You’ve found version 1.0 of Quarter-Life Enlightenment. This is how the site looked during its first year of existence from July 2011 – July 2012.
Feel free to poke around, but then I suggest checking out the latest version of QLE over at andrewmarvin.net.
You can get in touch with me on Twitter, or send me an email.
Thanks for reading!
Andrew
It’s August, and that means it’s time for another entry in the Year of the Habit. (See previous entries in the series here.)
July was a pretty good month. The “Looking Outward” goal was a worthwhile experiment, albeit difficult to quantify. It’s something I still need to work on, but I think I’m getting better. It’s all about the mindfulness.
Now for something completely different:
I want to do 10,000 push-ups in August.
That’s a lot of flipping push-ups.
I KNOW.
Why do I want to do 10,000 push-ups?
So, here’s the plan.
Obviously, I’m not going to do all 10,000 push-ups at once. Therefore, push-ups can be done any time, anywhere.
10,000 push-ups divided by 31 days equals 322.58 push-ups per day.
That’s 6.45 sets of 50 push-ups per day.
Or 9.77 sets of 33 push-ups per day.
Or 12.9 sets of 25 push-ups per day.
Or 25 push-ups per hour for twelve hours.
Or whatever’s your pleasure.
Fifty has become my standard set, so I’m going to shoot for seven sets of fifty every day. That will give me a slight, mostly negligible buffer.
I’ll be adding a counter to the sidebar on andrewmarvin.net so you folks can keep an eye on me and my increasingly sore arms. I’ll also be logging all of my push-ups on Fitocracy (see my review here).
I think that’s all there is to it. Care to join me?
Time’s up… LET’S DO THIS.
(P.S. Yes, my thesis is done! Just in time. Stay tuned for a big post about it in the near future.)
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
I’m spending a few days at my dad’s house while he’s away on business. I didn’t bring very much with me: Mac. iDevices. Kindle. Toothbrush.
As I write this, I’m sitting on the floor of my old living room. I took my desk with me when I moved out.
There’s something I love about sitting on the floor of an empty room. Just me, my computer, and a few other possessions. It has a romantic quality to it. I’m alone with only my thoughts.
But at the same time, I’m also in so much company. My thoughts are infinite, and even though they exist only in my head, they never abandon me. I’m not quite as alone as I thought.
Likewise, all that’s in front of me is my MacBook Pro, but this 15” screen is a window into the vast expanses of the Internet. I can read about anything, learn about anything. I can listen to music. I can write. What more do I need?
Sitting here on the floor of an empty room reminds me that a lack of physical things does not equate to a lack of meaning. In fact, I’d argue that it augments my awareness, and subsequently, my ability to experience and create meaning. I’m not distracted by stuff, so my thoughts come through much clearer. It’s quiet. My perception is heightened. I notice the air and the crickets chirping. I’m more aware of my emotions and why I might be experiencing them.
If I was surrounded and distracted by stuff, there would be no room for all that.
When we remove stuff, we create space, and we become better equipped to fill that space with meaning.
An empty room is, in some ways, the most hospitable.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
I adore this list of Seven Things Extroverts Should Know About Their Introverted Friends, which M.G. Siegler linked to over the weekend:
- We don’t need alone time because we don’t like you. We need alone time because we need alone time. Don’t take it personally.
- We aren’t judging anyone when we sit quietly. We’re just sitting quietly, probably enjoying watching extroverts in action.
- If we say we’re having fun, we’re having fun, even though it might not look that way to you.
- If we leave early, it’s not because we’re party poopers. We’re just pooped. Socializing takes a lot out of us.
- If you want to hear what we have to say, give us time to say it. We don’t fight to be heard over other people. We just clam up.
- We’re not lonely, we’re choosy. And we’re loyal to friends who don’t try to make us over into extroverts.
- Anything but the telephone.
When I find myself in the company of talkative people, I find it difficult to do anything other than listen. I literally cannot come up with anything to say, and I’m often rendered speechless anyway watching people who can just talk and talk and talk and talk. I don’t know how they do it.
I strongly dislike being asked if I’m having fun or if I’m OK just because I’m leaning against a wall or sitting quietly by myself. I’m perfectly content observing the room. Really. The act of asking me if I’m OK—and thereby calling attention to my introversion and inadvertently making me feel bad that I’m not telling my latest joke or playing charades—is what makes me not OK. Now I’m uncomfortable.
Folks don’t realize how challenging it is to be a quiet person in a room full of talkative strangers. The introvert has to rise to the environment’s level of in-your-face friendliness. That’s the expectation. It’s never the other way around. An introvert can’t make everyone sit quietly and read a book.
We don’t dislike people. We just feel outnumbered easily. We prefer to go one-on-one.
It’s not your fault. We introverts are complicated creatures. And we are selective. Intensely loyal to those who do not try to change who we are.
Getting to know an introvert requires more of an investment—we don’t let just anyone in—but there are returns to be had. I like to think it’s worth it.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
As promised, today I inflict upon you a list of some of my favorite posts from QLE’s first year. They may not be the best, but these are the articles of which I have the fondest memories. However, I make no guarantees as to their quality, relevance, or literary merit.
They are presented in chronological order, so it’s my hope that you’ll be able to read some articles you may have missed the first time around.
There are a lot of them, which is kind of pompous, but you can write quite a bit in a year.
Have an awesome weekend, everyone. See you Monday.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
Three hundred and sixty-five days ago, I published my first post on andrewmarvin.net, a website no one knew existed. Just one tiny little link. A block quote with barely a sentence of commentary.
But it was a start.
Since that day, I’ve posted three hundred and fifty-five times, including two hundred original articles.
When I started the site — my first real attempt at a professional online presence — I wasn’t sure I could do it. I thought I’d post enthusiastically for a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, and then abandon it like I had so many other blogging platforms. I thought no one would read. Who could possibly care about what I had to say? I was scared. Maybe it would be better to just keep the daydream alive…
But I started anyway.
I didn’t want to publicly announce the site with nothing substantial to read, so I opted to write privately for a month, without telling anybody. I took comfort in the solitude, and even though I knew no one was reading, I experienced the thrill of hitting Publish on things I was proud of.
I emailed Patrick Rhone and Shawn Blanc back in those early days, and I received thoughtful, compassionate responses from both of them. Their encouragement was instrumental in QLE’s formative moments, and I’m not sure the site would still be around had they replied differently or not at all. I thank them for that.
One month turned into two or three, but I eventually pulled back the curtain, letting in a few sets of eyes, and then a few more, and a few more. And then suddenly, it was a real thing. I had a website, and even a reader or two.
Here I am, a year later.
Writing QLE for the past year has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever undertaken, and I’m proud to say that knowing it has been a complete labor of love, unmotivated by page views or click throughs.
My primary focus has been on building relationships. To establish myself as someone worth reading, someone worth knowing. To be one of the good guys. Though the Internet remains as vast and expansive as ever, I’ve been privileged to get to know some of its most brilliant individuals. Some I look up to as role models, some I confide in and collaborate with as peers, and all of whom I respect and admire.
Here are some of my proudest moments from my first year as a person of the Internet:
All of these accomplishments would not have happened if I hadn’t decided to hit Publish three hundred and sixty-five days ago. And so while my little corner of the Internet is just that — a little corner of the Internet — I’m proud to call it my own, and I’m thankful that it has allowed me to meet such amazing human beings.
Thank you all for reading, and special thanks to all of you whom I’ve gotten to know in the past year. I look forward to making QLE even better in its second year, and I hope you’ll join me.
Tomorrow, I’ll be posting a list of some of my personal favorite QLE articles. If you have any suggestions, please do let me know.
All the best,
Andrew
When given the choice between a native app and a web app, I will invariably choose the former. I don’t see the appeal of opening my browser, navigating to a website, and logging in instead of just tapping an icon on iOS or launching an app with Alfred in OS X. Native apps reduce friction.
Take Twitter, for example. I very rarely use twitter.com because I can launch Tweetbot in two seconds with a tap or keystroke. Logging into twitter.com is cumbersome by comparison.
However, there is one task for which I’ve always had to rely on my browser, and that’s searching for lyrics.
I love music, so I look up lyrics on a regular basis. Fortunately, Alfred removes considerable friction from this task: ⌘ + Space to bring up Alfred, type “[name of song] lyrics”, hit Enter, and boom — instant Google search.
But, I still have to wait for my browser to open, and then I have to click on one of the search results. And really, that’s way to much work for 2012.
Strophes is a lyric reader for your Mac.
Why do you need this? Because it loads the lyrics automatically. That’s right; no searching required.
Open Strophes, and the lyrics to whatever song is playing in iTunes, Rdio, Spotify, or Radium will automatically be displayed. Changing the song changes the lyric. You don’t have to do a thing. If Strophes can’t find lyrics, you can click a button to search Google instead. You can also search for lyrics within the app, and it offers Last.fm bios for the artist you’re listening to.
Strophes has a few preferences, including three themes, the ability to translate lyrics into five languages, and a Safari extension you can use to display lyrics for YouTube videos. The selection of typefaces is poor (Noteworthy, Bradley Hand ITC TT, and — fortunately — Helvetica), but I’m willing to overlook it because of just how handy Strophes is.
Launching the app is faster than searching Google, and if you frequently find yourself looking up lyrics, you’ll love Strophes.
See Federico Viticci’s review for more.
Get Strophes for $4.99 on the Mac App Store.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed or benefitted from this article, please consider sharing it with the button below. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
If you read the site yesterday, you know all about my awesome Saturday. What you probably don’t know is that when I got home at almost three in the morning, I enjoyed a package of Chewy Chips Ahoy! and some Phish Food courtesy of Messrs. Ben & Jerry.
Which is ridiculous, given the amount of food I consumed throughout the day.
But as I sat there on the couch — possibly making little ice cream cookie sandwiches — I realized that the reason I couldn’t help myself was because I was so incredibly exhausted.
I have very little willpower when I’m exhausted.
I could have fallen asleep immediately had I just gone upstairs. But my sleep-deprived brain decided that cookies and ice cream sounded like a much better plan, and I was powerless to argue. I knew it was a terrible idea, but I literally didn’t have the strength to say no to myself.
Of course, this speaks to the importance of sleep, but there’s also a bit more to it.
Here’s an article by Tony Schwartz called “The Only Way to Get Important Things Done”:
It turns out we each have one reservoir of will and discipline, and it gets progressively depleted by any act of conscious self-regulation. In other words, if you spend energy trying to resist a fragrant chocolate chip cookie, you’ll have less energy left over to solve a difficult problem. Will and discipline decline inexorably as the day wears on.
“Acts of choice,” the brilliant researcher Roy Baumeister and his colleagues have concluded, “draw on the same limited resource used for self-control.” That’s especially so in a world filled more than ever with potential temptations, distractions and sources of immediate gratification.
So not only are we less equipped to make good decisions when we’re tired, we’re less equipped to make good decisions after we’ve already made a bunch of decisions. And because those two variables tend to coincide at the end of the day, it’s no wonder the glow of the refrigerator always seems most tempting after midnight.
The solution?
Get your sleep, and automate as many decisions as possible so you don’t have to think about them anymore.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
Andrew and Jeffrey discuss the surprisingly complex topic of minimalism, including its place in technology, lifestyle design, and your head. They also touch on Moleskine explosions, the relevance of staplers, and the beauty that is Squarespace 6.
We’re on a Thursday release schedule from now on, so please enjoy our first two episodes until then!
Because the ZenGeek Podcast is in its infancy, ratings and reviews on iTunes are ultra important. They help with visibility, which helps more people discover the show, which makes everyone’s day better.
I’m really proud of this project, so I hope you’ll give it a listen.
Listen, rate, and/or leave a review on iTunes.
Listen on our website.
I’ve been thinking about this food dichotomy:
In general, I tend to fall into the second camp. I want to live a long life, so I love to eat healthy and exercise.
But once in a while — like this weekend — I do enjoy going on a total food bender and indulging in some of my favorite vices.
I had a crazy Saturday. After about four hours of sleep, I drove out to West Hartford Center for a public yoga class with hundreds of other people in the middle of Lasalle Road. Then I had to cut my friend’s dad’s lawn before making it to Mill Pond Park at 11, where my students were putting on a karate demonstration at the Newington Extravaganza. I got home, showered, changed, and drove to North Branford for my friends’ apartment-warming/graduation/birthday party, where I proceeded to eat everything in sight. Burgers, shish kebab, buffalo chicken egg rolls (oh my god), pasta salad, potato salad, cake, cookies, and more. Then I drove to Cheshire to pick up a friend of mine, and we drove to Bridgeport to see Primus at the Gathering of the Vibes festival. I got home around three in the morning and promptly passed out with my clothes still on.
It was great.
If I lived every day like that, I’d probably collapse from exhaustion pretty quickly. But it felt good to burn my candle all the way down for a change. It was a blast, actually.
I think it’s the same with eating.
As I sat in a lawn chair at the party, drinking my first rootbeer in probably six years and laboriously trying to digest a double cheeseburger, I remembered that some people eat like this every day. I can’t even imagine what that’s like, and I have no desire to find out. When I splurge, I always look forward to eating healthy again and to getting back on the path.
So while I choose to eat healthy most of the time in the hopes of living a long and happy life, I have no regrets about eating myself silly this weekend. I was among friends, and we were celebrating. Not just a particular event, but life in general.
And it is short, no matter what we do.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
When it comes to friendships, I’ve always favored quality over quantity.
Growing up as a geeky, introverted kid, that makes total sense. When I was younger, I was far more interested in my studies, reading, or playing video games than I was in being a social butterfly. In many ways, I still am.
Being a geek when you’re little is, to say the least, inconvenient. But as I got older and went to college, I began to wear my social selectivity as a badge of honor. I had little desire to allow anyone into my life who didn’t positively contribute to it. Not that I would forcibly reject people — I’d just be content with allowing certain relationships to fade away. To let them be what they were, nothing more, and not try to force anything out of politeness or desperation.
As our dad likes to point out, my sister and I are complete opposites, especially when it comes to our social lives. Through her, I’ve noticed how being selective with friendships has its advantages and disadvantages. I don’t think my sister has ever been without plans, somewhere to be, or someone to hang out with. Or so it seems to me, anyway. That’s really awesome, and there are plenty of times when I wish my phone was going off all the time, if only to have someone to talk to.
On the other hand, the more friends you have, the more likely you are to encounter drama on a somewhat regular basis.
If a relationship causes me more drama than its worth, I let it go. If I want to get through life as contently as possible, eliminating unnecessary people is one of my most valuable strategies.
What I’m beginning to realize now, though, is that as I get older, I find myself having to eliminate unnecessary people less and less. That is, I’m meeting new people far more infrequently.
A few days ago, Alex Williams wrote an article for the New York Times about the challenge of making friends as an adult:
As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college, she added.
I met most of my best friends in college. We saw each other, laughed, cried, and lived life together every day. It was amazing, in retrospect. Now I only talk to most of them every few weeks, if I’m lucky, and since we’ve all moved back to our respective areas of the country, I see them far less often than I’d like.
But they’re still my best friends.
I made some best friends in grad school, too, and I’m grateful that I still talk to them as often as I do.
But none of them are here right now. None of them are down the hall or upstairs. Most aren’t in the same town, let alone the same state.
Since moving out of my parents’ house, I’ve felt their absence more than ever. There are days when I wake up, read, write, work out, cook, and eat without ever talking to another person. Sometimes it’s not until I go to work or yoga or run errands that I hear my own voice. And though I love solitude as much as the next writer/geek/introvert, we do miss our friends.
I tell you this not out of a desire for pity, of course. Being out on my own is great, and I wouldn’t trade my best friends for all the acquaintances in the world. It’s merely been the observation at the forefront of my mind lately.
As I get older, I don’t see myself suddenly gaining five new friends a week as one might do in college. In fact, when I try to imagine where my next good friend is going to come from, I can’t come up with an obvious answer. There are no more classes. There are no more parties in the quad. Right now — and with the kind of job I want — there aren’t even any coworkers.
It is, admittedly, a bit scary.
People have an internal alarm clock that goes off at big life events, like turning 30. It reminds them that time horizons are shrinking, so it is a point to pull back on exploration and concentrate on the here and now. “You tend to focus on what is most emotionally important to you,” [Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor who is the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity in California] said, “so you’re not interested in going to that cocktail party, you’re interested in spending time with your kids.”
I don’t know if I’m OK with pulling back on exploration, of the self or otherwise. But I do know — so far — who I want alongside me at 30 and beyond.
There are billions of people out there, and not all of them are worth knowing.
So when I find someone who is, I’m going to make sure they know it.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
As listeners of the ZenGeek Podcast will recall, I had dinner with my family over the weekend, and my sister was contemplating what to do with her two huge closets worth of clothes when she relocates to Rhode Island at the end of the summer.
That got me thinking, and I realized that if she hadn’t had two huge closets, she — theoretically — wouldn’t have as many clothes.
If you have the space, you’ll eventually manage to fill it. If you have a huge house, you’ll eventually fill it with stuff. Consciously or not.
The same is true with time and work. I can take pretty much as long as I want on my thesis as long as I keep filling out the Incomplete extension form. No wonder I’ve taken fifteen months to write the thing! There’s no sense of urgency. If I had a deadline with real consequences, I probably could have finished it in half the time.
Many of us have eight hour work days. It’s bizarre that we can procrastinate and stretch the simplest task so that — seven and a half hours later — we still haven’t done it. Imagine how much you could get done if you only had two hours to do it all.
The amount of time you have is the amount of time it will take.
On the other hand, it’s amazing how much you can get done in just a few minutes when you really concentrate.
Or when you really love what you’re doing.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
Today I’m thrilled to announce the ZenGeek Podcast, a weekly audio program about technology, mindfulness, and more. Co-hosting the show with me is the exceptional Jeffrey Inscho of Static Made.
Our first episode — wherein we introduce ourselves, our plans and expectations for the show, Jeffrey’s dentist appointment, my bass collection, and more — is already available for your listening pleasure.
You can follow the show on Twitter, Instacast, or via RSS, as well as subscribe on iTunes. Also be sure to check out our shiny new website for the latest show notes and updates.
Like Jeffrey, I’m very excited about the show, and I’m looking forward to having some great discussions about the topics we care about.
We’d love to have you along for the ride, so come visit ZenGeek.net and tune in!
Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come.
My thesis is so very close to being done, and it’s time to make the final charge so that I can stop writing about it and you can stop hearing about it.
My goal is to have my thesis finished and submitted by August 1.
To facilitate this plan, I’m conducting a bit of an experiment this week.
Because I work in the evenings, I tend to have a lot of free time during the day, and deciding how to allocate that time is often difficult. Sometimes I take so long to decide what to do that I don’t end up doing much of anything.
To combat this issue, I’m scheduling out each of my days the night before, à la Shawn Blanc.
For example, on Sunday night I planned out my Monday, which looked a little like this:
9:30 AM: Wake up. Check iPhone (Twitter, RSS, messages, etc.)
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Thesis. Fifty-minute blocks, ten-minute breaks. (Via BreakTime.)
12:00 – 1:00 PM: Workout. (Push-ups, goblet squats, overhead dumbbell presses, kettlebell swings, pull-ups, chin-ups. x2. Ten-minute run.)
1:00 – 1:30 PM: Shower, shave, dress.
1:30 – 3:00 PM: Prep and send QLE VIP Newsletter No. 1.
3:00 – 4:00 PM: Stop at Post Office. Drive to New Haven.
4:00 – 6:30 PM: Late lunch with Rich.
6:30 – 7:00 PM: Drive to Newington.
7:00 – 9:00 PM: Work.
9:15 PM: Home. Write. Rest.
It didn’t work out perfectly down to the minute, but having the day planned out was incredibly useful for knowing exactly what I should be doing right now.
One nice thing about scheduling your day is that you know exactly how long each thing is going to last. One of the barriers to working on my thesis, for example, is that it seems like such a huge task. But if I know I’m just going to work on it for two hours — and at noon, I’m done for the day — it’s much easier to concentrate and get a lot done during that time. Getting my least favorite thing out of the way first is a great feeling.
Fortunately, my dentist appointment today is scheduled for 9:40 AM.
I’m only working part-time while I finish my thesis, but this system can be applied to anyone’s work day. I recommend trying it out and seeing how it works for you.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
Our volatile eleventh episode:
Matt returns this week, as the Crush On Radio crew manages to utterly confound each other with their picks. Other topics of discussion include Matt’s recent visit to Portland, alternative comics and vintage porn, agit-pop, the commonality of Radiohead and Neutral Milk Hotel, Paul Thomas Anderson, complexity, density, and length versus quality, French Surrealist plays, unusual vocal styles, and the TV show Archer.
Picks this week are Frank Chickens, Radiohead, and Pere Ubu.
If you enjoy the show, please take a few seconds to click five stars or leave a quick review on iTunes. If you do, at least one person will comment on how good you smell.
Listen, rate, and/or leave a review on iTunes.
Listen on our website.
Since I moved out of my parents’ house, I’ve been eating very healthy most of the time. Eating properly feels good, especially when you’re out on your own and responsible for your own well-being.
I’ve made a couple of observations about my dietary habits over the past month or so, and I thought I’d share them with you.
The first is that the easier it is to eat, the more likely I am to eat it.
When you’re hungry, your willpower is diminished, and so it’s easier to grab something you can eat immediately than it is to prepare something healthy. Of course, unhealthy foods — like cookies, chips, and other snacks — require the least preparation. When you’re really hungry, it’s hard to spend five or ten minutes making scrambled eggs when you could be eating a cookie in five seconds.
Because the easiest foods get eaten first, I’ve decided not to keep any in the house. Even reasonably healthy things, like apples. If I have eggs, salad, chicken, vegetables, and apples, the apples are the easiest to eat. Everything else requires preparation. When I’m feeling particularly hungry and/or lazy, I’m much more likely to just eat five apples instead of making something else. So, easy foods are out.
Which leads me to my second observation, which is the notion of gateway foods. Gateway foods can actually be pretty good for you, except for the fact that they lead to much more unhealthy foods. I’ll give you an example.
Over the weekend I stopped over my dad’s house to pick up some mail. I wasn’t in the door for more than a few minutes before I was indulging in a heaping bowl of fruit salad (already made, and thus an “easy” food). But fruit is good for you, so no big deal, right? That first bowl lead to two more bowls. And since I had already had so much fruit, I thought I might as well enjoy some nuts while I was there (another easy food). And what goes great with fruit and nuts? Cheese. Obviously.
Within an hour I had enjoyed much more fruit, nuts, and cheese than I had intended. So by the time my dad pulled out the dark chocolate covered popcorn, I figured, “might as well”. And then came the latest sickeningly sweet variation of Oreo.
Fruit, nuts, and even cheese aren’t inherently unhealthy foods, but because they’re so easy to consume and require virtually no preparation, it’s easy to overeat them. Once you’ve binged on that stuff, it’s harder to rationalize not having some chocolate, dessert, or whatever.
So there you have it. Be wary of easy foods. Be wary of gateway foods. The best way to eat healthy is to have no other choice.
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
Greetings, QLE readers, and a happy Friday to you.
It’s been a dark week here on QLE, and I hope I didn’t scare any of you off with my morbidity. I had an emotional Sunday, and I ended up writing most of this week’s articles the following morning.
Writing is incredibly therapeutic, especially when you can’t say everything you want to say to the person you want to say it. In such cases, I find that the best thing to do is to write, and write, and write. Empty your mind. Get everything you’re dying to say out of your head and onto paper or your computer screen.
And remember to breathe.
It helps.
A lot.
Despite the fact that I want QLE to be an enjoyable and uplifting corner of the Internet, I opted to publish this week’s pieces because life offers just as many dark moments as light ones. It’s all part of the experience.
Inner peace means existing in a state of utter contentment — for a whole day, an hour, or even just a few moments. You have no wants, needs, worries, or fears. It’s very rare, but that’s what we’re here to practice and achieve.
Conversely, one could argue that any time we aren’t experiencing true inner peace, we are plagued with the desire for things to be other than the way they are. Sometimes it’s just a little twinge in the back of your head, sometimes it ruins your whole Sunday, and sometimes it makes your world collapse. In any case, I don’t wish to shy away from the really dark moments. We need to learn how to get through all of it, from a messy desk to the death of a loved one.
As always, I want to ensure that every article I post contains value for you as a reader. I don’t want to waste your time. With that in mind, I will always do my best in the aforementioned dark moments to offer some ray of light, some sense of possible resolution, for myself and for you. You will never see a post about how everything sucks and there is no hope — end of article — on this website. No matter how dark things get. Promise.
I appreciate you sticking with me this week, and I wish you the best in your pursuit of inner peace.
Have a positively radiant weekend,
Andrew
(P.S. Between you and me… awesome stuff coming up. Tell you more later. Shhh.)
Thanks for reading! Want more? Grab the free QLE Manifesto. Perhaps follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.
What do you do when the love of your life decides they don’t want the job?
Like any loss, the first reaction is denial. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. How can your heart be so sure of something, and then be wrong? How can your heart be wrong?
What makes someone the love of your life is that they defy expectations. They supersede all of your past relationships, and you can’t possibly envision someone better. You think, this is it. I don’t have to look anymore.
Unless they don’t agree.
And when that happens, we have no choice in the matter. All the confidence and love in the world is not enough to make someone feel something they don’t feel.
The pain and grief comes not only out of the loss of that person, but of the realization that now you’re back to zero. You thought you had a ten on your hands, and now you have nothing. And the despair comes from being unable to possibly imagine anything ever coming close to what you’ve lost.
But the thing is, something better will come.
You only know the love of your life so far. It’s easy to declare someone the best when you have no knowledge of who else is to come after. Sometimes, your heart is right, and there is no one else.
But when your heart is wrong, the only thing you can do is trust that the next best thing — the next better thing — is yet to come. Even if you can’t possibly imagine who they are, someone better is coming. Someone who defies your expectations in ways you’ve never even dreamed of.
It sounds impossible, but that’s because seeing is believing. It’s impossible to envision someone better until that someone arrives. But they are coming. We have to believe and be ready.
They’re on their way.
Is hope a good thing?
It keeps you going through uncertain times, but that uncertainty can drive you insane.
So is it better to be hopeless? To know there is no chance, but to be certain about it?
I’m not sure, but having experienced both in close proximity to one another, I have to say that I miss having hope.
Hope is like a candle when you’re without electricity. Even when everything else is shrouded in darkness, there’s always that little flicker. The hope that some day, just maybe, things will brighten. Things will be OK. It comforts and consoles you.
And your imagination — being the absurdly powerful thing that it is — can take that little flicker and stoke it until it becomes a roaring fire filled with dreams and possibilities and a future that’s so good you can’t possibly envision anything else. How can something that good not come true?
I don’t know why, but it can.
Hopelessness means that the thing you were clinging to, protecting, nurturing, has vanished. There’s a void in your heart where it used to live. And it’s agonizing, especially if you’ve been holding onto it for a long time and have given it your complete confidence.
What makes hope insidious is that it can hinder you from achieving other things. If you’re busy holding on over here, you’ll miss what’s going on over there. And I know — you don’t want what’s over there. That’s natural as long as the hope for what’s over here exists.
Perhaps the realization of hope is inevitable. Eventually, it’s either going to come true or be crushed. Maybe it’s better to rip the bandage off quickly.
The only way to survive hope’s demise is to think of it in the context of freedom. Hope — like expectations — attaches you to an outcome. When that outcome doesn’t come true, your attachment to a thing is severed, and it hurts like hell.
But the pain will subside. Every passing moment brings you a little bit closer to being OK. Once the wounds heal, we are free to move forward. And as we move forward, we come closer to arriving at the next big thing. And — hopefully — the next big thing will be a sure thing.
Our tenth episode is a tour de force:
Rich and Andrew are joined by the brilliant Jonathan Pfeffer of Capillary Action for a rollercoaster ride of a show, talking about being in a band versus being a solo performer in this day and age, the brilliance and horror of Prince, Jeff Mangum’s mythical status, the National, tall singers, setting expectations for music and missing them, the value of criticism, and so much more.
Picks this week are: Prince, Liars, and Neutral Milk Hotel
This is one of my favorite episodes of Crush On Radio. No joke required.
Go forth:
Listen, rate, and/or leave a review on iTunes.
Listen on our website.
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