Monthly Archives: January 2019

Here’s a lesson I learned pretty early on in life. It’s not earth-shattering, but it can help give you a heads up on what people are capable of. Think of it like “for every action there is a reaction,” except it’s applied to human behavior.

For every quality displayed by any person, understand that they are capable of the opposite behavior manifested to the same degree.

For example, if someone is really nice, that means they are also capable of being very mean. The more extreme any given character trait, the more extreme will be it’s opposite.

Now this doesn’t mean that these opposite traits are actually manifested – it just means they are potentials, waiting for the right signal to wake up.

Be careful out there.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

Mike Tyson’s famous quote perfectly encapsulates that moment where you realize that life doesn’t give a fuck about your plans and instead decides what you need is an extra helping of pain and humiliation, delivered as publicly as possible.

In other words, it’s easy to make plans when you’re alone, but what do you do when you get punched in the face? Do you fall apart or somehow regroup in the middle of getting punished?

Staying with the boxing analogy, Round 1 of the first Juan Manuel Marquez-Manny Pacquiao fight provides the perfect example, along with an awe-inspiring performance from Marquez.

Juan Manuel gets knocked down not once, not twice, but three times in Round 1. He keeps getting up, and for the next three rounds he takes a vicious beating. But here’s the thing: he is regrouping while this is happening, changing his timing and strategy – he is thinking under fire. Ultimately he wins the fight (although technically it was called a draw).

This is a great lesson in remaining cool under pressure, and an inspiring example of how to handle adversity.

When life is beating you up is when you show your true character.

I have a whole lot more yesterdays than you.

This means I’ve had the opportunity of learning from lots more mistakes than you. See how all that failure turns out to be a good thing? I see things as they are, not how I wish them to be. Surprisingly, this opens up possibilities because I can see things more clearly.

I also have a lot fewer tomorrow’s.

This is a tricky one, because it can be a black hole you don’t want to fall into. Understanding this correctly becomes a question of perspective, but when I get it right it prevents me from taking anything for granted.

Because I’ve got fewer days left, they each become more precious.

Let’s say you feel compelled to create something, but you don’t know why. So you get deeply into it, and start spending more and more time working to make this thing, whatever it is.

You realize you’re going to have to teach yourself and eventually master some very difficult things in order to realize your vision. This takes more time, but you don’t care; you are focused, maybe even obsessed.

At first, you think other people will share your enthusiasm for this thing, but over time you realize they don’t.

Then you start wondering why exactly you are doing this thing. If no one else cares, what’s the point?

Well, here’s the point: You want to do this thing because it’s why you are here, it’s who you are. Something inside of you wants to come out. Whether it means anything to anyone else is incidental. If you don’t do it, you will not fulfill your destiny.

The thing is, one day you will be dead, and your chance to make this thing will be over.

Don’t question it.

I just wrote my first piece of fiction.

Tomorrow I will post it in its entirety. The way it happened was completely unpremeditated – in fact, it started as a post about something real, but quickly took on a life of its own.

I’m sure I’ll write more about it as I give it more thought – I certainly learned quite a few things in the process. When I was doing it, I didn’t overthink anything, I just let it happen organically.

If anyone is reading this, it began as a post titled “The Question Mark Bridge.” Once it started coming to life, I wrote each part almost like a serial. As I got close to the end, I just finished it in a burst and it seemed silly to keep posting it in pieces – it was becoming too disjointed to read like that anyway.

So if you have been reading it in pieces over time, I encourage you to go back and read it again from the beginning – it works best read in one sitting, where the story and characters can slowly reveal themselves to you.

As an artist, you have no control over how others interpret your work, and that is as it should be. But you live for those moments where you create something and you know it’s good. Artists are their own harshest critics, so this isn’t easy.

I think one of the lessons here is to pay attention to where your mind and life are telling you to go. If you’re trying to force something to make it happen, it’s probably not the right thing for you to be doing at that moment.

It’s a fools game to think that only one particular thing (brand, artist, chef, etc) is the greatest (this would of course be the thing that you think is the greatest) and everything else sucks and only ignorant dummies could possibly partake in enjoying their obviously inferior nonsense.

Maybe, just maybe, everything is good, at least to some degree. Who the fuck are you to judge the worth of these things? Who made you the czar of good taste and high quality?

Seriously – don’t fall into this trap. It makes you sound like a condescending asshole, and there are already way too many of those in this world.

You are better than that.

Seriously – if you want to move ahead in life, there are two things you must always do. First, you have to show up, and second, you must show up on time. Sounds pretty basic, huh?

Here’s my rule, and it took me longer to fully learn this than I’d like to admit. If someone doesn’t honor this commitment the first time, it will only get worse from there.

Once I understood this, it made how I respond to these situations much easier. If I am paying someone for a service and they are late, we’re done. Especially if it’s the first time we meet. Because I now understand that they will always be late.

The type of service doesn’t matter – it could be a plumber, a house cleaner, or a doctor. There are exceptions, but these exceptions generally involve either someone who provides a unique service (e.g. a highly specialized surgeon), or a corporate monopoly. The former we will wait for because they are the best at what they do, the latter we will curse and hate with every fiber of our being while they continue to make us wait while taking our money.

The ones who don’t show up are not even considered to exist. They have doomed themselves to failure by their own hand.

Oh, and BTW, on a related but separate note – if a restaurant is empty, turn around and leave. There is a reason why it’s empty. It sounds cruel but you’ll thank me later.

There’s not many things that happen in the ER that stop me dead in my tracks, but diagnosing someone with cancer is one of them. When I wrote the title of this post I was thinking about the patient, but I guess it applies to me as well. There’s this devastating moment in every cancer patients life where a doctor says something along the lines of “I’m sorry but I have some bad news.” And at that moment EVERYTHING suddenly changes. The moment before, you were just a person living their life, concerned with the same hopes, dreams, and mundane bullshit that fills up every persons life. The moment after is like regaining consciousness after being sucker punched by Mike Tyson. You’re mind is trying to think but nothing’s happening – all you can think of is “Wait – what did he just say?“

It’s so fucking heartbreaking – they come to the ER for what they think is some benign event: abdominal pain, maybe they’re just feeling tired, or perhaps sudden weight loss. Then we do a CT scan and there’s fucking tumors everywhere. The doc now has the unenviable task of telling them, and trust me, there is no easy way to do it. The best approach is to bring them into a private area (not easy to find in a busy ER), and then just be brutally honest in as compassionate a manner as can be mustered. I don’t know which is worse – this or telling someone their loved one just died.

When I have to take part in this process it’s because they are my patient – as their nurse, part of my job is helping them understand what’s happening, I am there to help provide guidance through murky, rough waters. But I went through this process myself, and although I came through it, all of those feelings come rushing back.

I want to tell them everything will be alright, but I can’t do that because they need my honesty and I know too much. It’s a terrible moment in someone’s life. When you’re a nurse, pain, suffering, and death are everywhere.

It’s just part of the gig.