There is No Spoon
NOTE: This is NOT a new post. I wrote it for Clay Collins’s Project Mojave blog in November of 2009, but I find that I reference and link to this post ALL THE TIME, so if I were to rank my most important posts, this would probably be at or near the top of the list. And yet it wasn’t on this blog, meaning that most of my readers had probably never seen it. So since it’s been seven months, I decided to put it up here too.
But as you read it, remember that this is seven-months-ago Johnny speaking. The shit I mention going through is pretty much gone now.
Because there is no spoon.
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I’d like to talk about the magic ingredient for success in any endeavor, be it building a Project Mojave “Freedom Business” or climbing the outside of a glass skyscraper wearing suction cups and Superman underwear. Even if you have all the planning and equipment and knowledge in the world, you can’t get anywhere without this magic ingredient. Without the ingredient, you will fall flat on your face every single time.
That magic ingredient? It’s belief.
Allow me to make this all about myself yet again.
I wrote a post two weeks ago on my own blog in which I talked about faith and Martin Scorses’s unit. The upshot, if you don’t want to read that post (and why the hell wouldn’t you? You asshole) was…
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What Matters
NOTE: What you see below is just a teaser. The full post is one I wrote for Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein over at her blog, but I wanted everyone who follows my blog to be sure to check this one out.
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When I found out what was happening with EPW’s daughter Gracie, I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to hear it for Elizabeth and I didn’t want to hear it for Gracie, but most of all I simply didn’t want to hear it for me.
I have two kids. One of them is Gracie’s age. And a few years ago, we had a little scare. It turned out to be nothing, and even if it had turned out to be something, the worst case scenario would have been a few days in the hospital. But even that — that smallish incident that involved my son, that was totally out of my control — knotted my stomach and made everything else in my life irrelevant for a little while.
So I can’t imagine what these two are going through. I don’t want to imagine it. I’d give anything in Elizabeth’s shoes. And I’m sure she’d give anything, too. When one of your kids is at stake, everything else is irrelevant. You don’t weigh costs in a situation like this. You simply pay them.
Which led to a really interesting realization.
>> Read the full post on ElizabethPottsWeinstein.com
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Why I’m essentially the same as George Washington
NOTE TO NON-AMERICANS AND ESPECIALLY YOU BRITS LIKE THAT WILY TIM BROWNSON: Me writing about US independence probably looks kind of ethnocentric, but I’m not trying to be rah-rah, go team USA! so much as I’m discussing independence in a general way, like in a way that even people in Mozambique are without a doubt totally riveted by. Now excuse me while I paint myself in red, white, and blue and streak in front of the queen.
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We always celebrate the Fourth of July in Canada.
It’s not planned deliberately, like I’m making a statement or am anti-American or anything. It just always works out that way because my mom owns a cottage on an island in the middle of Lake Erie, and the Fourth is one of those times we always go, and it’s always really hot, and at night, we can watch around a dozen microscopic fireworks displays across the lake in the USA, assuming the flies aren’t biting after dark on the beach.
We’re hardly alone in our non-US Fourths. There are always a lot of Americans there, all of whom are being quite Fourthlike with their many barbecues, bottle rockets, and Jet-Skis. So it ends up being like a US away from the US anyway.
This year, watching all of the activity and very eager to light sparklers and make s’mores over a fire, my son Austin was asking about why the Fourth of…
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5 Tips for Disruptive Thinking (Or, How to Get a Pompous Classist Like Johnny B. Truant to Feature You on His Blog)
What Sam Rosen says in the intro to his guest post below is true… I’m really not so into accepting guest posts because this isn’t so much a “business blog” as it’s “that one asshole’s blog.” When that one asshole isn’t the person writing, it feels strange. (Drew Kime holds some incriminating info on me, which is why I ran his post recently. But hopefully those hearings will be over soon and the statute of limitations will expire.)
So the reasons I’m running today’s guest post by Sam Rosen are twofold:
1. Sam is doing this really interesting thing that I’ve never seen before — 60 speakers in 60 minutes giving their best tips on online influence — and you all will like it. (I’m planning to like it myself, actually.) It’s totally and completely free, so there’s no reason not to do it. I also don’t stand to benefit from it at all, which both irks me and makes me feel like Mother Theresa.
2. I needed a post, and it made sense to talk about Sam’s thing (because naturally, I’m in it… since I’m a whore). However, I had the choice of doing the hard work myself or saying, “Yeah, Sam, why don’t you write it because I’m going on vacation in a bit and don’t want to write it myself? Have it on my desk by 9am tomorrow. And by ‘my desk,’ I mean to…
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