A garage sale for your mind

Sign in Subscribe

Topic

other

A collection of 205 posts

Five Books to Rule Them All

Going through ten boxes of once-vital books, I found exactly five worth shelving. On sentimentality turning into clutter, the suspiciously fifth-grade prose of 3 Body Problem, a deliberate $10 tip my bank flagged as a possible 53% error, and the strange waves of hunger during my 18-hour fasts.

Five Books to Rule Them All

Depression Hates a Moving Target

While consultants side-lined and misunderstood me over audio-only Zoom, I was outside splitting logs with a maul, more vigorously the worse they got. Churchill had his bricks. The lesson: if your feelings are taking over, get yourself a physically strenuous hobby.

Depression Hates a Moving Target

The Supportive Wife

S left a plate waiting in the fridge, knowing I'd otherwise grab something convenient over something good for my fitness goals. The little things aren't so little. Plus Dawkins refusing persuasion about Claude, and figuring out what my cheerful four-year-old tornado needs as he stops being the baby.

The Supportive Wife

$10 Per Push-up or $1 million

Reddit asks: $10 per push-up for life, or $1 million now? The top answer caps out at 200 push-ups a day and calls that unsustainable. But $730k a year, for life, is the lazy minimum, and the million is long gone. A fun thought experiment, perfectly timed with my humbling DEXA scan.

$10 Per Push-up or $1 million

Waterfalls, Hiking, Dinner, Etc.

An evening of waterfalls, an inevitable soaking, a challenging hike home, and pork tenderloin. Plus why I love concrete personal projects but distrust the nebulous, vague goals of current work, and why America's problem is health insurance, not healthcare.

Waterfalls, Hiking, Dinner, Etc.

Don't Give Up and Get Fat

I stepped out of the car at a kid's birthday party and my first thought was how many very heavy people were there, probably just a representative sample of the country. A reflection on living in a bubble of fit retirees, and a plea: do what it takes to not give up and get fat.

Don't Give Up and Get Fat

Park Friends

At the park getting work done while J angles to play with a friend who shows up. The friend only wants to play Agents, and after a standoff she walks away until J caves. Perfect, that's all I needed to hear. I call N manipulative; my wife is happy to keep her as a park friend.

Death by Boomer

In our tiny rural grocery store parking lot, someone tries to kill us nearly every trip: cars backing out blind, a driver blowing through a crosswalk and stop sign without a glance. A meditation on unaware drivers, high-trust societies, and doing the right thing because it is right.

That Feeling When...

That feeling when routine maintenance costs ten percent of your car's value, and you suspect the mechanic is going easy on a high-mileage beater. Plus a Saturday of orchestrated chores, including the six-year-old who hoped to dodge it all (she did not).

That Feeling When...

Bat House

The kids spotted the bat on the dining room wall in seconds, though they step over their own toys all day. Armed with a borrowed net and a flattened cereal box, I set out to evict a houseguest who had absolutely no interest in leaving.

Web Analytics