As the year wraps up, I look back through the archives and pull out what I consider to be my best writing for the year. The purpose of this "Best of 2009" list isn't to showcase the most popular posts, but rather my personal favorites, generally based on creativity and the quality of writing. If you have any favorites that you think should be on this list, I'd love to know about them!
Do one thing every day that scares you posted January 11th, 2009
"The yard was empty. There were no armed guards with guns ready to fire upon me. There were no gates preventing me from passing. In fact, there weren’t even any signs that said 'No Trespassing' or 'Official Use Only' and not a single person in sight to stop me! I drove up to the huge pile of sand, filled my truck, and drove away."
The Pursuit of Knowledge posted February 19th, 2009
"I came to the conclusion that it’s our bills and our standards of living that are holding us down. By living paycheck to paycheck we make it impossible to take six months or a year off from work to explore some new thing that has peaked our interest. Socially, we’re expected to follow the same routine advancement in our current field from one position to another, making a bigger paycheck and being able to raise our standard of living that much higher (thereby putting us back to where we started and resulting in yet another desire for a raise and advancement)."
The Three W’s: What to Write Where? posted April 15th, 2009
"But I digress. Perhaps all the definitions and various places to write are slowly killing my creative outlet. Perhaps making the decision of what to write and where is becoming difficult enough that I choose to simply not write anything. My time can be used for more important things than figuring out where I should write, let alone what I should write."
The more we have, the less we appreciate posted August 8th, 2009
"We’re all human. If we really want to be happy we need to look deep inside ourselves for happiness. It’s there. Everyone has it. No one person has less happiness-making-capacity than the next. It’s really tough to forget that all the material stuff around us, regardless of how much importance we place on it, really has nothing to do with our true happiness. That’s a tough pill to swallow when some of us work day and night to afford the stuff."
The bad guy isn’t technology, it’s our inexperience posted on September 14th, 2009
"The acceptance of mundane tasks and jobs as a part of our daily lives slows the progress of human civilization. While there are many socially, physically, and even culturally harmful effects of technology today, I think they can be directly attributed to the fact that this stuff is so damn new to us."
Create and Share Value posted on November 11th, 2009
"The Internet makes it easy for us to keep sharing useless stuff that we think is important because we don’t see anyone’s reaction to what we’re offering. If you stood on the sidewalk and asked strangers to listen to how your day went, how many people would care? With the in-your-face feedback that you’d receive on the sidewalk, how long would it take you to realize that what you’re offering is valueless and adds nothing useful to the lives of others?"
Choose Happiness and Growth posted December 12th, 2009
"So what’s life? Well, we know that death most often brings sadness and is associated with the ending of progression, so this would mean that life, being the polar opposite of death, should be associated with happiness and growth. I propose that choosing anything less than happiness and growth in our life is associating ourselves with death and thereby ignoring life."