In the book, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***”, the author talks about how action creates motivation, not the other way around. He’s a professional blogger (meaning he makes money doing it) and he says that when he doesn’t want to write, he still sits down and writes 200 crappy words. If after 200 crappy words he still doesn’t want to write then he quits but it’s almost always the case that once he gets the ball rolling, the words start to flow. I like to pretend that I’m a professional blogger so my intro paragraphs are almost always about writing because I’m trying to get the ball rolling and they’re often the most fun to write and reread later. I like to pretend I’m a writer at Vox.com doing political hot takes like Matt Yglesias or Ezra Klein (mostly because I exclusively listen to their individual podcasts). Sometimes it’s fun to not write about politics though and if my Medium stats are any indicator, those are the ones people actually read.
I’ve been chatting with a girl from London lately, we matched on Tinder somehow and we talk nearly every day. I really enjoy talking to her. We’ve both admitted I’m a little weird though, especially by British standards I do lack a certain… oh what’s the word, politeness? We were listing off all of the odd things I do that she’s noticed and it was kind of fun so I thought it might make a fun blog post.
- I end conversations abruptly — this has been a common quirk of mine. I will occasionally end a conversation quickly without really give much of a wind down to what we were talking about.
- I used to be allergic to the cold — 1 in 10,000 people suffer from cold-induced urticaria which is an allergic reaction to temperatures of all things. I had this as a teenager which functionally meant that I couldn’t go swimming or spend long periods of time outdoors. The way allergies work, the body responds to external stimuli by releasing histamines into the blood stream, causing the blood cells to swell up. In this case, when a part of my body was exposed to extreme cold, the part would swell up be it my hands, feet, ears, or face.
- Now I’m allergic to scratching — my allergist loves working with me. He spends most of his time working with people with runny noses allergic to dogs, but my hands used to swell up when I held a pop for too long without a koozie. Now I have dermatographia, which causes welts and swelling the same way it used to when I was too cold, but only where I get scratched. Doesn’t matter if it’s a dog, cat, tree branch, or my own nails, any scratches will result in a raised line exactly where the scratch took place.
- I can scream at an incredibly high pitch — think of a child screaming at the highest pitch you can imagine. I can still do that at 31 years old despite my naturally deep voice.
- I often eat four eggs a day — I like eggs. Ever since I got into fitness, I’ve learned the importance of protein. Eggs have a high level of high quality protein, healthy fats which lower bad cholesterol, they’re delicious, easy to make, and you can cook them in several different ways.
- High protein diets are great, but they have adverse side effects — Protein is an amazing nutrient. It provides you with calories and energy, supports muscle growth and recovery, and it has partial negative calories. 25% of the calories you take in from protein gets burned digesting the food itself, supporting weight loss while maintaining how satiated you feel. That being said, high protein diets without weightlifting which gives the protein somewhere to go can cause rancid flatulence.
- I’m too open about anything regarding flatulence or what goes on in the bathroom — I’m not going to explain this one because I’ve been asked not to too many times.
- I do not know how to flirt and I do not recognize it when it’s happening to me — multiple friends and family members have had to ask me why I didn’t go for a girl’s phone number when they were flirting with me only for me to look at them and ask “wait, she was interested in me?”. One time, a time that I’m kind of embarrassed about, a beautiful girl laughed at a lame joke I made really had, brushed my knee, and then gave me the flirty eyes. In my head I was thinking “wait, why is she laughing so hard? That wasn’t that funny. Why is she touching me? This is weird”.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I wanted to write a fun article because I realize most of the recent one I’ve written have all been political.
