when does one actually start living?

i have a job interview tomorrow, something that i'm hopeful about. just this morning as i was pottering around the house, waiting for a client to call, and wondering if i could be satisfied with what i have now, a nice man called to ask whether i'd like to work for his university.

i don't know if i'd like to teach his students at his university.

but i'd like to try :)

good luck to me!

A GIRL YOU SHOULD DATE

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

– Rosemarie Urquico –

To kick start the years reading list, i decided to pick up Richard Koch's book that highlighted Pareto's 80/20 Principle. What i found intriguing about his writing was the following:

-"Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least"

-10 golden rules for career success:

1) Specialise in a very small niche; develop a core skill

2) Choose a niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming an acknowledged leader

3) Realise that knowledge is power

4) Identify your market and your core customers and serve them best

5) Identify where 20of effort gives 80%% of returns

6) Learn from the best; observe, learn, practice

7) Become self-employed early in your career

8) Employ as many net value creators as possible

9) Use outside contractors for everything but your core skill

10) Exploit capital leverage

In summary, rewards increasingly demonstrate the 80/20 Principle: the winners take all. Those who are truly ambitious must aim for the top in their field. Choose your field narrowly. Specialise. Choose the niche that is made for you. You will not excel unless you also enjoy what you are doing. Success requires knowledge. But success also requires into what delivers the greatest customer satisfaction with the least use of resources. Identify where 20% of resources can be made to deliver 80% of returns. Early in your career, learn all there is to be learned. You can only do this by working for the best firms and the best individuals within them, “best” being defined with reference to your own narrow niche. Obtain the four forms of labour leverage. First, leverage your own time. Second, capture 100% of its value by becoming self-employed. Third, employ as many net value creators as possible. Fourth, contract out everything that you and your colleagues are not several times better at doing. If you do all this, you will have built your career into a firm, your own firm. At this stage, use capital leverage to multiply its wealth.

-Two ways to be happier:

i) Identify the times when you are happiest and expand them as much as possible

ii) Identify the times when you are least happy and reduce them as much as possible

MAKING OURSELVES HAPPY BY STRENGTHENING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Daniel Goleman and other writers have contrasted academic intelligence or IQ with emotional intelligence: “abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and delay gratification; toregulate one’s moods and to keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to emphasise and to hope.” EQ is more crucial for happiness than intellectual intelligence, yet our society places little emphasis on the development of EQ. As Goleman aptly remarks:

Even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige, or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on academic abilities, ignoring EQ, as set of traits—some might call it character—that also matters immensely for our personal destiny.

The good news is that EQ can be cultivated and learned: certainly as a child, but also at any stage in life. In Goleman’s wonderful phrase, “Temperament is not destiny”: we can change our destiny by changing our temperament. Psychologist Martin Seligman points out that “moods like anxiety, sadness and anger don’t just descend on you without your having any control over them…you can change the way you feel by what you think.” There are proven techniques for exiting feelings of incipient sadness and depression before they become damaging to your health and happiness. Moreover, by cultivating habits of optimism you can help to prevent disease as well as have a happier life. Again, Goleman shows that happiness is related to neurological processes in the brain:

Among the main biological changes in happiness is an increased activity in a brain center that inhibits negative feelings and fosters an increase in available energy, and a quieting of those that generate worrisome thought…there is…a quiescence, which makes the body recover more quickly from the biological arousal of upsetting emotions.

Identify personal levers that can magnify positive thoughts and cut off negative ones. In what circumstances are you at your most positive and most negative? Where are you? Who are you with? What are you doing? What is the weather like? Everyone has a wide range of EQ, depending on the circumstances. You can start to build up your EQ by giving yourself a break, by skewing the odds in your favour, by doing the things where you feel most in control and most benevolent. You can also avoid or minimise the circumstances where you are at your most emotionally stupid!

MEDIUM-TERM STRATEGEMS FOR HAPPINESS

Seven shortcuts to a happy life:

i) Maximise your control

ii) Set attainable goals

iii) Be flexible

iv) Have a close relationship with your partner

v) Have a few happy friends

vi) Have a few close professional alliances

vii) Evolve your ideal lifestyle

Conclusion

Happiness is a duty. We should choose to be happy. We should work at happiness. And in doing so, we should help those closest to us, and even those who just stumble across us, to share our happiness.