success reformulated

We live in a success oriented culture- the trick is to have access to as many forms of success as you can. Some allow themselves to be trapped by the money version of success, the fame version or the longevity version. But we should try to come up with more, many more. One sort of success I've been looking at recently is simply improving your environment. Your absolute proximate living space. Incrementally make it better, keep improving it - not in a big sweep but by taking small bites. Entropy wears things down over time so to balance it you need to keep an improving state of mind rather than a steady state.

Improving your environment connects easily to what I've thought of as 'bulking up'. Gather together all that you have done of something- be it creative, memories, written material. File it. Print it. Publish it even. Be proud of it. Don't let your personal archive be treated disrespectfully.

There is a kind of fake humility which masquerades as humility but is really a giving up, a sort of nihilistic impulse.