Rosen says the book is written with “scholarly care and memoirist’s flair,” and that it’s “a brisk, lively read, a concise and shrewdly observed portrait of an unlikely political alliance” … but by far the most remarkable part of his review came under the noxious book reviewer humble-bragging tag of “full disclosure,” where the reviewer usually confesses to having had a friendly chat with the author once years ago at the country club they once shared until they both quit when the place started admitting black people (what can I say? As the old saying goes, when you lie down with the National Review, you wake up in a gated community with alcoholic children and a wife who hates you).
If you want to learn to use implementation intentions, I recommend you set this goal intention and meta-implementation intention right now:
Goal intention: I intend to use implementation intentions to reach my goals!
Implementation intention: If I set a goal intention, I will also think of a specific implementation intention that specifies the where, when, and how I will act to achieve my goal!
Goodbyes: Irish and Serbian
This is something I used to do more in my 20s but never knew there was a name for: the “Irish goodbye,” said of someone who leaves a party without saying their farewells to the host, the other guests, etc. Also referred to, says the Slate article, as “ghosting.”
A young woman in our office, who married a Serbian gent and visits the country regularly, contrasts this with what she calls the “Serbian goodbye.” In this instance, you have to say goodbye to everyone at the party before you can leave. She says it can take an hour and half to leave a party.
Movie: “Wild”
I’ve not read Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, on which the movie is based. And I’ve seen only a few Reese Witherspoon movies (I liked “Election” the best). So most everything here was new to me.
“Wild” tells two stories simultaneously: Cheryl’s punishing hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, starting at the Mexican border and finishing hundreds of miles later at the Oregon-Washington border, and the circumstances that drove her there.
For now, I’ve limited my storage to a 16GB SD card. The small amount of space forces me to dump photos onto the hard drive once a week or so. I never learned this simple rule till now, but “keep the best and trash the rest” is an organization life saver. After harvesting the good stuff, I compile the truly precious photos into a desktop folder, which I’ll eventually have printed into a book.
Anyways, if you make a New Year’s resolution, make it this: something small, every day.
Most questions can be boiled down
A woman in Sri Lanka once told me a story. She said that the rate of malaria among the British in Sri Lanka during the 19th century was much higher than in the local population. It was the vases of flowers, she told me. In the British households, they found it absolutely necessary to keep beautiful bunches of cut flowers in vases. These vases of standing water happened also to be perfect breeding grounds for mosquitos. The British were killing themselves with a stubborn sense of aesthetics.
I think the only reason I’ve had the career life that I’ve had is that someone told me some secrets early on about living. You can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed, no matter what it is or what your job is, the more relaxed you are the better you are. That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized the more fun I had, the better I did it. And I thought, that’s a job I could be proud of. It’s changed my life learning that. And it’s made me better at what I do.
Bill Murray (via austinkleon)
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