Covers and Cranberry Juice: Little Links Roundup

Castles in the Sky #14

Next week is my 35th birthday. I’ve got a lot planned for this year:

• I want to spend more time—and more quality time—with my wife and young daughter. `

• This newsletter should get another 50 editions. I hope to write about as many essays and short stories, too.

• I’m working to significantly expand the family bookstore with my parents.

• I’ve recently rejoined Brazilian Jiu Jitsu which I hope to make a focus of my life. I want to break my all-time weightlifting record. Plus, toward the end of the year, I plan on running a half marathon.

• The team I’m on is aggressively growing the Center for Economic Inclusion, and intellectual property we have been working on for years should finally be published to universities all over the world.

• I plan on losing a significant amount of weight, getting a major surgery on my jaw, and getting a year of allergy shots under my belt.

Why lead the newsletter with this? Mainly because this issue is about putting yourself out there. I’ve always admired people who put big goals out every year on their birthday, but I’ve never done it publicly out of fear. However, I realized that if I’m going to succeed at my goals, I need to work hard. And if I’m going succeed in ways that I can’t plan for, I need to really put myself out there too.

🍌Quote of the Week

“It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.”

Amy Poehler

Photo Credit by Liam McGarry on Unsplash

🍌In the Newsletter This Week

• Original Writing: Writing I’ve Loved

• On My Mind: The Benefits of Putting Yourself Out There

• My Favorite Things: Dreams Cover by Infinity Song

• Crowd Work: How Do You Put Yourself Out there?

Original Writing

🍌Writing I’ve Loved

I haven’t had time to edit and publish any of my own writing this week. Instead, I wanted to do something different and share three essays by others that inspire me in my writing. Below are links to each piece with a brief description, from longest to shortest.

• OTL: Why You Should Care About Cricket: This is a fantastic long form profile of Sachin Tendulkar—the world’s greatest cricket player at the time this was written—by someone who knows nothing about cricket. This is arguably the first piece I read “in the wild” that made me consider writing non-fiction instead of just fiction. (I think the sports journalist who wrote this, Wright Thompson, is one of America’s greatest living writers.)

• L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department. This is gade-A, top tier parody. You would probably have to know some Libertarians or be one yourself (with a sense of humor) to laugh at this.

• How to Be Like Steve Ballmer. This great post from Medium combines humor, a profile of a business leader, and actionable advice for normal people. I enjoyed this when I first read it and I have thought about it a lot since then.

On My Mind

🍌The Benefits of Putting Yourself Out There

A friend once told me something I’ll never forget. He was talking about launching a podcast and I asked him why. He said:

“Because I want to entertain the idea that I might become an ‘overnight success,’ but in order for that to happen, I need to be doing something where becoming an overnight success is even possible.”

It reminded me of an aphorism from Roman philosopher Seneca:

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

My friend understood what Seneca meant: in order to get lucky, he needed to put himself in the position to receive that luck. The internet gives people that opportunity better than ever before.

Consider Nathan Apodaca, who filmed himself in 2020, skateboarding to work, drinking cranberry juice, and singing Fleetwood Mac. He uploaded this fun moment on TikTok, went insanely viral, landed a bunch of commercial gigs, and is now acting on the TV show Reservation Dogs.

The odds of this happening off one TikTok are very low. But the odds of this happening if he had never thought to film himself and upload it was zero. This is true for everyone, but I believe it’s especially true for artists and entrepreneurs. Just showing up and saying, “I like this,” or “I care about this,” is a way to connect with people in a meaningful way. And if you put yourself out there enough, you give yourself the chance to connect with millions of people and have it change your life.

My Favorite Things

🍌Dreams Cover by Infinity Song

When I was looking up the video above, I came across this incredible cover of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. I wanted to share it with you all. All of the videos on this YouTube channel are excellent.

Crowd Work

In standup comedy, crowd work is when the comic speaks directly with the audience. This section is a place for us to directly engage one another. 

Do you think you’re “putting yourself out there” enough? Why or why not?

That’s all for now—see you next week!

Thanks to everyone who edited, proofread, and gave feedback on the writing in this issue. And thanks for reading Thought Bananas!