elections? What’s the reader sentiment of your latest book? Focusing on user adoption can drive your results, so make it a priority objective to measure from the beginning. But what about artists, those wild and primal creatures of the chaos regions? Won’t a focus on user adoption warp the creative process? Only if…

I lost my head in Antwerp Centraal Station. I thought my bag was lost and panicked — but No! It’s safely stored in Schipol airport. Duh! I forgot about becoming a tourist; what a simple and profoundly comforting identity.

A bit of a rant on the ideas of pleaaure and fulfillment. Comments welcome! Most people know the difference between pleasure and fullfilment. Pleasure is a momentary sense of satiation, contentment, or bliss. Fullfilment is a longer rampup of meaning and a sense of meaningfulness in one’s life. Meaningfulness, as in, confirmed impact on others and exchange of love with them. Pleasure is…

I wrote a few opening paragraphs of a short story in my notebook. The OCR (handwriting to text) turned it into garbage that might get mistaken for sculpture in a gallery no one can afford to view: The Distania dool loves no play laids, finger pur daisaad nine a a bachgonn Phroughout Me wolk Jag, ease cially in morh neongs winh moe chan Shut up now too andit dora no que te will never short…

We all live by certain rules, some more consciously than others. Do I know what rules govern me? Sure, there’s the obvious ones like “stop at red lights” or “don’t murder” — but what about the rules that cause you angst, that chafe, or that dim your inner light? Personally I’ve labored under many unwritten rules; rules I picked up and ran with from a young age. Maybe they serve me now, maybe…

If I had known then what I know now—would I have dropped out of school as a teenager? No. In fact, I would have done even better in school. I would have worked consistently and efficiently, focusing on achieving the best results with the least wasted effort. I would have applied proven study strategies to earn A’s, graduated with honors, volunteered, and taken on leadership roles. Leading a…

When the world seems indifferent or cruel, it’s easy to ask, “Where’s the customer service in God’s world?” It can feel like there’s no one to lodge a complaint with, no fixes coming. But here’s the thing: there’s a difference between resignation and acceptance. Resignation is nihilistic — it drains you, focuses on what’s broken, what’s missing, and leaves you stuck. It says, “Nothing matters,…

I noticed some friends getting into influencers who talk about living a minimal lifestyle. I’m all about this, but watching their content I found an issue — a surface understanding of minimalism that in the end leads to a rigid, unsustainable way of life.

The problems start when people apply minimal attention to the idea of minimalism.

The philosophy isn’t a set of rules; it’s an invitation to wake up your unconscious relationship with consumption.

At the heart of minimalism is a realization of a simple truth: the way you relate to one thing is the way you relate to everything. In other words, your relationships to many things and in many areas of your life spring from a single source — a root belief.

So, minimalism invites you to question your root beliefs underpinning your relationships with possessions.

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