Every day I teeter on the edge of not sending one of these out; every day (or night) I manage to do it anyway.
A lot of the pain I experience, mental or physical, has to do with overthinking. I overthink my art, my work, my videos, my newsletters, my health, my relationships; and while I’m sure this is a human universal — no special snowflake stuff here, we’re a species of overthinkers or we’d probably have stayed happy in the trees — I find I could often do with a bit less of it. That’s what this do-shit-everyday project has accomplished, for this newsletter and much else, and for that alone it has been worth it. Instead of agonising over a given decision the short time-frames involved mean I just get stuck in and do the thing. Finally. At last. Took me long enough.
The side effect is that I am very tired and spent this morning sleeping in. Don’t worry, it’s not all the newsletter. A lot of it’s my infant child’s emerging teeth causing her to yell in pain throughout the night as nature apparently intended. But I am pooped, almost as much as she is, and I need to turn in early tonight.
I’m still on the wagon. I went for a run today. I did pullups. And I noticed that after struggling to make 5 pullups at the start of this thirty day thing I am now quietly putting away a couple more per set. I spent a bit of quality time fiddling with my Dungeons & Dragons character sheet; that warlock/bard gunslinger multiclass in a alt-history Wild West setting isn’t going to roll itself, is it?
Oh and a bunch of folks on TikTok really liked that stamp video, and several people actually subscribed to my print club! Exciting stuff (here it is again, if you want to use it to write actual letters to your actual friends.)
Also I just realised that it’s been more than a week since I did the proper Cynic’s Guide email to all subscribers. Irony! You guys have had more emails than I’ve sent in the rest of the year, and I still haven’t quite managed a weekly cadence for the rest of the email list. Tomorrow! It’ll give them something fun to do with their Sunday.
After this email goes out I’ll head to bed. I can’t wait to sleep blissfully for thirty minutes before the baby wakes up.
Thanks for sticking with me as I stick to whatever this is.
A skeptical dive into the weird, sketchy, occasionally life-changing world of self-improvement.
Hey everyone! I have already sent out two big ol’ emails today — a lot of you are paying subscribers, and I sent you something special earlier today — and I also put out my first customer newsletter in a while. To save my sanity and some semblance of an early bedtime, you 30 Day Challengers are getting the email I sent out to my customers. I think it’s relevant, as there’s a fair bit of art and stuff you may not have seen yet.
And apparently rest days are important when you’re doing an absurd endeavour like this newsletter+video posting marathon. That’s probably true, I wouldn’t know, but today is the seventh day so maybe some kind of kip is called for. I believe it’s traditional.
Oh also I finished the painting part of my secret project today. Y A Y
Gidday, Two Ruru art enthusiast,
It’s been a while, but I wanted to show some of what I’ve been working on. This is just some, by the way; I’ve never done more art (or writing in my life.) There’s a good reason for that:
I’m now a full-time artist/writer/marketing contractor/consultant/dilettante
So there really has never been a better time (for me) to purchase my work. And I’ve just made the best possible way (for you) to do just that:
Introducing the Two Ruru Print Club: where you can subscribe to my work (digitally or in-real-lifey, your call!) for a very attractive price ($2 less than the cost of one PDF download from my shop)
AND the prints come with a postcard printed on the back, so you can send a message to your friends in the snail mail like in the olden days!
AND there’s an option to get a stamp with your print and the stamp has art on it that I made myself, as seen in the following educational film:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lEiR1nJskVU
I like all this very much, and I hope you do too. I especially like the idea of getting folks sending actual letters (well, postcards) to each other — it’s something I miss from the pre-internet days and I think it’d be good to get going again.
Oh and subscribing to any of the tiers will also get you a letter from me each month. If that’s something you’d like.
And I’m still making prints, shirts and other things. The aim is to get a print, a sticker, and a shirt made for each piece of art I make each month, so if you want to buy something as a one-off, you definitely have that option too.
That duck picture you’ve seen a lot of is part of the new project I hinted at last time: I am attempting to paint along with every single episode of Bob Ross’ show The Joy of Painting and make… creative adjustments to the art that comes out. I’ve done a few of these now and will be putting out prints and stickers for each, as well as making them available for digital downloads.
And on a completely unrelated note, people seemed to like this:
If you’re more in the scrolling mood, I’m making an antidote to doom at all of the usual social media hellsites. I challenged myself to post something new every day and I very nearly have — I’m now up to day 22. Feel free to check it via the digital addiction platform of your choice:
“Kakabro” (a kakapo wearing a trucker cap) was the standout winner in the poll I sent asking you what bird I should paint next, and work is now underway! The reveal should be my October Surprise (a good one, I hope.) I’m looking forward to showing you.
Thank You
Now, more than ever, I appreciate you supporting my work. Go have a hoon on https://www.tworuru.com/shop/ and I’ll have more for you soon.
Feel free to reply to this email with any suggestions or requests, and I’ll make sure to reply right back – I read every email you send, and I appreciate ‘em, too.
It’s been one of those days where I was busy to the point of being frantic throughout, and I can’t really recount what I actually did. Wait, no, that’s only if I use my stupid human brain. I have a bullet journal and I can look at it to tell what I did.
The closest I have ever come to conventional definitions of “productive” has been when the bullet journal is in regular use. Being ADHD me, it goes in and out of fashion; sometimes I forget it exists, sometimes it rules my day. But when it works, it really works.
Mine is laid out with the date, the day, and the page divided in half. There’s a day planner on the left, which I almost – but not always -forget to use, and a todo list on the right. (This is… not fascinating, I know, I am nodding off just typing it, but because these emails go out late at night perhaps you can use this bit as a sleep aid.)
Today mine tells me that I set too many tasks for myself and consequently didn’t get them all done. And that I avoided work on a couple of quite important things to get lost in busy-work. So that’s why it seems I didn’t get anything done. The reason I know this is because I also practice the “reverse todo list” which is when you write down the stuff that you actually did in addition to the things you merely intended to do, so I can see where I went off track.
Tomorrow I’m going to self-improve by only writing down the one or two most important todos and then, revelation only doing them until such time as they are done and I can get to the other stuff.
I did manage to get a video done today – I’d dropped off the previous two days because of, well, these emails, which were eating my usual both-end candle-burning hours. I also finished the main body of work on the Secret Painting Project, which I hope to be able to talk about quite soon, ideally next week. And I am getting things ready to email all the Cynic’s Guide and Two Ruru subscribers with all the art products I have made lately, and I am absolutely shitting myself that no-one will buy anything, because… well. Remember I mentioned rejection sensitivity? And being worried about not making a go of this business malarkey and consequently not being able to make ends meet?
Those two things combined are a hell of a drug. The kind that makes you paranoid, not the good ones like heroin that just make you pleasantly sleepy.
But those emails are going out tomorrow. And so is a surprise for all the paid Cynic’s Guide subscribers; I feel a bit bad because – in my efforts to keep this newsletter free – I’ve never done anything especially special for the paid subs. And it’s time I changed that.
Time to sleeeeep
Wait, no, first:
What the hell is wrong with PDFs and the tech industry in general
I had the misfortune of having to fill in a form via PDF today and may I just say, to the originator and perpetuators of this cursed format: what the fuck? How is it, tech industry, that you’re force-feeding AI into every product, and yet it’s still well-nigh impossible to fill in a PDF form in a way that does not instantly induce a migraine? How is it, Adobe, that you offer me the opportunity to pay for an in-PDF AI assistant who can be unhelpful in new and presumably exciting ways, when the software itself is bloated scum garbage and barely fulfils its function?
See also: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Teams
Today’s Video
–– Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me, and another person kindly pointed out last week that I have not been including my Cursed Platform links in these newsletters. Let’s fix that now.
This painting of Moby Duck – name suggested by a few excellent TikTok commenters – is the first artwork I’ve made that has done Numbers on social media since I was posting videogame artwork on Reddit. People have been asking for prints, so I’ve prepared the following options, to gather everything in one place.
Physical prints
People love prints, and who am I to deny them? These can be printed and shipped worldwide (yes, even the United States!) Buy using the link below.
I like to keep my artwork as accessible as possible, so I make digital PDF prints available for every artwork I do. Buy this, and print it however you like.
I’ve been wanting to set up a print club for ages, and here we are! You can subscribe digitally (for less than the cost of one digital download) and get access to all the art I’ve ever made. And you can also subscribe to monthly prints, in postcard form! Check it below for all the details.
I have, true to my word, been absolutely smashing the website. As always when I make Website Stuff I feel like Homer when he’s been up all night eating cheese, or like Billy Joel Armstrong in Brain Stew.
There, some comforting references for Elder Millenials. The rest of you will have to be confused. Let me assuage that by showing you the things I made today. Behold, my stuff!
Some of the stuff I made today
First up is a print of old mate Moby Duck, as requested by what seems like a billion but is more likely about ten TikTok commenters:
And next is a digital download, because DRM is silly and digital products are cheap and convenient for customers and all margin for me, baby! It’s a win-win!
You folks who’ve signed up for this 30 day challenge malarkey are the first ever to see this. And if we’re all extremely lucky, all the subscription links and options on that page should actually work. Feel free to test it out! 1
A bit more about the print club in the last few minutes before midnight. Essentially, it’s a way to subscribe to my art. I’d been wanting to set up a subscription print club for ages, but I thought the concept was a bit… done. Then I thought: why not postcards? So you can choose to keep them or send them to your mates?
So that’s what I did.
And then I thought: but why not stamps too? Because it turns out New Zealand Post offers a custom stamp option, and so now you can bathe in this glory:
Minutes left until deadline! Oh, I almost forgot. Paid subscribers to the Cynic’s Guide are going to get opted into the Two Ruru Digital Archive automatically. I’ll send an email about it tomorrow. It’s the least I can do for you guys. With that in mind, here is the big red button.
Thanks all! And feel free to reply to this email and let me know what you reckon.
(Don’t worry, I’ll sort you if anything goes wrong.)
Today is a shorter update. I worked on my Secret Project — it’s a painting, but that’s not the secret bit — and I did House Chores.1 This episode isn’t likely to be riveting for anyone playing along at home, but I think there’s a metaphor to be mined out of the boring detritus of domesticity.
We have a set of curtains in the master bedroom that is Not Doing Well, and hasn’t been for oh, let’s say, a year. The lining, I suppose you’d call it, the stuff that blocks out light and attracts mould, is getting sun-damaged and fragile and has ripped accordingly. When the rip started it was about four centimetres long.
“We should fix that,” Louise, or I, said.
Of course, since then, the rip has grown up and had little baby rips of its own. It’s now a good metre long. Or I should say was over a metre long, because today I finally took the curtains down and fixed them.
Of course, I’d figured out how to fix them many months ago. About midway through what I am, entirely without justification, going to call the Rip Saga, I’d bought some iron-on patches and tape from Spotlight and done nothing with them. As is so often the case with ADHD stuff, there were what seemed like dozens of reasons not to fix the curtains. The stuff I’d bought might not work. The ironing board wasn’t big enough. The curtains might rip even more. All these excuses, half-thought, felt as a kind of almost tangible barrier in the mind.
So while the kiddos were out and after I’d done enough work on my secret painting I popped into our bedroom, took the curtains down — five minutes, tops — laid them out on a set of drawers, no ironing board needed, grabbed the iron-on patches and scissors, and the curtains were fixed. It took maybe 45 minutes.
45 minutes, for a job I’ve been avoiding for a year.
I don’t want to pin all this sort of thing on ADHD. Every person in with a house has housework they don’t get to. But that odd little barrier in the mind, the terminal indecision followed by a reflexive urge to do something else — that, I believe, is an ADHD thing. So many of the things I struggle with come down to indecision. I can’t decide, so I avoid, so I fall in to some kind of default behaviour.
Since finishing my old job and attempting my own thing, this sort of stuff happens far less. I’m noticing I get more done, more often. Some of this is the inevitable result of having more time and more mental bandwidth; there’s a reason newly unemployed people are so often portrayed in media as taking a sudden interest in housework or arcane hobbies.
But I feel like mine runs a bit deeper; I’m finding myself more apt to do tasks I’d typically avoid. That little mental hiccup of indecision, the stab of resistance, is somehow more noticeable and therefore more avoidable. And some of this is quite definitely because of my do-something-every-day project; instead of just letting the roadblocks get in the way I’m just smashing through them, and realising (to continue the road transport metaphor) they were more cones than concrete barriers.
Or maybe I just give fewer ducks these days.
Speaking of ducks! For inexplicable reasons, that duck I painted has gone almost legitimately viral on TikTok. Last I looked it had 123,000 views, which is still small beer in the scheme of things but is by far the most looks anything I’ve ever made has had. My almost-daily posting and gruelling video-making has, at last, paid off. Not in money, of course. That would be too easy. But there are a lot of folks asking for prints, and so I’m going to have to get some of those ready to sell tomorrow.
Oh here is that large red button again I suppose. Thanks to those who have taken out paid subscriptions! You can pay what you want, so long as it’s more than $3 dollarydoos
https://buttondown.com/cynicsguide?as_embed=true
Then I played D&D with friends, which is why this one is late (there will be a new reason every night, I’m sure.)
I know, I know, I said I’d get this out bright and early, but apparently bright and early is (at the time of writing) 10:30 PM. However, this fundamental inability to get a newsletter out before sunset has given me an incredible idea, based on the shittiest, griftiest, shiftiest, outright dumbest self-help tome I ever read: The Morning Miracle. This book, with fellow travellers like The 5 AM Club, claim that your inability to rise before 4 AM is what’s holding you back in life. Well, here’s my contra-thesis, in the form of an obnoxious self-help book blurb:
The Midnight Method
Author, artist, entrepreneur, male model and playboy dilettante’s Joshua Drummond’s otherwise perfect life was marred by just one flaw: his urgent need to rise at 5 AM. He felt like he was cursed to be an early riser – until he discovered this one weird secret trick: The Midnight Method. In this 864 page book and accompanying webinar series, Drummond outlines the ultimate lifehack that changed it all – staying up late every single night. His rediscovery of the secret known by midnight luminaries from Benjamin Franklin to Imhotep is exactly what your sad life has been missing. The Midnight Method will teach you the seven highly effective habits that lead to being a regular night-owl, and will at last unlock your health, productivity, riches, love life, and happiness.
There you go. Wasn’t that horrible? It’s accurate, though; The Morning Miracle and my Midnight Method have the exact same thesis at their core: go without a bit of sleep to get more stuff done, or go for a jog, or something. It’s just that one is surrounded by weird biblical hang-ups about wise men rising early, and the other is culturally frowned upon.
I promised you a list. I also did a spreadsheet, but it’s not ready for public consumption. That will have to be tomorrow.
I reserve the right to change the order of the following items without notice, but this is pretty much the order in which I want to get stuff done. In between these specific jobs, I will of course be working on commissions and making videos and cooking food and changing nappies: ideally not all at the same time.
28 Days Later
Ideas, part 1
Ideas, part 2
A 28-day todo list (you are here).
Secret project
Daddy Capitalism: add a whole bunch of products to the store and send out an email to customers. Work on secret project.
Rejection therapy: Ring around 20 art/gallery/souvenir-ish shops and see if they’ll stock my stuff. Finish secret project.
Very Specific Parody Video: I’ve been wanting to do this for ages. I figure it’ll take about a day to film.
Rejection therapy, part 2: Ask customers for testimonials. Ask local cafe/venues about drink&draws.
Plug me pls Ask influencers for plugs. Prepare materials for Print Club.
Print Club 7: Launch preorders for print club – digital and physical.
Level Up Louise: This is my awful code name for my adult drawing course. I’d like to get a few people learning from this weekend.
Day of Rest: I will probably spend Sunday resting with family, by which I mean “doing chores”
Again, capitalism daddy: Adding more products to the shop
Business time: Business plans and investment pitches. As much fun as it sounds.
Those that can’t: Developing course materials for professional development course
Brand me: hitting up corporations – greeting card companies, apparel companies, whoever it is who makes jigsaws, etc – to see if they want birds or other paintings/designs on their shit
Artwork for corridors: put up a website page advertising the suitability of my stuff for doctor’s surgeries or hospital waiting rooms or other depressing places that need something cheerful in them
Crowd Fund: Investigate some kind of crowdfunding for Season 1 of Everybob or something.
The First Rule of Print Club: Actually launch print club
Look for investors: I’m pretty sure you find them under rocks, right?
Send out prints for print club
Moar products on the store, another email to customers. The aim is to have a print, a shirt, and a sticker available for pretty much everything I make.
Stage a drink & draw
Stage an art class
Stage a professional development presentation / lesson
Launch crowdfunding
Pitch to investors
Apply for a real job. I kid! If I see real jobs that look awesome I will apply for them anyway.
That is a lot and obviously jobs will blend into each other or stretch out across days, it is all subject to change, but getting all the shit I need to do written out is cathartic.
Today’s video
I made a video about ruining one of my Everybob paintings with a duck. It did OK on Instagram, terrible on YouTube, and for some reason – I genuinely have no idea why – it is going gangbusters on TikTok. Last I looked it was getting about hundred views every other minute. This doesn’t mean much, especially in the TikTok scheme of things where 1 million views barely rates as viral, but it’s still easily the most successful video I’ve done even if the algorithm arbitrarily cuts off the view firehose in the next five minutes. Check it out here:
This absolute unit of a duck has blessed your timeline to pass on a very important message: you’re wonderful. Pass the duck on to someone who needs to hear it. #motivation#painting#rubberducky#bobross#positivity
I did a bunch of pullups as part of a houseworkout. Remember my New Year’s resolution? I’m still on it. I really want to get that muscle-up before December ends.
Like and subscribe
Here as always is the big red button that helps me out. You know what to do.
It’s late; I need to figure out a way to get these emails out before stupid o’clock. You know what doesn’t help? GODDAMN DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME THAT’S WHAT. Despite evidence clearly showing that daylight saving kills or maims or just really pisses off a huge number of people every year, we persist in the monumental folly of meddling with time. And it’s even worse with kids, because they don’t understand why they have to get up and go to bed an hour earlier and it is apparently bad form to give them coffee. “Oh, but it’s so nice to have that extra sunlight in the evening!” Yeah, it is, and that would have happened anyway, thanks to the axial inclination of the earth and the sun’s gravitational pull. I hate daylight saving and I will spend the next few months furious about it until time returns to its rightful course.
Did you miss yesterday’s email?
Some of you didn’t sign up to this until the email was already out. Luckily, I am archiving them all on tworuru dot com. Go read, comment, share, and enjoy.
Here are the remaining revenue plans/ideas I have.
Art classes/drink&draw sessions etc I am good enough at art to know I’m not and never will be top-tier, but I’m also well aware that I have more draughtmanship than the average schmo. If those that can’t, teach, then surely those that can (a bit) would be better at it? Also, I enjoy the science of drawing, and I like teaching people. Some drawing classes or maybe putting on a few of those drink-and-draw sessions could help keep the wolf from the door. I was thinking of starting up an online cohort of folks who’d like to pick up some drawing skill; email me if you’re keen – josh@tworuru.com
Teaching teachers how to draw You know who mostly can’t draw, at all? Teachers! To me, this is mind-blowing; it’s like if someone dropped a casual “Oh, I can’t add” or “Hah, yeah, I never learned to read!” in conversation. It’s not just arty-farty; the ability to sketch or diagram is a vital skill for any number of STEM-ish careers and a lot of kids aren’t being taught how to do it, because their parents or teachers didn’t know how. So I’m putting together a little professional development course for primary and intermediate teachers in NZ. The idea is just to teach the basics, to get teachers to the point where they’re “better” than the kids (children have a pointedly unsophisticated view of drawing; if you can do realism, you’re amazing) and they can take it or leave it from there. I’ve been at it for a while now and have a pilot school signed up ready to go. If you’re a teacher or principal or aligned such, ping me on josh@tworuru.com
Investment/crowdfunding I think a few of my business plans – those I’ve detailed here and others – have legs, shapely business legs that might actually provide a return on investment. To that end, I am interested in hearing from anyone who might be interested in investing, or can simply tell me how to talk to potential investors without falling flat on my face. I also think there’s some crowdfunding potential for painting series – for example painting along with every Bob Ross episode – that might be worth looking into. If any of that is something you know about, josh@tworuru.com will find me.
A day job. I am not proud. I’m aware that the spool-up-your-own business biz may not work out, despite my best efforts — and you’d best believe I am giving it my best effort — and I’m more than happy to take on another normal-er job. On the bright side, the deeply stupid AI bubble should be bursting soon, so people might start hiring humans with a comms and marketing skillset again. On the dark side, the bursting may reap pure economic chaos, so who knows, maybe I’m better off trying to convince people to buy my stickers.
Your ideas. Give them to me.
I have more ideas, but that’ll do for now. Is there anything you reckon I’ve missed? Hit the reply button or snap an email off to josh@tworuru.com and let me know.
Also your money
The big red button lies below. Do you click it, helping me hit my $1k a month newsletter goal, or do you let it languish, curious to see if I can keep up daily emails for more than two days running?
A bit of transparency is in order here. I currently bring in about (it varies, for various reasons) $400 a month from this newsletter. That may surprise you; perhaps it sounds like a lot, perhaps it sounds like very little. Either way, I’d love to get it up to $1000, a hefty 10 percent of my revenue goal.
Tomorrow — bright and early tomorrow, not at what is apparently 10:45 PM but is actually 9:45 PM and you cannot convince me otherwise — I will send out a calendar of all the biz stuff I’m going to do or try to do for the next 28 days. There may, and this is fair warning, also be a spreadsheet. I hope you are ready.
For those who signed up for the Cynic’s Guide way back when, this new series may be what you were expecting (compared to whatever it is you got) it’s just me, trying on every damn self-improvement business hustle malarkey under the sun in an effort to make something stick, or at least make money, in 30 days. Let’s go.
I am wearing my business socks, mm. Because I am addicted to eating food and having a house, I am attempting to spool up a business in 30 days. This isn’t quite as follycious[1] as it might sound; people sometimes manage this stuff in a weekend. The target I’ve set myself is $10k revenue a month, which is a curious combination of lofty and about what a supermarket middle manager earns, but I’d rather shoot for the moon and miss and… end up asphyxiating during a decaying eccentric orbit? Damn my inability to let trite metaphors go unexamined. I’m giving it a damn good go, put it that way.
The model I am using – because I like easily divisible numbers – is 10 revenue streams of $1000 each. Of course it may not shake out that way, chances are some will be more and some substantially less, but here’s the 10 that I think I can spin up from scratch or develop out over the next 30 days.
Corporate comms and marketing stuff. I would be silly not to do this; it’s been my bread and butter for a decade now. To that end I have set up a website for a freelance case study business, specialising in being a tech whisperer for industries that absolutely suck at selling themselves. If you’re an accountant, systems integrator, infosec consultant, or your business has anything to do with Linux, you’d better make that call to the Content King.[2]
Art shop. https://tworuru.com has been ticking over for ages now, but I’ve never really souped it up. I’ve been absolutely smashing out art lately and the plan is to make – at minimum – three kinds of product for each new piece I make: a print, a sticker, and a t-shirt.
Commissions. A bunch of people have bought a commissioned artwork since I opened them up again and I am very grateful; you are keeping the (two) wolves from the door. You can get one of your own here if you’re so inclined: https://www.tworuru.com/product/custom-commission/
Two Ruru Snail-Mail Print Club[3]. You subscribe and you get a print and a letter in the mail, each month! Like the olden days! I am actually absurdly excited about his one as I think I have come up with a really unusual twist on the fairly well-done concept of a snail mail club. I’ll introduce in an upcoming email. I’ll let you guys know first, because you’re cool. Oh and everyone who joins the Snail Mail Print Club also gets access to:
Two Ruru Email Print Club. Exactly the same idea as the above, but users will subscribe just like you do to this newsletter and I’ll send you the letter and prints via electronic mail. Oh and I almost forgot; everyone who subs to either Print Club will get access to a downloadable archive of every artwork I’ve ever made.
The newsletters. Yup, you’re here too! If I can get around ~200 paid subscribers a month, that’s 10 percent of my revenue requirement taken care of. And – as I hope this email proves – I will be writing a lot more. If I’ve made my case well enough, scroll down to the big red button
That’s just the first six for now – I realise, now that I’m on a roll, that I have lots more of these in various stages of feasibility and completion, and these emails are meant to be short. So I’ll talk about the next five ideas/revenue streams in the next one of these thirty day challenge emails. And in the following email I’ll put in what I plan to be doing on each of the subsequent 29 days – there will be a new, business-time focus for each day. Today was “Explain the plan”.
“Artwork” of the day
I’m tired. Here’s a duck.
Today’s video
I made a video of me painting the black hole scene from Interstellar, one of my favourite sequences and visuals in any film. I love the painting. I’m less sure about the video, but I never know about those.
And here’s the one from the day before, in which I painted those weird lights you see when you shut your eyes. People seemed to like it.
What did you do today self-improvement-wise?
I went for a run. Pre-kids I could whip out a casual 10k and now… I can’t. So I am taking it easy, because nothing will stymie me like a swollen knee. I am doing Couch to 5K. Should you be struck by the urge to join me, feel free. Because I am more bougie than I am comfortable with, I am using an app. You don’t have to use the app; there are plenty of training programs available online and you can get pretty accurate distance estimates via Google Maps or your neighbourhood.
Lifehacks
When I come across anything I’m doing that helps me on this mad caper, I’m putting it here.
Making the most of your spare minutes
I’m writing this particular snippet in the nine minutes the air fryer has to finish doing the burger patties we got in the 3 for $20 deal. If I have a useful lifehack to offer, it’s that productive activities – or, less toxically, “things I genuinely want or need to do but end up doomscrolling instead” – can be done in the same time blocks, on the same device, that you’d typically use to have a hoon on the Tok pipe. The more I do this the more I find that the phone in my pocket is a boon instead of a curse, and it’s one of the very few self-improvement plans that survives contact with kids. Things that have built-in timers work well for this method. It’ll go beep in a minute or few, and I’ll leave the laptop and go assemble burgers for me and (Borat voice) My Wife.
Markdown
Writer? Get yourself a Markdown editor and learn Markdown. It’s the fastest, most distraction-free, and ultimately foolproof (and I am very foolish) way to format as you write. I use Obsidian for the moment – it’s what I used to write this – but there are lots of others. Many, including Obsidian, are free. Get amongst!
Yeah/Nah
A few minutes before sending this out I realised that some of the people who signed up to my “Yeah” list also clicked “Nah” to receiving an email every day for the next 30 days. I am sorry about this but you must admit that it is a very funny, very Kiwi problem to have, given how we tend to use this expression. Of course it’s my fault; I simply shouldn’t have included a “Nah” option. If you’re getting this email and you’d rather not, simply reply to this one and let me know I messed up, and I’ll take you off the list.
For everyone who did want to get these, welcome! I hope you enjoyed Day 1.
This, a portmanteau of “folly” and "fallacious’ is not a word, but it should be. ↩︎
Old Simpsons fans: this is exactly the joke you think it is. Also I apologise for the AI generated image; it’s a placeholder. I need to create a new File Photo as none of mine were even verging on professional. ↩︎
I am thinking of setting some ground rules, and the first and second rule will probably be “Talk about Print Club”. ↩︎
Here’s the big red button, click it to help me on my follacious journey
Gidday! I’ve been caught in that loop where I think constantly about sending an email out to you all but then think “but no it has to be good” and consequently don’t send anything at all.
If I think hard about it, and I have been, given the employment situation I now find myself in, I have two traits that — if not toxic — can certainly be annoying and detrimental, and have enormous toxicity potential. They are my absurd perfectionism (see above) and my extraordinary rejection sensitivity, which some folks with ADHD/autism feel so strongly they term it rejection sensitive dysphoria.
Those powers combined make it a wonder I ever send or write anything at all. And they’ve caused enormous problems in my life, in relationships, and at work.
Welp, time to exorcise those particular demons. I’ll probably always have some degree of perfectionism and rejection sensitivity, but I’d rather they served me than got in my way. To that end, I have (for the hundredth time) resumed exercising, which I find good for exorcising. And I have also started, vis. my previous epistle, to upload a video (nearly) every day for 30 days. I’ve managed 18 days so far, and I’m very determined to see it through.
I’ve learned from doing this. Mainly to be okay with making things that are extremely less than perfect, that sometimes ‘good enough’ is indeed good enough, and to give less of a shit when something I do does not take off in the way that the deeply unfortunate perfectionism expects. In fact, it all adds up to a good working example of how perfectionism and rejection sensitivity act as a one-two team to stymie action. Perhaps this sounds familiar: you work too long on something (perfectionism) when you’d learn a lot more from doing something faster and less perfect, then expect more from it than you should (will THIS be the video that gets twenty million views?) and then the rejection sensitivity kicks in (bawwww, this one only got to twenty thousand!).
Going through the motions over and over again seems to blunt the impact; after a while you just seem to stop caring. In a good way.
And I’m getting a bit less weird about showing my mug on the internet too.
And here is the one that seems to have done best across all three of them:
Making up for lost time
Of course, after 12ish days of having my creative impulses spaghettified by the internet’s supermassive black holes of short-form content, it occurred to me: why am I not doing this here?! After all, you are the ones who’ve made the effort to really subscribe to the stuff I make, taking actual time to consume it in appallingly old-fashioned word form. But of course I don’t want to spam you, either. So I’ll set up a special email list for yet another 30 day challenge. Should you opt in via the button below, I will send you an email every day for 30 days, detailing the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles, of the inherently absurd but hopefully productive effort of trying to spin up an art/creative agency business in just one month.
Misc
After my piece at The Spinoff, RNZ got in touch to ask for a chat about self-improvement, and I was happy to oblige. (I thought I’d posted this already, but apparently not! I’m still not 100 percent sure, but I think I managed to make it through without making a complete goose of myself. Have a listen!
A few readers have been replying to my emails letting me know what they get out of it. These have been absurdly touching to read and I hope you never stop sending them. If you do want to send me one, just reply to this email. Here are just a few, with more coming next time.
Charlie writes:
I read your pieces from time to time and always enjoy them although I am often left wondering why. Maybe it’s the randomness that some how feels very familiar to me. Whatever it is, keep doing it. You make this 75 year old almost retired male feel a little less irrelevant.
Sarah writes:
Kia ora Josh, Not sure this is the reply you’re looking for. Nonetheless, a reply is what you’ve got! I knew you have an ADHD brain but I didn’t realise you’re Autistic as well. So that’s why you’re so cool! Relatable struggles. I haven’t had an ADHD assessment (despite my doctor’s encouragement to go for one) but I am confirmed Autistic. Our little family all really relates to Pathological Demand Avoidance. Even internal demands trigger it. It’s very frustrating for all concerned, but especially for the person receiving or perceiving the demands. I think that gets in our way a lot. The eldest one can’t cope with something as simple in appearance as a “good morning” wave. I wish I could say that didn’t result in me feeling hurt even though I understand the why (curse RSD). Both kids dropped out of school without qualifications because school is nothing but demands. I am grateful they are diagnosed and old enough for us to not be facing the current government’s ire. I’m moving further and further towards self acceptance. It doesn’t always come easily but I mostly can’t be bothered trying to spur myself or my teenagers into action anymore, or to feel in ways other than we feel, beyond trying to be good people who help others. Maybe part of it is trying to justify my own life as a disabled person unable to properly participate in the employment market (thanks, related health conditions) but I’m grateful I don’t have to labour in paid employment and can spend my life doing things that feel meaningful (when I’ve gathered the spoons to do so). Today I went to a doctor’s appointment with someone and then in to WINZ to make sure they’re getting what they need as best they can within system constraints. On Monday night, I ran a craft gathering for Autistic gender queer people and women. I’ve found my niche, finally, in turning towards what feels good rather than what I (or others) think I should be doing, and I’m grateful that that is an option to me. I really should finish sorting that will I paid for though. Reading is a struggle for me (and my auditory processing is even worse) but I like reading your newsletter. In part to reassure myself I’m not wasting valuable time by spurning self-help books, but I also enjoy your curiousity, your world view, how articulate you are, and the relatablility of the struggles. I’m sorry you never got your tree photo, though I hope you can treasure the feeling it gave you when you saw it. I lost virtually all my photos of the house I grew up in, my grandparents’ homes, and the rental we lived in when the kids were born. But even though I can’t share these places with anyone else now, I’m grateful to remember how they felt. A belated happy birthday to you. I am also 42. I think a lot about death, but in more of a “this is going to happen at some point” rather than in a self-induced way. That is major progress. I’m grateful to know I’m Autistic because it’s given me the missing pieces of the puzzle to understand who I am and see that it’s ok. If I think other Autistic people are cool, worthy, intelligent, belong in this world (and deserve accommodations and understanding!), then maybe I should be more compassionate towards myself and realise I’m not so different. We can do good things. I hope to cross paths in person one day. Thanks for doing what you do when you are able to. Sincerely, Sarah of Kirikiriroa PS. I’ve never read Hitchhiker’s Guide (and I accept I never will) but somehow I do still get the reference!
Joel writes:
Hi Josh,
Just wanted to send a quick reply to this. In recent times I have aggressively cut down on the amount of news/newsletters/blogs/social media I consume. Mainly for mental health reasons. Also because over consumption has an effective way of keeping me from doing basically anything else. For the last year or so, my blog consumption has been cut down to roughly – actually exactly – one. This one.
Two words come to my mind: hopeful and connected. Even as I write them, they seem like odd words to associate with the impersonal activity of reading a newsletter that doesn’t always have the sunniest disposition. But there is something about a man who’s roughly a decade older than me consistently writing in a way that is thoughtful, vulnerable, insightful, often poignant…it’s actually quite aspirational. You often have a lovely way of helping me clarify a feeling or thought that I have not quite had the words for previously. I often feel ‘seen’ by your work, and tend to carry it internally for several days afterwards.
Your consistency is of quality, if not regularity. For which I have much gratitude.
Best, Joel
Making a go of it
Now that I don’t have a traditional job, I’m busier than ever. Now that I am finally in the habit (via the partially-debunked notion that it takes two weeks to form a new one) of posting something new every day, the focus for the next 30 days is to develop my various interests and income streams into something that replaces my lost full-time income, enabling such useful things as “food” and “mortgage payments.” I have a lot of ideas on this front and I’ll be posting about them every day, but for now, the most helpful thing you can do is subscribe via the big red button below. It’s a monthly charge; the suggested amount is $5, but you can pay whatever you want.
