The (surpising) results of embracing my inner hustlebro

Oh gidday! Some of you will have got an email a bit like this on already. But most of you won’t have because it occurs to me that I only sent it to the people who subscribed to my 30 Day Challenge, in which I — as the name would suggest — challenged myself to make up for lost time by sending an email every day whilst simultaneously spooling up a hybrid art/marketing consulting business with a goal of getting $10k revenue booked in one month.

Well… it’s worked?

I probably didn’t need the question mark. I have a little spreadsheet I put together for how much revenue¹ I needed to book or get paid in October to hit my target of $10,000 and I, uh, did it.

It’s a funny feeling. I’ve worked like mad to get to this point and now all I need to do is either repeat or exceed the same target next month and every subsequent month for the foreseeable future. Goodness gracious me. But, to actually allow myself to feel triumph for once, I think pulling ten grand in the first month of a new business is pretty good. Of course, it’s not much in the scheme of things! There are taxes and my salary — a term I am using very loosely — to come out yet. The salary will not be at all what I was earning in my corporate job. But by gosh it’s a start, an auspicious start.

Let’s recap a bit. During the course of the 30 Day Challenge I:

• Laid down a challenge for the business to make $10k in revenue (it did)
• Went a bit viral on TikTok for my video of me painting a giant rubber duck invading a Bob Ross landscape
• Made the front page of Reddit for a picture of said duck, which was seen by about two million people(!)
• Launched the Two Ruru Print Club
• Launched a different project that didn’t do too well, to be honest, but that’s OK! It was worth a shot. Part of this whole process has been about learning that some things inevitably fail and so long as you got some good learns² out of it it’s probably worth it.
• Fixed the curtains
• Survived on too little sleep (partly because of the hustle, mostly because of the kids)
• Contracted an absolutely savage gastro, also because of the kids
• Worked out any number of times, biked my son to school on every day that didn’t have inclement weather and several that did, went hiking, mountain biking, and golfing, all of which served to remind me that I go absolutely crazy if I do not go outside and exercise and do all right if I remember to. (Update: I forgot again, which is why I’ve been a bit crazy today).
• Burned out about… five times, I think? It might have been more
• Picked up a few thousand new subscribers across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram
• Made products out of my art and put them up on my website, where a decently large number of people bought them
• Worked on a whole bunch of commissioned artworks and got the most thrilled message ever from one of my customers, which I am posting again here

• Emailed galleries and wildlife sanctuaries about stocking my art, with some positive results!
• Wrote some fiction for the first time in forever
• Wrote and published a piece at Webworm for the first time in forever, which was great, about a horrible topic, which was horrible
• Mowed the lawns
• Did my first professional development session, teaching art to teachers
• Baked two cakes
• Talked about all the weird habits I have
• Talked about my Harry Potter fan-fiction again (sorry, not sorry)
• Forgot to send a daily email once
• Sent a daily email 30 times

This is the first challenge like this I’ve ever managed to stick to.³

It’s also the most self-improvement-y thing I’ve ever really done for this newsletter. If you signed up in the hope that I would actually do some self-improvement at some point, well, now I have. I hope you enjoyed it.

It has had its ups and downs, but overall has been the most resounding absurd stonking success; I really couldn’t have wished for better and I am proud of myself to a degree that is a little unsettling. This is not something I am used to feeling.

I also have a useful little daily writing habit that I am absolutely keeping, and from now on Cynic’s Guide updates are going to be weekly or better. I’ve tried that before, and it never really stuck, but now I’ve done thirty days straight, weekly seems like a doddle.

And now I have a couple of tardy New Year’s Resolutions to get back to. Two more one-month challenges and I should have them in the bag.

hashtag #inspiration

Inspired? A few people have emailed to let me know they have been! If you’d like to try something similar, please let me know — either flick me an email (josh@tworuru.com will always find me) or drop a comment down below.

Who knows, I might even revive the Discord if folks are keen.

Archive

The full archives of the 30 day challenge are archived right here! If you didn’t sign up specifically to the 30 day challenge series, you might get a kick out of reading back through them all. It’s been quite a journey.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

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1. As in “money in to the business,” as in “not the same as profit,” but it’s still useful! ↩︎
2. I refuse to learn to say “learnings” ↩︎
3. I came close on my video challenge, but I still plan to finish that series, and make a lot more videos besides. Daily videos are a mug’s game though ↩︎

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:

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.

1. Don’t ask about the bad ones.

The AI article is out.

https://www.webworm.co/newgods

It’s horrible, but I’d appreciate you reading it anyway.

Today’s chief achievement was making some little blocks to boost the lounge suite’s height by about a centimetre so the robot vacuum can make it underneath. Summoning that knowledge took me about a minute of serious thought; I was genuinely struggling to remember what else happened today. It was because I’d spent most of my time online, reading and responding to comments, and that sort of behaviour does funny things to the perception of time and the formation of memory.

The cake I baked didn’t turn out too badly. The kids at our son’s preschool ate it and apparently they’re fine.

And just after school pickup a mate messaged me asking if I’d like to come mountain biking, and you know what? I did, so I did. Ripping along some sun-dappled trails at silly (for me) speeds was just what I needed; sometimes we all just need the catharsis that only outdoor exercise can bring. I recommend trying it tomorrow, especially as a much-needed chaser if you happen to have read that terrible article I’m very proud of.

This evening I baked a cake for my son’s birthday celebration at his preschool tomorrow. In an attempt to be inclusive, I made it gluten, dairy, and egg-free. From the taste, this will work perfectly, because no-one will eat it, and so won’t have to worry about allergies.

Occasionally when I’m typing up a cute anecdote about my kids or writing about my art practice or my hope for the business or whatever I get struck by a very odd feeling and it’s happened again just now, when I happened to clock that it’s pouring with rain outside. This reminded me that the weather is a lot worse for most of the rest of the country (I live in a relatively sheltered bit of New Zealand, where the weather can best be described as “aggressively mediocre”) which reminded me, oh yes, climate change.

I find it absolutely surreal that we are just kind of watching the climate bomb go off. I am using the term “we” very loosely; most people would like to stop climate change, but are prevented from preventing it. But I’m not using the term “bomb” loosely. Climate change is heating the oceans, says the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, at a rate “equivalent to detonating five Hiroshima atomic bombs per second, every second over the past 25 years.” Skeptical Science has a running ticker you can embed on your website that has the total Hiroshima Bombsworth accumulated since 1998.

It’s 3.5 billion.

Nearly all the writing I do eventually trends around to this unbelievable, impossible folly. I cannot stop thinking about it. I wish I could; some people seem to manage just fine. Yes, there are causes for hope, no, I am not a “doomer,” but nor can I avoid noticing that each successive year sets a new greenhouse gas emission record (emissions must stop for warming to stop) and that right when the world desperately needs technology that works to mitigate the worst of climate change, tech leaders have started throwing trillions of dollars at energy-hungry “AI.”

It’s madness.

All I feel like I can do is write about it occasionally, like a pressure valve, and go on doing the things I know how to do to try and keep us afloat.

Man, it’s really coming down out there. I hope everyone is all right. I note that essentially none of New Zealand’s media mentioned the role of climate change in the massive storm hitting the country.

It’s a bit like talking about how terrible it is to have bullets flying around without mentioning the guns.

Or who’s firing them.

On a related note, that AI article I wrote should drop in a day or two.

Sorry for the depressing epistle. I’ll try to schedule some cheerfulness for tomorrow. Time to go upstairs and see if a new cake needs baking.

In last night’s D&D game there was a discussion about the things that live rent-free in your head: mainly advertising jingles. I recently bought a packet of the Warehouse’s Market Kitchen brand of puffed wheat cereal coated in honey, whose name I cannot recall right now because of the following:

Honey Puffs are made to stay fresh (stay fresh)
Stay good all the time
Keep looking for the funny honey bee
Honey Puffs are yours and mine
Thanks, Honey Puffs.

Of course, Honey Puffs no longer exist. They’re off the market as of May 2025; another cruel little nail in the coffin of millennial childhood. I checked the Sanitarium site and there’s no mention of the discontinuation, just a bit of marketing copy I could not resist sharing:

“Sanitarium Honey Puffs offers the combined attributes of taste and fun.”

No wonder they discontinued the cereal — you can’t expect anyone to buy if the marketing is that dismal. Luckily, the Market Kitchen alternative tastes identical and there’s more of it per packet. As the father of a four-year-old with a limited palette for breakfast offerings who, it turns out, really likes Honey Puffs, I appreciate what the Warehouse are doing on the food side of things.

I bring all this up because another thing that lives rent-free in my head are the closing lines of The Great Gatsby:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

When I am feeling tired or maudlin or just nostalgic for what — events are fast making clear — really was a better time, that line pops into my head. It grows more poignant with age.

And although the literal meaning of the phrase is quite different, in fact opposite, and I am hesitant to draw comparisons between very different cultures, something about Gatsby’s ending reminds me of the Māori concept of time.

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua:
“I walk backwards into the future
with my eyes fixed on my past”

In this view, the future cannot be known; only the past can. The past becomes distant, but the formative events rear like great monuments. Prior triumphs and failures, happiness and grief, gratitude and bitterness; all can be seen and felt with a clarity that is lacking when we focus only on the future.

I think the quote and the proverb resonate together because I like the ocean, and the Māori view of past and future reminds me of how we row boats, with our backs to the destination, watching our embarkation recede.

It has been a strange, anxious, exciting month, and I have been steady at the oars. I have felt enormous responsibility for my family, my little crew of four. As I begin to see the shape of the recent past, emotion rises to the surface. The month is not over yet, of course. The future is unknown. But sometimes we steal or are shown a glimpse, to see what lies before the horizon.

After several hours at a standing desk writing about 2500 words worth of notes, from talks and lessons I have given over many years (truly, nothing motivates the ADHD mind like a deadline) I gave what I hope is the first of many professional development sessions today, for a course aimed at teaching teachers how to draw. It was small and scrappy but immensely personally satisfying, and it seems my audience enjoyed it too. There is so much more work to be done on this, something I am intensely passionate about, but I have embarked.

It recedes behind me now, and so we beat on.

It was around 9 AM this morning when I realised I hadn’t sent out an email yesterday.

It wasn’t laziness or tiredness or illness; I just forgot. Straight forgot. Which is odd; getting this email out is very important to me, and I was absolutely determined not to miss a single one.

I was annoyed at myself for a bit, but on reflection I think I’ve figured out why I did it.

Our habits are often functions of our environment. If we’re in the same place we will tend to do (roughly) the same things. And, as it turns out, I was not at home. I was in a hotel with the family, out of town for an event. The event took place at night and required me to be on for several hours, making copious physical and mental notes, and when I got back I was both very tired and my head was full of the event and the story I’m supposed to write about it. It chased any thoughts of the newsletter clean away; I didn’t even think of my daily email obligation while dropping off to sleep — usually primetime for stray “oh God I was meant to do this” thoughts — and it didn’t occur to me until later the following morning.

This effect works in other ways. For instance, this is why taking a walk can help you stop feeling stuck, why you sometimes feel fresher after tidying a workspace, and why you can get a whole host of stuff done in a cafe or a hotel lobby when it seemed utterly impossible at your usual place of work. A change can be as good as a rest. Or it can just make you forget about obligations altogether.

It’s also a useful reminder that all-or-nothing is not always a useful frame of mind. Would I prefer not to have forgotten about something I place a lot of importance and pride in? Of course. Is 23 days out of 24 a rather larger number than 0 days out of 24? Somewhat needless to say, yes. I have been a perfectionist since age 4, when putting a line of place on a colouring-in made me feel like the whole piece was ruined, and I can still feel that anguished child’s scream[^1] echoing through my whole being when I mess something — anything — up. But then I think of my little boy, who has picked up some of his dad’s perfectionist tendencies, and how much I want him to be okay with making mistakes, not least because trying and failing is a lot better than not trying so to avoid failure. I think I’m helping him be better with it, and that is helping me.

Also I had drunk several drinks, for which I am paying a small but noticeable price today. Hangovers after 40, man. Oof.

[^1]: I am told this is not an exaggeration. I took colouring in seriously.

My nights have started getting late again. In my defence, the daughter wakes up at 11 pm sharp every night; her body clock seems infallible. (It used to be 10, but then we were hit by the curse of daylight savings. She, being one, sensibly ignored it.) So it hardly seems worth going to bed before then when we’re only going to get woken up anyway.

I spent the day with the family, taking our son to the miniature trains (autism and trains; they’re like peas and carrots), visiting the plant nursery, getting some new berry bushes, weeding, planting, planning. It’s been wonderful. What’s been less good is that I’ve finished the first draft of the AI article and I can honestly say I hate it. Not for the normal reasons I might dislike my writing, I think the prose is more or less OK, but because it is such a catastrophically depressing topic. An internet full of slop is among the least upsetting things about AI; the path that the tech-overlord lunatics has us on ends in giga-ecocide and I wish I was exaggerating. (And not because of some fabled AI superintelligence either. Superintelligence is bunk.)

This is such a difficult tension to work with; on one hand I am trying to live a good life, beset by First World luxury and my beautiful family, trying to start a business and spread a little joy with my silly paintings. On the other hand, climate change — the field I’d most like to work in, because it’s important, but my life’s trajectory has so far sent me otherwise — is bearing down on us; a slow inexorable bomb with the power of hundreds of thousands of nuclear weapons. It is a bomb we have the power to stop, or at least prevent from detonating catastrophically, and civilisation’s leadership has so far decided on “no.” It would impact share prices, you see.

Again, I wish I was kidding.

So I’m doing the only thing I can, writing what I know, which isn’t much. But it’s something. And at some stage soon I hope to do a new video essay combining the article I’ve just written with the sharp juxtaposition of a beautiful painting time-lapse, because that’s the world as it is and perhaps always has been. The beauty and the horror, the two sides of the same coin.