Pride. Humility. Success.
It’s Friday, which is the perfect time to do a roundup of links from some of my friends in the blogosphere. I encourage you all to check out these posts and the folks who wrote them.
I’ll try to do posts like this on a more regular basis, with some kind of theme for each one.
Today, I hand Primility.com over to the fairer and wiser gender. Trust me, we’re all be better off for it.
I need to get more flexible.
And I don’t mean in my ability to handle dinner plans being moved from 6:30 to 7:00.
I mean, literally, I need to get more flexible in my muscles and joints and all of the other bodily fibers that are starting to creak more and more like the staircases of ancient Italian villas as I move further into my 30s with each passing day.
I know this. I understand this. I accept this.
I just haven’t been great at actually, you know, doing something about it.
Until now.
What is the greatest gift you can think of?
A car? A snazzy new outfit? A delicious meal? A trip around the moon?
Nope.
You may be surprised to learn that the greatest gift you can receive is actually not something that can be bought. It’s not available in stores. In fact, it’s priceless.
And it’s not something anyone else can give to you; only you can give it yourself.
So what is this most special of gifts?
A positive attitude.
Confession: I made it about midway through the second season of Mad Men before I started to lose interest, and I haven’t returned to it on NetFlix since.
The timing also coincided with me canceling my cable, which has been far more beneficial than I ever anticipated, so you can also chalk my loss of interest in Mad Men up to a general disinterest in watching anything.
However, during my time watching the show, I did realize what all the Don Draper/Jon Hamm fuss was about.
Draper is a fascinating character, and Hamm plays him splendidly. Neither the character nor the actor compare to Walter White/Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad, but the Draper/Hamm persona is certainly far easier to embrace away from the show.
Which is why I found the video below to be so interesting and entertaining and decided to blog about it.
The picture below spent a good portion of yesterday on the front page of Reddit beneath the title “The brilliant philosophy of a 1st grader.”
And with good reason. It’s awesome. And 100% true.
Yesterday I read a thought-provoking post by an earnest and quite promising blogger I came across recently, Genesis Meranda, and I want to share it because it hints at some of the ideas I am exploring here at Primility.
The post is called, simply, “Desire.” You can and should read it in its entirety here.
In the post, Genesis describes the dichotomy of feeling that we all have experienced: wanting something, desiring it, “so bad our insides hurt,” yet at the same time being reluctant to actually go after it.
The last time I turned my TV on was last Monday.
When I turned it off that night, I didn’t necessarily plan on not turning it on again, but when I got home from work on Tuesday I found myself dreading the vapid NFL draft analysis, ubiquitous re-runs, and stale reality shows I’d be met with if I decided to turn it back on.
So I left it off Tuesday night.
Then Wednesday night as well.
Then on Thursday night too, at which point I had become so enthralled with my no-TV life that at 10:30 pm I attempted to call Time Warner to cancel my cable TV package altogether. (Unfortunately they were closed by then, so I completed the task Friday morning.)
Then this weekend, a memorable one thanks to some great guests who were in town, was totally TV free.
And it was awesome.
Here is a smorgasbord of reasons why I’m so thoroughly enjoying living without TV…and why I may never go back.
On the advice of someone who was a complete stranger, I recently started reading the book Start Something That Matters
If you don’t know the story of TOMS, it’s really quite remarkable. Learn more about it here.
Basically, Mycoskie started a shoe company with one simple idea: for every pair of shoes he sold, he would outfit an impoverished, shoeless child with a new pair of shoes.
It was a radical idea, but Mycoskie was not about to let fear stand in his way.
This past Saturday, White Sox pitcher Philip Humber threw the 21st perfect game in MLB history, much to my excitement as a rather dedicated fan of the Pale Hose.
Scott Merkin, who does a terrific job covering the White Sox beat for the team’s official website, took the opportunity tell the story of a trip Humber took this past December to impoverished areas of the Philippines and the impact it had on the pitcher.
I highly recommend the entire article, which you can read here.
This excerpt is what stuck out the most to me:
The statement I am about to make will not make sense. I want you to know that before I say it.
It’s true, unequivocally so, but you will think I’m making it up. Just know that I’m not.
Here is the statement: The most excited I ever felt going to work was for the shittiest job I ever had.
See, you think I’m making it up. I knew you would.
But I’m not.
And I couldn’t have done it without Sam Cooke.