Some days I spend too much time on social media. It’s addictive, I get it. It’s also probably one of the primary causes of depression and anxiety among Millenials.
It is what it is.
But today I don’t want to talk about us comparing our day to day lives with the highlight reel of the rich and famous.
Today I want to talk about those who pretend to be rich and famous for likes and shares and a bit of money.
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There, I said it.
I started my first blog on the 22nd of April, 2012. A month or so later, after having published a bunch of mediocre blog posts, one of my articles went viral.
From then on out, it was all rather confusing. Yeah, Neil Gaiman mentioned one of my articles on Twitter. So did Random House. I was gaining anywhere between 500 to 800 new followers per day.
By November the same year I was earning around $100 per day.
I see everyone running around for success. And I wish that everyone could have their fair share of success and fame and glory and the respect and admiration of others, but the truth is that we do not enjoy the victory, but the struggle.
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“It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.” – Ian McEwan
They say the biggest distance between two people is misunderstanding. It creates this gap between people. Or is it a wall? And it’s frustrating, isn’t it? It does make you feel as if you’re alone, the only one who thinks and says and acts in a certain way.
And by feeling so don’t we diminish others as well? Don’t we fail to understand that even though they are different, they’re still inherently the same as us? And they deserve to be treated the same way we’d like to be treated.
I don’t know, it’s a difficult question to answer.
But could you hate someone if you knew why they do what they do? If you could truly understand them? Their thoughts? Their feelings? Know their past? Their struggles? What they want? What they have lost?
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It seems to me that the last couple of years have been all about the grind.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson famously works out twice before we even wake up. Elon Musk sleeps on a couch in his office. Everyone is either working hard or telling everyone else to work hard.
But what about working smart? What about becoming more efficient? Getting more done in less time. Isn’t that something worth looking into?
Well, lucky you, here are fifteen ideas to help you work smarter, not just harder.
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Like the vast majority of ex-smokers, I tried to quit many times and failed. I remember my first quit: I had smoked three packs of cigarettes over a 24 hour period, and it was the first time that I felt disgusted by the habit. Prior to this, I was one of those who enjoyed smoking. Well, at least that was what I was telling myself.
In order to stop for good, I resorted to listening to Paul McKenna’s hypnosis. I was into self-hypnosis and NLP at the time, so I thought this would be enough to make me quit…
Well, the thing was that I was quite stressed. That’s an understatement. I almost beat a cab driver once, and on another occasion I started running after a car that hadn’t stopped at a pedestrian crossing.
No wonder this didn’t last long. All it took was to get real angry once, more than usual, and the first thing I did was go the grocery store and buy a pack of cigarettes.
After this, I think I tried to quit a couple more times, always insisting on listening to Paul McKenna urging me to give up that nasty habit once and for all, but to no avail.
Then, last year in May, I had become so disgusted with myself for being a slave to this stupid habit, and more disgusted with the fact that I kept trying to quit and failed. Also, a few days prior, a friend of mine told me that he considered all smokers to be emotionally weak: they needed something to help them cope with their own emotions.
That was it. I was going to quit smoking or die trying.
As I am still here and writing this post, I’d like to share the top 10 things that made this quit successful. Continue reading
First of all, I’d like to say that I have been that guy. The loser. Depressed, suicidal, yet doing my best to motivate others. The words I wrote were for myself, for those like myself, and for those who could, one day, end up like me.
That being said, I believe in every single word spoken in that video. I understand the principles at work, I have lived in comfort (and depression), I have desired comfort, and the more I wanted comfort, the more discomfort I had in my life.
If you are inclined to disagree with me, or feel that I am insensitive to people’s mental health, I do urge you to listen Joe Rogan in this video, then try to see it in a less civilized manner. See yourself as less than human, and a bit more animal, and see that happiness and mental well-being is the result of overcoming struggles, not avoiding them. Continue reading
Traffic! It’s one of those words that I do not like much, for it almost begs us to forget that those stats represent actual people.
But… but… I know that one of the main reasons we blog is to be read by other people, so this makes it important to gain more followers, to receive feedback, to feel as if what you blog about truly matters to other people.
That’s why I compiled a list of the eight best ways to increase traffic and gain more followers for your blog.
I’ve been following and reading a number of blogs for over five years now. I remember this blog by a Romanian journalist; I would spend hours reading the posts, the comments — oh, the comments were so funny and great. It was quite addictive. He got an insane number of comments, and I was jealous of his success.
I was quite sure that I would never become a successful blogger. I created some blogs on various platforms, but I never had the patience to build an audience. The thing is that I never asked myself whether I had something worth writing about on an almost daily basis. I think this is something a lot of bloggers struggle with. What’s worth sharing? What’s considered useful information? Also, I believe that a lot of writers simply focus too much on trying to come up with an original idea for a blog, a new approach, a new angle.
I believe passion is the key element in any creative endeavor. Continue reading
First, I’d like to say that there is no how-to guide or recipe for writing a brilliant post. That being said, I’d also like to point out the fact that some posts seem to perform better than others. Lists and guides usually receive more comments and likes than “normal” blogs.
So this is not a how to guide. We’re just going to talk about the major components of a blog post. Continue reading
Today’s post is dedicated to blogging and social media. You know, how to turn your blog into a sort of central hub, from where you can direct your followers to your social media accounts. That’s pretty cool stuff, if you were to ask me. Continue reading