Category: The Cynic’s Guide to Self-Improvement

  • Day 28: I am getting an early night and you should too

    Day 28: I am getting an early night and you should too

    Something I saw some time ago: “Depleted brains seek distraction.” I wish I could attribute it, but I was tired, and scrolling, and now I’ve forgotten without any possibility of recall who said it.

    But it certainly seems abundantly true; the more tired I am the more likely I am to seek distraction, whether it’s the omnipresent lure of my phone or… other stuff. I’m well aware that stimming isn’t a purely ADHD/autism/neurodiverse phenomenon, pretty much everyone stims (tapping feet, drumming fingers, twirling hair) but I notice I do it a lot more when I’m tired. One tell I’ve become acutely aware of, for obvious reasons, is that I’m more likely to scat (in the musical, non-horrific sense of the word; I see you grinning there — stop it). Making up words and singing them at speed is just something I do, and as far as I can tell have always done. Perhaps it’s a hangover from my fundamentalist childhood.

    Anyway, that’s one of the ways I know I’m tired. I used to get more verbal tics when I was tired too, but therapy seems to have got rid of a lot of those. These days it’s just the scatting. Ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop.

    Weird stuff everyone does(?)

    There you go, that seems like a topic for this newsletter: weird shit that everyone does — or at least, that lots of people do. Do you do anything you think is a bit odd and probably can’t do in polite society but that is also perfectly normal? I’m sure you do. Feel free to reply and I’ll put some in the next newsletter. I’ll volunteer another one: Trichotillomania. I don’t have this very badly (it’s not the reason I went bald or anything, that was plain old boring male-pattern baldness) but I do have it to a degree; it only really manifested once I grew a beard. For some reason there’s a few bits of beard I absent-mindedly pick or pull at and I’d really rather not. It’s not good for the beard, and like other stims — I’m pretty sure it’s a stim — it pops up mainly when I am tired, bored, or slightly nervous. Driving is typical.

    There you go. I hope that was enough TMI for one newsletter! You are probably used to it by now.

    Where I’m up to

    My horrible AI article seems to have done well.

    I’m writing a follow-up of sorts, because apparently I am a prose masochist, and I’m thinking of turning going to turn it into a video essay. There’s not much to report on the business-development front today, (although a shop I am stocking my postcards at as a kind of test has reported they are selling well – and remember, there is still time to join the Two Ruru Print Club this month if you want to subscribe to all my art, forever!) as it was mostly looking after the kids. Which was wonderful, the kids are great company. Whenever I feel a bit overloaded I remember how lucky I am to see as much of them as I do, and that’s why the nagging urge to grab at my phone keeps annoying me. On that note:

    Bricked

    A friend got one of those Brick things ($100!) and said it was helpful, so I asked him how it was going. He had this to say:

    It’s a wee device you can magnetise to your fridge or whatever. When you get the attached app, you select which phone apps you want the device to block

    Then you simply tap the device and it blocks you from being able to use the apps until you tap again to unblock them

    While it’s active, opening the apps gets you this:

    a Brick screenshot that says "This is a distraction. Your phone is currently Bricked. To access app, tap your Brick."

    It’s been life changing so far man, honestly can’t recommend it enough

    Anxiety has gone down, focus is way better, haven’t doom scrolled since I got it. I check the apps when I want to contact folks or check in, then turn them off again

    And that sounds… really clever, actually. Ulysses Pact apps usually become ineffective when it becomes habitual to bypass them; adding a physical location to them (like Odysseus’ mast!) makes a lot of sense in terms of reducing distractions yet still allowing you to access them if you’re actually need to. It’s a cool idea, and yet like nearly all self-improvement doohickeys I still feel it’s too expensive for what it is! That said, $100 would pay for itself pretty quickly if it really did work to reduce distractions.

    Sleeeep

    My plan for less distraction in this moment is not a Brick, for now. (Focus Friend is fun, free and helpful; the only annoying thing is that I keep finding myself forgetting to set it!) Instead it’s back to my eternal battle: just getting the heck to bed. If I can carve out an extra hour or two’s sleep I will be much less distractable. The problem is I am temperamentally a night owl who would love to remain one, but the kids don’t give me that option. And as such my total sleep time on a good night is around the 6 hour mark1 which is enough, but man, more would be great.

    And if you are perpetually tired and could do with an early night (and have the ability to get an early night, not everyone does!) and are reading this at my unseasonably early send-out time of ten-ish PM, this is your permission slip to catch some shut-eye.

    30 Day Challenge update

    I had been meaning to send a Cynic’s Guide out for the longest time to all my subscribers but kept overthinking it. “But it has to be good!” It gets me every time. In the spirit of not overthinking, I have arbitrarily decided to send this one out to… everyone. For everyone who isn’t keeping up with my attempt to send an email every day for 30 days, it is going really well, to the surprise of probably quite a few people, including me!

    The rule here is YMMV, Your Mileage May Vary, and I am deeply aware of how 30 day challenges can (for some) be just another example of toxic hustle culture. Happily, I have found the experience incredibly positive: I gave up a bit of my post-children’s-bedtime scroll fest and occasional videogame binge to write every day and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I will absolutely be keeping this going, because once the thirty days of daily emails are up (next week!) I’m going to write other stuff. That fiction that’s been sitting unhacked-at forever? That’s next on the list. Weekly Cynic’s Guide emails? You’re damn right. It’s happening. And I dare you, by God I double dog dare ya: if you’ve got some scrolling time you’d like to make a dent in then why not attempt thirty days of doing something else that you want to do in the time that’s currently getting munched by your phone? It doesn’t have to be a big deal, it doesn’t have to take long, and it doesn’t matter if you only do half the days. It’ll still be 15 more days of doing that thing than you’d have managed otherwise.

    Let me know.

    Upgrade now
    1. Don’t ask about the bad ones.

  • Day 13: finally, a little luck

    Day 13: finally, a little luck

    It’s a truism that aphorisms never track back to the person who supposedly said them.
    — Mark Twain.1

    Gary Player, a golf player who (for the non-golf players) really is called Gary Player, supposedly coined the aphorism, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” Of course, he did not really invent the phrase, and we know this mainly because he says he didn’t. According to the excellent Quote Investigator, which I learned about ten minutes ago, the quote originates with a Cuban revolutionary mercenary, which somehow makes the extremely cool phrase even cooler.

    Because it doesn’t matter who said it (and apparently Thomas Jefferson said something similar) the aphorism is true. If you practice, you get better. Dangle more lines and you have a better chance of snagging a fish. If you cast a die more often, the probabilities multiply. I could go on; I won’t. The point is that eventually you come to a place where probability and practice and talent kind of merge. The more you play…

    That’s the reason I started my challenge series, both here and with my semi-daily 30 days of videos; I wanted to get better by doing things that maybe weren’t destined to be great but at least existed. Instead of avoiding mistakes, I’d just accept that mistakes would be made, and ideally I’d learn from them. Much in the same way I enjoy the challenge of making my own art, I wanted to give making my own luck a shot.

    And now that I’ve been at it a while some of those luck chickens are finally coming home to roost. Of course, these plump fowl are the consequence of hard work, but that’s what the saying is saying; effort and luck are in many ways indistinguishable. The Secret Project I’ve been hinting at goes live tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to showing you all the results. What’s more, useful emails were exchanged. Calls were made. Good Zoom meetings were had, as opposed to the normal kind of Zoom meetings.

    I’m pleased, not least because it’s nudging me towards thinking there may be some viability to my hybrid art sales / social media / art teaching / marketing consultancy malarkey, but because I have been up since 4 AM for a variety of reasons, which is the name I should have given my daughter. If this episode was more incoherent or circuitous than normal, now you know why!

    It’s now 11 o’clock and all’s well. Time for bed, and the best weekday yet to come.

    Thanks, as always, for reading. I haven’t shown you the big red button in a while, out of a fear that folks were getting Big Red Button fatigue. Here it is again.

    Do you feel lucky?

    A skeptical dive into the weird, sketchy, occasionally life-changing world
    of self-improvement.

    1. I am lying. As far as I know.

  • Day 12: welp, THAT happened

    Today’s update is to let you know that I finally bit the bullet1 and emailed a bunch of galleries and sanctuaries about my art.

    This was singularly horrible and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Art is intensely personal, and the inevitable well-meaning no-thankses threaten to hit me and my sweet little rejection-sensitive snowflake heart like a blast furnace from Hades. I am not looking forward to gallery-owners having the entirely reasonable opinion that my art is not for them or their customers.

    That said, despite dreading sending those emails for years — I really do mean years, I’d have approached galleries properly a long time ago if I hadn’t been so petrified of the process — once I was actually writing them I wasn’t too worried at all. I was just stringing some words together and attaching some stuff and hitting send. I do it a bunch of times every day. And as for putting my art out there, it occurs to me now that approaching several galleries should be much less scary than putting my art on Reddit where a million or two people might see it, and in fact just did. And also that sending a few emails should be less scary than sending emails to couple of thousand people, which I do quite often.2

    In the spirit of celebrating things that are self-improving but are not traditionally-coded self-improvement or productivity-hustling: I looked after my daughter for most of the day. It was wonderful. She is the sweetest little girl. She points at everything and wants to know its name. (She is obsessed with the artwork on our walls; I have to take her on regular gallery tours.) She laughs at a lot but very especially at burps and farts. She likes my silly videos. She really liked the duck video, which is how I should have known that it had a bit of viral potential. She’s a great test audience.

    She is at this moment having a grand old howl upstairs and I will have to lug her around the house while patting her nappy-clad butt and singing the Happy Song which will hopefully lull her. For the third time tonight. So far. I love her so much.

    Here is today’s video, in response to the typically horrible news that OpenAI (chaos be upon them) have released a video generator that produces near undetectable AI slop. All human creativity and potential rendered into one big stupid chum bucket. Revolting. I hate it so much.

    I will email more galleries tomorrow.

    Thank you, as always, for reading.

    1. This is not the metaphor some people think it is, so I’d best explain briefly. It references the days of pre-anaesthetic surgery where patients would be given a bullet (wrapped in cloth) to bite on while having a limb sawed off or some such. I have heard of people thinking it means something even darker. It doesn’t.
    2. Not always often enough, but I’m improving! 12 days straight!
  • But what about *second* day of rest? (Challenge Day 11 of 30)

    But what about *second* day of rest? (Challenge Day 11 of 30)

    It may not surprise you to find out that after 24 hours of feverish gastro I am still not 100 percent; I did in fact spend a chunk of today asleep. The rest of the day was mostly doing miscellaneous chores, those I felt well enough to do. Looking after the kids, doing the dishes, cooking dinner. Things of the carrying water, chopping wood variety, if not those things exactly. Oh, and once night fell and the kids (mostly) fell asleep I played D&D with my wife and friends. Good times.

    Merry and Pippin look expectantly at Aragorn, son of Arathorn, for a second breakfast
    We’ve had one, yes.

    It seems to me that self-improvement stuff is often unnecessarily compartmentalised, into individualistic, dare I say capitalistic systems, which means — to bring in a little Marx — they are often alienating. If your image of self-improvement and those that practice it is a single male gymbro who takes cold showers and meditates, perhaps this is why. And perhaps that’s why those that pursue self-improvement as marketed often ultimately find it lonely or unfulfilling. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being single, going to the gym, cold showers (I still do them!) or meditation; just that when these often solo pursuits become what is understood to be “self improvement” then the common things in life that it actually makes a lot more sense to be good at (cooking, cleaning, fixing things, and such) are denigrated. Or, as often seems to be the case these days, they are gendered; the lionised warrior-monkish self-improvement stuff is male-coded whereas cooking and cleaning and child-rearing gets flowy sundresses and Instagram filters and becomes tradwife-chic.

    I say nuts to that. Sometimes the most improving thing you can do is be present with the kids, or make sure the dishes are done, and I’m going to assert that this is independent of gender; you can be sheila or bloke or anywhere in between and find the ordinary things that don’t require a membership the most self-improving activities around.

    Thanks as always for reading. All going well, something like normal service will resume tomorrow.

  • Challenge Day 9 (of 30) – Gastro no

    Challenge Day 9 (of 30) – Gastro no

    I preface a lot of these emails with “this is a short one” but this really is a short one.

    I’d say today was a rest day — the bits where I took the kids to the playground were fun if not strictly restful —but My Wife was sick with what is now quite clearly gastro, and it would seem the children have a dose too, and as I write this I’m really not feeling too hot. There’s a rumbling reminiscent of magma, or perhaps Rotorua or Yellowstone in the immediate pre-geyser phase. Fun fact: tummy rumbles are called “borborygmi!” Such a great name; I’m sure I’ll be able to reflect on it at length while I’m up tonight having all kinds of fun. The upshot is that the regular Cynic’s Guide subscribers can wait until tomorrow for their epistle, whilst you, lucky 30 Day Challenge subscribers, get to hear about my bowel movements. I’m sure you’re thrilled.

    Meanwhile, my painting Moby Duck, which I’m sure you’re very sick of hearing about by now, hit the front page of Reddit, via a post I composed hastily while looking after a sleeping baby in the car (I didn’t want to move her and wake her up, so I hung out in the front seat for an hour or so) and didn’t check until hours later to find it had gone proper viral. At the time of writing it is just shy of a million views. No, wait, let me check. Yup, over a million now. Of course, this initial distractedness meant that I forgot to attach information about where Redditors might acquire prints, and had to add it later via an edit once most folk had probably already seen it. Oops.

    This isn’t the disaster you might suppose. The knowledge that a million views means precisely dick when it comes to people actually buying your work — the comments can be full of people posting gifs of SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY and yet mysteriously no money materialises — is hard earned. It can be a little grating to know that your work is simultaneously good enough to get seen by a million or few people and not good enough to buy. But such is the way of the world! I am genuinely happy that people like the art, and that people posted about it cheering them up. That is after all what my anti-doom anti-slop art-posting is all about. But man, it’d be sweet if I could eat upvotes. Or convert them into precious dollarydoos.

    Anyway, here is today’s video, which — now I’ve looked at it here — I realise I have screwed up the thumbnail for. OH WELL.

    And now I’m off to bed.1 Thank you, as always — but perhaps especially after this yucky episode — for reading.

    A skeptical dive into the weird, sketchy, occasionally life-changing world
    of self-improvement.

    1. Not bed.
  • Challenge Day 8 (of 30)

    Challenge Day 8 (of 30)

    Sawing the Z’s

    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.)

    Print Club

    I also made a much-requested shirt:

    Cats are Comrades – Unisex classic tee

    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.

    Social hellsites:

    The Gram:
    https://www.instagram.com/tworuru/

    The Tube:
    https://www.youtube.com/tworuru

    The Tok:
    https://www.tiktok.com/@tworuru

    And of course, my website, where art can be bought and all these newsletters are archived (and can even be commented on!) is

    Home
  • Challenge Day 7 (of 30) – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Reanimate

    Challenge Day 7 (of 30) – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Reanimate

    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:

    Print Club

    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.

    Check out the Two Ruru Print Club

    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.

    Moby Duck: How to Buy

    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:

    Cats are Comrades – Classic Matte Paper Poster

    There’s now a shirt that says “Yeah, Nah” to complement The Shirt That Says “No.”

    T-Shirt that says “Yeah, Nah” – Men’s AS Colour staple tee

    And custom commissions are extremely open:

    Custom Commission

    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:

    Social Medias

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tworuru/

    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tworuru

    The Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tworuru

    New bird coming sooooon

    “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.

  • Challenge Day 5 (of 30)

    Challenge Day 5 (of 30)

    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:

    Moby Duck on Classic Matte Paper Poster

    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!

    Moby Duck – Digital Download

    And lastly, the thing that took me most of the day and that I am — justly, I think — absurdly proud of. Welcome… to the Two Ruru Print Club!

    Print Club

    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.)

  • Challenge Day 4 (of 30)

    Challenge Day 4 (of 30)

    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
    1. 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.)
  • Challenge Day 3 (of 30)

    Challenge Day 3 (of 30)

    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

    1. Ideas, part 1
    2. Ideas, part 2
    3. A 28-day todo list (you are here).
    4. Secret project
    5. Daddy Capitalism: add a whole bunch of products to the store and send out an email to customers. Work on secret project.
    6. Rejection therapy: Ring around 20 art/gallery/souvenir-ish shops and see if they’ll stock my stuff. Finish secret project.
    7. Very Specific Parody Video: I’ve been wanting to do this for ages. I figure it’ll take about a day to film.
    8. Rejection therapy, part 2: Ask customers for testimonials. Ask local cafe/venues about drink&draws.
    9. Plug me pls Ask influencers for plugs. Prepare materials for Print Club.
    10. Print Club 7: Launch preorders for print club – digital and physical.
    11. 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.
    12. Day of Rest: I will probably spend Sunday resting with family, by which I mean “doing chores”
    13. Again, capitalism daddy: Adding more products to the shop
    14. Business time: Business plans and investment pitches. As much fun as it sounds.
    15. Those that can’t: Developing course materials for professional development course
    16. 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
    17. 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
    18. Crowd Fund: Investigate some kind of crowdfunding for Season 1 of Everybob or something.
    19. The First Rule of Print Club: Actually launch print club
    20. Look for investors: I’m pretty sure you find them under rocks, right?
    21. Send out prints for print club
    22. 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.
    23. Stage a drink & draw
    24. Stage an art class
    25. Stage a professional development presentation / lesson
    26. Launch crowdfunding
    27. Pitch to investors
    28. 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:

    @tworuru

    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

    ♬ Wes Anderson-esque Cute Acoustic – Kenji Ueda

    Self-improvement

    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.