Living in such a complicated world can seem so complex. But we’re creatures of habit. Ninety-three percent of our behavior is predictable.
And everyday the media reports on new research that suggests certain things are good or bad for you. It’s all quite confusing. We get so lost and so paralyzed by complicated details, we lose sight of making health simple. Don’t worry about whether or not coffee is good or bad for you. If the “science” of analyzing one substance and its effect on health hasn’t figured it out by now, the implications of that substance is mostly unknown for you as an individual. In fact, even the number one selling drug in America, Lipitor, designed to reduce your cholesterol has very little evidence to suggest it prolongs your life. In reality, our longevity is limited by our genes and our everyday behaviors.
All I ask is that you stop and think about your life today.
We’re all expected to live 82 years or so in the developed world. What do we want out of those years? Do you want to prolong your life at the end? Do you want to live to be 92 instead of 82? Or do you want to feel your best prior to getting old and limited by age? What do you think will give you the most happiness out of life? Living your life optimally as a young person? Or stretching your life out at the end for another decade of life as a slow-moving senior citizen?
Now, think about your everyday. Spend a few minutes and write down how you spend your day. What are you doing? What are you doing that’s probably good for you? What are you doing that’s probably not that great for you? What are you doing too much of? Not enough of? Make a list. It’s actually pretty simple. For everything you identify that’s not so great for you, write a simple way you can change that behavior.
Think about just three things– sleep, food, activity. Changes should be very, very simple. It’s things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator. It could be eating less meat. It could be sleeping 7 hours instead of six. It could be drinking with friends 3 nights a week instead of four. It could be one less hour of sitting in front of your computer.
Life really isn’t about your health. It’s about happiness. Health is just one component of happiness. So take a break every once in a while and sit down and think about a few small everyday things that have huge impact on your happiness.
video portrait of Drew Anderson by me.
There are no other Everglades in the world.
They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass.
“Security, Love & Democracy (for export only)”, 2006 by Shahab Foutohi. via VVORK
…It soon became clear that Dan Bejar was master of a singular songcraft—and one who was only just getting started, because the following year brought us Streethawk: A Seduction. And every last inch—and we don’t mean this hyperbolically: EVERY. LAST. INCH.—of Streethawk is a true classic.
— I really hope that Dan Bejar writes his own press releases. (via perpetua)
Whoever wrote that is right! (via listgenerator)
Srsly (via me)
A poem written to @michaeljordan via Twitter
Yeah, tell that to the Iraqis. And the Haitians. And the Afghans. And the Palestinians.
Also, why should we assume that amazing things make people happy?
Picking the right text editor will not make you a better writer. Writing will make you a better writer. Writing, and editing, and publishing, and listening — really listening — to what people say about your writing. This is the golden age for aspiring writers. We have a worldwide communications and distribution network where you can publish anything you want and — if you can manage to get anybody’s attention — get near-instant feedback. Writers just 20 years ago would have killed for that kind of feedback loop. Killed! And you’re asking me what word processor I use? Just fucking write, then publish, then write some more.
— Mark Pilgrim on The Setup (via adactio)
The city food only weakened him. He and his great-uncle had eaten well. If the old man had done nothing else for him, he had heaped his plate. Never a morning he had not awakened to the smell of fatback frying. The schoolteacher paid scarce attention to what he put inside him. For breakfast, he poured a bowl of shavings out of a cardboard box; in the middle of the day he made sandwiches out of lightbread; and at night he took them to a restaurant, a different one every night run by a different color of foreigner so that he would learn, he said, how other nationalities ate. They boy did not care how other nationalities ate.
— pp. 161-162 of The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O’Connor
