I support passionate photographers and creative artists by giving away my portfolio as royalty-free stock and sharing my personal development progress in conquering fear and living courageously. My two latest photos are below:

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Best of Richard:    Richard’s photography portfolio,    How to Break into Stock Photography,    The Cancer Myth,    How to give file names to your photos,    The Perks of Having a Job,    Being a Free Photographer,    The Profit Police and How They Kill Everyone,    Over-Emphasis,    Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value,    Talking to Rocks,    My Life of Crime,    College is for Dummies,    Fake Personal Development,    Transcending Limiting Beliefs

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A few details: I bought 6000 empty ink cartridges at an auction for $1080 two months ago, and me and my Dad have turned in 3700 of them at Office Depot for $3 store credit coupons. We have a box of them. You can only turn in 25 per day and use 3 per day, so each time we go there we buy $9.02 worth of stuff and get $9 off. Since the cartridges were only 17 cents each, it’s a safe, though tedious way to acquire small office supplies cheaply.

Recently, that program has changed so you can only turn in 5 per day and you get the store credit back all at once on a gift card at the end of the quarter. That won’t be till February, but we continue to turn in the 1700 remaining cartridges. I’ll be able to buy a computer or a new camera eventually.

With all these $3 coupons which I can only use 3 of per day, I’ve bought markers, new ink cartridges, and tech items on clearance under $9. I’ve been reselling them sporadically, but I just got the biggest batch listed.

What I found out is that it takes a lot of effort to create 30 auctions. I used to list things on eBay occasionally, but I’d get bogged down in details. I’d feel compelled to include every detail from the packaging in each description. I’d spend 30 minutes taking a product shot with the correct light. Editing it would take longer. I’d agonize over shipping costs and debate international shipping.

All this is not any good for getting anything done. I was tempted to spend lots of time on each auction this time around, because it feels comfortable to accomplish nothing when you’ve conditioned yourself to do so. But instead, I took the photos quickly, used the grass in my yard as a background, did quick contrast adjustments in Photoshop with keyboard shortcuts, wrote shorter descriptions without deep thought, and didn’t even bother with anyone but U.S. users. I have no qualms with padding my shipping charges. Everyone expects it, and with eBay taking 45 cents + 11.15% of each sale (eBay fees + PayPal), they can live with it too.

I got all these items listed:

These low-margin items aren’t profitable to sell unless you’re getting them for free; I don’t expect to clear more than $200 from all these items. Postage and eBay’s fees swallow up way too much. But that doesn’t mean you should hang on to this stuff.

When I was creating these auctions, I did things differently. Before, I’d preview each auction meticulously and check for errors in spelling, categorization, product details, shipping charges. Usually I’d find none, and it would eat up a lot of time. This time around, I listed the items immediately, reviewing them after. It went much more quickly, and the few little mistakes I caught, I fixed with eBay’s revision feature. Psychologically, that helped me work much more efficiently.

Most people have way too many things, even nice new possessions like markers or paper or computer supplies. It’s easy to hoard free-after-rebate items, gifts, and things acquired cheaply, but they end up gobbling up space without providing much return. The question to ask is not “could this item be useful?,” but rather, “might this item not be useful?” If the answer to the latter is yes, get rid of the item. Sell it at a loss if you have to.

This was my first time listing on Craigslist.org. The site feels something right out of 1995. The design is clunky and simple, warnings are in bold red capital letters, all pictures I upload are compressed as tiny artifact-riddled JPEGs. But there are people, lots of people in the Daytona Beach area looking for things to sell or selling things themselves there. Community counts more than presentation. The things I listed there are generally too heavy to ship. I expect to get bites pretty quickly, as I’m getting rid of this stuff way below retail:

Microsoft Comfort Curve USB Computer Keyboard 2000 NEW - $10 (Ormond Beach)
Samsung ML-2510 Black & White Laser Printer - $35 (Ormond Beach)
HP LaserJet 1018 Black & White Laser Printer - $30 (Ormond Beach)
Brand new Staples 8.5×11 Paper Shredder - $10 (Ormond Beach)
Case of Legal Size Copy Paper (8.5 x 14 in.) 5000 sheets New - $30 (Ormond Beach)
16 Port Fast Ethernet Switch 100Mbps NEW - $15 (Ormond Beach)
Ultra ATX Mid-Tower PC Computer Case Steel NEW - $20 (Ormond Beach)
Epson Stylus Photo R260 Ultra Hi-Definition Photo Printer - $20 (Ormond Beach)

I got all the printers free after rebate or nearly so, then used up the toner or ink and put them out in the shed. They take up a ton of space, but I started getting attached to them. “These are obviously worth a lot,” I’d tell myself. “I shouldn’t get rid of them—what if they become useful someday?” The fact is, if you have something that’s going to be useful to you, you won’t even have to ask yourself if it’ll be useful—you’ll just know it. Whatever you need you can just buy later anyway, and with the prices of technological gadgets constantly falling, it will be cheaper anyway. This also means that if you wait to sell stuff, you’ll lose more money.

From holding these printers and computer towers for as much as a year, they’ve already lost value. It doesn’t bother me. It’s much better to take action now than cling to the past. I could easily hang on to this stuff for many more years never doing anything. I could console myself by saying the items are too valuable to part with. However, that accomplishes nothing and serves no one. The space I’m reclaiming can be used for new stuff like photography gadgets or chairs or tables, or I can just leave it empty so the house doesn’t feel so cluttered. Printers that you never use take up a lot of space. They take up a lot more space than useful printers, even if their dimensions are physically the same.

I bought two cases of legal size copy paper a year ago. They were clearanced at Staples for $15 each, and it was just such a good deal I had to have them. Each case weighs 70 pounds, after all. It must be valuable. Surely it is, but to whom? Not to me. I have no use for paper that’s 14 inches long. I could say that I might in the future, but I’d be conning myself. Never in a million years will 140 pounds of legal size paper be worth owning. If I got them as a gift I’d accept them, but only to sell to someone else. It’s much more important to get rid of these space-eaters now, rather than deceiving myself into thinking they might become useful. I can always buy new stuff, but I can’t always get rid of old stuff.

You can make money selling your stuff, be it your creative art or the trinkets you’ve collected. It takes effort, though. I still spent too long writing all the descriptions and taking photos of all this junk, and I could never do this as a profitable business. I can rejoice that I am making progress in getting rid of a large amount of stuff and earning a small amount of money, because it would have been easy to get nothing done today. Don’t cry over wasted time in the past, but look toward what you can do in the present. It actually makes no different if you’ve been operating below the capacities of your talents for years or decades, because that is irrevocable now. The time in the future is also going to come to pass whether you like it or not. Thinking like this gives me a lot of motivation. I used this on my last physics exam, where I studied the problems and formulas for over a dozen hours even though I’m near-failing in the class. I could stay depressed because I didn’t put in enough effort earlier in the course, but that’s over and done with regardless of my feelings.

Now I know why people have garage sales and sell stuff so cheaply. Most people, myself included, go through six-month periods where they acquire lots of stuff. Everything I’ve bought has been at fair prices, even free, but most of it has outlived its usefulness or was never useful to begin with. When you’re evaluating an item to purchase, you must not ask “is this a good deal?” You must ask “will this item help me a lot?” If the answer is yes, it might be that you should buy it even if it’s over-priced. If you’re dying of thirst, it’s a great deal to pay $100 for a bottle of water. But if the answer is no, the item isn’t worth buying at any price. I’m starting to think in this manner, so I should be able to end the garage sale cycle right here.

The other key is to simply stop buying things. If you’re going to buy something to resell, it has to be something you’re going to list on eBay or at your own shop within the next day. If you aren’t committed to flipping it within the next week, don’t buy it. If it’s a really great deal, become committed. It’s quite simple. We just have the tendency to make it way too complicated.

I love my material possessions. I have a camera and lenses I used every day to create art, a computer with two monitors that lets me communicate my thoughts and creativity to others, a good color and black and white printer that does the same for hard copy, a piano I play occasionally, hundreds of prints of my photos I give out to people, clothes that I enjoy wearing. But the camera I had three years ago that’s now broken is not a possession I love, because it’s not useful to me. I should probably throw it out. It’s not doing anything as a relic.

Objects that have sentimental value usually have less sentimental value than you think. Having a whole bunch of small trinkets you never use on your desk is even worse, because they’ll stop you from thinking. I become a lot more productive with a clean desk, even if I’m just typing at the computer. I need to work on that.

At least move the stuff from your desk to a drawer, or under the table, or to plastic bins, as an interim measure. Throw out old receipts and paperwork. We burn them in our wood-burning stove. Moving things out of sight makes you more productive, but there’s a trap: you encourage yourself to fill your space with more stuff, while never getting rid of the junk you’ve hidden. That’s why no one can have a big enough car or house or apartment.

I want to settle this issue for myself now, so I don’t have to deal with it for the next days, months, years, decades.

If your house burning down does not seem such an unpleasant thought, then you need to clear out the clutter.

Please buy my stuff. When you do, ignore everything I just said about buying stuff.

The golden highway: International Speedway Boulevard in Daytona Beach, Florida, near the race track. I shot this through the windshield of the car from a few hundred feet away, with my lens at 135mm, the maximum telephoto. Since my camera has a 22.2×14.8mm (cropped) sensor, that’s the 35mm equivalent of 216mm.

The light around the cars struck me immediately. Shooting through a scratched windshield actually makes the scene more beautiful, because you have streaks of light and contrast around the highlights. The downside is that the photo is initially low-contrast. I cranked up the contrast with curves in Photoshop. Even though this is at ISO100, I managed to bring out quite a bit of grain with the editing. Also, I burned in the corners and shifted the colors more toward gold and red. I’m liking this photo quite a bit.

Don’t give up on the golden highway. It’s there, waiting for you to find it. Even if you have to fabricate it.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/1600, F5.6, 135mm, ISO100, 2008-11-05T16:54:51-05, 20081105-215451rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

The dishes are washed and the kitchen is closed. This was lit by a beautiful sunset outside my door. It was at dusk when I shot this, but I balanced the camera on the counter for a 2.5-second exposure to give the sensor enough light.

What goes on around the sunset is often a lot more interesting than the sunset itself. Or the solar eclipse, or full moon, or the big thunderstorm. Take shots of everything, or take shots of something and focus on it. Usually for me, the first shot I take of an object or scene is the best, and then it goes downhill as I tweak and experiment with different angles. So trust your instincts.

This shot is wide-angle (18mm). It seemed better than backing up and going telephoto.

Canon Rebel XTi, EFS 18-55mm, 2.5″, F3.5, 18mm, ISO100, 2008-10-09T19:01:34-04, 20081009-230134rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

There are 14 categories, including things like “gives examples,” “answers questions,” and “is fair.” You can rate 1 to 5 on each.

This seems like a negative thing, because you have to rate your professor’s performance objectively. You have to decide how he’s done, evaluate him in many categories, and then write suggestions (most people don’t do this). It’s a big responsibility, because college administrators will be judging his merits, worthiness, and teaching ability based on your report.

But in my reality, this isn’t the case at all. If you have a bad teacher, and you give him all 1’s on his evaluation, do you know what happens? He gets worse. Usually it’s quite noticeable. The next class day he will be all flustered and confused. He will say things that make no sense. The grade you’ve given him will be confirmed.

If you give him 5’s, on the other hand, he will become far better. The coursework will just start making sense to you, he’ll be expalining concepts and formulas in a clear manner, and everyone in the class will seem happier.

This totally contradicts the common belief of reality. The common belief is that your opinion is independent of circumstances or facts. But common beliefs are common in common people. You can’t expect to be extraordinary if you’re doing what everyone else does. It’s extraordinary to go from a medium telephoto lens to an extreme wide-angle lens, because everything looks so different. So pick the extraordinary lens.

With your new lens, thoughts are inextricably linked to reality. They’re one and the same. If you think negativity, you’ll give more people 1’s, and then you’ll feel more negative and more negativity will come back on you. You’ll hope to find friends and a loving partner who bring positivity into your life, but all you’ll find is negative people. No one will rescue you from negativity. By waiting for a twist of fate to change your circumstances, you’re giving up control of your life. When you hand your keys over to some other person or group, the results are never good because no one else can manage two lives. You stagnate, contribute nothing to the world, and become a boring person in general. You won’t find the happy people, because they’ll all become like ghosts. You won’t even see them. The only way to attract others is to be attractive yourself, and the way to do that is through positive action. Writing this paragraph was a very positive thing to do.

A lot of people call this the law of attraction.

When you share this with others, you can expect criticism and unrest. Many people don’t want to believe their beliefs reflect on others. If you’re influencing everyone around you, you have a lot of power, and power is a scary thing. Wielding power is more scary than being subject to it, at least initially. That’s why 95% of people are afraid of public speaking. You have a lot of power when you’re addressing a large group. You can give them good ideas or you can give them bad ideas. What if you make a mistake and people start throwing food and sharp objects at you?

Most of us are not fighting wars or being stalked by lions or starving to death. All of the fear, stress, and uncertainty at work or at the mall or among friends is 100% phony. People are not going to start throwing knives at you or machine gunning you for mispronouncing a word. Sure, you could get fired from your job or kicked out of your apartment or ostracized by your friends, but that’s highly unlikely, and if it does happen, it’s positive because you’re completely free to meet new people and make new connections. You can easily go into betrayal / heartache / revenge mode instead, but then you become a more negative person. In negative mode, you build walls instead of bridges. Bridges are better, because they expand your intelligence and influence. You might lose a few cities to roving barbarians, but it’s much safer to expand your civilization into new territory rather than to relentlessly defend what you have. Walls feel safe and secure, but they make you a prisoner. Past accomplishments are decaying and future circumstances are imaginary—the only true safety is in continued expansion a.k.a. growth.

Fears of public speaking are imaginary, because the worst that can happen is that you’ll be boring. Usually, you become boring from worrying too much about the opinions of others. But it’s not even the average opinion of the group that you’re worried about—it’s the group’s most vocal, negative members. The critics. Don’t listen to the critics.

The critics tell you to bite your tongue. Don’t share your opinions with others—you might offend them. Not everyone believes what you do. Some might find you terribly offensive. Everyone is uniquely valuable—you have no right to encroach upon the beliefs of others. I have no right to go up to people and tell them how eating meat is sapping their strength or how cancer can be readily cured.

This is often called social resistance. We conform to the demands of the least intelligent people. This manifests itself through weasel words: we pad our sentences with terms like sometimes, likely, in most people, I think, in my humble opinion, and other nonsense, to demonstrate that we have no idea what we’re talking about and should not be taken seriously. Even if we have something powerful to say, we do everything we can to disempower ourselves by dilluting the message. We refuse to talk honestly with others, for fear of offending them. If I conform to social resistance, instead of writing great articles like Don’t Vote 2008 and The Cancer Myth, I might be writing nothing. Or fluff like “do what you feel” and “there are many factors in curing cancer” (when in fact there is only one). I couldn’t look in the mirror if I was writing that stuff.

We think we have to stick with ’safe’ subjects. What if instead, you don’t look to others for approval? Even better, believe they want to hear you. That’s much more positive. You’ll taken negativity, and you’ll flip it on its head to create positivity. It doesn’t matter if it’s objectively true—if it empowers you, the belief has served its purpose. What you’ll find is that people will agree with you more as you state your beliefs on clearer and clearer terms. I believe that film photography has no intrinsic value—it’s a much better learning experience to start with digital photography. I believe abortion is murder. I believe factory farming of animals is wrong. I believe that college education is frivilous. I don’t believe in thievery. I don’t believe in having a job. I don’t believe in renting. I’m not afraid to tell people what I believe, and they either accept it at face value or run away. Not many people run away from truth, so if you speak your mind truthfully, most people will not be offended even if you’re clashing with their opinions. If instead, I tried to mirror people I meet, I might start drinking, smoking, taking drugs, or shoplifting instead (there are plenty of people doing those things). If you don’t set your beliefs, other people will set them for you.

Thusly, it is a very positive thing to have strong opinions and to share them readily. These opinions have to be based in fact or usefulness, of course, but as long as you haven’t become the slave of your beliefs (like many people do with religion), it’s fine to have a voice. Not only is it fine, but it’s the only way to go.

If you’re proven wrong or you find a better system later, there’s no shame in announcing a correction. Most people are so afraid of being wrong that they never say anything that can be disputed. They only make easy, obvious announcements that are clearly fact, much like a computer regurgitates information. The keys on my keyboard have no mind to type what I’m typing. Do you want to be the senseless keys, or do you want to be the smart brain? In any subject, you can’t be right without the risk of being wrong. You can’t have success without the risk of failure. If you have no risk of failing, any success you have is guaranteed. This means it is completely worthless. Your success is no more than normal and expected mediocrity. Raise the stakes, because you’re not trying hard enough.

When I believed that it was in my power to “offend” other people, I was subscribing to a very negative belief. Apart from physical violence, you can’t actually offend anyone else—only they can offend themselves.

Remember always that negative people defend what they have; positive people scout for new opportunities.

Going back to the example of evaluating your teacher with 1’s or 5’s: your teacher will always get better if you give him high marks instead of low marks. It’s an indisputable fact. This question is the downfall of objectivists: is the improvement “real,” or does it merely represent confirmation bias on my part (i.e. “imaginary”). Is change really happening, or am I just seeing what I want to see?

The truth is, truth is irrelevant.

The objectivists will say that it is not ‘fair’ to everyone else if you give ‘unfair’ ratings. They’re assuming that ratings are a zero-sum game. Your evaluations should reflect your professors’ showmanship, because when you give a good score, you’re effectively giving bad scores to everyone else.

This is baloney. If you’re going to be completely objective, you should do this: give really good scores to your bad teachers, because it will result in noticeable improvement. But if your history teacher makes the Vietnam War come alive, you should give him low scores, because that will bring him back from extraordinary to ordinary. Everyone needs to be in the safe and ordinary middle.

Of course, this is hogwash, no matter what perspective you have. Even my seven-year-old sister Rachel would agree.

Objectivism is hogwash, and realists aren’t objective at all. They’re negative. Being objective is useless, because all we have is negativity or positivity. You can’t choose between good and evil by splitting your time equally between doing good and doing evil. If you’re being neutral, you’re doing nothing, and doing nothing is always negative. Forsaking your human power and potential is never a neutral decision. It can only be negative.

Most people have negative belief systems. I could say this is a negative thing, but it is in fact quite positive because it means they have many opportunities for personal growth. Though I’ve written a book worth of articles, I’m just as much a beginner as you. The limit of our potential is only the limit of our mind.

It’s easy to become negative when all you’re doing is busywork. Conversely, it’s hard to be anything but positive when you’re working for the highest good of all. Negative emotions are a sign that you’re not accomplishing enough—you need to either change focus or work a lot harder on your current projects. For me, it’s inspiring greatness in others, which I do through artistic photography and writing articles like these. Sometimes I get tired of writing so I take or edit photos instead. Usually I’m not thinking about helping others while in creative flow, but everything builds on that, even if it’s not present every second.

Negativity is just positivity in disguise.

Three bottles of orange juice, lined up on the roof of a black car, with shaded trees (left) and sunny trees (right) in the background.

This was store-bought orange juice I dispersed into water bottles. Then I removed the labels from the water bottles.

I like this composition… the colors, shapes of the bottles, lighting, and spacing came together that day. I made the colors warmer in Photoshop, brightened the bottles, darkened the edges. It’s a lot more idealistic.

The bokeh highlights in the background are eight-sided because my 50mm lens has eight uncurved aperture blades. If I shot this at F1.4 you wouldn’t see them at all because the blades wouldn’t be used, but then the depth of field would be much too shallow. The second and third bottles would look like big orange blobs with little distinct shape at F1.4.

This photo is ironic, because it seems like something completely natural, but in fact is man-made. Plastic bottles don’t occur without us. Orange juice doesn’t become collected itself. This orange juice, like all orange juice sold at the supermarket, is watered down—if you squeeze real oranges you’ll get more potent, sweeter juice that is orange, not yellow. Most people don’t put orange juice in bottles, either.

Whose to say we’re unnatural, though? Only us.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/200, F4, 50mm, ISO200, 2008-09-23T17:42:22-04, 20080923-214222rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

Shawnee was trying to study, but I interrupted her to put these fake autumn leaves in her hair. I just rested them on her head for this shot. She was reaching up to catch them as they fell off.

The leaves do make a good prop, and she was laughing enough that there’s no chance she learned anything that day. At least her test is days away. There’s always a test coming up.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/800, F5.6, 50mm, ISO200, 2008-11-07T10:17:42-05, 20081107-151742rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

You can use the model’s likeness for anything not defamatory. You are one of my “licencees.”

A girl named Lyric, holding up a print of Fiery Hearts, which represents her heart. Don’t hurt her! She’s fragile like the glass in that picture frame.

I always try to get my models to look down with eyes up toward the camera, or toward the side… it’s a much more interesting pose than a dead-on stare. That worked well here.

I took out her nose ring, part of a tattoo, and some of her clothes. The photo is much more appealing that way.

The framed picture didn’t turn out good to start, because it was mostly a blue reflection of the sky. I burned it in quite a bit and took out the blue, so it looks great now. The other big change on this was selective color; I took out all colors except in the red channel, which puts emphasis on her and the picture, makes the background black and white, and makes her skin a bit weird looking. But in a good way.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/500, F5.6, 75mm, ISO400, 2008-11-07T11:42:05-05, 20081107-164205rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

The corner of the Riverside National Bank at 1060 W. International Speedway Blvd., Daytona Beach FL. It looks interesting by itself. I angled the camera and set this against a blue, cloudless region of the sky. Then, I made the sky dark and the bricks redder on the computer. Ha ha. Always have to do that sort of editing.

This was an interesting study in geometry and architecture, though I don’t think about those things at all when taking photos. I just photograph what looks unusual.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/1250, F4.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-09-25T10:13:45-04, 20080925-141345rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

Jenna says hello. She was studying chemistry.

It’s hard to get my models to be serious. Most of them just start laughing when I tell them to look serious. This is as close as I got w/ Jenna.

For editing, I took out some lines under her eyes and made her brighter. Since the sunlight is behind her, she was a bit dark in the original image.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 50mm 1:1.4, 1/100, F2.5, 50mm, ISO100, 2008-10-13T09:23:47-04, 20081013-132347rxt

Shaun & Krystal, pretending to study calculus. All the numbers are making sense.

I did editing in the Lab color space, which separates luminance from color, to make them look yellow instead of blue. I could’ve done the same with a cloudy sky, but I can’t control the weather (yet…).

This was around noon at the college. I found Krystal smoking with a group of friends, and paired her up with this guy who was really studying. She’s still holding a cigarette in her hand, you can see on the right. Smoking is as popular as ever.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/160, F4, 41mm, ISO100, 2008-10-22T12:37:10-04, 20081022-163710rxt

When you kill off your naggy voice and listen to your confidant voice, you’re being smart. I’m two-tenths of the way there.

This is a review of Steve Pavlina’s book, Personal Development for Smart People, 2008 October 15. Thanks for the free copy, Steve!

I like the title of this book. If you’re even interested in personal development, you’re way ahead of most people. Most people don’t even give a passing thought to the subject.

What happens to many smart people, is that they run into phony, substanceless personal development. Stuff like “do what you feel” and “be yourself.” Then, they dismiss the whole field as being wimpy hand-holding fluff. Psychology gets dismissed this way, too. Even photography. I’ve heard way too many artistic explanations that make no sense or sound wishy-washy, and I hold little reverence for photography schools or museums.

The problem, of course, with “be yourself,” is that in means nothing to most people. Most people think they are their jobs or their thoughts or their friends or their lives. So if your surroundings are boring, that must mean you’re a boring person. Which isn’t true, of course, because the closest thing to being yourself is being committed to personal growth. Trying to “be yourself” without knowing yourself is like trying to understand Einstein’s theory of general relativity without knowing the speed of light.

Steve Pavlina does not do this. This is a really down-to-Earth, practical piece of work.

If you’ve read his blog extensively as I have, I wouldn’t recommend this book. You pretty much already know all the stuff that’s in it, and in fact you can apply it with just a personally developed mindset.

In fact, I found Steve’s book a chore to read, and I couldn’t even finish it. I just flipped around a lot. It’s like trying to read an English paper. Or anything with an MLA Works Cited page, for that matter. When I read one of Steve’s great articles like How to Get from a 7 to a 10, Overwhelming Force, or 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job, I feel completely engaged and motivated. He pushes against the flow, but you know he’s darn right, and he loved writing those. He completely convinced me to not work in a normal job ever. This book, on the other hand, feels like something he was forced to write. I also think there were several committees involved.

Of course, if you read any of the reviews on Amazon.com or in the blogosphere, you’ll here people saying just the opposite—that this book is completely different and revolutionary. Most books in the personal growth field are garbage anyway, and this is 100 times better than a book by Wayne Dyer or Anthony Robbins. They’re just trying to sell books and DVDs and tapes. I don’t even think they apply or like any of the stuff they write. Pavlina is writing most of these 256 pages from personal experience, but he often paints too broadly and refuses to step on toes. He crucifies organized religion on his blog, but he avoids that in chapter 13 on spirituality. While he encourages his readers to disconnect themselves from the fixed viewpoint of one faith, he has diluted his message to offend fewer people. This can be justified: he’s opening his ideas to a wider audience who may not be ready to be challenged in that manner, but that is misguided because it goes against the principle of truth. I wrote this in my conclusion 17 Lessons from 17 Years: offending others is good, because it means you’re pushing them toward their fears. The only way to conquer fear is to move toward it.

This is unimportant, though. It would be creepy if Steve’s book was entirely perfect, and it is not important to quantify truth anyway. Don’t write for the critics or write for the past. They exist only in your mind.

I like the part about how Steve left his church on page 87: “At age 17, I finally recognized I was being coerced to participate instead of being offered a truly free choice, so I left.” I’m glad I haven’t spent years in the haze—my father has identical reservations and doesn’t believe we can know all the answers. If God is at all personally developed, he’s not going to respect you if you pay lip-service to church. In fact, that’s an insult. Either be a Christian 100% or 0%. Don’t sit on the fence like most people. You can’t fool the creator of the universe.

I like how Steve keeps saying “you are the commander of your life.” You can read that and think you don’t need to read at all, but reading about personal development helps you to think in different ways, which you eventually translate into action. Most people either read way to much while never getting anything done (PD junkies), or take action repeatedly without ever stopping to think. Steve would call these ready-aim-aim-aim and ready-fire-fire-fire types, respectively. The best way is ready-fire-aim-fire-aim, which is really just trial and error. No one else can ever teach you anything, because you’re always actually teaching yourself.

The chapter on courage is the best. I like this part: “People often take circuitous paths to their goals to minimize the risk of rejection . . . The idea is that if they can sniff out a negative response in advance, outright rejection can be avoided” (page 105). I was doing this with a girl over the past month, but it was stupid to lead her on, so I just asked her to be my girlfriend because I like her a lot. That’s the wrong way to start a relationship, and I was rejected, but it’s completely better than doing nothing at all. If I could know the result ahead of time, it would in fact be awful, because I would never build any courage.

The main problem was that I was doing unattractive things (i.e. not leading, being shy, etc.), but I’ll develop those skills through baby steps. As you become courageous, powerful, truthful, loving, etc., you become more attractive toward others. So personal development is exactly the same as pickup artistry.

The other great thing about being rejected is that you can focus on 100% on forging new relationships, rather than wasting energy on people who you’re not even being truthful with. Rather than waiting and hoping for other people to take command, you exercise courage yourself. That’s what Steve’s whole chapter on courage is about. It’s actually what all personal development is about. Instead of waiting for God or other people to do things or create opportunities for you, you create them yourself through unwavering dedication and extraordinary effort. Instead of hoping someone else will sponsor my photography and make me rich / famous / successful, I don’t make wishes at all. Success must come from my own efforts, not the efforts of others.

I wish (ha ha) Steve would have spent more time debunking the concepts of true love and destiny. Those are both empowering when you’re on the right side of them, but for most people they are disempowering. If you believe in destiny, you’re giving up control over your life. You are no longer the captain. Destiny means that you have a destination, and you’ll get there no matter what you do, even if you actively thwart it. Sure, you can redefine destiny in positive terms, i.e. you’ll let no obstacles stand in the way of your dreams, but it’s better to just abandon the concept all together and call the whole thing courage. It’s the same with true love. If you have one true love, doesn’t that mean that if she is eaten by sharks or grows to hate you, you’re ruined for life? Steve’s concept of oneness says no because we’re all people, part of a larger body, connected and the same. But the real solution is that love is a condition of circumstance. True love just means there are a whole lot of circumstances piled up—hopefully ones you’ve both created through courage. That may sound bad, but it’s actually really good because it means there’s an abundance of love. You can both totally find other people if you need do, and that’s great because it eliminates fear. You have no fear of losing each other, so you can live completely in the present moment. That’s true love.

Steve defines truth, love, and power as the three principles of the universe. Three derivative principles are oneness, courage, and authority (respectively), and the consummate of the six is intelligence. It reminds me of photography. You have red, green, and blue as your primary colors. The derivatives are yellow, cyan, and magenta, and the consummate (all combined) is white. Or with subtractive (print) colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow are your primaries, blue, red, and green are your derivatives, and black is the consummate. I could draw a triangle, but I don’t feel like it.

Steve loves to tell this story about how he dropped out of college and became a shoplifter, went to jail for a while, woke up, went back to college and got his 4-year computer science degree in three semesters, then started his computer games business while becoming insanely personal developed on the side. All I’ve got is that I started college last year at 16, and the closest thing I have to shop-lifting is scamming coupons and rebates out of companies. I’m not going to go for my Bachelor’s degree, though. I’m just going to end it after getting my AA degree in computer science this spring. I don’t have a good reason to be in college. On page 235, Steve has a quote by Robert Heinlein which says “religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help.” Just replace “religion” with “college.” That’s why I refuse to go to photography school. It’s all people telling you what to do because they think they know what’s right for you. If you’re really dedicated to your art or subject, you’ll learn it all yourself and you don’t need college at all. Standardized education will just drag you down.

The first part of Pavlina’s book is theory. The second part is applications. He has lists of good habits, like “timeboxing,” batching, no-communication zones, deadlines, etc. One of these lists goes on for many pages (149-157). There’s more lists on pages 124-132, for quizzing yourself about following the principles. I didn’t care for them. The first half is much more interesting. Most people will enjoy the applications more, especially newbies to personal growth. Others will find them totally mundane.

Personal Development for Smart People is a good book, especially if you haven’t read anything of its type. If you can’t afford it, read Steve’s blog, which is even more interesting (to me at least). Right now, he’s doing this experiment where he’s eating no solid foods for three months. He’s grinding up nuts and leaves and grass and bark in a blender and drinking a gallon of that everyday. I thought that would kill you. Fascinating stuff.

Keep learning and growing.

The real truth is the opposite. By voting, you’re legitimizing our elections. But why would you vote for one of two when the candidates are exactly the same? They’re both puppets to the concerns of internationalists and big corporations. Both the democratic and republican parties support the continued expansion of American empire, national socialism (corporatism), and the further creation of phony currency—and phony debt. Both parties call for “change,” but if there was change to be had, it would be happening already, because there is a constant alternation between the two parties. It’s like Coke and Pepsi. Coke and Pepsi pretend to be rivals, but their real concern is to keep out a third contender.

If you’re going to vote, don’t vote for either of these bozos. Pick a third party candidate, or vote for yourself or Mickey Mouse. That’s a protest vote, and you’re supposed to be able to do that in the American political system because you’re supposed to be able to vote for whoever you want. If I was of voting age, I’d vote for Ron Paul because he’s the only candidate who supports a capitalist, prosperous America free of empire and corporatism.

If only one percent of Americans turn out to vote, the legitimacy of the system will crumble. Our “two-party system” is no more than the choice between being killed with a blue grenade or a red grenade. If you pick the “lesser of two evils,” you’re still choosing evil. When you continually choose evil, you become a heartless person. Don’t vote for McCain or Obama. Change starts with you. The agendas of both parties are the same: to drive this country into the ground by wasting our resources as quickly as possible, fighting phony wars in other countries to kill countless civilians, all the while usurping the profits and freedoms of the citizens in the name of safety.

Safety is bogus. The only safe thing for us to do is to get out of the 100 countries we have troops in. We’ve already killed nearly a million civilians in Iraq. You won’t hear this on ABC World News, because ABC World News isn’t news—it’s propaganda. Other countries laugh at our “free speech,” because we have no love of free speech ourselves. Whenever you go into another country and bomb their people and overthrow their government, you can bet you’ll get terrorist attacks coming back on you—but only because you exercised terrorism yourself.

Terrorist attacks are relished by out military and internationalist leaders, because they’re an excuse to further restrict our freedom. We have ID cards and serial numbers. We’re photographed and finger-printed like common criminals—yet if we’re walking about free, the assumption is supposed to be that we are not criminals.

It makes no sense for an under-populated continental nation, rich with natural resources, to be obscenely indebted, and that’s what we’ve gotten from this. The founding fathers are spinning in their graves.

The big goal of Nazism a.k.a national socialism a.k.a corporatism is to merge big business with the government while robbing small businesses blind to make them unprofitable. Everyone is taxed obsessively. Then, the government gives back money and resources through social welfare programs, public schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. This giving back of resources seems nice, and most people accept it, but it’s actually a warm bath about to boil you alive.

The ultimate goal of socialism / pervasive government is to kill everyone. It’s the side of evil, and all evil can do is destroy both good and evil. From the side of evil, that’s the best outcome. The first goal is to replace worship of God with worship of man—the state takes over the religion. This is why most pervasive governments have a book, i.e. Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto, much like the Bible. They may also have a charismatic and fictitious leader, i.e. Big Brother from 1984. You worship this guy instead of a higher power.

Once you have people treating man as god, you can assume man can do anything it wants. This allows you to erode the sanctity of human life. This is done through eugenics, abortion, euthanasia, evolutionary theory, etc., and it’s always justified as being in the interests of the greater good. Since you’re all being taxed at 98%, you’re dependent on the government to support you and your children. You can bet that you won’t be receiving your “benefits” if you give birth to a child with down syndrome, instead of killing him like the government wants. Soon, this extends to all children, because we have “too many” people anyway. Environmentalism is often used as a ploy here. Then, we have mock famines and state-issued epidemics to get rid of people. Don’t ever get a flu shot—you know they’ll put the poison in there. People get poorer and poorer, as the state takes more and more.

Even our scientists are agents of the state. They all rely on government grants to fund their research. Do you think the government is going to grant money to research nitrilosides as the cure for cancer? No way, no how. Cancer is too much of a good thing, because it kills lots of people, makes people afraid, and leeches from their resources. Not only do phony treatments like radiation and chemotherapy do more harm than good, but they also cost a lot of money.

The only solution to oppressive government is continuous resistance among the people, and the best way to do that is through personal development. Personally developed people know that empire building, fiat money, wealth distribution, and eugenics is not on the side of good. So they continue to oppose and thwart pervasive government. When you have enough people doing that, you get stuff like due process, jury systems, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It’s all about shackling the government while the people roam free. The government is limited to the very narrow scope of protecting people from being killed or harmed by others, providing courts for criminal and civil disputes judged by public juries, and providing basic emergency services, through apportioned tax funding. No empire, no industry bailouts, no social security, no public schools, no IRS, no CIA, no FBI, no illegal drugs, no FDA, no foreign bases, no postal service, no equal opportunity, no affirmative action, no bankruptcy laws, no nonsense.

When government merges itself with large business (corporatism), those businesses gain advantages over the small businesses, which become more oppressed by government waste and taxation. Soon, all that’s left are big businesses, because they’re the only ones that can survive, thanks to favoritism like closed-bid contracts. Because the free market has been removed, employees’ choices diminish to large companies, and the government leaders declare that we need more regulation to ensure fair and equitable employment for all. But in fact, if you don’t stand in the way of business to begin with, you need less and less regulation because there are more and more small businesses that have to compete with each other. If I apply for a job and they won’t hire Orientals, I can go somewhere else and it’s their loss. We don’t need artificial rules to support an artificial system—we need to get to the root of the problem. That is to remove the socialist system, because it’s crippling everyone.

When you have a huge, plodding military-industrial complex… and companies like Blackwater, Bear Stearns, SLM Corporation, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, AIG, and NORAD all suckling from the public teat… you know something is wrong. Billions of dollars and public resources go to these companies, when these companies are failures and couldn’t support themselves at all without government contracts and favorable laws. There’s no reason for us to have a military-industrial complex to begin with. Are we trying to rule the world? To kill everyone? This is what the Nazis did, because their name stands for national socialism, which means just this—merging big business with government. It doesn’t work. It never works. It always hurts citizens and tax-payers like you and me, because when you remove the free market, you remove competition, and there is no incentive to improve. There’s no incentive for scientific research when anything you find will be stolen by the state anyway.

When we return to a constitutional national with gold-backed money and none of this garbage, everyone will become richer. Living prosperously under government largess is like trying to swim with an 80-pound weight around your neck. You get a few life preservers, but you’d be better off if you were rid of both the life preservers and the weight. We’d be better off schooling our children at home or through private enterprise. We don’t even have that now—all schooling, even these types, are heavily regulated and controlled by the government. The public school system has proven itself so useless, that more people than ever are willing to pay for it (through mandatory taxes) plus private-schooling their children. But if we weren’t supporting this boondoggle to begin with, everyone would be more prosperous, and most people would be able to support private schooling. There would also be a lot more competition and quality by the free market and government noninterference. You can’t throw money at our school system to fix it. It’s not a problem about money. Scrap it.

It’s the same for our hospitals and doctors. You can’t make the system better by making our doctors government employees. The problem is government interference. People will claim that we’ve let the free market run its course in the medical industry, and it’s proven itself useless. The exact opposite is the case—hospitals are so thoroughly regulated and insured that everything is a liability and nothing can get done. Have you seen how much paperwork a doctor has to fill out just for a strep throat infection? You can bet there are people filling out paperwork in the office for you, too. His malpractice insurance is so high, he has to take on twice the patient load just to stay profitable. New doctors want to enter the workforce, but the government even restricts licensing to keep the pool of doctors small.

Doctors need to be able to enter into private contracts with their patients, free of the risk of frivolous lawsuits. There is no reason that we should need an insurance lottery scheme just to afford basic medical care. The solution is not further socialism—the solution is a return to the capitalist ideals of this country, meaning—get rid of regulation. People are largely capable of regulating themselves.

The same thing happens in restaurants. With more inspections and fines, restaurant owners and staff care less and less, because they’re being treated like cattle. But if you go into a church kitchen or a home kitchen, you won’t find garbage cans on the cutting boards or oil and bacon left out uncovered overnight. Shouldn’t your Grandma’s kitchen be filthy, because she doesn’t have the all-knowing and benevolent government to control her?

We can’t throw money at this country to fix it, even though we can print it by the boxcar. We can’t attack this problem with more empire and corporatism and government sponsorship. The only solution is the dissolution of the government into a base entity, only with the power to protect life and private property. Constitutionally, we should have a weak federal government. The states are in fact 50 nations, and they control both the federal government and the localities as a representative democracy. What we need to do now is to pull and dissolve our troops from all foreign countries, stop printing fake money, dissolve most government largess, laws, companies, and regulations, and sell off the land the government claims to own in the mid-West to pay for the debt we’ve accumulated through years of Nazism.

Will lots of people lose jobs? Yes. Will lots of people have to start making a real contribution to society? Yes. In the short run, this will hurt a lot of people—the people that are more on the receiving end of public funding than on the sending end. But it’s the only way to go, because it will allow us to become prosperous and self-reliant like never before. There’s no reason a house should cost $150,000 to build. Materials and technology are cheaper than ever, but when you have fees, tribute, taxes, permits, licensing, zoning, inflation, and other nonsense at every step of the way, things get bad.

When you get Nazism off our back, we’ll all have the freedom to survive. Sure, some people who get by on social welfare and refuse to work may die of hunger, and you may fear having no state-provided safety net, but in fact that safety net was an illusion. If you can’t fail in a nanny state, you can’t succeed either. This is core to personal development, yet neither Obama or McCain will ever support it, because it steps on too many toes. Dissolving empire steps on too many toes. Yet if we don’t do it now, it will happen itself with a lot more fighting.

Stop voting. Start making things hard for the government. Sign your name badly. Fill out forms by circling everything and checking every box. Don’t sign up for the draft. Stop paying income taxes. Keep stuff off the books. Buy a rifle and some ammo and keep it under your bed. You won’t need it—we just have to make sure that once the U.S. soldiers are policing our streets, they still have some fear in their hearts. Do you think the police all have guns for fun?

Be peaceful but don’t cooperate. We have a revolution on our hands.

A glass rose my Grandmother found at a garage sale. Its appearance changes dramatically under different light; the highlights turn out best with bright light shining down or from the side. I think it looks great here.

I bought a new lens: a Canon EF 28-135mm F3.5-5.6. I got a good deal ($260, refurbished). It’s been a lot of fun to work with. Quite a bit heavier than the old 50mm prime, but much more versatile. I like the image stabilization gyroscopes; they really work, unlike on some cheaper cameras. I used them here to hand-hold at 105mm with a 1/30 second exposure time.

I took this ten days ago. I’ve been taking photos, but not getting back to the computer to edit them. Feeling a bit disconnected lately. I’m getting back to my art though; just touched this photo up today. It really doesn’t have that much contrast, but I added lots of contrast in Photoshop. I also did some nice vignetting with the burn tool. There was a pipe on the wall in the background, and the grooves between the bricks are blurry dark lines, but I like them.

Photography is all about light, and I love light, so I love photography. Rather than building a scene from scratch, you start out with a pre-made scene, and then mold and shape it with light, composition, and computerized manipulations. It’s so freeing, because you can do stuff like this fairly quickly. No photo is actually finished quickly; there are dozens of dud photos in-between, and every frame represents years of progress and experience, but it all flows together when you’re working.

Canon Rebel XTi, EF 28-135mm, 1/30, F6.3, 105mm, ISO100, 2008-10-16T12:58:11-04, 20081016-165811rxt

Download a perfected high-res JPEG or download the source image (Canon Rebel XTi RAW file).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Credit me as Richard X. Thripp, and link back to richardxthripp.thripp.com or rxthripp.com. Thanks!

Extraordinary people are usually extremely good or extremely bad. While ordinary folks get B’s, C’s, and D’s, extraordinary folks get A’s and F’s. They’re polarized on both ends of the spectrum. Being at the scary edge of the world is a much more interesting place to be than the safe and secure middle.

It’s not good to be extraordinary merely for the purpose of impressing others, because then you’ll do crazy stuff but have no direction. If you’ve set a mission that your heart loves, then you’ll have to do extraordinary stuff to fulfill that mission. If, however, you can meet your goals with ordinary actions, then the goals you’ve set aren’t your goals at all. They belong to other people. Those people could be your parents, your friends, or your perception of society in general, but they aren’t you.

Extraordinary people are not paralyzed by fear of failure. This is why they either fail or succeed. Failing once usually leads to succeeding—completely—the second time, through hard work and lessons learned in the first misadventure. Sometimes you’ll have to replace “second” with “tenth” or “44th,” but if you’re really trying, it doesn’t matter.

Once you stop fearing failure, you can eliminate excuses that justify your failures. Instead of handing control of your life over incidental circumstances, you take personal responsibility for your situation.

Some common circumstances ordinary people blame:

* Their parents.
* Their friends.
* Their environment.
* Being “ugly.”
* Race / ethnicity.
* Lack of talent.
* Lack of money.

There are many others, but this is enough of an overview. All these are excuses to justify ordinariness. They are all represented with disarming, demeaning beliefs and concepts. When you say that happenstance rules your world, you lose the burden of control. You become safely powerless.

Having an office job is an ordinary thing to do, because most people do it and it requires an ordinary amount of effort, relative to the alternative. The alternative is to be your own boss and pave your own path. You’re making a genuine contribution to your neighbors, and being paid with money, which you can use to convince others to contribute goods and services to you. This requires an extraordinary amount of effort and risk. Many times, what you think should earn money will be of no value to anyone else. You’ll keep learning, building, and improving until you are adding value.

The ordinary path seems secure, but it’s actually even riskier, because you’re not operating at peak efficiency. The bulk of your potential lies dormant. If you operate at 1% capacity for too long, change becomes scarier. If you do manage to unlock your potential while sticking with your ’secure’ wages, you’ll make the same amount of money while producing far more for your employers. That’s bad, because if you received proper compensation for your efforts, you’d be able to plow that back into contributing more.

As my profits from photography increase, I’ll be able to buy better cameras and lenses which will give me more creative freedom. This will make it even easier for me to produce artistic photographs, which will make more money. A camera won’t make art for me—the best it can do is get out of my way while I create art. But a better camera will get out of my way even more. I’m in an upward spiral of creativity and abundance.

In the long run, it’s far safer to be paid what you’re worth, all the time. For a while, you may feel fine leeching as a government employee, but you’ll come to see that you’ve restricted yourself to ordinariness. It’s far better to contribute directly, even if you go into debt, lose your house, and live in the woods for a while. If you never give up, you’ll be extraordinary, and then you’ll rise far higher than your safe job would ever allow. A life of turbulence and adventure is more exciting than a life of safety and sameness.

Reframing the extraordinary

When I stopped eating animals three weeks ago, a lot of my friends were surprised. Apparently, becoming a vegetarian is an extraordinary thing. Many people want to do it. They see that torturing animals in our factory farming system is completely wrong, but they never take action to change it. Change starts with you. Only 1% of Americans are vegetarians.

Other people try to stop eating animals, but they do it for all the wrong reasons. They’re going along with friends, or following a new trend, or expressing their love of animals. They constantly have to control themselves, because when they see a crisp hamburger or juicy steak, they remember everything they’re “missing” by not eating dead flesh. It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to maintain their new practice, because they’ve chosen it for phony reasons. Usually, they’ll become “semi-vegetarians” (i.e. wimps) by eating meat occasionally, or by deciding that chicken and fish are somehow not animals. These are ordinary people.

True vegetarians, on the other hand, don’t have to exercise any self control. When they see a meatball or a collection of pork chops, they don’t feel hungry at all. Even though it’s a disgusting thing, they don’t feel disgust either. To a true vegetarian, a steak is the same as a rock or a pencil or a violin or a doorknob. It’s not something you eat. It doesn’t inspire fear or hunger or doubt or repression. It’s completely ordinary.

To be extraordinary, you have to believe the extraordinary is ordinary.

Not eating animals is completely ordinary to me. I can’t ever think I’m special or extraordinary for being a vegetarian. If my 14-year-old self met my 17-year-old self, he would think I’m extraordinary, but I hold no such opinions about myself. This way, I can continue to rise, instead of stagnating in narcissism.

Fighting ordinariness

In one of my college courses this semester (physics), I completely failed the first test. I thought I was prepared because all my other teachers make the exams far easier than the in-class work, but this one was just as difficult. We had to do six multi-step problems in fifty minutes, which is as fast as my teacher presents them.

Much of the class failed it—I got 43%, while the average was 60%. The tempting thing to do right away is to blame the teacher for not teaching properly, or for making the test too hard. “No one else did well, so it’s fine that I did the same.” If I was so bold, I could even drop out of college or give up on computer science, and I could go through life telling people that it’s not my fault because I had a really bad teacher. People do this often. College is supposed to be really hard and lots of people are supposed to fail. It’s completely ordinary to fail, but what isn’t ordinary is to accept personal responsibility for failure.

So after two days I accepted personal responsibility, worked hard, and got a 93% on the last test. I probably deserved a B, but my teacher went easy on me. I could consider this an extraordinary accomplishment, but the fact is this is the way it’s supposed to be. This is ordinary. My first grade was just way below average; far worse than ordinary.

We’ve had a cat for about a year, but she was a stray that just started loitering in our yard. We never came up with a proper name for her. I called her “cat,” my Mom named her “Vanilla,” and my Dad named her “Asparagus.” Those names are all fairly ordinary. Recently, we came to a consensus on a new moniker for her: “The United Federation of Cats.” She’s already enjoying and responding to her new title. It’s a completely extraordinary name. I bet no one has ever named a cat that, in the thousands of years that cats have existed.

“The United Federation of Cats” doesn’t even make sense, because she’s not a federation. She’s just one cat, and I don’t see how she’s more united than any other cat. Most names are short and arbitrary, but hers is lengthy and declarative. I think most cats wouldn’t even agree that she represents the feline community. It doesn’t matter, because extraordinary things don’t have to make sense.

You can bring the extraordinary into your life by doing unexpected things like this. Go sit in the woods and look around for a couple hours. Go to a store but don’t buy anything. Eat breakfast in the evening and dinner in the morning. Wear crazy clothes. Write stuff like this. Change your name. Do you think I got this crazy “Thripp” name by happenstance? We were the Parrishes, but my Dad was done with that name and picked out Thripp in 1986. A lot of people told him he couldn’t or shouldn’t change his name, but he did it anyway and proved them wrong. That was extraordinary.

Make sure that you don’t do heartless extraordinary things. You can murder a bunch of people, and that’s quite extraordinary, but it’s not what I mean here. It’s evil. Evil can only destroy, while good can only create or convert, and when it converts, it converts evil to good. If you’re not sure if something’s good, it’s evil, because good is always readily apparent. Choose the path with a heart.

Excuses of the ordinary

Instead of saying “I have no motivation,” most people say “I have no time.” You go to a businessman’s office, and he says he doesn’t have “time” to speak with you. What if he just said you weren’t interesting / impressive enough? At first, a lot of people would be shocked by his bluntness, even considering it extraordinary. But shortly, it would become a hallmark trait that, while abnormal as compared to others, is completely normal in terms of him. While others lie about not having time, he tells the truth about not having motivation.

When you have a lack of time, you actually have a lack of motivation, because you have 24 hours per day just like everyone else. Whatever is important to you can certainly fit within those constraints. What isn’t important falls by the wayside.

If you have a hobby you don’t have time for, you either have to drop it, drop something else, or do everything more efficiently to accommodate your new hobby. It’s really quite simple, but most people never apply it and remain ordinary. I don’t even apply it well. It’s harder to do than it is to type.

I did a few pencil-sketch portraits in 2006. They weren’t particularly good, but I enjoyed the hobby for a few weeks. Modeling reality in sketch-form helped me to see interesting compositions in photography. But I’ve dropped sketching now, because photography is so much more empowering for me. I could claim that I don’t sketch because I don’t have time, but I’d be lying to myself and you. I just don’t want to.

On occasion, people see what I’ve done here and ask me to develop websites for them. It would be a lot easier in the short run to tell them I’m too busy, but that would be an ordinary excuse. What I tell them now is that I don’t design websites for other people. It’s the truth—apart from a funny site for my Dad, I only work on my own projects, and I use far more time writing articles like this than developing Th8.us. Often my response is surprising. I’ll hear “can’t you put me on a list?” or “this is only a little bit of work,” but I don’t budge.

If I said I was too busy, I’d have them believing I’ll get to them eventually. I may think I’m “letting them down easy” or that they’ll “figure it out,” but it’s extraordinary to speak the truth right away rather than hiding from honesty. When you lie about being too busy, you set off a whole chain of events that brings you down progressively. Especially if you do it to ten or twenty people. Everyone you meet keeps asking you when you’ll work for them. You have to keep the busyness charade up even though you never really want to work for anyone. You want to write about working instead of actually working. Why not just say it?

If you don’t speak the truth, many of the people you meet will only know the fake, “too busy” you, and life in general will become depressing. You might even feel guilty that you’re going to the beach or reading a book, because you’ve told so many people how little time you have. If you have so little time, why do you have time to play games or go for a walk? You should be working on something really great.

When you are honest with yourself all the time, you’ll be honest with others, and they’ll be supportive of you. Instead of using busyness as a ploy to keep doors half-way open for you, slam those doors shut. They were never half-open anyway. No one is waiting for you to become less busy. They’re waiting for you to become less of a liar.

This is a foundation for being extraordinary, and it works in dating, hobbies, friendships, finances, work, life, work-life, projects, school, driving. Anything you can think of.

Even though I don’t drive, I see often enough that when you come to an intersection, people who have the right-of-way wave you on. You look at them, and you can’t see what they’re doing through their dark-tinted windows, and for a few seconds you’re confused. Why are they not moving? It looks like they’re waving, but you don’t want to chance it because as soon as you pull out, they’ll gear up and plow into you. It’s their turn. Why would they forfeit their turn? After a few seconds (or minutes), you become tired of waiting and you cross through the intersection anyway.

Wouldn’t it be easier if people just followed the rules of the road, instead of doing you a “favor” by letting you go first? It would be more honest too, and everything would get done quicker.

Applying the extraordinary

At all my classes at college, I give out a 4-by-6 print of one of my photographs to every student each class day. People enjoy seeing what I’ll come up with next, and it only costs me about fifty cents each day thanks to free shipping + referrals from companies like Shutterfly and Snapfish.

At first, I was afraid of doing this. Even though I hand out prints in the five minutes before class begins, I didn’t think my professors would like it. They’re prefer nothing to be handed out. Most students don’t want pictures of roses and sunsets anyway. They’re too busy studying (notice the “too busy” excuse).

Despite this, I went ahead and started giving out prints full-time about a year ago. I didn’t have many separate classes then, but it was a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed it. The program continues to this day. I’d created plenty of reasons not to do it, but none of them came to pass. The voice that tells me to be ordinary gets quieter and quieter in my head, as my true, extraordinary voice comes out.

Many people tell me how impressed they are that I “have the time” to write these articles. “They’re so lengthy and in-depth! It must take you days to write this.” Sometimes it does, but writing 3000 words feels completely ordinary to me. It doesn’t matter how long it takes or how much I write. If you look at a blank screen with the sole purpose of typing 3000 words, you’ll fail completely. You have to have a topic and a purpose.

When you start doing extraordinary stuff, many people will tell you they could do what you do. If you publish a book, friends will tell you they’ve thought about publishing a book. If you make a million dollars, people will say “I should do that.” This is completely irrelevant. It makes no different what other people can do. No man ever reaches the limits of his potential. The purpose of personal growth is to get you closer to the limits of your potential (what you “can” do), but you’ll never actually get there. The journey is what counts. Just because a billion other people can take a picture of a rose, doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t. Only 100 million of them are doing it, only 10 million of them are doing a good job of it, only 1 million of them are broadcasting their work, and only 1 of them is me.

Extraordinary people live below their means rather than going into debt. Then, you can afford to take risks… but you can’t afford to take risks if you have a $3200 / month mortgage over your head and you make barely more than that. On the other hand, if you’re living in a tent in your parents’ yard, you can take risks.

You can actually take risks either way. Life is just one big risk. Security is an illusion. Let go of security, and then you’ll become extraordinary.