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- [DIGEST] It's elephant time
[DIGEST] It's elephant time
Your weekly stackable roundup
I’m still keyed up from people lighting off fireworks in my neighborhood for 48 straight hours, but I’m able to keep my sanity by looking at all the elephants we hung out with at Tarangire National Park. Look at these amazing buddies.
If you want to share how you are doing this week, then there are two ways to interact with this post.
1 - If you don’t want to say anything, or bristle at identifying yourself, then you can reply with this nifty poll.
2 - If you’re feeling very brave, then reply below and tell us how you are doing right now on a scale from 1-5.
Even though I’m tired from constant ‘splosions, I think I’m a 3.5 this week, mostly due to these amazing Somnilight migraine glasses that have literally changed the whole of my life. I went from having headaches literally every day to basically none. It’s life changing.
Also, this week I met Kesha!!!!
She shook my hand and liked my tattoos, so how bad can life be, really? You might remember I talked about how much I love Kesha in this post. Her music has been the soundtrack of my adult life, so it was pretty awesome to be able to tell her how much her work meant to me, even if it was only for a couple seconds.
This week, I released a long article on evolving your natural ecosystem. It has a ton of valuable info about the different ecosystems, how best to think about each one, and when to evolve your ecosystem without collapsing your whole business.
A new chapter of Magic dropped this week, and we’re nearing the epic conclusion to part 1 of this story.
The hardest part of a prisoner transfer was that you had to trust the other party to behave themselves. That was complicated by the fact that it was impossible to trust the other party; they were, simply by the fact that they had one of your friends, completely untrustworthy.
You had to hope that your hostage was important enough that your enemy would find their honor, despite being completely dishonorable. That meant the scariest part of the transfer was after the exchange took place, when you had what you wanted, and they had what they wanted.
New chapters are free, but paid subscribers can access the archives. You also get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog.
On Wednesday, I’ll be releasing an article about how to build a substantial body of work that allows you to fight imposter syndrome. It’s one I’ve promised for a while, but had to move things around because of drama.
While being a talented creator and gaining popularity are gorges like the Grand Canyon, self-doubt is more like an earthquake that cuts through the earth under you. It comes upon you suddenly, and rips the ground from you, sending you careening backward as it thunders and quakes around you. It is violent and painful.
It takes courage to stand in the face of such a force and continue forward anyway. This is not a test of willpower or strength. It is a test of courage. Do you have the courage to stand in the face of possible rejection and share your work anyway?
If you do, you will set yourself apart from most humans on this planet who can never get over that fear. If you can, then you might succeed, if you can traverse the other chasms as well.
If you finished my very long article and still want more, then here’s some amazing articles I loved this week.
makes a case for slow replies, gives the collective noun for umbrellas, reads the canon, and praises the humble bookmark.
is too fricking late for all that, hungers for Kevin Kline's great american sandwich, stops outsourcing to her future self, and ’s sadness lingers.
needs somebody somewhere, doesn’t think psychadelic art sucks, needs other artists, and writes about medical topics without using jargon.
helped my wife understand why businesses demand we return to the office, takes lobbyists to task, and doesn’t care about the Ivy League.
doesn’t underestimate the pleasure of thought, never wants to hear herself complaining (even to herself),and remembers magic.
explained why an apology song is the last gasp of old Youtube, demands that you start a mailing list (yes, even you), wants broke Vice staff to get their severance already, and declares that Apple’s declaring war on newsletters.
intertwines book publishing, social media and streaming, battles payment issues to improve retention, brings realistic capitalism to bear, and normally states the bizarre nature of social media for writers.
If you like this post and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. We seeing Into the Woods this weekend because my mom is in town. She introduced me to musicals so I am excited to experience it with her.
You also get access to one of my favorite books with your membership, ANNA AND THE DARK PLACE.
Anna cannot escape death. It follows her everywhere. First with her aunt, then her father, and now her best friend Katie has died after a long battle with cancer.
With her best friend gone, Anna is falling apart. So, when Katie’s ghost returns from beyond the pale talking about a tear in the barrier between the living of the dead, Anna is sure she’s gone crazy.
She denies Katie at first. However, eventually, Katie turns Anna to her side and convinces her to help. Now, together they must learn a spell that will save the world before the dead invade and destroy everything.
Join Anna and Katie on a fantastical quest that introduces them to trolls, gnomes, dragons, and much more as they discover that death is stranger than they ever imagined.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.