Blog Stuff

I wanted to give you a heads-up about some changes I’m making to my personal blog.

Email subscribers: you get to hear about it first.

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They probably aren’t.

One of the best books on my infinite reading list is Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It by Steven Pressfield.

The title says it all.

Most writers want to fix it. Most desperately want their work to be read. Some build a business or life around it.

I’m no different, I guess. But I have an additional constraint I find myself fighting: there are certain people I’d love to know are “reading my sh*t”.

Yet I know they’re not.

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(My apologies for the long delay between personal blog posts. All I can say is “2020”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

When I was young I was a voracious reader. Lots and lots of books passed through my fingers. Once I discovered fantasy and science fiction the pace only increased. Being a socially awkward only child gave me lots of time to myself, and reading was one of the activities I thrived on.

At one point during my Microsoft career a manager turned me on to self-help and growth literature, and I was once again an avid consumer.

Fast forward <mumble> years and things have changed. I’m not the reader I once was. I watch my wife consume upwards of a book a day, while I’m lucky to do one or two a month.

I want to change that.

I think I have a plan.

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(Because I’m “stepping away” from Facebook, I may post more frequent, shorter things on my blog https://leo.notenboom.org. For example the things I might have shared on Facebook might end up here. Or not. We’ll see. Interesting times.)

About a week ago I decided I really needed a break from Facebook. It was impacting my attitude, impacting my sleep, increasing my depression, increasing my anxiety, and decreasing my productivity. These are all things I’m normally extremely good at managing. But not here, not now.

You know the drill: Facebook bad.

But, of course, it’s not quite that simple.

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Life is short. Death is capricious and random.

We had an unexpected death in our circle of acquaintances that drove that point home once again.

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In mid-August, sixty days prior to my 60th birthday I started a writing exercise I called “60 Days of Gratitude“. Ten years ago I wrote a thought piece entitled “Half Century Mark“. I wanted to do something similar to mark the next decade, and using a writing exercise focussed on gratitude seemed an appropriate approach.

Now that I’m done I decided to capture some of what I learned in the process.

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