Introducing the Cynic's Guide to Self-Improvement Podcast
(Sort of)
I thought it'd be fun and perhaps even convenient to record some of the posts here as a kind of mini-podcast. So here is the first episode – a recording of last week's post, Map of the Problematic. (I've also added this audio to the original post.)
It seems to be a rule in the writing business that the stuff you like the most is what audiences like the least. I really enjoyed Map of the Problematic, but a somewhat surprising number of subscribers didn't! While it's easy to assume that the unsubscribers were just those readers who are also into Andrew Huberman, I doubt that's the case. I think it's a bit of newsletter fatigue. God knows there are a lot of these things, with seemingly every made-redundant journalist starting one. I just want to reiterate that while a paid subscription is lovely and helps keep me in coffee, I want this newsletter to stay aggressively free. If a paid subscription causes you any kind of financial hardship, just stop paying (or, preferably, pay someone whose newsletter pays the bills, like Emily Writes. I love her Meditations posts).
Emily Writes
The best way to pay me is to DM someone who has buyers remorse over purchasing a second-hand copy of 12 Rules for Life and getting them to subscribe, for free, to this newsletter.
So here are some links to some stuff I found improved my self this week:
Steal some writing time back
Nadine Ann Hura is always worth reading, and she's got a rather lovely observation on stealing time to write – in poem form!
Steal back your life
Time to write is always stolen
So get used to thieving
I think of all the words I've ever written furtively, fearfully, faithfully
Hiding notes inside the spines of books penned by others
Never daring to describe myself as a writer
despite writing being the only thing I have ever done with any consistency
and not once because someone gave me the time
I am a thief, not a writer.
I relate, heavily. Go subscribe (for free) to read the rest. Newsletter fatigue notwithstanding, you won't regret having Nadine's writing in your inbox.
Bro, read this essay on bro culture, it's sick bro
After reading Map of the Problematic, a bunch of people recommended this essay by Patrick Wyman. I'd already seen it, but it was well worth the re-read.
But this kind of Bro Culture is also intimately connected to the emergence of a new kind of American ethnonationalism, rooted in its peculiar conception of masculinity, its collection of lifestyle products, its worship of guns, and its aversion to self-reflection. Maybe you can just have the big dudes lifting stones without the drive to pardon Navy SEALs convicted of horrific war crimes; but then again, maybe the algorithms make them impossible to separate.
Patrick Wyman
Life Coaching is (very often) a scam
Caveats: I think that some kinds of coaching – ADHD coaching, business coaching, sports coaching, even life coaching, whatever that is – are not scams, or at least, they don't have to be. I've got an article coming up on coaching stuff, but in the meantime, use this NYT gift link to gape in horror at how thoroughly some people have been fleeced by the deeply unethical aspect of an unregulated industry:
After completing the program, Ms. Mullett was certified by the school and hoped to start coaching. But although she had initially been told that her certification would give her “everything I needed to make my first $100,000,” Ms. Mullett found herself short of clients and scrambling to make any income. The solution that she was offered? To spend more money on being coached.
Is Reddit OK?
A social experiment: Go to one of the self-improvement subreddits, like r/selfimprovement, sort the posts by controversial, and witness the absolute state of it.
There's been a huge increase in GPT spam to Reddit lately and the self-improvement subreddits have been hit hard. They're full of posts that are just some spammer's poorly-written AI summary of a self-help book studded with affiliate links, and are somehow escaping moderator attention. But sometimes you get something so impossibly odd that only a human could have written it.
I just thought this was funny
I don't mean to dunk on this newsletter – I'm sure it's good, and paid subscriptions help enable writers to do fun activities like "eat," but I thought this was amusingly emblematic of the great Paywalling of Everything:
More Birmo wisdom
If there comes a day when John Birmingham stops churning out quotable articles that boldly identify the self-improvement elephant in the room especially as it relates to writers, I'll stop plugging him in my own newsletter – but today is not that day.
The Blergh, whatever you want to call it, arises from a loss of meaning, a loss of any connection to what’s grounded and firm. For us, specifically, I think it’s triggered by the rootless, untethered feeling of floating around on an endless sea of digital shit. And you what isn’t gonna help with that? Some glowing, beady-eyed, ratbastard influencer yammering at you to get one per cent better every day.
John Birmingham
Pilgrim's progress
Let's take a break from pull-up updates. Look, self-improvement is all about doing things yourself, right? So what could be more self-improvementing than self-surgery?
Here's the story. I think I mentioned a while back that I'd picked up a splinter while gardening. "Splinter" doesn't perhaps do it justice. It was a big bit of sharp stick that shot deep into the ball of my thumb, and when I pulled it out, it dropped off a friend. This splinter stayed in my thumb for two months, long after the entry wound had completely healed over. I had two ultrasounds to image the thing – one from a startlingly inept technician who tried doggedly to scan the wrong bit of my thumb and then snarled at me for daring to whistle in an attempt to take my mind off the whole ordeal – and I finally got surgery exactly one month ago today.
Unfortunately, the surgeon missed the splinter. She had promised that if they couldn't get it out on the first attempt the only recourse was to (I'm using her term) flay my thumb wide open. I didn't feel like going through this, and I'd figured out I could kind of push the splinter towards the end of my thumb, as it seemed to have made a kind of tunnel for itself – like a water-slide, but with pus. So I sterilized one of my craft scalpels, made a small cut, and slowly pulled it out with tweezers. It's now a great life regret that I didn't take a video of the process, but I did get this pic.
The splinter was pretty pristine given how long it had lived in my thumb. If anyone is looking for a variety of wood that can survive being carried around in their bodies for several months, I recommend whatever my hedges are made of. The moral of the story is obviously that if I ever need any kind of surgery in the future, I'm going to do it myself, and you should too.
Pango
You asked, the Cynic's Guide to Kitten Pictures delivered. Here he is looking alternately fiendish and adorable while trying not to fall asleep.
Expect regular Pango updates in future, and possibly podcasts of select posts too!
Dopamine, now in song form
Also, let me know what you thought of the Cynic's Guide podcast! You may now type any words you choose in the comments.
