Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.

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I only really want to do things for their own sake. That is one definition of art. Whether it’s business, exercise, romance, friendship, whatever. I think the meaning of life its to do things for their own sake. Ironically, when you things for their own sake, you create your best work. Even if you’re just trying to make money, you will actually be the most successful.

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Tools and leverage create this disconnection between inputs and outputs. The higher the creativity component of a profession, the more likely it is to have disconnected inputs and outputs. If you’re looking at professions where your inputs and your outputs are highly connected, it’s going to be very hard to create wealth and make wealth for yourself in that process.

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Status is a zero-sum game. It’s a very old game … And for number three to move to number two, number two has to move out of that slot.

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An old boss once warned: “You’ll never be rich since you’re obviously smart, and someone will always offer you a job that’s just good enough.”

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Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.

(more…)

Em-dash: use this for sentence interjections and sentence enders; can be used to replace colon. Wide as capital ‘M.’ Get there in Word with –. Can use or not use a space before and after. I like using the space. Or ctrl + alt + minus sign.

• The last time I saw him I asked him if he still believed — as he once had written — that we are at the is moment participating in one of the very greatest leaps…
• On July 22, the company was awarded the largest privatization contract ever for a prison — a 2,048-bed minimum-security facility in Taft, CA.

En-dash: half width of Em. Used to show range. Ctrl + minus in word. Often equivalent to to or versus. Width of “N.” Often represented with hyphen.

• the 1914-1918 war
• the nature-nurture debate

Hyphen: if two or more consecutive words make sense only when understood together as an adjective modifying a noun that follows, those words (excluding the noun) should be hyphenated. So special-interest money, but not special interest. Credit card  vs. credit-card application.

 

 

And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats it only prevents them from hiding.

 

– C.S. Lewis

 

• Bad now doesn’t mean bad forever
• Something that’s hard now – playing individual notes – doesn’t mean hard forever
• Really listening and enjoying the music makes you play better
• Your fingers will tremble. So. You have played hard stuff in that reality.

• T produced by Leydig cells in the testes
• T decline = hypogonadism. Causes:
  1. Leydig cells impaired or
  2. Control glands in the brain are not informing Leydig cells to produce enough T
• For #1:
  • LH & FSH: hormones that exert influence over sex glands
  • When these levels are high, the pituitary is correctly trying to get T up, but it’s not happening, hence leydig failure. You would see low T and high FSH/LH in this situation
• For #2:
  • T is low AND LH/FSH are low. The message to produce more T isn’t being sent. (CG is something to do in this scenario)
• Aromatase converts T to estrogen and goes up w/ age. Too much estrogen can reduce production of T
• Free T is 2-3% of total T
• Estrogen high = SHBG high
• T high = SHBG low
• SHBG binds to T and limits free T
• Can run into issues where injections spike T, but a disproportionate share is converted to estrogen, so the T to E ratio actually worsens even though total T is high
• Patches/pellets may be superior because they don’t cause spikes

• Rust on rocker panels
• Did they already start the car before you showed up? A bit suspicious
• Check the date on the tires. Four digits. Week and year of manufacture
• Use penny for Lincoln head tire test
• Oil leaks under car
  • And then open car and see if there is oil splattered around the engine
• Are all the panels the same color? If not, maybe an accident.
• Check oil: not burnt or low
• Check transmission fluid (yellow pull): not burnt or low
• Low brake oil may mean the brakes are worn (but they could just top it off)
• Antifreeze: should be green or pink NOT oily
• Stitching coming off on soft top?
• Check trunk rust underneath cover panel
• Check windows
• Check stereo
• Check ac/heat

 

How did you arrive at this number?

It sounds like there’s no movement?

You’ve been very generous. It sounds like there’s nothing more you can do.

 

• Find out what you can do w/ assessed value for taxes. Is assessed value less than purchase price? If so, can you just fill $0 in for purchase price and pay the assessed value?
• Be careful with license plates. Probably won’t forget this lesson. It’s fine to leave them on, but make sure you 100% know what is required to transfer plates.

 

But Martin knew Billy to be a generalist, a man in need of the sweetness of miscellany.

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I know how it is to live in the inescapable presence of the absence of the father.

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Billy went for his ball, kissed it once, massaged it, chalked and toweled his right hand, spat in the spittoon to lighten his burden, bent slightly at the waist, shuffled and slid, a bazoo-bazoo, boys, threw another strike: not just another strike, but a titanic blast this time which sent all pins flying pitward, the cleanest of clean hits, perfection unto tidiness, bespeaking power battening on power, control escalating.

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He salted his oatmeal and spiced it with raisins, those wrinkled and puny symbols of his own dark and shriveling years.

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She was remote cousin to Charlie’s mother and would want to lend whatever strength she had to the troubled family, a surge of good will that would now be intrusive.

---

a reporter whose stories were so sugary that you risked diabetic coma if you read them regularly.

---

Pray to Jesus, but where is Jesus? Jesus, Charlie, sits at my desk in the person of an equivocating Welsh rarebit who doesn’t understand sons because he never had any. But he understand money and news and power and decency and perhaps such things as these will help save the boy we remember. (more…)

Our research has documented that the negative thoughts which cause your emotional turmoil nearly always contain gross distortions. Although these thoughts appear valid, you will learn that they are irrational or just plain wrong, and that twisted thinking is a major cause of your suffering.

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There’s a difference between feeling better – which can occur spontaneously- and getting better – which results from systematically applying and reapplying the methods that will lift your mood whenever the need arises.

---

For this reason I call negative thoughts “automatic thoughts.” They run through your mind automatically without the slightest effort on your part to put them there. They are as obvious and natural to you as the way you hold a fork.

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Nearly every depressed person seems convinced beyond all rhyme or reason that he or she is the special one who really is beyond hope.

(more…)

She assumed the problem was that she is too needy. Research findings support the exact opposite. Getting attached means that our brain becomes wired to seek the support of our partner by ensuring the partner’s psychological and physical proximity. If our partner fails to reassure us, we are programmed to continue our attempts to achieve closeness until the partner does.

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It turns out that the ability to step into the world on our own often stems from the knowledge that there is someone beside us whom we can count on – this is the “dependency paradox.” If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, find the right person to depend on and travel down it with that person.

 

This is an important lesson for someone with an anxious attachment style: If you wait a little longer before reacting and jumping to conclusions, you will have an uncanny ability to decipher the world around you and use it to your advantage. But shoot from the hip, and you’re all over the place making misjudgments and hurting yourself.

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Activating strategies: to reestablish closeness with partner. When they fail, you may resort to

Protest behavior:

-excessive attempts to reestablish contact

-withdrawing

-keeping score

-acting hostile

-threats to leave

-manipulations

-making him/her feel jealous

(more…)

• Trauma is worse if you feel you were betrayed
  • Raped when campus was negligent is harder to overcome
• Any questioning of the experience counts as invalidation
  • “You’ll get over it.”
  • “It’s not a big deal.”