If you have interacted with me at all sometime in these past eight weeks (specifically after I listened to this episode of At Work by The Ready), you will have heard me share this quote by Alvin Toffler:

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write. It will be those who cannot learn, unlearn and learn again.”

In my recent newsletter, I recommended looking at those three states and defining what you think you are doing to fulfill those three categories: what are you learning? What are you unlearning? What are you learning again?

Today, however, I am going to use these three states differently. I am going to apply it as a vertical to my relationship with control.

‍Thanks to this tiktok, I found out that Ours was hosting a Cinematic Mindfulness workshop and boy, did it deliver!

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As a high performing anti-procrastinator, patience is low on the list of my virtues. Lately, however, the universe has been repeatedly teaching me that having my timelines disrupted bring the best blessings…

Work chat channels are the worst. When left to occur organically, chat conversations are disorganized, nothing is tracked, and everything is forgotten in a day.

Lately, I’ve been having regular conversations with my mentor and friend, Simon Carcagno, and this man has been on a roll. He will make these, seemingly throwaway, comments and observations that worm there way into my brain and unlock and unblock these mental obstacles I’ve been struggling with since the beginning of 2024.

I’ve never been against gratitude. In fact, I have my whole trifecta of Love – Gratitude – Imagination and how it’s important to tap into all of them.

But I’ve got to be honest.

“Pro-bleeeeeemmmmm?!?!?” she exclaimed, while sticking a microphone taped to a golden mannequin leg into my face.

I stare at her, my eyes wide, slightly panicking while scrambling for a better way to explain what I want to say. I draw a blank. I resign myself to saying “existential dread”.

They say when you make a plan, God laughs at you. Then, God then sends a man to ruin your plan!

I will not help you.

Ever since I learned about it on Tiktok, I have always wanted to got to a Taste Film event. Unfortunately, they are based in the UK, so it’s going to require a little extra coordination.

One day I woke up and wrote this.

Have we ever earned anything in our lives?

Determine a fixed amount of money to gamble (e.g. $1,000).

Pick which color to bet on (e.g. Black)

Start by betting the minimum bet (e.g. $5)

Every round, increase your bet by $5, but continue to bet on the same color.

Stop play when either of the two events occur:

• You’ve doubled your total cash.

• The amount of money you have is less than your next bet.

What does it mean to be young? In the broadest of terms, it means to be on the early side of the spectrum, to have a path ahead, to be certain that progress is possible.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a special episode of the Teacher’s Off Duty Podcast with Daymond John and they were talking about teaching kids financial literacy. One idea they mentioned was having an in-class economy, where students earn classroom currency and then have to budget their money accordingly.

I asked ChatGPT to scan through my entire website and then, based on the writing there, suggest some jokes I would make. Previously I’ve asked it to suggest blog posts and their suggestions felt like light roasts, so I was excited to see what it would come up with.

January is a ripe time for wanting to start a new habit, but is it always worth it? I developed the tool below where you answer a few short questions using the Negative Five to Five (NFTF) scale to answer that very question.

In order to maintain my Platinum status at Cinemark, we have to watch 25 movies within the year. What I didn’t realize was that the free movies I get as a benefit do not count towards that total. So, here is a recap of the 28 movies I saw in theaters this year with their rating on the Negative 5 to 5 scale (starting with my least favorite).

Yesterday, I was challenged to come up with 33 “musings”. I chose to add to that challenge by writing down thoughts or assertions or jokes that are completely new - meaning I have not consciously created them or communicated them prior to yesterday.

I decided to think about things that I do fairly regularly that only work perfectly if no one is paying attention (and that includes me!).