Wellsbaum.blog

Writing about life and arts

Life

  • Angels with dirty faces

    •

    1 min read

    If you want to be more optimistic, close your Twitter account. Bad news is addicting. But don’t completely bury your head in the sand. No one acts in public like they do on social media. People say whatever they want online because they’re shielded behind a mobile screen. Go to the grocery and the sick-spitting…

  • ‘Everybody wants to be somebody: Nobody wants to grow’

    •

    1 min read

    Everybody wants to be somebody: Nobody wants to grow. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  • On the tip of your tongue

    •

    1 min read

    The mind always beats the tongue. It tries to make sense of reality before the linguist in your head interprets. The closer you look, the cloudier an object gets. Texture, too, is the product of an intelligent designer. You are guided by what you know. Thankfully, you never know as much as you think. Look…

  • Distracted into interestingness

    •

    1 min read

    The mind never gets sidetracked. It either chews on the immediate interesting thing or gravitates to the next fascinating subject. Needless to say, we’re never really bored. We care about everything in front of us. The levers of regard fluctuate even to the pillars of our own energy. Moored to reality, we nonetheless flock to…

  • You’ve got to play to win

    •

    1 min read

    “There was once a man named Goldberg who wanted nothing more than to be rich. So each day he went the synagogue and prayed to God to win the lottery. This went on for days, weeks, months, and years, but Goldberg never won. Eventually, Goldberg was at his wit’s end. Praying to God, he said,…

  • A little bit louder now

    •

    1 min read

    Provocation is neither about engagement nor expression — it’s about likes and shares. The lightning rod on Twitter will always outshine the passive inspirer, hiding from the market. But it is the quality of interactions that deliver the message. Neither the loud nor the faint succeeds. Speak softly and carry a big stick.

  • Hobbying for hobbies sake

    •

    2 min read

    Whether it’s trying surfing or playing the guitar when’s the last time you did something out of pure joy? In this Instagram-edited era where everyone gets their own stage, people only like to do things they’re good at. The thought goes: ‘if I can’t share it and show my best self, why do it?’ The…

  • Embrace the swings

    •

    1 min read

    We need the yin and the yang, excitement and disappointment, anxiety and relief, work and play, optimism and pessimism, drunk and consciousness. It is in the forced escape of one or the other that makes it worse. But the habit of no habits is a self-inflicted curse. Talk is cheap, including the words to ourselves. An overactive…

  • How design controls behavior

    •

    1 min read

    Design dictates behavior. Put a feature front and center like Instagram or Facebook Stories and it’s nearly impossible not to click. Keep a smartphone around while you’re doing work or eating and you’ll fight the urge to pick it up. Listen to enough conspiracy theories and you’re bound to think that they’re true regardless of…

  • Success comes down to one word

    •

    2 min read

    LOVE. ❤️ Love yourself. Love others. Love thy neighbor. Love your job. Love to show love. In the biography The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Buffet offers this advice to students at Georgia Tech. “Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of…

  • The irrationality stick

    •

    1 min read

    Irrationality runs rampant, pervading every human that dare unthink its power.  Call it karma. Call it branding. Call it exuberance. Absurdity’s long-term effect attrits the reality of facts. What is progress in a sea of lies? The perception of truth arises from the visceral to keep the falsities at bay. But like any other placebo,…

  • Slow appeal 🐢

    •

    1 min read

    Conventional wisdom says that we should emphasize speed over power. After all, he who runs the fastest wins the race. But life is a marathon, not a sprint. Malcolm Gladwell once said proper books should take at least two years to write. “We need to be a little bit more tortoise-y and a little less…