Month: January 2019

Being Famous Would Be Awful and Why It’s Ok Nobody Will Remember You

One of the real bummers about transitioning from a hopeful 8-year-old kid to a statistically unexceptional adult for 99.99% of us is at some point we have the realization that we never became famous. This is another way of saying we weren’t good enough at anything for most people to notice, or we never got around to making a sex tape. It’s usually one of those. Continue reading “Being Famous Would Be Awful and Why It’s Ok Nobody Will Remember You”

Seven Skin Tight Life Lessons Learned From Wrestling

Wrestling is a tough sport. It teaches you discipline, the value of hard work, and how to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time. If you can get through a good high school wrestling program you can get through just about anything.

In a former life Mr. Burrito Bowl was heavily into the singlet wearing sport of wrestling.  Not wrestling as in WWE, more like, “Hey why is that kid not drinking any water? Let’s for sure not date him,” type of wrestling.  Basically the sport kids played when they weren’t popular or tall enough to play basketball. 

I had a real love/hate relationship with wrestling.  On the one-hand, wrestling isn’t fun.  It’s hard work and sucks most of the time.  On the other hand, wrestling gives you sense of pride for having not died while performing your sport.   If you can get through a good high school wrestling program you can do almost anything you put your mind to.  

Despite stunting my growth an inch or two and making me borderline insane in high school, wrestling taught me several life lessons I still keep with me today.  Continue reading “Seven Skin Tight Life Lessons Learned From Wrestling”

Traditional vs. Roth vs. India Red Ale- Which IRA is Right For You?

Literally no one has ever asked me what the difference is between a Roth IRA and a Traditional IRA.  I’m not great at the economics of supply and demand so I’m going to write an article about it.  Understanding the difference between these two accounts is like eating broccoli.  Only like three people in the continental United States like broccoli, but it’s important to eat it for reasons nobody is sure about.

It’s important to know the difference between the various IRAs because you’re supposed to be putting money into your retirement accounts.  If you were doing that, then you’d eventually want to know which retirement account you should put your money in.

So, what is an IRA?

IRA is short for India Red Ale.  It’s like an India Pale Ale except it’s less hoppy and it’s red.  IRA also stands for Individual Retirement Account, if you’re a nerd.  Continue reading “Traditional vs. Roth vs. India Red Ale- Which IRA is Right For You?”

The Best Bite of Ice Cream

Which is the Best Bite of Ice Cream?

Depending on the flavor you get, the bites can vary slightly, but they’ll all share characteristics.  You might have one bite that is a better ratio of cookie dough to chocolate, and you might have a bite that’s all ice cream with no extra flavor at all.

Is the best bite a random bite somewhere in the middle of all that sugary chaos?  Is it the very first bite of a brand new, untouched carton?

The law of diminishing returns would say it’s the first bite because each subsequent bite brings less and less satisfaction.  This might be true if you were to eat the entire carton at once.  More evidence in favor of the first bite is the euphoric feeling you get knowing you have the entire carton left.  You’re not even close to running out.

The first bite is good, but it’s not the best.   Continue reading “The Best Bite of Ice Cream”

Ketchup and Lettuce

You’re at my house for a barbecue.

Imagine I ask you if you like the flavor of ketchup and lettuce together.

If your answer is ‘Yes,’ you’d probably be disappointed if I used ketchup as your salad dressing.

If you answered ‘no,’ you might be disappointed if I didn’t put lettuce on your hamburger.

Context matters.

When people have simple black and white answers for complex problems it should signal a red flag to you.  Life is full of nuances and many answers are situational.

Don’t be afraid to get more context before making a decision.  Don’t be afraid to ask more questions.  It doesn’t make you weak or undecided.  It protects you from winding up with ketchup as your salad dressing.

If you enjoyed this Saturday Short please share it with your friends and enemies

Read our first Saturday Short:

They’re an Idiot But I Just did and Idiotic Thing

 

Combating Option Overload and Getting Back to Living

I’m often jealous of previous generations.  Not just because they got to eat bread without feeling guilty, but for the lack of options they enjoyed.  Don’t get me wrong, having no options isn’t fun, but having so many options your circuits get overloaded isn’t much fun either.

No matter what we’re doing, we have so many options that we can’t possibly try them all.  How do we know we’re choosing the right entertainment?  Blizzard flavor? Nigerian prince to send our money to? How do we know we’re not missing out?!

The fear of missing out makes having too many options stressful, rather than freeing, because we’re continually worried we’ll choose wrong.  From little decisions like What if I pick the wrong Netflix movie, to huge decisions like What if I pick the wrong Netflix series, we’re overloaded and stressed out with too many options at every turn in our lives. Continue reading “Combating Option Overload and Getting Back to Living”

Where Fi and Frugality Intersect

By now you’ve heard me rant about pursuing financial independence (having enough passive income to cover your expenses) and you’ve heard me rant about frugality (not buying dumb sh*t).  If you don’t give those ideas any context, they can each come across as pointless pursuits.

If you haven’t been slapped across the face with the ‘aha!’ moment, then I’m guessing you’ve felt something similar to this while reading my posts on financial independence:

“Oh, it must be nice for them to be able to pursue this rich person lifestyle of Financial Independence.”

Or this, when you’ve read my posts on frugality:

“Ha, what a weirdo.” Continue reading “Where Fi and Frugality Intersect”

They’re an Idiot But I Just did an Idiotic Thing

I’m starting a new section called Saturday shorts. I plan on having them come out…drum roll please…every Saturday. These articles will be short thoughts on life. I should probably keep all my articles to this length but they always wind up much longer than I anticipated. They won’t all have conclusions and some of them may not have any point at all. So basically like my regular articles, only shorter. Enjoy.

When we encounter someone treating us worse than we want to be treated, we have a tendency to view them negatively on the whole.  They are just a bad employee, driver, person, etc.  Basically, they’re an idiot.

When we find ourselves not living up to the person we were raised to be, we look for any ear willing to hear our excuses.  We aren’t an idiot, we just did an idiotic thing.

Yes, I snapped at the lady returning shoes, but it was my 47th return that day.  I had been working a double shift and I didn’t even get to take a lunch break.

Sure, I honked excessively at the lady who caused us all to miss the light because she didn’t turn when she had a green arrow.   Give me a break though, I had a really stressful day.

We don’t care why the lady didn’t notice the light had turned green.  Maybe her mind is preoccupied with an ailing loved one or maybe she’s been up all night working.  Maybe she was just taking a minute to enjoy the scenery and got lost in thought.

Give other people the same benefit of the doubt that you give yourself.  It’s not for their well-being, it’s for yours.  They won’t know if you stay mad at them.  It only hurts you.

Using Selective Attention to Increase Life Satisfaction

There are two types of attention we give- Divided Attention and Selective Attention.

Divided attention is where our minds are giving our attention to multiple sources at the same time.  Selective attention is when our attention is focused on one thing.  Generally speaking, having the ability for divided attention is good, but often the way we choose to use that ability is not good.

Sometimes life requires we give divided attention.  Too much divided attention leads us to feel spread out and overwhelmed.

When we give something our selective attention we’re able to go deeper and get into a flow state more easily.

Many things require our selective attention, but we often try to get away with just giving our divided attention.  How many times have you been watching a movie and instead of giving your selective attention you decide to look at your phone?  At no point do you feel like you aren’t paying attention to the dialogue, but before long, you look up and realize you have no idea where the characters are, or what they’re doing. Continue reading “Using Selective Attention to Increase Life Satisfaction”

No Social Media For A Month!! AAAHHHHHHH

I watched this video roughly three minutes ago and really dug it.  It’s about a couple who decided to not use the internet for a month.  In a bid to generally take action when I run across something cool, I decided to take action.  I’m going to take the rest of the month off of social media, and substantially limit my internet use.  I am well aware nobody else cares.  But, read this article and maybe you’ll follow me.

I’ve been kicking the idea around for a while because I hate how addicted I am to my phone.  I am cognizant of how silly we are just staring into our screens even though WE KNOW nothing we scroll through will increase our level of life satisfaction.  Almost none of it makes us any happier, even in the moment.

We’re always looking for that next unicorn post that’s going to make a tangible difference in our lives.  We hardly ever find it, but the allure of social media is so addicting that we’re constantly scrolling for it.  Doing this day after day is making us depressed.  Life is passing us by while we stare into our phones and we know it.   Continue reading “No Social Media For A Month!! AAAHHHHHHH”