Here’s a quick and easy way to improve your writing, I hope.

Read it out loud. This has saved me (and my editor) a lot of headaches.

You’ll be amazed, and occasionally horrified, at how things sound sometimes, even if you thought they were the apotheosis of literary majesty.

This simple practice reduces the time I have to spend revising and cutting. For that reason alone, I’ll never stop.

Jared, the Subway Guy, the book!

by Rob O’Hara

Jared Fogle, the man who lost more than half his body weight by switching to a strict regiment of Subway sandwiches, has written a book. But Jared, the Subway Guy: Winning Through Losing, is not a diet book. Instead it’s the story of Jared’s life, bundled with inspirational bullets dished up like Subway lettuce.

Anyone who has ever been overweight will relate to Jared’s tales of growing up obese. There are stories about secretly eating alone, about being embarrassed in P.E. class, about having to weigh in at the doctors office, about the many diets he failed at over the years, and about girls quietly snickering as he walked past them in a lonely school hallway. As Jared’s weight skyrocketed past the 400 pound mark in college, he finally realized that something must be done. Inspired by a Subway store located in the basement of his college dorm, Jared was inspired to create his own diet, now known simply as “The Subway Diet.”

Throughout the book Jared documents how he plummeted from a massive 425 pounds down to less than 200 in a short amount of time by switching to a steady diet of Subway sandwiches, all while not exercising. Those looking to duplicate Jared’s success should be aware that prior to starting his sandwich diet he was consuming more than 10,000 calories a day (more than enough for five adult men). At that point, Jared probably could have lost weight by simply eating a single large pizza at every meal. Several times throughout the book Jared points out that “Jared, the Subway Guy” is not intended as a diet book, but rather his own story. I agree. Anyone who weighs 425 should talk to a doctor before drastically changing his or her food intake and exercise routine.

The book’s subtitle is “Winning Through Losing: 13 Steps for Turning Your Life Around.” At the end of each chapter, Jared offers inspirational advice that can be applied toward any goal or overcoming any obstacle, whether it’s weight loss or any other type of addiction. His advice is honest but sometimes oversimplified (ie: “eat less”). Overall I had very few complaints about the book. My wife had hoped for more information about Jared’s life as a celebrity (the book ends around the time his first commercial aired), and I had hoped for at least one before and after photo. Regardless, the book delivers what it promises — an inspirational story with advice on how you too can get started down the right path of achieving your goals.

The point Jared makes throughout the book is that there is no magic pill for weight loss. Jared’s story was never really about the sandwiches; it’s about hitting rock bottom, finding your inner strength, and knowing that you have the power to change your own destiny.

And that knowledge is tastier than any six-inch Subway Veggie Delight.

About the author

You can visit Rob at his blog,  www.robohara.com

Okay, a few wonderful souls keep asking how I’m doing, so here’s the update:

The Tourette’s is currently back, in a big way. The most challenging thing about this resurgence is that during my respite, all of my tic muscles and tendons withered up! The body strengthens itself and creates tissue based on whatever movements and positions it performs and assumes most frequently.

Well, I’d built up a delightful tolerance to a whole bunch of nonsense. Then the nonsense stopped–meaning, the specific movements of the tics stopped–and now those movements feel clumsy, awkward, and like I haven’t done them in a long time. It’s not entirely unlike muscle soreness, I’m just sore in weird places.

It’s annoying and tiring and I do not accept it. I thrashed it in its former incarnation. I’ll do it with this one as well. It’s probably just going to take some time while I figure out which questions to ask.

Currently, strength training makes it worse. Sitting makes it worse. Standing makes it worse. Ditto breathing, food, sleep, work, walking, crawling, running, etc.

I sound like a goose riding around on a blaring foghorn.

I am jerking and twitching around like the most dashing, debonair, muscular marionette you’ve ever seen.

My blue eyes, usually the toast of the globe, are bloodshot and stupid-looking.

I am writing the book in very small bursts because I have to psyche myself up just to sit down and type, because typing is when things are currently getting really erratic with my hand tics.

I’ve got too much crap to do to be sidelined. And it’s still getting done.

Don’t be inspired by that. I’m cranky and annoyed and I want to go home sick and I want to pull someone’s arm off (not yours!).

But I won’t. I am fulfilling my obligations and playing the productive gentleman out of pure spite.

I’m not great company right now.

But as always, thanks for the concern, the emails, and for letting me whine.

And now? Off to deadlift at lunch.The bar will bend and I’ll pretend it means something and take another step forward and be stronger tomorrow because of it.

Josh

A lazy Saturday afternoon in Utah. Ryan Pitts from Stronger Grip recently sent me a custom Monster Mace. The original name for this particular style is the “gada.” If you want to know more about that, then take a stroll over here to Scientific Wrestling for some history about big guys swinging things around.

Because if you’re wondering, hat can you do with such a thing?, that’s the answer: swing it around and get stronger. In the video below you can see me swinging the mace with one hand, although two is a lot more comfortable. (If you’re wondering why I’m only using one, I’m trying to work on a juggling routine, sort of a EXTREME HARDCORE BATON TWIRLING!!! type thing).

My form is still kind of clumsy. I should be able to smooth it out a lot in the next couple of weeks.

Also, I think my glasses are cool.

There’s a lid in the top that can be unscrewed so the bell can be loaded with more weight. Lead shot, sand, water, etc.

I wanted to fill it up fairly quickly. Once I got the basic movements coordinated to the point where I wasn’t afraid of bashing my skull in, I needed more weight because I’m not personally interested in doing really high-volume sets.

But the “Great Gama,” a fierce Indian wrestler in the 19th century, was interested in that very thing. You can read about some of his exploits in the link provided up top. So if you do decided to do high rep sets, it looks like you will be able to wrestle 40 men at a time and everyone will be terrified to face you.

Joking aside (and that stuff about Great Gama’s not a joke, read it!), the macebell is a lot of fun. It makes my shoulders feel great when I’m done, and it’s a movement my body is not familiar with. That’s rarely a bad thing. Often, the movements that I feel clumsiest at are the things with the greatest payoff once I can make the movements more skilled.

Note from Josh: Shane is becoming one of my favorite writers. If you didn’t catch it, please check out his post Life After Depression after this one.

Worship the Carrot goddess!

Vegan is a goofy word.  It sounds like a magical food cult where root vegetables are worshipped beneath a full moon.  All hail the carrot goddess.

By definition vegans must not eat animals or anything derived from them, including eggs and dairy.  Some vegans also boycott honey because they believe it’s a form of insect slavery.  A fundamentalist vegan will not wear leather or other animal hides, furs, or silk harvested from non-unionized moth larvae.

Even before vegetarianism went mainstream, vegans dined on the extrasolar fringe, frightening their parents half to death.  If vegetarians were believed to be in grave danger of anemia, radical weight loss, decreased immunity, or reading Karl Marx, vegans were bona fide nut jobs in need of a C.I.A. takedown.

Then vegan found its way into every day conversation and became less scary sounding.  Sort of like Yoga, a ritualized stretching practice that for a while troubled some Christians because, oh, I forgot why—until they began opening “Christian” Yoga studios.  I have no idea what that means so let’s stick to the topic of eating.

Most of us belong to a food cult whether we admit it or not.  Whatever eating system we enter into seduces us with promises, both curative (arthritis, cancer) and preventative (death).  Vegetarians and vegans sometimes link themselves to New Age thoughts (e.g., when you eat a slaughtered animal you literally ingest its suffering).  Seriously, Deepak Chopra got in on that one when he tied it to quantum physics.  A young vegetarian I knew told me that water collected near Nagasaki, Japan “remembers” the violence of the bomb.  Arcane beliefs from the ancient world are also alluring to some who choose a plant-based diet because old practices must work, right?  They are old!  Or alternative.  Whatever.

Everyone’s a food preacher now.  A foodist as I like to say.  TV chefs insist that one must eat everything in order to be truly happy (Anthony Bourdain might include cocaine on his list, technically not a food) but then they admit to having Type 2 diabetes like Paula Deen, or they just get fat like Mario Batali, whose swollen red face looks frighteningly incendiary.  Dr. Oz publishes books on every particle that goes through his colon.  Sandra Bullock tells us that she only eats button-size portions of roasted chicken and herbed fish accompanied by a wheat grass smoothie, which even I will tell you is one disgusting beverage unless it’s 98% bananas, pineapple, strawberries and a generous squirt of Reddi-Wip.

Simply put, it’s impossible to eat anything free of meta data these days.

When I was growing up my family ate animals, but vegetables were also served in equal proportion.  Fresh fruit was a staple.  Personally I never loved meat all that much—it always made me a tad queasy, so flesh was easy to quit.  Once at a summer barbeque my sister asphyxiated on a fat piece of steak and turned blue.  My father performed the Heimlich, and saved her life.  After that shocking incident I forever lost my appetite for slabs of grilled cow, and to this day I don’t find anything sexy about a man who is king of his Coleman unless he can braise veggie kabobs without losing the cherry tomatoes through the grill.

Eating vegan or semi-vegan (I put myself in the latter category) really just means that plants dominate our meals.  Of course without plants humans would literally have no food of any kind.  If plants exited the food chain, both carnivorous and herbaceous animals would disappear, and we would have no choice other than to eat each other’s faces, leaving the remnants for the roaches.

Honestly I do worry about our current food system—industrialized, scaled up to an almost incomprehensible state with next to zero planning or understanding of how it can be maintained over hundreds and thousands of years.  Doritos and Coke?  An unwise strategy for long-term survival.

Eating a plant-based diet supplies me with good physical health—my doctor marvels at my consistently superior cholesterol levels.  My food choices also give me an itsy if not tenuous sense that I can make the world a better place.  It’s magical thinking, I know, but at least I don’t believe that if I curse at my leaky plumbing the tap water will hold a grudge.

 About the author

You can visit Shane at his blog The Passionate Gardener

photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyntharyn74/

Yoda!

This story I heard when I was younger: the story of two brothers that owned a circus. They had been traveling for a long time, carrying their show from town to town, until they found out that they were broke.

The two brothers were in despair; they didn’t even have enough for the payroll which was to come due at the end of the month. The night before they arrived to the next town they were programmed to perform, they came up with a desperate plan for their last show.

The next day, they started to promote the event around the town, the usual way, only this time they announced the “Abominable Beast act”. Not even the other members of the crew knew anything about this terrible creature: it was a secret surprise that was going to be unveiled at the end of the show.

The day came and the circus tent was full with people eager to find out about what the Abominable Beast looked like.

The show started normally with the common performances and, between acts, one of the brothers -who acted as the circus’ host- would enhance expectations announcing the appearance of the incredible creature at the end of the program, in the main event.

When the time finally came, the host rushed into the center of the stage and yelled: “the Abominable Beast has escaped, run for your lives!!” – The audience spread in panic destroying the circus and the surroundings. The two brothers disappeared and nobody ever saw them again.

Ten years later, one of the brothers passed through the same town while in a business trip, and stopped by the town’s bar to have some drinks. The night came and the man felt the urge to go to the bathroom. When he asked for the toilet whereabouts the bartender told him where the outhouse was placed: around the corner, outside the bar.

Just when the former circus owner was walking through the exit, the bartender stopped him, looked directly to the man’s eyes and said to him: “Be very careful, there is an abominable beast loose around this town”.

I find this story to be a very good example of one of the most affecting –and disregarded- aspects of human behavior: we run our lives among inexistent abominable beasts. Over the years I recognized the beast many times. Some were obvious, some were more subtle. Some came soon, as the fear of “not fitting in”; some came later, as the so called “emptiness” hidden inside of us.

Some fears are real. We are not looking at those right now.

We are looking at the ones which are not real: limiting illusions programmed in our heads; preconceived ideas about success and failure; the fear of not being important or not being appreciated; the dread for financial insecurity… and many more.

Whatever you are running away from is probably inside of you. Stop and face your abominable beast. You might be very surprised. You might find out that it was never there. Funny, isn’t it?

About the author:

Gustavo is a self proclaimed frugal scientist. He draws and shares cartoons, and is on a project to put the Frugal Explorer Handbook together.

Lazy!

by Kelly Diels

A conversation with my inner lazy ass.

(Ok, she’s my outer lazy ass.)

Writing. Rising Up. Raising Cash. Raising Kids. Working. Working out. Losing weight. Not losing my mind while keeping it all together.

These things are hard. Or, I tell myself they’re hard.

Let’s talk about hard.

Hard means attempting a task that might outstrip your abilities. Hard means straining ’til you shake. Hard means acute mental anguish.

Hard is hard. No wonder we’re having such a hard time.

Let’s reframe, shall we?

It’s too hard. Oh, you think you’re hard, do you? A hard man is good to find, says my good friend Mae West…so, in certain circumstances, hard is a damn fine find.

Given all the ways we can use hard (get yer dirty mind outta the gutter), it makes you – me – wonder, What is hard, anyway?

Depression. Childbirth. War. Waiting – and praying – for your warrior to come home. Poverty. Abuse.

Those things are hard and we as individuals and a culture ought to work very hard to avoid them.

(Excepting childbirth. The history of civilization our mutual existences attests to its ubiquity and necessity.)

Lightbulb! Epiphany!

When I’m self-talking and telling myself that something is hard, what I mean is not that the task is hard (as in birthing-small-creatures/going-to-war hard). It means it isn’t pleasurable. In my usual mental calculus, hard = absence of pleasure. I’m not using hard to describe things that are difficult/verging on impossible – in fact there aren’t a lot of things I encounter regularly that meet that criteria, but then again I’m not in a war zone or a maternity ward, same diff. (Forgive me, I just had a baby, I’m both traumatized and obsessed.) Most often, I’m using hard to describe things that aren’t getting me high.

This is a problem. This is a good problem to have. The first step to getting better is admitting you have a problem.

(Immabout to stage an intervention on my own damn self.)

(And you.)

Wherein Hard Becomes Easy. Or At Least Tolerable.

So.

Most of the things in my life that I struggle with, that I tell myself are ‘hard’, aren’t hard at all. They’re just not immediately pleasurable. They’re not delivering hits of instant gratification.

But they’re not hard. This is good: because things that are hard are hard to do, or do well. And nothing I’m trying to do – write a book, raise civilized humans, make the dolladollabills – is actually all that hard. For me.

(The only thing in my daily that’s truly, almost insurmountably hard for me is P90X.)

I’m a good writer. I’m a good mother. I’m pretty good at making money and making my way in the world. To do any of those things well, all I have to do is sustain my effort.

And maybe those are the two keys to unlocking success: do what you’re good at, and keep at it.

That’s obvious, isn’t it? Not hard at all.

Except there’s more…

If you simply resolved to only do things that are easy and that you’re good at it, a whole lot of essential tasks just wouldn’t get done. Avoiding things that don’t give you pleasure means you’ll play flamingo with most of your life. (Head, meet hole in the sand.) To wit: parenting. I’m a good mother, but most of the mundane labour that goes into mothering might not be hard but it isn’t pleasurable, either. If I only did what gave me pleasure, I’d be cuddling a baby wearing a diaper that’s 63 days old. (The kid is 63 days old, d’ya see where I’m going with this?) If I’m leading with strengths I’ve got to admit that beatifically toughing out a toddler tantrum isn’t a particular talent of mine. I don’t enjoy it.

Ditto invoicing. Or chasing biz. Or staying persistently present on Twitter. Or writing guest posts for anyone I don’t adore. (Big ups to The World’s Strongest Librarian for making this easy by being on My Adorable List.)

(It really exists.)

But here’s the difference: when I tell myself that any of those essential tasks are ‘hard’ then I don’t do them. When I admit that they’re not hard, they’re just un-fun, then I can – and do! – do them.

Because you can do anything necessary but unrewarding or unpleasant for a minute or two (or sixty when necessary).

I learned that on PDX. Which is both unpleasant and hard but eminently survivable one exercise at a time.

But above all, this is what I’ve learned:

Hard is a Mental Game You Play With Yourself

“Hard” is how you defeat yourself before you begin to fight. Whatever it is you need/ought/must do, it probably isn’t too hard. It probably just doesn’t taste like a chocolate sundae.

So don’t play the ‘it’s too hard’ game with yourself.

Because if you’re going to play with yourself, there are other activities that are much more pleasurable.

(And with most of those it helps to be hard.)

About the author:

Kelly Diels likes to think she’s a modern incarnation of Mae West, if Mae West moved to the suburbs, gained baby weight that is now school-age, wrote a feisty blog (Cleavage, it’s a sexy word that means more than you might think), and taught online artists, entrepreneurs and provocateurs how to write. Well.

photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/f-oxymoron/

By Ted Hessing

It seems that in this age of newness, any book about technology is outdated as soon as it’s published to your Kindle. That said, The New, New thing should be on the book stand of any aspiring developer, tech investor, or fan of sordid tales of Silicon Valley during the late, great tech boom.

Micheal Lewis came to fame writing a collection of entertaining non-fiction accounts beginning with Liar’s Poker – a story about the excesses of the US bond industry in the 1980′s – see Josh’s review here. Josh has also written about 5 entertaining resources to understanding the economy, which mention’s Lewis’ most recent work – The Big Short. You may also know him from his books that were recently turned into movies like The Blind Side and Money Ball. In the New, New Thing, Lewis pits geeks against venture capitalists in the setting of the tech boom of the turn of the century.

To review chapter and verse of this book – or any others of Lewis’ would be to do you a dis-service and spoil the tale. Instead, here are a few lessons I learned reading and re-reading the New, New Thing.

Lesson 1: The American Dream is Alive and Well

Or at least it was in 1999 ;’) The book’s central figure, Jim Clark, came from absolute poverty in Texas to found not one, but three companies valued at more than $1 billion. The New, New thing details his persona and that of his contemporaries as they follow their insatiable appetites; some for the challenge of new invention and others as a thirst for wealth.

This tale of the rise of an expelled student being raised in what can be charitably called a “troubled home” to a first career as an enlisted Navy man being eventually being discovered as having a natural talent for mathematical reminds the reader of Good Will Hunting. But that was just a beginning for Clark. The following years find him as a 38 year old unsuccessful college professor and two-time divorcee goes on to create three separate billion-dollar corporations. The narration of the book begins as the 3rd company is taking shape and revisits Clark’s anarchist career lead him to adventures far beyond the lot he was assigned at birth.

Lesson 2: Effort is Rewarded

Clark begins his post-professorial career out as a solid technical expert with a talent for seeing shifts in society, and how to profit from them. Coupled with his personality – or perhaps in spite if it, he is able to attract talented people to build phenomenal working teams. Additionally, Clark shares the wealth of these creations with the engineers who designed them – in direct contrast to a system that is more inclined to favor the investment banking executives who take the enterprise public.

If this sounds similar to the main plot of the movie The Social Network, you’re not alone. Clark’s persona is reminiscent of Zukerberg’s and the results are strikingly similar; an individual with a great idea and great effort can move the entire investment to a new, previously-unseen narrative.

Lesson 3: Buyer Beware

The New, New Thing is provides an insight into the process of bringing an idea to market. From concept to venture capital backing to packaging and selling the idea to venture capitalists is step one. Actually creating a product takes a back seat in the valuation of such a company compared to convincing investment bankers of the viability of taking the company public in an IPO. A successful technology stock launch may have less to do with the long term viability of a company or the usefulness of it’s products and more to do with how many people can be made rich along the way.

The New, New thing was recommended to me not by a fellow website developer nor even a Wall Street guru. I picked up on the advice of a friend working through his MBA. His rational was that The New, New thing was about the lessons of perceiving the world in new ways and how a shift of perception can have long-ranging consequences. It’s an interesting book for anyone who is interested not only in history but for having a hand in shaping it.

About the author

Ted Hessing is a small business website designer in Charlotte, NC. He writes a weekly blog on how to make the most out of the web for your small business here.

Gang of one,

My tics are absolutely horrific right now. Not sure why. I’m all right, just tired and achy and annoyed. And awesome. Handsome, too, or so the men who hit on me while I’m desk suggest.

Joking and whining aside, typing is a challenge right now, so I’d like to offer any of you who have ever considered writing a guest post for me, or submitting another one, to do so.

I think I’ll be up and running by Wednesday or so, but who knows?

I’d love to hear from you. Always welcome are book reviews, health pieces, and whatever well-written nonsense you would be too ashamed to put on your own sites!