Category: Thoughts

Categories
Samuel Thoughts

Navigating A New Phase Of Life

I want to try and take full advantage of my wife having more free time once she switches to part time work next month and has a baby. I want to try to optimize our time with a young kid – all the adults I’ve ever spoken too – pretty much unanimously – always say that’s their favorite time in their entire life – that time when they had little kids – My wife and I both have our parents to enjoy it with as well so I just want to make sure we don’t take that for granted and we really enjoy it, my plan to do that is to follow this outline loosely – Not exactly. Not every single day – but to follow it on most days because this is the best way that I can think of to live life, I’ve given it a lot of thought and read a lot of books on the subject. It’s totally subjective but at the current moment I think this is the best way to structure day to day life.

Daily Ritual

  • 10:30 – 11:30: Go to bed somewhere in this time range.
  • 7:30 – 8:30: Wake up somewhere in this time range.
    • Note: I’ve tracked this extensively with the fitbit. I get the best sleep far and away going to bed and waking up in the ranges above. I don’t have to stick to this perfectly, if I miss a day no problem just get back to this path as quick as I can 🙂
  • #1: Reward drink + relaxing walk w/Ellen to plan our day.
    • Choose my, up to 5 hour time block, reserved for uninterrupted completely focused work.  This time doesn’t have to be early and it doesn’t need to be late.  Don’t think judgmental thoughts about whatever time I choose, who cares what everyone else says about when “successful” people work.   I have worked extremely hard to set my life up so that I have the luxury of being able to choose when I will complete work tasks – enjoy this luxury, don’t judge yourself for it.  Just remember; I’m happiest when I get a great workout in early  + when I complete important and challenging work. It’s fine to enjoy the work – and to occasionally spend some leisure time working – but try not to fixate solely on work, choose a small window of time – work hard during that window – then completely turn that off – as much as you can – And aim your powerful focus towards whatever  activity(s) you choose to do for the rest of the day…. social, family, adventure, sports… whatever!
      • Note: Having this flexibility feels like the key for me, I can try to set strict limits like – were always going to get up at 6:00 a.m. and do 3 hours of work – but that’s not realistic for my life anymore. My sister might text and have a fun activity to do with the kids, or my parents my call and have a random chore they need help with – I just get pulled in many different directions + I actually enjoy not having a super structured day, I enjoy a more freeform choose your own adventure vs a strict rigid structure, if I wanted a strict rigid structure I’d work a corporate job.
  • #2: Brush teeth + Choose Workout On Tablet -> Workout
  • #3: Cold shower to cool down then Breakfast
  • Questions:
    • What Time will I complete my focused work today:
      • Note: While working put phone in DND + if working in office put DND sign on door.
    • What Time will I go to bed today: 
    • Fill out my Workout & Happiness Journal
Categories
Samuel Thoughts Uncategorized

Hospitals In Cuba

Something strange is going on in our world today. Using an example from my own life, a conversation I just had with my older sister. My older sister is very intelligent, she is someone I look up to in many ways, which made this conversation all the more strange. I found myself sitting with her listening to her say that hospitals in Cuba are good, that they are better than the US. I believe her exact words were “their medicine is socialized and free, so its good!”.

I can’t make any logical since of this, I know my sister is intelligent. I know she has to be aware of how silly this comment sounded. I mean just without even examining it; Cuba is a country that has food shortages, they lack basic infrastructure. Doctors all over the world share many similarities, and one thing is for sure – you are going to have a hard time attracting world class health care talent into a country where they will be concerned about finding their next meal. A quick search online shows that Cuba is not even in the top 100 ranked countries in therms of healthcare. I know my sister knows this deep down, I don’t understand why she would say something like this? She does watch a lot of main stream news and she lives in LA which is from the outsides seems like it has a very narrow minded echo chamber of ideas, (but then all of us live inside our own echo chambers to a degree).

Really almost all of the health care comparisons that people shout about are really very useless. The US heath care system ranks 30th in the widely shared rankings, behind many other countries. These rankings are obviously very silly though – these rankings are trying to do an almost impossible job anyway. What does it mean to have the “Best” healthcare. Does that mean having the best doctors, the thought leaders of the industry? Or does it mean having the best “average” of skill when you factor all of the doctors in any given country? The answer really depends on who is asking the question. Germany and the US are widely believed to have the best raw talent in the health industry, these countries have the most “thought leaders”. These countries drive the most innovation. So if you are someone who is in need of very advanced care – its obviously that your first choice would be Germany, or the United States. Beyond that if you have a simple injury that could be fixed by almost any doctor – or if you don’t have enough $ to afford treatment then you would be best off in a country where the “average” of all the doctors skills is the best and or the care is subsidized by the government.

The entire ranking process seems pretty silly and basically totally politicized.

Categories
Samuel Thoughts

You Can Make A Point or You Can Make A Difference

I passively observing a lot of the social movements in our country from a distance, not because I don’t care about them (I do!) but as a white man I’m very unsure of how to help. There are things that seem obvious to me from my perspective, but I don’t want to inject myself 1 because I realize my perspective could be wrong, and 2 at this point its just natural self preservation to avoid these topics as a white guy.

The main point I would want to offer some of the prominent social justice movements is: you can make a point of your can make a difference but its very hard to do both, I’ll elaborate:

From my perspective the goal of the BLM movement is to try and root out all the of systemic racism in this country – a lot of this racism is invisible to the average white person because they have never felt it directed towards them. So if the goal is to change these whites peoples mind and to show them the discrimination and get them on the same team to help end this discrimination then the messaging should be designed to changes these white peoples mind. A few concreate examples:

BLM = Black Lives Matter. This slogan is not going to be very effective in reaching the average white person (the person who’s mind we need to change). If you contrast this with:

BLAM = Black Lives Actually matter. The average white person would read this and say something like “well of course they do…. I’m confused”. At which point the conversation would be primed for success, they would be open to receive the message that BLM is trying to impart, instead of being back on their heals and in a defensive mode they would be open and (I think) much more easy to interact with. And in turn they would be much more willing to change their mind and or be shown the systemeic racism and the societal structures that are in place.

Obviously to a person of color this will be very frustrating, they have lived their whole lives under these systems and don’t want to be told how to protest. I’m fully aware of that and that’s why this topic is such a challenging one to bring up. But not bringing it up makes me feel like I’m standing on the sidelines of a family argument watching 2 people yell at each other – and I can clearly see both perspectives, and more than that I can see ok here is the argument person 1 could use to change person 2’s mind. I think its a lot like when you watch your spouse interact with their parents. Your spouse has years of built up interactions with their parents so a small comment can trigger a massive argument, which to you as someone who only has a few interactions with their parents seems totally silly. It’s not until you comprehend that this is the 5000 time their parent has made this annoying comment that you can fully grasp why they are getting so angry haha

Oppressed people have lifetimes, generations even, of built up interactions which can be triggering to them. That is 100% understandable, and justified. It’s just as someone who hasn’t lived under that lifetime of oppression, and someone who grew up as apart of the group of people that have historically done the oppressing – its very easy for me to see the pit falls of trying to change this groups mind. And i’m not saying we should try to manipulate the average white person – I’m saying there is messaging that would be effective at reaching the average white person – and I wish that messaging would rise to the surface because 10 or 15 years of progress could be made in 1 or 2 years.

Categories
Fixing Stuff Samuel Thoughts

Everyone’s Political Views Are Hypocritical

This is just a small sample list but it covers most people:

“the government should be limited and as small as possible”

“oh well except when a women wants to choose what goes on in her own body, then the government should step in there”

“the prohibition on drugs is racists and does not work, prohibitions never work”

“we need to outlaw guns! No one should be able to buy automatic weapons, just put a prohibition on them and gun violence will stop”

“our government needs to lower spending and not run deficits. We must cut expenses and balance the budget “

“We should have a blank check for military spending and fighting overseas. No cost is too high to keep our boys safe.”

  • the not as obvious hypocrisy here is two part. 1 people saying we need to cut the social safety net here in the US, while also saying we need to send citizens off to war and risk their lives. And in the next breath saying not cost is too high to keep those boys safe during war. It’s just idiotic. It’s too expensive to help US citizens out when they are living in the US, but let’s stir up a bunch of wars and waste unimaginable amounts of $ blowing things up, which literally adds 0 to the planet. Objectively building a bomb and then blowing it up and potentially also killing people with it ads at best 0 value to the world, and at worst a very net negative. We do live in a violent world, and to some degree we have to balance the fact that people will do violence to us unless we are prepared to defend ourselves. There is also a huge gab between having a military to protect ourselves, and having a military that polices the entire world and really if we are honest kills a lot of people and stirs up a lot of trouble. I will admit there is credence to the thought that if the US did not police the world there would be more violence, but at the end of the day I think we could even continue to police the world and do it in a way that was much less about the US exploiting other countries for our gain, and more about the US trying to make the world a better place. We have definitely leaned too far to the side exploiting and it really sucks because we don’t have to be that way. It does feel like it would be extremely hard to stop though. Most of our countries problems would be easy to solve, except that a large part of our population watches tons of misinformation on the news and reads tons of misinformation online. It really would be challenging to effect much change in our current environment.

“if you don’t wear a mask then a private business has the right to refuse to serve you. It’s just like no shoes, no shirt, no service.”

“oh well a private business can’t refuse service to someone on religious grounds, they need to serve everyone equally at all times”

  • the not as obvious hypocrisy here is that people are telling the religious person that their views are wrong and should be suppressed. And to be total fair I obviously see the difference between refusing someone for a safety reason, vs refusing someone for a religious reason. But I’m not religious. Religious people could very well think disobeying their god/religion is dangerous to them. And at the end of the day no one can definitively say whats real and whats not real when it comes to big picture stuff like religion. It is without a doubt 100% possible that religious people could be correct, there could be a god and they could be living the way that god wants humans to live. I find that highly unlikely, but its possible all the same.

Categories
Samuel Thoughts

Life Is Good

I was writing another post and ended up clicking back into a few other links on my blog and reading a couple articles where I was pretty down. I just wanted to write this one on here, so that my future self can find it someday and smile.

Life is so great right now, I’m enjoying living at the sister’s house complex so much. Things with Ellen and I are excellent, we are really in the groove. My immediate relatives are all doing really well, and almost all of my close friends are doing great too! Beyond my actual circle of control there are some kinda crazy and potentially worrying developments, but I’m a huge believer in keeping my thoughts within my own circle of control.

I am not a politician, I am not someone who enjoys fighting for all kinds of causes. I’m a someone who enjoys being a good person to everyone I encounter. Controlling what I can actually control. I feel this ends up making a much bigger difference actually improving other peoples lives as well, so it’s a win win.

I personally feel happier and more relaxed, and I’m actually doing more to improve other peoples lives than the people who read every news article and social media post and write screaming posts of their own online, or scream and shout at strangers about their ideas. People are all different, but you can be nice to every person you see. Only on the very rare occasion would you ever have to be mean to someone else, and thats only if they are threatening your life, the life of someone you love, or the life of another person you have determined is just an innocent bystander. In those extremely rare cases it’s fine to be mean and violent with another person. But those are about the only circumstances I can think of where that is ok.

Every other time, be nice to people. Help them out. Tip waiters large tips. Help Stangers when they ask. Always help your friends and family any chance you get. You can live a great and meaningful life following this way.

Categories
Samuel Thoughts

My Mom

My Mom is such a badass, and I really don’t stop enough to appreciate the influence she has had on me. This is just 1 story in a long line of badassity. 

Her father passed away a few years ago.  Before passing he spoke with her and her brother at length about what he wanted to do with his assets.  Due to an error by the company that managed his account, his assets were going to be dispersed incorrectly, totally against his wishes.  In addition to that, her older brother, the executor of her dads will, was just going to disperse the money even though he knew it wasn’t what his dad wanted. He was just going to cave because it was the easy path, and for some reason he does not have a badass bone in his body. Her brother plays live like Patrick Berglud played hockey, extremely soft.

Not my mom tho, instead of just rolling over and accepting it, she sued to stop the disbursement, even though this meant that she would almost surely get less $ because she would have to hire lawyers and prove that the company was in fact negligent with their handling of the will and the inventory they kept of her dads assets. All the while her brother the executor was fine with signing off on the whole thing, leaving my mom to go it totally alone, even though he lives in the state where the entire court case had to be handled, and my mom lives 4 states way.

It’s one thing to know a company is guilty, and a whole other thing to actually win in a lawsuit against that big company’s high powered lawyers. But she goes ahead and does it, the process takes more than 3 years and she just sticks with it, doesn’t back down.  She just found out that the investment company is calling a mediation, and is willing to settle plus pay her attorney fee because they know they are so at fault it’s not even worth their time to fully take the case to trial. 

Such a great example of doing the right thing, even when it might not be beneficial to yourself.  Also a great example of when you stay true to what you know is really right even if it’s not convenient for you, when you do that the universe can often reward you for it. Not every time.  Maybe not even most times.  But when you do the right, and honest thing and then the right and honest outcome happens, there is a deep sense of satisfaction with that. A deep sense of pride, I’m really proud of my mom for doing it.  I really have been so lucky to have gotten to learn, and get to continue learning, from my Mom. She has show me so many lessons of how to be a good person and how to live a honest meaningful life.

Life is so many ways is such a giant lottery. I’d like to thing that no matter what situation I was born into I would have fought my way to success. But my parents really put me in such a great position to succeed. I definitely hit the parents jackpot.