by Patrick Rhone, Master Generalist
Don’t wait for permission from others to do the right thing.
Don’t wait for others to do the right thing.
Don’t wait to do the right thing.
Do the right thing.
Don’t wait for others to see the right thing has been done.
Don’t wait for others to thank you for doing the right thing.
Don’t wait for others to join you in doing the next right thing.
Do the next right thing.
Here, on the occasion of my 45th birthday, are forty-five things I know.
Columbia River Knife and Tool’s M16-02Z Knife Review from Patrick Rhone on Vimeo.
A quick video review of the Columbia River Knife and Tool’s M16-02Z Zytel Razor Edge Tanto Blade Knife.
Care.
Yep. That’s it. That’s the cure. If you want it in detail, read the rest….
My wife, Bethany Gladhill, and I faced a major scare over the weekend. She had all the signs and symptoms of Inflammatory |kaeba|referrer|kkytr
Breast Cancer. Of all of the forms of breast cancer, it is one of the most deadly, that takes far too many (and, any is too many) way too young.
Luckily, for us, her biopsy came back negative. Turned out to be a ruptured cyst (which has identical symptoms and detection procedures). Unfortunately, most do not.
Look, we can send robots to Mars and upgrade their software from earth in minutes. We can pour trillions into elections only to produce the same outcomes we have had for 200 years. Or…
We could be taking the collective wealth and knowledge of our society and saving the lives of millions and those that love them by ensuring that no one has to face cancer ever again. No, it is not as sexy as robots on Mars and not as entertaining as watching Washington mudslinging and gridlock but… It matters.
Start. Today.
Not by buying more crap you don’t need (even the pink crap). Not by throwing a dollar into a cup and calling the job done.
As a species , we have proven that there is nothing we can’t do if we set out to do so. We have cured the incurable countless times before. I fervently believe that, if we can send robots to Mars and fix elections with money, we can cure cancer. All it takes is the same thing it always has for every one of those challenges…
Care.
But, care scales. In order to tackle the big problems the more people who do it the more likely it is to succeed.
Start by educating yourself and those around you. Start by sitting in empathy and practicing mindful and compassionate listening to those who have been there (trust me, we all know someone). Then, continue by raising awareness and supporting in any way possible (money, time, attention, etc.) those organizations who are active on the front lines of this fight.
Because, what got robots to Mars, put men on the Moon, ends famine and war, and, yes, even elects presidents, is the power of that one simple, yet powerful, word set into action and collectivized.
It even is the secret to curing cancer.
I will say that one thing I have missed about Twitter so far is the ability to quickly and succinctly share links to things I have found useful or otherwise enjoyed. I used to do that regularly, pre-Twitter, on patrickrhone.com in a regular feature I called “Remainders”. It would seem that there is no better time to start that back up again and to share these things with you.
Here, in no particular order, are some things I have really been enjoying lately…
Caesura Letters — My friend James Shelly’s smart, philosophical, mindful subscription newsletter. Fantastic writing, deep thought, and enlightenment. It makes me excited to open my inbox each day and makes me smarter with each one. Seriously. Use the link before for 40% off (only $3.99 a month).
Seven Summits by Dick Bass, Frank Wells, Rick Ridgeway — A wonderful book, given to me by a friend, about two guys who set out to be the first people to climb the highest summit on every continent in the world. They were both in their fifties, untrained, unprepared, and outmatched for the task. Yet, despite all of it, they had a dream and they chased it. It’s quite compelling and in line with some research I have been doing into the idea that accomplishment can become an addiction.
Nike+ Running for iPhone on the iTunes App Store — I’ve been using this to track my runs and have found it quite fun. It does a good job of giving me just enough of what I need and nothing I don’t. Plus, it has Path integration and I enjoy the fact I can share my runs there and people can comment on them or cheer me on.
Path — Speaking of which, this is where I have been sharing and having conversations while taking a sabbatical from Twitter. I love, love, love, this app. It feels so much more comfortable to me. I wish more of my friends were on it but I’m happy with the way I get to engage with the ones that are.
Henry David Thoreau wished to separate himself from community and society and live, for a time, alone. Not because he did not enjoy, appreciate, or benefit from his participation in it. He did so because he knew the only way to best evaluate his place within it was to live and observe it from the outside. So he built a small cabin in the woods, a brief walking distance from town, on a small pond called Walden. The land on which it was built was actually owned by his friend and contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson. I consider both literary and intellectual heroes of mine.
It is through this lens that I have been putting a lot of (read: way too much) thought into Twitter, and my place within it, lately. For months and, perhaps, years now something about it has not felt right with me about it. I’m beginning to understand that it is not just one thing but many, many, things that have led me to feel this unease. Here are some of the few I have identified.
From the beginning, Twitter was a place to post a personal status update and nothing more. It was modeled on Jack Dorsey’s long time fascination with the way New York City taxi cab services transmitted their status and location (Here is a fascinating interview about this early history). The question asked by Twitter, at the top of the post text field was, “What are you doing?”. This was great for a while and, in the early days of Twitter, this is how most people used the service. Seeing a tweet that was simply “@ lunch” or “Coding” was commonplace and such simple updates were the majority.
As more users poured into the service and big companies, activists, governments, and more began to use it, the way this new majority used the service began to morph. It became a place to communicate, organize, and report — thanks in no small way to replies and hashtags, both of which were community created and then later adopted as features by Twitter. In this new usage, revolutions were supported, stars were made, news was broken. There was power in the new communication paradigm that this new usage and these new features allowed. It was through this new use case for the service that Twitter also likely began to see the power and possible business model for the service. As such, they changed the question…
In November of 2009, they changed the question to “What’s Happening”, thus, the role the company expected users of the service to play. It was arguably their first not-so-subtle communication of intent. They no longer cared to ask about you, or what you were doing. They wanted you to take the role of reporter. No longer a participant, but a spectator. And, let’s be honest, the fact that you are having lunch is important to a very small few and likely only you. The concert, or story, or brand, or movie, or revolution, or whatever else is “happening” is important to many.
More to the point, they can build a business around making certain brands, stories, movies, concerts, etc. seem more important than others. They can sell these “promoted” topics as a form of advertising. They can insert them into your timeline. They can give them more to say than they give you. If you want to know “What’s happening?”, just ask them and they will be more than happy to tell you. In fact, they would prefer it.
The header above is a quote by Vice Admiral James Stockdale from the 1992 Vice Presidential Debate. He had been picked as Ross Perot’s running mate just a week before appearing. He was a decorated war veteran, former POW, a true American hero. Yet, most people watching the debate had no idea who he was. He was hoping that by leading with these questions, he would have a chance to tell them. Instead, he was widely ridiculed. Why? Because no one really cared…
It was terribly frustrating because I remember I started with, “Who am I? Why am I here?” and I never got back to that because there was never an opportunity for me to explain my life to people. It was so different from Quayle and Gore. The four years in solitary confinement in Vietnam, seven-and-a-half years in prisons, drop the first bomb that started the … American bombing raid in the North Vietnam. We blew the oil storage tanks of them off the map. And I never—I couldn’t approach—I don’t say it just to brag, but, I mean, my sensitivities are completely different.
I, too, would like to get back to that. My sensitivities seem completely different from what I see on Twitter today.
Whenever I look at the “Trends” or the popular hashtags, an aggregate of millions of users combined with businesses that have paid for those spots, I don’t see anything I am even remotely interested in there. I don’t care about what they are telling me is happening. My timeline is filled with lots of interesting things to read or think about, but at the cost of my own ability and time to do so. Twitter is rattling sabers that indicate they are going to restrict the ability of third-party clients to filter and access the service in ways that I find sane and sustainable.
Ultimately, I don’t know if what Twitter has become is for me, or the people I care about, or the conversations I wish to have. The things I want to know are “happening” — like good news about a friend’s success, or bad news about their relationship, or even just the fact they are eating a sandwich and the conversation around such — I wish to have at length and without distraction. Such conversations remain best when done directly, and there are plenty of existing and better communication methods for that.
So, therefore, I must take my own sabbatical from it so I can decide if there remains a place for me there and, if so, where and why.
The Minimal Mac Book. Get it today for only !
Buy Now!
As we approach the three year anniversary of my more popular website, Minimal Mac, I thought it would be a good idea to put together a book of my best writing on the site to date. The goal being three fold:
Thus, Minimal Mac: What We Believe In was born.
Now, I wish to be very clear about what this is. Every single item in this book exists on Minimal Mac as it stands — right now — for free. I have simply done the hard work for you; which is going through nearly 2000 updates and compiling the best posts, essays, and quotes into a couple of hundred pages. I then had these professionally edited and the cover, layout, and design done to make it an attractive and easy to read book.
Available now in ePub for Apple iBooks & .mobi for Amazon Kindle The cost is only $5. About the cost of a decent sandwich. Buying it not only gets you a copy of the book in both versions but also helps to support the work I do here.
Get it here…
Minimal Mac: What We Believe In
The Minimal Mac book is not available in any stores (iBookstore or Amazon). This is the only place you can get it. So get it now.
Of course, my last two books — Keeping It Straight & enough — are still available as well.
As I said in my review of the book, Turning Pro is an essential message for anyone ready to take the next step. Those who are currently living an amateur life or toiling away in a shadow career and are on the verge of staking everything they have, doing the work, and devoting it all to their passions and the dreams.
Is this you?
Are you a writer but working in a cubicle job to pay the bills? Are you an artist but working in tech support because you don’t think your work will sell? Are you looking to be your own boss instead of being bossed around?
Are you ready to do the work? Work that is purposeful and authentic? Work that is true to who you are and the offerings you wish to make to this world?
Then you need this book.
I have two copies to give away to the people that need it most. To find them, I have assembled a panel — Myself (Professional Author and Essayist), Shawn Blanc (Professional Writer and Technology Pundit), and Myke Hurley (Professional Podcast Producer). We all know what it takes to turn pro and what the life before is like. We all know what it takes to fight the resistance and fear and to take that next step.
Here is how we will do this:
The panel will review those entries and notify both winners via email reply to their entry by July 1st, 2012. In this reply I will request shipping information for the book and will send it out that week.
OK. Got it? Do you need this? Are you ready for it? Let me know.
Turning Pro is the new book by Steven Pressfield, author of War of Art and Do The Work. In fact, I would argue that together, read in order, the three make a cohesive whole. Turning Pro is an essential followup to those previous works and answers any question of “Now what?” the first two books may have left.
That “now what?” is this: The time for amateur hour is over. You have made excuses for too long. It is now time to change. Time to pull the pin and release yourself from the train of other people’s expectations and desires. Time to ride the rails that only you can put down in front of you. Time to go pro.
I counted those earlier works among my favorites and essential to artists and creatives who wanted to break past the fear, self-doubt, and blocks we face daily to get to the hard work of doing.
For a writer like myself, that means having a routine and carving out space and time that is sacred for the task. Write every day. Because the muse only shows up for those that are at the same time and place, every day. That, anything else is not the work. Anything else is a hobby.
Even though I subscribed to many of the principles set forth already, even though I am a published author, even though I took much of what was laid out in his first two books to practice, this book was a wake up call for me.
If you are an artist or creator of any stripe, you need this book. If you are one who is stuck in a shadow career working on someone else’s job, you need this book. And, if you are a professional who thinks you have it all figured out, you really need this book.
Even more so, you need to give this book to anyone you know who you feel is in any of those places. I was only a quarter of the way in before I came up with a short list of people who I knew would benefit from it greatly (and sent it to them as a gift). Then, even after I had already purchased it and started to dig in, I received several emails from other trusted friends of mine telling me they were only part way through but could not wait to tell me to go and get it. Therefore, do yourself a favor and get the paperback. This is one to highlight, mark up the margins, and pass around.
My presentation at Ignite Minneapolis 2012.