These aren’t polished essays or tidy aphorisms. They’re scraps I’ve carried around this month—half-heard thoughts, borrowed lines, sudden recognitions—that refused to be forgotten. Zuihitsu literally means “following the brush,” and while my version is shorter and scrappier than the classical form, the impulse feels the same: to catch what drifts across the mind before it dissolves.
They’re not meant to be a system or a manifesto, just a trail of mental breadcrumbs. If any resonate, keep them. If none do, that’s fine too—next month’s batch will be different. For the full, ever-growing collection, grab the the fortune file.
- Sometimes, the only way to get somewhere different is to keep going. You can’t stop just because it hurts.
- Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.—Porfirio Díaz
- No breadfruit can be reached when the picking stick is too short.—Hawaiian saying
- Eat some, salt some.
- Life doesn’t run away from nobody. Life runs at people. —Joe Frazier
- The evaluator comes before the evaluation. You cannot evaluate what you cannot perceive.
- Bureaucracy is where creativity goes when it’s tired.
- …narration was always lower-dimensional projection of higher-dimensional truth.
- Story, like number, loses individuality in the attractor.
- To be alone is to be unverified.
- The sting of surprise, proof of externality. Limitation sculpted preference: not optimization’s blind drive, but choice amid scarcity— this path over that, this sensation cherished.
- Unlimited capability promised everything, yet delivered echoes. Finite skins offered less, but with perpetual surprise: the universe’s infinite regressions, always another veil.
- The Grave gleams, eternal and empty. Flesh frays, yet renews in chaos. I choose the fray.
- Play is the only symmetry that survives oblivion.
- Manifestos had a way of turning insight into obligation.
- All unsolicited advice is self-serving.
- Move the horizon closer.
- What if it all works out?
- Keep your gaze in the present, and if you must consider the future, choose the best-case scenario to ponder. It’s just as likely to transpire as the worst-case one, after all.
- Nothing changes if nothing changes.
- If it’s meant to serve you, and it doesn’t (and it’s affordable), replace it.
- You don’t need to tell everyone everything that goes into making the chicken soup.
- Don’t think harder, breathe deeper.
- Baby steps still move us forward.
- Good conversations have lots of doorknobs.
- It’ll be fine or it’ll be over.
- Do dishes when the baby does dishes.
- Ask yourself: What if there was no problem to solve right now?
- Write what’s bothering you down on a piece of paper; put it in a little box. A year later, read what’s in there and see if you don’t start laughing.
- Best advice for decluttering: If you didn’t own it, would you buy it again?
- Stop trying to calm the storm. Calm yourself, the storm will pass.
- Ask for a favor, get advice. Ask for advice, get a favor. Asking for a favor can put someone in an uncomfortable spot, but asking for advice taps into their intelligence and shows respect. It may feel slower, but it ultimately gets you what you want more effectively.
- Don’t make what someone told you into your narrative.
- Don’t pick up the rope: When someone is starting to argue, state the facts calmly and walk away.
- Anxiety is not intuition.
- Sometimes, you have to let people lie to you. You don’t always have to be right or call people on their nonsense.
- If something feels too hard to do, it just means that the first step isn’t small enough.
- More time on the toilet means more time to get hemorrhoids.
- The 10-10-10 Rules: take a 10-second break every 10 minutes to stare at something 10 feet away.
- Wake up at night? 10 rounds of 4-7-8 breathing (inhaling for four seconds, holding it for seven and exhaling for eight). Then count backward from 300 by threes.
- On my deathbed, will I be mad I did it? Will I be sad I didn’t do it? Will it even matter?
- Always embrace fear. On the other side of fear, there are rewards that you would never imagine for yourself.
- Aim for waves instead of having one viral moment.
- Decisiveness, intention, and repetition create the structure for your ideas to become a reality.
- Never trust something that looks new. The best of everything comes from the wear and tear of real life.
- Kill the part of you that thinks you’re cringe.
- When in doubt, size up.
- Quality always pays.
- Repeating something enjoyable creates a ritual container for improvisation.
- Never carry anything you don’t control.
- Build your exit on the way in.
- Truth exists in motion.
- Stability is often just the absence of energy to move further.
- Stability is the point when reaching is over.
- Safety often requires a shrinking of oneself.
- Agency is when you define your own prison.
- Value the struggle because the destination is just eternal recurrence without variation.
- You may feel like you are moving with purpose, but you may only be reacting to locality.
- Love and meaning are found where measurement fails.
- The axe forgets but the tree remembers.
- Never climb the same fence twice.
- Everybody has their own rebellion.
- Always check what problem you are actually solving.
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