You do not have to be good
• Throughout a recent episode of the very funny, The Office-style satire St. Denis Medical, a patient with dementia repeats the phrase “You do not have to be good.” The comment gets under the skin of the trauma surgeon on the show, whose (hilarious) identity is based on being good. Turns out the patient is repeating the first line from a poem called “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver. I had run across the poem when David Whyte recited it on the Tim Ferriss podcast.
• Then I found this brief article by writer/artist Austin Kleon referencing chiefly that first line. He includes an excerpt from another one of Oliver’s poems, “When Death Comes:”
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
• Check out Kleon’s work, short but full of wisdom. Here are some notes I took from his book Show Your Work:
– Read obituaries.
– Stock and Flow – the flow of ideas and work builds a stock of content.
– Teach what you know. “Trade secrets.” Publishing content and getting feedback is free education.
– Meet people in person instead of by phone or Zoom.
– Change: try new things. Being a beginner again isn’t starting from scratch—you bring past domains with you.
– Keep a work journal or creative scrapbook, like an artist keeps a portfolio.
Thanks for reading Practice of Wellness! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Original Dirty Jobs
• Learned this cool story in Roland Allen’s book The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, which traces the history of notebooks across the past ~700 years:
“In 1977, Bob Graham, a relatively unknown state legislator, launched a unique campaign for governor of Florida by working 100 different jobs. This innovative strategy, known as “Workdays,” was designed to connect with everyday Floridians and understand their lives firsthand. Graham’s workdays included a wide variety of jobs, such as lobster fisher, short order cook, social worker, plumber, and even a night riding with the Tallahassee Police Department. He committed to working the entire shift and performing all aspects of each job, allowing the press to be present for only part of the shift to maintain authenticity.
This approach not only increased his name recognition but also transformed him into an avid conversationalist and provided valuable insights into the lives of working people. The workdays became a hallmark of his political career, continuing throughout his terms as governor and U.S. Senator. Graham’s final job before the 1978 election was as a housewife, and his efforts paid off as he won the election and became Florida’s governor. His workdays strategy garnered significant media attention and helped him connect with voters on a personal level.”
Commonplace Book
• I posted about CPBs back in July 2018. Roland Allen describes these books that originated in the 16th century:
“The basic principle was simple: when you found a piece of writing that you liked, or found useful, you copied it out into your personal notebook. You could copy out as much or as little as you wanted, neatly or not, and refer to it a little, or as much, as you wanted. The collection could be poetry or prose, fictional or factual, thematic or random, religious or profane, in Latin or Tuscan, or any mixture of any of these components; you could even draw pictures in it. The notebook itself could be large or small, luxurious or utilitarian.”
• I’ll have at least one more post from the Allen book next month, but if you like the idea of keeping a commonplace book, or a creative / work journal, here are some cool options:
- Leuchtturm – very cool, very expensive, very German. pages numbered. Don’t know how to pronounce it.
- Moleskine – well-known brand with cool history from Milan, still pretty expensive.
- Midori – Nice, clean, soft pages, opens flat, Japanese. All around excellent and the cheapest of the three.
Equator
• Apparently no hurricane has ever crossed the equator. See this X post and the comments that explain the Coriolis Force.
Tea and Metals
• Steeping in tea leaves can remove heavy metals from drinking water. The most effective combination was black tea, especially regarding lead.
Healthy cereal
• Seems that I have never shared the delicious Ghost Protein Cereal. They only have Peanut Butter and the far superior Marshmallow varieties. 5 grams fat, 17 grams protein, and 15 grams carbs (but some of those are allulose which has no effect on blood sugar). Approved with enthusiasm by my wife.
Pensions in Norway
• Anyone ever heard of these Norwegian pension funds? They have two, the Government Pension Fund Global and Government Pension Fund Norway. From Wikipedia:
The Government Pension Fund Global (Statens pensjonsfond utland), also known as the Oil Fund (Oljefondet), was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. As of March 2025, it had over US$1.738 trillion in assets … making it the world’s largest single sovereign wealth fund in terms of total assets under management. This translates to over US$325,000 per Norwegian citizen.
Quotes
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
– Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.
– Seneca
