Living on fire without putting yourself out — and cherishing the heat.

“May you live in interesting times.”

English translation of a purported traditional Chinese curse.

My good friends! I would like to say hello, once again. For the past three years, I have written a birthday post. A sort of thematic idea that is supposed to encapsulate the idea I would like to live out this year. Small self-experiments just for fun. My fourth one, however, it is very late. My twenty-third birthday was almost a year ago now, with my next birthday now creeping in.

Happiness isn’t the Meaning of Life

It is time for me to grow another year older, and since I wrote last year’s birthday thesis late, I decided to write this one early. Sometimes you have thoughts going through your mind so strongly, you have no choice but to write them down at that very moment.

What is a birthday thesis? I figure I should explain, as this is my third one. I originally took the idea from Buster Benson — where he would write a yearly report with a central concept. I really enjoy the idea, but haven’t done it very well so far. I have a rather good central idea this time around, although it is candid and dark, but I believe there is no other option but to write it.

Why you should create — even though there’s already far too much in the world already.

Six years ago, when Medium was first starting out, it was invite-only and was created by one of the founder’s of Twitter to simply publish thoughts longer than the then-limit of 140 characters. Oh, how so much has changed — and so quickly.

Medium has now grown into momentous platform that allows anybody to share their story freely and easily. The growth in such a small amount of time is absurd — but Medium is just the tip of the social media revolution iceberg.

Twitter itself was founded eleven years ago. If we go back further, to thirteen years ago, YouTube was founded. A year before that, Facebook. This was coupled with the exponential development of hardware, which now allows anybody to utilize these platforms within seconds from the palm of their hand.

There’s a superior method to ensure ambitions are fulfilled.

Summary: Change your mindset when it comes to ambitious goals — break them down into tangible and practical daily routines.

Author’s Note: This article is an expansion of two articles I wrote for Beeminder:

• The Tao of Bees
• The Sting of Work

Dreams on the Backburner

As a writer, I find myself getting into slumps where I don’t write anything at all. Contradictory? — There will be eighty different half-finished pieces in my drafts. I’ll have a late-night epiphany while trying to go to sleep or in the middle of a shower about what would make a good post.

But then I never write the posts. Eventually, those supposedly great ideas just disappear, and I grow old and whither away and die, and never publish anything. The end.