1. One moment I’m spreading pâté on a slice of bread. The next the phone rings. “Have you heard?”

2. We think everyone, us included, is going to live until 85 years of age, but then a phone call happens and the world changes.

3. Getting older means witnessing that the time between weddings and baptisms becomes longer and the time between funerals becomes shorter.

4. I thought I had an excuse for writing a very personal essay about grief. After all, this tragedy has been occupying my mind for most of this month, and if, in a monthly essay, I don’t write what occupied me for most of the month, what does that make me?

5. So I’ve spent a lot of time writing it with that excuse on my mind. But when I gave the essay to my editor-in-chief (read: wife) yesterday, she reminded me of my initial doubts about writing about grief and love. There is something very wrong with writing about that. Grief is prolonged love and the point of expressing it shouldn’t be gaining sympathy from the readers, bowing down after the applause for the alleged size of our heart, which gets corrupted by the mere act of expressing it. It gets corrupted even more so when this is expressed in public towards someone who will never read it, who is no longer with us. This type of writing should either be kept between me and the person addressed, or never see the light of day. I chose the latter, even though it might be the best essay I’ve ever written.

6. Grief really does come in waves, Joan Didion was right. I forget for a couple of days, but then it’s back.

7. Every essay I publish has an effect that I stop thinking about the subject after I press send. And even not publishing this one has had that effect. Maybe not completely, but less, at least.

8. The great terrible thing about writing these essays is the fact that I can’t not think about them. So if I stop thinking about one thing, I will inevitably start thinking about sentences for the next essay, instead of just not thinking. This is the main reason why I can’t get back to sleep when I wake up at night.

9. But still. It’s hard not to agree with Dostoevsky and his proclamation that thinking is a disease when I wake up at 23:34 like yesterday (because a stuffy nose has its own ideas on how long I shall sleep) and then can’t go back to sleep because I’m too excited about the first couple of paragraphs of the next essay.

10. Before writing these sentences I’ve fallen into the trap of reading an essay from the Substack timeline and then encountered the common “That’s not X. That’s Y” AI pattern: “That’s not economic development. That’s expensive theater.” It has 143 likes.

11. To clear the bad taste in the mouth I’ve then grabbed some books and read them frantically. Nelson’s “Bluets” inspired me to write another list.

12. I haven’t written much anywhere this month. No journaling. No note taking. No drafts. Then I discovered a Substack that reminded me how good journaling is. Everything becomes transparent if I see it every day. But also: everything that I do every day becomes transparent. I forget about the benefits. So I stop.

13. Since I’ve started writing this list, the dogs from neighbors that we are surrounded with have symphonically barked four times.

14. Every funeral is terrible. But a funeral of a friend that was younger than me especially so.

15. When I told my dentist that I like to work in silence because it’s hard for me to concentrate in the hustle and bustle of a city, he looked at me like I was some sort of weirdo. He is older than me and actually loves the chaos of the city. I was a little shocked, but the fact that he rides a motorbike somewhat explains it.

16. Five times.

17. This month hasn’t been particularly good, but then I look at the red tulips that found their way through the soil, at the pink cherry tree in bloom at the neighbor’s that makes the whole street prettier, at the way the sun rays fall again on the living room walls in the afternoon. What can I do? Plant more flowers. Read more children’s books. Bake more sausage rolls.

18. Emerson said that “earth laughs in flowers”.

19. We plan to plant ridiculously many flowers along the entry path in our yard. We want to create a really good entry, per Christopher Alexander’s guidelines. The one that will delight the visitors.

20. We also want to delight the passersby. Hence no dogs. Instead: Japanese cherry trees so the yard is pretty in spring. Ideally also two maple trees so they are red and orange in the fall. Our yard shall laugh.

21. Six times. I hereby solemnly swear, I’ll never get a dog.

22. It’s so wholesome to see something we have planted last year find its way through the soil and then bless us with its pretty shapes and colors. It’s the beauty of life. But it doesn’t last. Nothing is permanent. Nabokov: “Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies.”

To create is to commune with the divine. And writing the truth might be one of the pinnacles of creation. To be honest, I haven’t been very successful with that this past month. See, I’ve decided to spend the free time that I have in more near-term utilitarian ways than trying to write the best piece I possibly can. There’s this popular opinion that you have to be a little unbalanced to be a good writer, that the best writers need to have some sort of mental illness that pushes them and gives them energy.

Well, this month I’ve gone in the other direction, I’ve spent the free time trying to become more balanced, because honestly, between writing good or living good, I would choose living good any time. This is why again, I’m writing this at the last minutes of the arbitrary deadline no one except me cares about, which is why again, dear reader, I’m sending you this barely edited stream-of-consciousness piece that I hope you’ll enjoy.

See, the “me time” this month has been spent on saunas and swinging kettlebells because my current goal is raising my tolerance for stress. The reason: we’ve started the extremely fun and enjoyable process of building a house, which not only teaches you a lot of life lessons in a very short amount of time, but also demands the nerves of steel. And the nerves of steel, I’ve come to realize, are built early in the day. I’ve come to realize that the way to have an easy day is to start it by eating a frog. This will sound like I’ve stole it from the wall of the gym, and I apologize for that, but I’ve come to realize that we are not born with the right mindset, but it has to be earned. It has to be earned by something very important: by suffering.

Suffering. I think there’s a Goldilocks zone of it, like with being in the state of the Csikszentmihalyi’s flow. If there’s too much of it, you’re struggling to breathe and take in the lessons, if there’s too little of it, you’re decaying. I’ve recently read the Solzhenitsyn’s Commencement Address at Harvard and I think he correctly and brilliantly identified that the major issue of the West is the lack of courage caused by living in the endless state of comfort and material well being. Still, I find his claims of spiritual advancement of the East comical since this spiritual advancement can be very easily confirmed by looking at the current state of Ukraine.

Perhaps this desire for coming to terms with suffering is why I’m attracted to Dostoevsky and the reason I’m re-reading Brothers Karamazov and confirming to myself once again the Nabokov’s claim that you truly only read a book when you read it the second time. See, I like Dostoevsky because he suffered and he went through hell and then survived to tell.

I think his books are the most psychologically deep works of art because there’s something suffering teaches you that can’t be taught otherwise. Becoming a parent made me very aware of that. Becoming a parent is nothing other than rejecting comfort for the sake of suffering with the hope that this suffering is going to come with meaning. That meaning is simply absent from a life of endless comfort. And it does come with meaning. You find out that the meaning of this suffering is to love, to suffer for another is to give love, which is more blessed than to receive it. It grows the soul.

Suffering ages you spiritually. There’s a wide gap in the depth of character between a person who has been through a lot and the one who has lived in relative comfort, for one reason or another. I think this is the main reason why rich kids don’t make great art. Maybe the prerequisite for creating great writing is not trauma or mental illness, but just having suffered, because that means that you have lived and you have survived to tell.

I can’t find who said this, but some saint once said something along the lines of “God, please make me suffer, because when I suffer, I feel your presence the most” and I find that such a beautiful attitude to have. Praying for suffering because you know your soul will grow with the experience.

The Stoics said “Amor fati” and Meister Eckhart said “If the only prayer you say in your entire life is 'thank you', it will be enough”. Imagine saying “thank you” to anything that happens, good or bad. Imagine never complaining. That’s what I’m trying to work on in my free time. Increasing the capacity for suffering.

As always,
Thank you for reading,
May we suffer with grace,
SH

P.S. The crows have become quiet in our little town and now I can hear some other birds singing happier tunes during the rare moments of silence. The other day I saw a stork in the field. The spring is near.

• Dressing up nicely even when working from home makes me do a better job. I usually work in the tracksuit, but even after just one day of dressing up nicely I immediately feel the difference. Makes me have more respect for the job.

• My wife found out about Anthony Bourdain’s favorite mortadella sandwich (Croatian link) this month and so we had to try it. It’s amazing. Our usual sandwich meal is just plain ham and cheese with pickles toast and I think this is going to become our next go to. This reminded me of the pattern. How easy it is to upgrade something that you consume every day and make it so much better with just a little bit of effort and exploration. Examples of our past upgrades like this:

  • Switching from instant coffee to Aeropress. Of course, it’s easier to just put a spoon of instant coffee and pour water on top, but Aeropress coffee tastes 10x better even with regular store bought coffee.

  • Instead of settling for scrambled eggs for breakfast, which require zero effort, trying to make Jacques Pépin omelette. First attempts will be comically bad, but each attempt will bring you closer to it. It’s a fun game. Do 100 things.

• You can miss the point of good design by only focusing on the aesthetics. Something can be aesthetically beautiful, but badly designed and something can be aesthetically ugly, but well designed. One example of this is the portable electric grinder I use every day: Timemore Whirly 01S. It’s very nicely built, feels very robust in hand and looks nice. But some design decisions are just plain stupid even though they are marketed as “clever”. The bean compartment opens and closes in a fancy way, but the hole for placing the beans is small, so I end up spilling the beans around almost every time I use it. “Lose the lid”, their marketing page says, “Whirly’s clever hopper swivels up and snaps into place with a click”. It would’ve been much better if it was just a normal lid that’s as wide as the grinder, but no, it wouldn’t be a “clever hopper” then, whatever that meant (what makes it clever?). They sacrificed the convenience of the design of the lid which is ancient, but it’s not sexy, and then invented a “clever hopper” which is very sexy, but the only problem is that it doesn’t solve the actual problem as well as lid would’ve. So enjoy the sexy solution that annoys you a little every time you use, I guess?

• Also, I hate it when its battery dies in the middle of grinding. When that happens I have to plug it in and wait for battery to charge in order to continue. The thing is, the LED that indicates battery is low is aesthetically pleasing, but tiny and only visible when the grinder is working, so it’s easy to miss that it’s low on battery. It would’ve been so much better if (a) grinding was possible while it was charging, so I don’t have to wait for so long and (b) if the battery indicator was more prominent. I think people at Timemore chased the fancy solutions more than they chased actual functionality and I think that’s common. I find that that’s true in software development as well. We are biased towards modern and sexy, when we would get much more value if we just stuck with the boring thing that works and has worked for ages. I don’t think that’s good and I think we need to be aware of that bias and counteract it by looking for the timeless.

• As with coffee grinders, so with product design. My philosophy is that it’s better if it’s well designed but ugly than the other way round. If we can get the aesthetics as well, great, but not the crucial factor. Also, I think it’s much easier to make something aesthetically pleasing than it is to make something well designed. I think that’s the reason why every landing page today looks like Linear’s. That’s easy to copy. What’s harder is coming with good design. And I think the right way to do it is using something and then iterating on it. Just noticing what’s annoying and fixing it over and over. Feeding the problems you encounter while using it back to the designer and then fixing those problems again and again. I think having a feedback loop like that produces the best design possible. It’s like rewriting the same sentence over and over again after reading what you wrote. Inevitably you come to the better sentence.

• Speaking of writing (oops we’re barely six bullet points in and I’ve already gone meta, sorry), I’ve recently read Knausgaard’s My Struggle I and it’s okay I guess, but he can devolve from trying to express the beautiful in the mundane to only expressing the mundane. Like pages and pages of him cleaning his grandma’s house. What he saw there, what he moved, how he cleaned. Oh my. I would’ve definitely quit the book if that part was earlier in the book. That said, after reading the book I searched from some interviews with him and read that he went through the period of struggle before writing this book. He got stuck in the writing rut because up to that point he tried to express himself in a very literary way and then just decided to let up the pressure and just expressed himself in the way that comes the most naturally to him. I feel like I’m going through the same phase right now.

• This reminds me: Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail. I think I can probably spend infinite amount of time on every problem I have. The recent example of that is the stupid little app I’m working on, for displaying the trash schedule in a nicer way. It’s a stupid little problem I have and I really enjoy using this app every time I need to take out trash. Saves me from parsing that ugly PDF each time I use it. The biggest problem is converting the trash schedule from the ugly PDF format to something structured, like a JSON object. I have to do that once a year. And it needs to be 100% accurate. One would think I can just give it to Claude to parse, but no. Because of this 100% accuracy requirement, I can’t rely on it. So I can either write the schedule myself, but that’s menial and tedious work, I would rather not do it. But if I want to automate it, the solution is very complex and includes implementing some sort of OCR which I don’t know nothing about and it’s questionable if even that would be 100% accurate. So if I want to implement it right, I’ll spend a lot of time implementing a solution. It’s also not like I’m going to have any monetary benefit from that, but I think doing something like that is worth it just for the learning opportunity.

• It’s useful to think of the world as more fluid than what it seems. There’s a “skill issue” meme going around in programming communities that labels problems that happen as the lack of skill for participants. It’s common to blame others and/or external factors for the problems that you have, but I think it’s useful to think how someone more skilled in the problem’s domain would handle such an issue.

• I think the dangerous extreme view of Stoicism and how you can not change other people but only your own actions and opinions can lead to complete abdication of responsibility we have for others.

• I assume you’re familiar with Hanlon’s Razor, but I’m going to repeat it, sorry. When it seems that others are malicious can more easily be explained by their incompetence. But more importantly, for others not to think I am malicious, even when I am not, I need to become more skilled in whatever I’m doing for others.

• I often remember the main lesson from the short book called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity and how it says that stupid people engage in lose-lose scenarios while intelligent people pursue win-win scenarios as much as possible. Well, I think becoming as competent as you can increases the rate of win-win scenarios for you.

• Also, pursuing win-win scenarios is the reason you’re reading the listicle again this month. I’m a little listicle boy now. No, but seriously. This practice of publishing something every month (that I’ve been doing for a while because of the bet I made with a friend) is something I would like to do indefinitely, even though the format might change as I learn more things which will inevitably happen. See, listicle is the win-win scenario for me because I really enjoy writing one, much more than writing a regular blog post, and I hope it makes it more enjoyable for you to read because of that, dear reader.

• I hate the fact that I worked on a time tracker app on the side for years and haven’t published anything in the end. All that work only to console myself with “hey, at least I’ve learned something”. I am reminded of this every time I need to track time with some stupid app that barely works or when I manage my todos for a project. Currently I’ve been using Raycast notes for that and I really don’t like it. The only thing I like about it is the simplicity of it. But there is so many things that could be improved. And knowing this and not doing anything about it annoys me a lot.

• I hate another fact even more: I’m still using Roam Research for note taking. I hate it because I’ve also started building my own note taking app but didn’t finish it. I’ve realized that the best note taking app for me is the one that is the most fun to use and the most fun one to use is the one where it’s the easiest to talk with my previous notes. I have so many ideas how this can be improved and I had so much fun using my prototype but in the end stopped using it because developing it became unmanageable because I used AI so much to speed things up which generated so much technical debt that making changes became impossible. This happened over a period of weeks, not months.

• So basically I want to build todo apps and note taking apps. Probably the two worst categories you can possibly come up with if you follow the common YCombinator startup wisdom. But when I think about it I don’t use any other apps on my computer. Other than note taking and todo apps, I use terminal, email app and a browser and I am not interested in solving these other problems. Solving the todo app problem or a note taking app problem actually excites me.

• Now thinking about it more and connecting to the previous bullet point about product design I think I want my apps to feel like Aeropresses and V60s. I absolutely love the philosophy behind these manual brewers. See, when it comes to making coffee, there is really no upper limit on the amount of money you can spend on tools for making it. You can buy really expensive machines with a lot of moving parts that produce great cups of coffee. But the problem is, these machines have a lot of moving parts. And a lot of these moving parts need constant cleaning maintenance or replacement. There are more variables to think about. In contrast V60 and Aeropress are super cheap, have very few parts, and take no space. What actually matters when it comes to these coffee makers? Getting a great cup of coffee. How do we get there with the least amount of hassle, without thinking about things that don’t matter? Well, with V60 or Aeropress. I want to build the apps that feel like that. No complexity, no bullshit, no variables to get to what actually matters.

• How would your life change if you viewed most of your current problems as solvable, even the most difficult ones, and if you started by assuming you have them because of your own lack of skill?

• Munger: “Take a simple idea and take it seriously”. Are you sabotaging yourself by being more interested in working or noticing problems that are more complex and intellectual and ignoring the most simple ones, the low hanging fruit, which would bring you the most bang for your buck?

• What are your ideas asking of you? Are you doing what they ask or are you just sweeping it under the carpet and calling it a life?

• I don’t know if you can tell, but I’ve stopped using any tools for checking grammar or phrasing. All the grammar issues that remain is my ignorance in its full glory. Behold! I still do the google search for the phrase to confirm it exists when I’m not sure if it’s a Croatian-only phrase or not and that was done with “sweep it under the carpet” above. I googled “put under the carpet” because that’s how we say it here. Maybe I should’ve left it as “put” because that would make it look like an interesting girl with one eye blue and the other green (Vonnegut), but on the second thought, from my perspective if anything the English language has become more stiff since his time and the chances for achieving the “interesting girl” effect instead of a “look at that ignorant idiot” effect are not great, especially since English is my second tongue.

• Meta: I think the reason I like listicles so much is because I naturally think in bullet points instead of documents. And I find that a bullet point puts me immediately “in medias res”1 which I quite like. There’s no unnecessary fluff to get to the point. I trick myself into not noticing I’m writing which usually brings so much weight to it, that I don’t think is useful. I’m sure that you have noticed that some bullet points are connected, while others are completely disconnected. I hope that is more exciting to read because you never know what awaits you next.

• More meta: I’ve read somewhere that Dostoevsky apologized in the intro of Brothers Karamazov saying things like “you might not like this book, it is what it is” and I absolutely love that. So I’ll take this moment to apologize for whenever I was unable to deliver something good into your inbox. Believe me, I’m trying my best every time. At my current energy levels, I could probably push out a listicle like this every week or so and that would probably increase my readership, but I don’t want to do that because I think the quality would suffer. I find that making this patchwork in the random free moments for the whole month and then on the last day of the month reviewing and removing the chaff from the wheat gives me just enough distance between writing the bullet point and reviewing it. Gives it just enough time to marinate. See, I don’t want to spam your inbox every week but I also don’t want to shut myself up completely and send you nothing for months. I find the month to be just the right balance. That’s a lot of words to say this: dear reader, I respect your time and inbox and will continue doing so. As always, thank you for reading.

1. I find it funny how Substack has slurs for short blog posts, which is why I’m doing something that might be considered even more tacky and low-brow. I’m writing a list this month. Zigging while others zag was always pleasurable to me for some reason.

2. I think there are better and more fun ways to spend the sacred gift of free time than writing personal essays. I think there are better and more fun ways to use the internet than to introspect in public. I’m a little tired of all the introspection I’ve done over the past years and I want to focus on the external world more. I was inspired by the ancient maxim “Know thyself”, and while I think this is useful, I don’t believe that introspection is the right method for achieving it. I believe that the less you think of yourself, the better you’ll feel. Someone described hell as inability to step outside of yourself, as being drowned in your own self-absorption, as being strangled by your own narcissism. Sartre said that hell is other people, but I think hell is just you and nobody else. I’m immensely grateful for becoming a parent because my daughter is the most responsible for the fact that I’m less self-absorbed as a person. I think that if kids don’t pull you out out of your own self-absorption, I don’t think anything will.

3. Speaking of low-brow, I’ve recently read “Excellent Advice for Living” by Kevin Kelly and I really enjoyed it. It’s a book of aphorisms. Reading “Generally, say less than necessary”, advice that suggests doing what I have been unconsciously doing has made me laugh out loud. Some other gems include: “For every good thing you love ask yourself what your proper dose is”, “The very best thing you can do for your kids is to love your spouse”, “The rich have money. The wealthy have time. It is easier to become wealthy than rich.”, “Don’t create things to make money; make money so you can create things. The reward for good work is more work.” Of course, there are also plenty of things I disagree to various degrees, like “To be remarkable, read books”. Meh. If anything, I think collectively, we overvalue the benefits of reading books. Getting a little tired of the narrative that just reading books makes you some sort of genius. But also, after reading this book, I’ve realized that I’ve never regretted reading a book written by elderly people, even quite modern books like this, which are riskier with regards to quality. I think we as a society in general have lost respect for the elderly and stopped listening to what they have to tell us and I don’t think that’s good.

4. I’m currently reading “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt and I really enjoy it. With this book, I laughed after reading this: “Likewise, exposure to words related to the elderly makes people walk more slowly; words related to professors make people smarter at the game of Trivial Pursuit; and words related to soccer hooligans make people dumber.” So here goes. Beauty. Goodness. Truth. Harmony. Excellence. Haidt then explains how these effects are present even if these words are flashed on a screen for just a few hundredths of a second. Which immediately gave me ideas to build some sort of app that does this. You would configure it and describe your goals, like say wanting to improve the quality of your work, and it then sits in the background and in random intervals flashes the words related to quality on your screen and you don’t even perceive it consciously.

5. I’ve “tweeted” this about two months ago:

   Since then I’ve been waking up at [redacted] every day like clockwork. I’m surprised that this had such an effect and am wondering what I should mock myself about next as it’s obviously a motivation engine for me.

6. Consistently waking up at [redacted] has once again confirmed that following advice from Charlie Munger is generally a good thing to do. His “give yourself an hour each day” has been on my mind as I’ve been doing this. I also can’t stop thinking about Ben Franklin’s “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”. It’s so beautiful. Like a little poem. So yes. I’ve been waking up early and I don’t want to share how early because if I do share how early it will sound like I’m bragging and that’s not the point. The point is that starting a day with some time for whatever I want to do, before the world starts expecting things from me has been absolutely marvelous. I don’t use any alarms, I just wake up very early on my own.

7. This made me realize the following: I’ve realized long time ago that one of the key ingredients for having an “optimal experience” kind of day for me is waking up early. However, in the past I’ve spent a lot of effort in trying to force myself to wake up early with the alarms. Past me would probably look at my current wake up schedule and ask something like “How did you become so disciplined?” And he would probably be surprised if I told him that it was quite easy to do actually because I used motivation and excitement and inspiration instead of alarms. See, I’m working on projects that excite me, so I don’t have to discipline myself to wake up early just because. These projects are the fuel for what looks like discipline from the outside.

8. And this makes me think once again about Niklas Luhmann and how he said that he only did what was easy and fun to him. So I would ask my past self who is a striver for unachievable discipline “Have you considered how being a drill sergeant towards yourself is actually counter-productive to achieving what you want? Have you considered that brute-forcing is not always the right strategy? Have you asked yourself what compels you to force yourself to do something instead of just doing what is enjoyable for you to do because it’s fun and it feels like play and you feel fulfilled and glad that you did it afterwards? Try to find the “flow”. What makes time disappear? Do that more. Believe me, you can find the time for it if you realize (a) how seriously you should take your gut feeling when doing something, (b) how important this is and (c) how much it influences everything else. Don’t sleepwalk through life.”

9. Be me. Start the list by telling everyone how tired you are of self-analysis and how you’d like to look at the external instead of internal world and then follow the proclamation with 8 (eight) paragraphs of self-analysis. That’s rich.

10. Speaking of, I recently saw this tweet and I keep thinking about it.

    I think most people wrongly assume that rich people keep working because they are motivated by greed. I don’t think that that explains it. What explains it is that the alternative is not particularly attractive. I don’t know who would enjoy just laying on the beach somewhere all the time instead of working on something meaningful and fulfilling. I think a lot of people (myself included) are attracted to the idea of becoming financially independent not realizing how disorienting it is for people who actually achieve it and how often it leads to some sort of depression. I think we would probably still be using sticks and stones if there wasn’t this healthy drive to strive for things. This was a great read on the topic: I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life.

11. What happened to Sergey Brin reading physics is exactly what would happen to me if I just read and wrote all day. Which sometimes makes me wonder what I’m doing on the platform that is famous for how easy it makes you to make a living out of writing. I don’t want to make a living out of writing. I don’t ever want to turn it into a job. I just want to build things. (Says he who hasn’t built anything meaningful for a while. I’m working on it, trust me.)

12. I keep hearing “competence is fun” and it’s embarrassing that I’ve only recently realized that that is the essence of Nietzsche’s will to power. I thought naively that it was about becoming powerful in conventional tyrant du jour kind of way.

13. Would you look at it? What a number to end a list on. Let’s do it, let’s not force it beyond what’s necessary.

P.S.: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family. May 2026 be the best year yet for you. As always, thank you for reading.

For the past two months or so I’ve been waking up disgustingly early and I’ve been really enjoying it. I’ve been making myself a good pour over coffee and I’ve been reading a book. And the book punched me in the face: “Early in the morning at the break of day, in all the freshness and dawn of one’s strength, to read a book – I call that vicious!” And this made me think, Friedrich might be right this time. It is a little silly to start the day by reading thoughts of other people. Which is why I’ve replaced my book reading with jumping straight into my note taking app and writing whatever is on my mind.

For a while, I liked that more. But then after a while it became boring. I realized I am just spinning in circles. Same themes, same thoughts, same old. I realized I’m not that interested in writing thought pieces, in ruminating, in endless self-cannibalization inherent in personal writing that doesn’t expand the point of view outside the narrow navel gaze. I realized I have a tendency towards theorizing and I’m not particularly fond of that trait of mine. I value the practical more. I respect people who build. Talk is cheap, after all.

There is the Goldilocks zone when it comes to the practice of writing. Doing it too much ruins it. It takes all the fun out of it. And I’ve become more sensitive to detecting when this fun goes away. If I follow it, it absorbs me completely. The time stops existing. If I continue forcing it even after it leaves, it turns the activity into labor. Which is a great way to stop doing it completely.

I want to play infinite games. I never want to write to achieve a goal. I don’t want to reap rewards. I want only to do things that are rewards in themselves. I keep asking myself: is this fun? Was it fun once and now I ruined it? What’s stopping it from being fun? I want to be playful and serious at the same time. Serious about continuing the play. Serious about removing any obstacles to fun. And that sometimes means not overdoing it. I think this practice of publishing once a month keeps me in that zone. It’s not too frequent, but also not too relaxed. It’s just enough pressure.

I want to do things that are generative. I never want to passively consume. If my idea file is growing that means I’m doing the right thing. It’s so fun to think what can be done with the computer, with the internet. I don’t think we realize how good we have it. Isn’t it magical that there is a machine that you can tell what to do, that can solve some interesting problems for you, and then you can also share the solution with other people who have the same problem? Isn’t it magical that you can just do things? That no one is stopping you, that you don’t need permission from anyone? I keep thinking about this and comparing it to writing. Is writing the best I can do with these tremendous gifts I’ve been given or have I just squandered it?

Maybe I’m just overthinking it again. And this is another anti-pattern of mine. Have you considered that thinking more about the problem is probably not going to solve it? So I tell myself, I need to follow my intuition more. I tell myself it’s okay to do or skip doing something because I like it that way. Because it feels right. I don’t need to come up with elaborate argumentation for everything I do or don’t do. Maybe this all stems from the fact that I would like to be understood, to be legible and rational. And I just want to play more.

It seems that I’ve approached midlife not because I have survived the crisis, but because I’ve started preferring spoon food. It seems that you either prefer spoon food or you’ll soon become old enough to prefer it. And the swirling bean stew made with sliced sausages, army style, is perhaps the best food to return home to after the disappointment of food options in a hut serving five meals in total (one of which is inexplicably calamari), after dreaming about it the whole cold day of the long-distance bike ride.

The rattling spoon is my constant companion on all of my bike rides. The harder the gravel, the louder the rattling. I’ve learned. The fork food can be eaten with my bare hands, but I can’t replace the spoon. It’s the spoon that is necessary when you don’t have time on bike rides and so your main source of food is the local supermarket. When you eat the overpriced protein pudding or granola yoghurt on a parking bench in front of Interspar like some sort of savage, receiving the bewildering glances from civilians who are merely doing their day-to-day shopping, dressed in the bike-riding clothes, the Gregor Samsa lookalike sunglasses, the attire my wife describes as woman-repellent.

The spoon is the first tool we learn to use and also what we return to when our teeth start leaving us. I don’t remember it because I was too little, but my mother taught me how to eat with it as my wife taught our daughter. The gentle nudges to hold it horizontally instead of vertically so the soup doesn’t end up on the shirt. Guiding the scoop and my daughter then turning the spoon vertically again and again, until she learns that holding it horizontally is the way so it doesn’t end up all around her. Cleaning the soup from the floor and the highchair.

Simple things. From getting up to a sitting position to turning around from lying on the back to lying on the stomach. From the monumental one that is taking your first little steps, to putting on your own shoes, to the first tool: the spoon. Yes, the calf runs around from the moment it is born. Not so the little human, the little human needs to learn about the spoon.

The knowledge about the spoon gets passed from the old to the young by the hand of the mother. I wonder how many generations my knowledge of it has traveled. How many of my ancestors saw their own reflection in it, how many saw how they changed, how they aged until they disappeared.

So, I come back home and pick up the spoon. There’s bean stew and a fresh sourdough. Our daughter is bored and the Duck Dance is playing. The warm smell of cooking envelops me. I take the spoon and swirl it gently, and I’m feeling tired. The bike ride was long and I haven’t eaten. I have been feeling hopeful lately, naively fantasizing about the future, thinking that the problems will be gone next year when we finally build our little house and move out of this chaotic street, not knowing if it will ever materialize, which is all the more reason to appreciate today.

The spoon. It’s so easily overlooked, so easy to dismiss what the mothers and fathers pass on to us, so easy to forget the centuries that shaped it into its current form. The spoon, so common it disappears, the little companion of mine that continues to rattle and nourishes me with the bean stew.

I’ve recently read an article that said that every minute of parenting is pure joy and I am confused. Yes, parenting is pure joy, but not every minute of it. I think this is just another instance of that annoying trend of performative parenting whose main goal is pretending you are a superhuman who is never tired, who is always following the best practices of the latest trend in parenting, who never puts on some cartoons.

Well, I’m writing this to counterbalance that claim, that it’s all sunshine and rainbows, despite the fact that some people consider complaining about parenthood distasteful. In fact people, parents and non-parents alike, like to attack anyone who complains about parenthood. “Wasn’t it your decision after all?”, “Who forced you to become a parent?”, “I didn’t know you don’t love your kid” they say.

Becoming a parent is one of the best things that happened to me and I recommend it to anyone. Still, that doesn’t mean every day is a walk in the park. There are days that are hard.

The hardest day as a parent was not when my daughter was sick, because thankfully she never was terribly sick, but a day when both my wife and I were really sick. We still had to care and do all of our obligations and be at our best, but it was hard, and our daughter detected that something is not right and then became frustrated and nervous which resulted in multiple tantrums that day, which are difficult to deal with when you are healthy, not to mention when you are sick.

This day made us viscerally aware that we don’t get a day off from parenthood, even when we need it. It’s a full-time job where you’re expected to always be at your best. You don’t get time off and you don’t get sick leave. You have decided to take the role of a parent and that is your role until the day you die.

People would probably question my decision to become a parent after a day like that, but I stand by what I wrote above.

Everything passes. That includes the hard days. And with them soon even the memory of them passes and you only remember these readings of children’s stories, the days when we played around in the yard, the days we rode bikes near the sea. The time spent parenting crystallizes into good memories and the bad ones evaporate.

The hard moments are not the norm and there are many more moments of both regular calm and joy. The moments of cold rain falling slowly on the terrace roof, and we’re getting warm under a too big and too heavy blanket reading children’s stories. The Hare Who Wouldn’t Share. The Three Little Pigs. The Little Dormouse Who Didn’t Want to Wake Up. The moment when I’m getting to bed and the little one is already asleep, and it’s cold outside, but the room is warm.

Dear reader,

It’s the last day of the month, the last day to publish this month’s essay, and it’s 5 am, which means I have some time to write before the girls wake up. I have been thinking about the reasons that compel me to write each month, that keep this newsletter going, but then again, I am a little cautious about exploring this topic because I don’t want to write about writing again, since this is the least favorite topic for my editor-in-chief1 to read. Still, I think this is an interesting topic to explore, so here goes.

I think my main motivation for writing is to inspire other people to write. The best writing, in my opinion, is that which inspires the reader to write something of their own. And I want my writing to have that effect. Sure, it’s nice to have a record of my thinking over time, as these essays are nothing else than snapshots of my thinking. But I don’t think that’s the main driving force.

If I do that in some way, I’m happy. The difficult part is knowing that your writing has had such an effect, not only because people are reluctant to share something like that with you, for various reasons, but also because sometimes this effect is indirect. I think what we read influences us in one way or another, even if we don’t remember precisely what we have read. The effects are subtle, even for things we can’t provide a nice summary for.

For some period while or immediately after reading a book, I think I’m under its influence and it shapes the way I think and write. It’s like drinking beer.

To share what the current biggest influence is, I have spent some time just before writing this reading What Do You Care What Other People Think by Feynman, a very charming book by one of my favorite authors. There’s so much to love about that book: from how much importance he places on his father for developing the way he thinks, which inspires me even more to really put in the effort of teaching my daughter how to learn, to his attitude towards science and learning and really understanding things at a deep level and spotting “baloney”, even when it comes from authority or prestigious figures2.

See, I probably couldn’t give you a nice summary of that book, other than listing a couple of examples, that are currently in my working memory, but this book will work on me in ways I don’t understand. I say this as a person who likes keeping highlights of books in order to remember them better. I need to keep in mind that what I don’t highlight will also be remembered in a way. A delightful experience that has recently confirmed this for me is remembering a quote from a book I’ve read years back3. I was aware of its existence even though I haven’t saved it anywhere.

If you remember anything from this newsletter years after reading it, let it be that you should write. If anyone asks me what the desired outcome of this newsletter is I will say that it’s the increase in the number of other newsletters. This is what I consider success. And if there’s one thing that I can ask you to do after reading this it’s this: please write.

As always,

Thank you for reading,

Yours,

SH

Dear reader,

July has gone and it really flew by. That’s not the usual experience of summer, when everyone (me included most summers) usually goes on a holiday to the seaside and takes it easy. Our much anticipated 2-week-long seaside holiday lasted 6 days: 2 on the beach, 2 at the apartment and 2 at the hospital. At least everything was really symmetric.

See, I’m in my quit-the-social-media phase again, a clumsy statement as I’ve learned from AA-attending users of sobriety subreddits that one should never call it “phase” as it sets you up for failure from the get go. Still, I want to use that statement because I like it, so I’ll leave it like that. I haven’t noticed any drastic changes except for being extremely motivated to just do a bunch of stuff the entire day after jumping out of bed very early.

My unholy social media trinity includes Substack1, the app that continues to pretend that it’s another app. It attracted me initially when it pretended that it’s Medium that doesn’t suck. Then it was also attractive when it looked like Twitter that doesn’t suck as Twitter was being passionately driven to the ground by Elon. But now I’m not that attracted anymore since its pretending to be TikTok that doesn’t suck because that is impossible. One of my long-held beliefs is to not participate in any platform that shoves short-form video clips down my throat and I stand by it.

Not using Substack as a social media app puts me in a bit of a pickle since that’s one of the main ways that this newsletter has attracted more readers. The funny thing about writing newsletters regularly is that every newsletter that gets sent out actually decreases the number of subscribers2, which is something I thought only happens for small newsletters like mine, but it turns out is universal3. This is why it’s an absolute must for anyone writing a newsletter to have some sort of social media presence as not having it practically guarantees the number of readers will be zero if you continue doing it. This is one of the reasons I’ve used the term “phase” above.

All of this accumulated disrespect made me spend some time updating my old blog again, a simple static page I’m running since 2011. There’s something attractive in writing a simple blog post about anything I think is even mildly interesting and publishing it online, knowing it won’t hit anybody’s inbox, knowing that few people will stumble upon it. There’s something attractive in not considering yourself a master of the craft and having a humbleness about it when you’re doing it.

I think over time my motivation for writing has changed. I no longer want to solely write the most beautiful blog post I’m capable of. I don’t want to do it if that means sacrificing what makes me me. And I think when I’m writing a simple little blog post on a simple little blog, I’m much closer to real me for some reason. I think one can more easily lose touch with one’s true self if one is focused only on trying to write the most beautiful sentences possible.

«»«»«»

This process of updating my blog led me down very interesting paths. It led me down the path of trying to improve things, even if they are small. Here are some of the small issues that I’ve solved for myself: a command that creates a blog post in the right format, assigns it the current timestamp and opens it in editor. That led me to the command that deploys the changes to my blog which I run with a keyboard shortcut now. And this all led me to optimizing the build process of my blog from having 3 seconds rebuild times to 100 milliseconds. And this made tinkering with it much more enjoyable. 4

Even though these were silly little things I was working on, working on them excited me to the point that I started waking up even earlier than I did before, jumping straight to the computer and then continuing to optimize. This started the positive feedback loop, since when you start optimizing like this you notice other things that need optimization, and that spills over even to the things in the real world.5 Even things that don’t need to have technical solutions. For example, this made me make a wonderful discovery of washing machine timers, which I am ashamed to admit I’ve missed in my 36 years of existence on this planet, which directly helped annihilating the tower of dirty clothes that kept piling up.

I also created two stupid little apps for two stupid little problems that we have: a) what are we going to cook today b) what trash goes out each week. The solution to a) just takes a list of meals and gives you random breakfast, lunch and dinner on a page reload. The solution to b) removes the need to look at the horribly formatted PDF file to detect the type of trash that goes out and is just a static page that displays a properly colored bin.

Of course, these stupid little ideas lead to more ideas, because they keep multiplying when you start tackling them, unfortunately (my main reason for abandoning projects).6 I have decided to tackle this problem of ideas multiplying by surrendering myself to ideas completely by having an IDEAS.md file in my iCloud that I can access with one button press from my phone and with a single keyboard shortcut from my computer. I don’t ever want to forget an idea again. 7

Apparently ideas like that kind of treatment, because they keep coming (this file currently holds 22 ideas, some of which have already been implemented). I would tell you the craziest idea I’m working on right now, but I don’t want to jinx myself by sharing it too early, so I’m going to keep my fingers shut. I’ve learned my lessons.8

All of this made the evening watches of Bear almost painful. I’ve realized I love spending time on activities that are generative. I absolutely love reading things that inspire me, give me more ideas on what to do or try. I find these kinds of blog posts of books absolutely wonderful9. The absolute polar opposite of the blog post that complains about something or says how we have too many people writing blog posts today. Writing these blog posts is not that generative and this is why I’m not enjoying it as much as I could, but note taking absolutely is.

Thinking about these experiences made me remember that famous Steve Jobs quote: “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” I would say that it’s not that important that other people use it, but the fact that you can build it and change it at least for yourself is absolutely beautiful. And it’s so enjoyable to use something that you yourself have made.

My fault was thinking that the problems need to be marvelous. They don’t. I don’t need to build the next Google. I can just build a stupid little website that makes knowing what trash I should take out a little bit easier. No problem is beneath me. Writing about this made me remember something Richard Feynman said long time ago: “The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.... No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”

With that dear reader,
I’ll wrap it up,
I hope you solve problems this next month,
No matter how trivial they might be,
Yours,
SH

Dear reader,

The end of the month is dangerously close as there are only two hours left, so I’d better get to it. This month I’ve attempted writing some non-garbage on non-last day of the month, but upon re-reading I’ve realized that what I’ve written is non-non-garbage.

The themes included Jung’s shadow integration and the fact that somehow reading about the craft of writing rarely inspires me for writing as it’s usually full of the anointed writer of choice patronizingly declaring that no one knows how to write except him and that one should do this or that and anything different is not real writing. In retrospect, writing about these topics seems a little silly, as I did something unusual this month — I biked for four days. So here goes.

I started long-distance bike riding a couple of years ago, visiting towns in the county with some friends. There’s something inexplicable that attracted me to these rides.

There’s something meditative in only hearing the sound of the tires on the asphalt and the chain turning and the dogs barking at us in the distance. In riding through these fields and hills in the middle of nowhere, far away from traffic of the city or any people other than spontaneous residents of some sparsely populated village. In sweating profusely because of the merciless sun above and the endless inclines that have to be conquered by the already spent legs. There’s something alluring about being very physically active while exploring unknown places at the same time, knowing the end goal, but not knowing how you are going to end there.

These one day trips seduced us to think of something more bold — a multi-day trip to the sea. Going to the sea seemed like such an obvious choice for us. I don’t know if that’s because the coast is commonly considered the most beautiful part of Croatia, or because the sea is somehow embedded in every Croatian psyche as a symbol for a great trip and vacation. Maybe the former is the reason for the latter. Nevertheless, we decided one day that we were going.

There was just one obstacle on our way to the sea — the incline.

And we failed to conquer it when we did this attempt five years ago. My friend’s spoke broke and we didn’t have a spare one and the nearest bike shop was hundreds of kilometers away. I gave him my wheel and I returned back home with the bitter taste in my mouth that lasted until the second attempt. This second attempt happened a week ago and included an incline through Slovenia.

Again I was attracted to the idea of multi-day ride when I ended up on a gravel road in some wilderness away from civilization. I remembered how good it felt to know that I am now leaving home with a couple of bike bags carrying all my luggage and gear for the next couple of days and that I’m going to cross all this distance without relying on anything but the strength of my legs and some persistence in the face of hostile inclines.

This time I took the preparation and the trip way less seriously even though we were riding for four hours through the rough gravel roads covered with bear warning signs and no signal. Taking an activity too seriously usually spoils the fun of it and I wanted to have maximum fun this time. This time we actively sought woods and as little asphalt as possible because we knew traffic loves asphalt and we hate the traffic. Being alone on the windy road over the fields, surrounded by the pine forest and seeing hills in the distance, relying on the bike to carry you through with the power of your legs is almost a religious experience.

I am not going to lie — the bike is only the second best way to experience the world. The first is, of course, walking. But that doesn’t mean that long-distance ride can’t be a profound experience which can change one’s perspective on places usually visited only in passing by car. It definitely elevated the meaning of taking a trip to the sea for me.

As always,
Thank you for reading,
Yours,
SH

Dear reader,

The end of the month is here again and you know what that means. Again, not a single word was written this month, but that won’t stop me from publishing.

I am writing you this one from a village near Ljubljana. It’s 21:25 and I’m sitting on the terrace that looks out to the mountains. The neighbors down the street are having a party and are blasting Ex-Yu rock, Croatian trash, and Macarena which is making it a little difficult to concentrate, but that won’t stop me either. If I was sitting like this at my place at this time, the mosquitoes would eat me alive. But there are no mosquitoes here, which is wonderful. I left my laptop at home, but, again, this won’t stop me, so I am typing this on the phone like a psychopath.

For some reason I’m thinking of Charlie Munger and how he wanted to know where he would die so he can avoid going there. I’m thinking about my tendency to read and read and read and how maybe I finally realized that the answers are not in the unread books.

I’m thinking of Dostoevsky and how he said that thinking too much is a disease. I’m thinking of Henrik Karlsson’s recent essay where he said that writers shouldn’t be too focused on writing but should focus more on observing and then describing the observed in the best possible way. I’m thinking of social media and how now anyone can be a “thought leader” i.e. a person who thinks a lot, since one of the requirements of the game is that you have to do it all the time. You can’t do it sporadically.

I’m thinking about my writing idols and how a majority of them led tragic lives and how I read somewhere that you lose the will to write if you are content. Maybe I need to find better idols.

I’m thinking about the fallacy that whispers that you can think your way out of problems but how more thinking never solved anything. I think about the losertalk dressed as high brow pseudo intellectualism which shuns the entire self improvement genre because it’s not high brow enough and I hate the fact that I’ve fallen for it.

But my eyes opened when I decided to quit smoking and drinking for good three months ago. I realized that my choices matter a lot more than I thought. I chose that beer and then complained how I couldn’t sleep, how I’m not feeling great the next day, how I have low energy.

I’ve learned that I can make better choices. I’ve learned that real solutions are often not complicated. They are so simple, yet so difficult to do. I’ve learned that the path to the right mindset is not through endless books, podcasts or long essays. For me that’s a form of procrastination. I’ve learned that the path is through making difficult choices and putting in the hard work consistently.

Like I know you do as well, dear reader, I’ve learned that I knew what I needed to do all along, I didn’t need the books or influencers to tell it to me, I knew it in my gut, but I was too afraid to take it seriously. Well, I’m not afraid anymore.

As always,

Thank you for reading,

Yours,

SH

Dear reader,

It’s 22:13 on a Monday and our little girl is asleep and I have some time to write. The only problem is that I don’t have anything to write about but if I’ve learned anything from the past, is that that’s not a requirement for writing. In fact, by writing, I get more ideas on what to write about.

Maybe I should tell you that the trees and the grass are very green this time of the year around here. The gentle rain drops so usual right now are so irritating to hear because they remind me that the steppe on our piece of land is slowly growing. Thankfully today was a sunny day, but instead of dealing with the steppe, I decided to fill up my walking reserve to last me this week. I decided to visit the city.

It appears that I like traveling by public transport now, although I didn’t like it all these years when I had to travel for school. Now that I just travel to visit a city a little, I’m enjoying it. We have a saying here in Croatia, that goes “that what you must do is not hard” and like with almost all the sayings, the exact opposite is true. And I like the city more now that it’s on a safe distance. I remember reading recently “good fences make good neighbors” which reminds me of this. While I was living in the city and I was in the hustle and bustle, I got annoyed with it. Now when I’m in a quiet town when the only thing I can hear right now are frogs and crickets, I appreciate the hustle and bustle more. The dose makes the poison, as they say.

Looking back after yet another great day I’ve been lucky enough to experience… This will sound like bragging, so I apologize for that, but all I’m trying to do is “write the truest sentence” that I know of. Let me try. I’ve been feeling pretty good lately.

I feel like I’ve finally learned what I should do to be in the right frame of mind. Like I’ve known all of this for a long time and now I’ve finally started taking action in accordance with that knowledge and that feels amazing. It feels fulfilling to finally take myself seriously enough to act on what I believe to be true and to validate my assumptions. To know that the acting me will not sabotage the thinking me if given a chance.

I feel silly for thinking for so long that the self-respect comes from the applause, from the accolades, from the likes when in reality it feels like the essence of it is taking my own thoughts seriously enough to act on them, especially if that means going against the grain and making hard decisions. I’m embarrassed that not much has changed externally for the past two months, yet my self-respect has grown just because I have started behaving differently.

I feel bad knowing that I’ve been kidding myself thinking that habits are not important and post-hoc rationalized my abandonment of some good habits with self-love. Using it as an excuse to oscillate from the drill sergeant mode to the zen master mode1 all the time. I’ve built elaborate structures of intellectual fallacies to persuade myself that the whole self-improvement movement is beneath me instead of experimenting a little and seeing for myself if some of the practices are useful. I’ve mistaken passivity and complacency for self-love.

And I’m glad I’ve realized this on time, which is slipping away, dear reader, and the night is getting darker. I better stop here before frogs and crickets become silent again.

As always,
Thank you for reading,
Until next time,
SH

Dear reader,

March is almost behind us and this month I’ve learned that it feels wonderful when the gap between knowing and doing is closed. When the practice follows the theory. There’s this fear I have that at the end of my life someone will tell me everything I did wrong and will show me that I could’ve been better in this or that regard.

In an attempt to make that conversation just a bit shorter, this month has been about actually doing the things I know are good, instead of just wondering what the good things would be. Marcus Aurelius: "Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

Although I find this hard to admit, the thing is that I’ve been influenced by the whole “cultivating agency” movement that’s in fashion these days. I think that there are these forces of inertia that we need to fight every day if we want to accomplish anything and I’m trying to do a better job at that. Life is a struggle against this pull of inertia. And I think a good life consists of rejecting immediate gratification — rejecting the short-term pleasure that always comes with long-term costs (an essential property of all vices) and just trying to do the exact opposite as much as possible. Camus: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I think one can fall into a trap and get stuck in the endless loop of infinite self-analysis and self-reflection without doing anything. Doing all this journaling without doing anything different because of it. This is why I’m skeptical of the effects of therapy where the plan is to get your thinking in order so you can go do things. I think you need to go do things first to get your thinking in order. At least that’s what has always worked for me.

Yes, doing anything can be hard in the dark times, but I’ve always found that the hardest part is not actually doing the thing, but breaking that first wall of not doing anything and deciding to actually do it. Hearing the voice which comes up with thousands of excuses and recognizing it as the voice of defeat and telling it to be quiet is actually the first victory. Sometimes this voice is external, but I find that one easier to ignore.

I think it’s easy to be mistaken with the order of things. Thinking that I’ll skip physical activity because I don’t feel well. Thinking that I’ll skip writing because I don’t have any ideas on what to write about. But, feeling comes after the action and good ideas come when I show some initiative and put the first words on the page. When I show that I don’t look at them with judgement and that I am not afraid of putting them onto the page “even if they prove cockeyed”.1

As always,

Thank you for reading,

Yours,

SH

Dear reader,

It’s currently 22:41 on the last day of the month, which means I have a little over an hour to compile something meaningful and publish. Yes, the truth of the matter is that I haven’t been very regular with my writing practice. My first instinct is to be harsh towards myself, since I haven’t put more time into it this month again, but then I remind myself that I never want to put writing above being a good husband and parent, above things that truly matter.

See, finding the time to write is not that much of a problem, since there is some time every day after my daughter falls asleep, the bigger problem is finding the energy after being pretty worn out by all the obligations. And if energy is not there the writing is dead. As I’m writing this literally minutes to midnight, it now appears that a looming deadline is a good source of energy.

This month I’ve been thinking how stopping exercise practice is worse than never exercising at all, how stopping to write regularly is worse than never having it in the first place, how increasing the theoretical knowledge without the practice is worse than not having any theoretical knowledge at all. There’s a price of cognitive dissonance to pay for knowing one thing in theory and doing another or nothing in practice. I think the philosophers are right when they said that a thought which was developed individually, from the ground up, is more valuable than any advice absorbed from the wisest and the most genius of the individuals. There is immense strength in trusting one’s own instincts, one’s own thoughts, one’s own judgment.

There is something silly in waiting for science to confirm one’s own instincts in order to consider them valid. There is something silly in trusting the watches or rings to score one’s sleep. Delegating how one feels after a night’s sleep to an imperfect sensor and a data point. I think that’s a path to dissociation, to a loss of gut feeling, to a loss of listening to one’s emotions.

As a software engineer, I am biased towards logic and considering emotions a wishy-washy subject. I am biased towards not caring about that part of human experience. But I think there is a reason they exist and I think one shouldn’t ignore them altogether.

For example, I don’t need science to confirm to me that strolling and listening to music is a very healthy thing to do. I can just trust my judgment and experience of it. I can trust my realizations that after five minutes of walking leisurely all the problems seem to go away, how after a day spent inside the four walls in a slightly anxious state, walking opens my eyes to how small I am in the vastness of space. I can just trust that yes, working from home has a lot of benefits, like getting to spend much more time with my family and not having to lose my mind twice a day in the Zagreb traffic, but also how there are a lot of drawbacks, like reality narrowing to a pixelated rectangle that emits light. What are the effects of that on a large enough time scale? I wonder.

I also wonder what happens to the human species in the TikTok attention spans, chatting with LLMs more than with friends, in the age where legacy media is dead but it’s replaced with a thousand times worse distributed media that capitalizes on the same emotions of fear and despair enhanced with the infinite scroll. What happens when we’re all warped in our own versions of reality, when there is no overarching narrative that would synchronize us?

I hope I’m making some sense, dear reader, and I hope these are worthwhile questions to ask. I hope your February was better than mine and as always, I thank you for reading what I have written.

Once again I spend many hours over a draft only to abandon it upon looking at it with some detachment. I have this “fix idea” that I should write about the ordinary more, but then I fail miserably to produce anything interesting and am reminded of how much more I have to learn. This month I’ve learned that shoulds are a red flag when it comes to writing and that just relaxing usually produces better results.

I admire people who can turn the ordinary into something magical, but I am aware that this takes a lot of skill and I’m just not there yet. Something kills the joy of it and I think that’s happening because I come at it with this preconceived notion of what I should write about. I pick a theme and then try to find something interesting to say about it. Like I’m in high school again. And then I wonder how I can’t find the energy to write something good.

That saying from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, how in order to draw a perfect painting you need to become perfect and then draw naturally keeps coming back to me. I can’t brute force it. My mind has to be in a playful state.1 To risk sounding like Marie Kondo: following and listening to the feeling of joy is a useful practice and drafts that don’t evoke that feeling need to be abandoned.

But it’s difficult to come to that state after a day full of work and obligations when my mind is pretty worn. I complain. And yet, writing is magnificent when the energy flows, “without hope and without despair”. When it doesn’t, it’s like torture, and I end up asking myself: “Why do I subject myself voluntarily to this?”. Why do I keep doing it in this precious free time I have in a day?

That is to say that despite it looking very easy to do, it’s difficult to do well. And I don’t think anyone except beginners would fall into the trap of considering it easy. There are so many traps to fall into and sometimes it feels like walking a tight rope where the end goal is enveloped in fog. That’s another reason I don’t like choosing a topic to write about and why that never produces anything interesting. It feels like writing a shopping list where the items are corny arguments I invent just because they support the main theme instead of letting the writing take me step by step on that tight rope to an uncertain end.

Knowing this, I sometimes get excited reading other blog posts written in this manner and noticing the little parkour-like jumps. Never knowing where the next paragraph will go. Never knowing how the author is going to jump from one sentence to the next. Some would accuse this style of writing of meandering but to me that’s what’s interesting about the writing. I want to be taken on a ride and not just circle around a single topic with one supporting argument after the next. And since I am looking for that in the world, I want to try to create more of that in the world, although I’m not always successful. I want to only send you things I would like to read.

And what I’ve learned from this abandoned draft is that sometimes pursuing beautiful writing too much can ruin everything. The beauty kills the personality in a way. Like with photography, I think editing can be overdone and result in kitsch. I edit myself out of my own writing in order to sound more sophisticated than I really am. The truth is, I’m not extremely sophisticated, so I find this disingenuous. I don’t try to “be honest”, but “avoid being dishonest”. Not Dostoevsky: “Above all, be honest.” Dostoevsky: “Above all, don’t lie to yourself.”

The interesting thing about “The Brothers Karamazov” is that the prose is not particularly beautiful. No, you won’t find the colorful calm scenery or the pleasant hypnotizing rhythm in his sentences. And yet, I think it’s the best novel ever written. In a way all of that is surface-level, pure pursuit of aesthetics, while the relentless pursuit of truth, a trait so obvious in this novel, is what makes it truly beautiful.

Man is a forgetful creature. As long as we live, we learn, but we also quickly forget these lessons. This month has taught me that thirty minutes with a kettlebell is better than reading all the self-help in the world. I have arrived at such a conclusion after spending a lot of time with intellectually stimulating books, only to realize that not everything is an intellectual problem and that sometimes it’s more useful to apply things from more down-to-earth books.

I’m reading Dostoevsky’s “Writer’s Diary” — a very flawed book and I don’t want to get into the details, but I will admit that it also contains the best short story I’ve ever read, which is very timely for this time of the year, called “The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree”. No short story has ever had such an emotional effect on me, so I highly recommend you read it. Reading that book has also taught me that there are gems waiting to be found inside any kind of book and one of these gems was reading his announcement from 1876 about this publication:

Each issue will come out on the last day of the month and will be sold separately in all bookstores for twenty kopecks. But those wishing to subscribe to the whole year’s edition will enjoy a discount and will pay only two rubles (not including delivery and mailing): the cost with mailing and home delivery will be two rubles, fifty kopecks.

If I didn’t know this was written almost 150 years ago, I would’ve thought that he’s starting a Substack. The past is an interesting place, because some things are conceptually the same as what we have in the present, and learning about things like this is my favorite part of reading old books. Issue on the last day of the month, subscribers, yearly discounts… How little has changed since then.

~~~

Now, Dostoevsky is not a light fellow to read, even when one reads his non-fiction. One needs to have a certain stamina for approaching his books, which is why I’ve decided to take a break from all the theorizing and picked up something more practical next. I picked one of these “top 20 books you must read before you die” shared by bookfluencers on your social media of choice. I picked a book that has a banner “over 4 million copies sold” on its cover, which, like “Pulitzer prize winner” should’ve sounded the alarms. But, I wanted to explore a little, so yes, I will confess this, I have decided to read “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins. And, I hate to admit, I’ve found it quite interesting to read. Sure, like most popular non-fiction, it was about ten times longer than necessary, but still, I think it was a worthwhile read.

It was compelling because it’s a classical hero’s journey story about a person who was a failure by any standard and is now probably one of the grittiest people alive. His grit borders on self-harm but he still continues to do it because he wants to conquer his mind. He actively seeks pain because his mind, like everyone’s, likes to avoid it and seeks solace in comfort and pleasure. Instead of his mind being in the driver’s seat, he wants to take the wheel, and make it his servant; suffering is a vehicle for that.

That said, it was interesting to understand how both Goggins and Dostoevsky appreciated suffering because it enriched their lives. Goggins since he is a former Navy SEAL, and Dostoevsky having survived a labor camp and being spared from execution and then continuously suffering epileptic attacks. Still, he persevered and that resulted in production of multiple classics of world literature.

Goggins always seeks more suffering, and I don’t think he will ever find enough of it. I don’t think being dissatisfied with yourself all the time, judging yourself and setting the impossible standards for yourself, and constantly chasing the next thing is a very nice way of living. Over the years, I’ve realized that I most admire people who live wholesome lives.

This is going to sound shabby, but I like people who find pleasure in the little things: slow mornings, good cups of coffee, finding beauty in the mundane. I like people who romanticize their lives in one way or another. Who understand that the path to living well is counting the ways in which they are blessed in the present, since the present is a very temporary thing.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t take something good from his life. I think we like to glorify people and either raise them to the level of gods or quickly dismiss them as idiots as soon as they do something stupid. And I think that worldview lacks nuance because it sees everything as black or white.

There’s this trap of intellectualism and valuing books purely because of their intellectual value while sometimes even the most simple of books can be more beneficial. Charlie Munger said that one should take a simple idea and take it seriously and that neatly transfers to books. There’s this fallacy that one can get more from a book if it’s more complex, like everything that is valuable is complex, but that is not always the case. Sometimes one can get a lot from very simple ideas.

So when I read more practical books like this, I think of Emerson: “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.” I have learnt a lot about perseverance from this book and it has inspired me to take training seriously again so my habit tracking app now reports a training streak of ten days. There’s this trap of overintellectualism where we are compelled to read complicated books because read books are also a signaling device — just like an expensive watch signals that you are wealthy. In this world a complicated book read signals you have a very developed intellect. But sometimes, there is more wisdom in applying simple ideas than in understanding complex ones. Sometimes the teacher comes in the form of a kettlebell and teaches lessons without uttering a single word.

P.S. As always, thank you, dear reader, for reading my essay. Thank you also for reading all the past essays, I know they are not always the best. Thank you for your emails, they are always delightful. May 2025 be the best year for you.

Dear reader,

Once again, I’m publishing this monthly essay on the last day of the month. I’ll never learn. November passed by like a speeding train; that is to say a non-Croatian one. I think kids speed up the passage of time and when I realize my little daughter will have her first birthday soon I remember how a friend said that I should try to enjoy every moment because they grow up so fast. She reminds me every week that I live in illusion that nothing ever changes, as she grows in front of my eyes, little by little so I don’t notice. And then one day she stands on her feet. She reminds me that life is short, as I think how my parents also watched me stand up for the first time like that, and how much has changed since then.

As I’ve said before, we live in the illusion of a trouble-free future and that some unfulfilled condition prevents us from enjoying the present. But isn’t that what makes us adults? Not avoiding responsibility, but pursuing it head-on. And so in moments when frustration starts to shade my days I try to remind myself that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”. When I selfishly whine how I would like to have more free time, I realize that I have plenty, but the problem is that it now requires sacrifice at the altar of sleep gods. But this sacrifice makes it more precious and so I use it more wisely.

For example, I can’t remember the last time I sat and watched something on Netflix. I think that’s a good thing because the quality of things produced these days is rarely comparable to older classics. I would rather rewatch Braveheart for the fifth time than risk it with latest Netflix drama miniseries. Even though it might sound corny that that movie is one of my favorites, because it’s not as intellectually stimulating as say Tenet, it still is, because it tapped the well of deep emotion in me, which is a feature of only the greatest art. I can’t remember the time when something released more recently has had the same effect on me. Similarly, people complain about their lists of unread books and how they won’t live long enough to read them, but I think they would benefit more from just re-reading some of their favorite books. Nabokov famously said that you can’t read a book, but only reread it.

And when I reread I notice a lot of details I’ve missed on the first reading. Sometimes I have gathered a better knowledge about the writer so I better notice how the usual themes are developed. Sometimes a lot of time has passed so now I am more familiar with the authors or books mentioned, that were total strangers on the first reading. As books contain all these references, they gaze towards the past. As I am a programmer who works with technology that focuses towards the future, this is refreshing and gives me an alternative world view. Maybe the old works will become more popular, now that the AI generated slop is penetrating into the book publishing industry as well, which could make everyone skeptical that a book is really written by the author. On a second thought, ghostwritten books are extremely popular, so I realize I’m being naive and hopeful again. Oh, well, a man can dream.

I think people shy away from rereading because of the novelty bias and I think repetition in general is more valuable than generally thought. For example, the popular advice to get better at something is to do it a hundred times. But I think a common misinterpretation of that advice when trying to get better at writing is to publish a hundred different essays. And that leads to rushing to publish without giving enough attention to any of them. I believe there’s more to learn from rewriting the same essay over and over again, but this is more difficult, as it requires stamina, so it’s easy to avoid it. But good rewriting means sharpening the axe, as one can’t do it successfully without paying attention and attempting to improve the strength of one’s arguments, or the quality of articulation, or the transfer of atmosphere or emotion.

Maybe this is just my sorry attempt of an excuse for writing these sentences on the last day of this month. You see, I had another essay in store, but it’s not done yet, even though I’ve done four complete rewrites. I think I’ve learned more from rewriting that essay than I did from all the other writing combined. I want to keep working on it, I say to myself, forgetting that that’s exactly how I stopped the regular publishing practice. See, my writing failure mode is not publishing anything at all when I become obsessive about it. What keeps me obsessive is the fact that publishing essays is in a lot of ways similar to programming, but it’s very different in this: once an essay is published I stop working on it. Which means I only have one shot at covering an idea I want to cover. Which is why, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll now get back to repetition.

Yours,

SH

The clock or the fridge is ticking, and the dishwasher is drying. These are the only sounds interrupting silence on this chilly autumn night. The room is dimly lit by table lamps hiding behind the couch; they are now the only source of light, now in these ever-shorter days.

We go for walks almost every day now, and the minute we get out we smell something in the air. We smell something that reminds us of winter, of all these winters spent in the city, where people heat using anything they can find. I joke that it’s surprising nuclear waste can be used for heating and that it follows us every winter, no matter the location. You say that you’re glad you have remained optimistic after marrying such a grumpy man.

I make all of these promises to myself: promises that I’ll become better, promises that I’ll stop complaining, promises that I won’t judge other people. But they rarely last longer than a day. These are all noble goals, but then the dogs start barking, and the 150-decibel engine vehicles start parking and unparking. This all forces me to mute myself on Zoom calls. It forces me to realize that I am complaining too much, and who am I to complain, when I haven’t worked an office job in my life, and the only exposure to physical work was during my college days.

All of this makes me realize that I’m going deeper into the well of complaint, where many have been lost because they couldn’t escape the ever-growing need to complain. If we don’t course-correct, we tend to increase our complaints with the passage of time, little by little, until we realize, when it’s too late, that we are too far gone to be rescued.

When I was younger I made myself a secret promise never to become the stereotypical old man who always finds the inspiration to complain, after seeing so many old people full of frustration, full of angst, full of contempt towards everything and anything. This passion for being frustrated is especially pronounced in the Balkans, where tolerance for anything less than the highest quality is very low. Everything is either the best in the world and then we can live with it somehow, or total garbage. I now realize I am slowly walking towards becoming the stereotypical old man.

It’s funny how we get used to everything. What’s interesting to me is how I always return to complaining. When we moved into this new place we were so happy, since we moved away from all the noise, all the bad neighbors, all the anonymous dents from the parking lot. For a couple of months we were truly happy. This place was the best. This street was so nice and quiet. The neighbors were so nice.

But then a couple of months pass and suddenly we live in the wildest street in town and can’t figure out why everyone has at least one dog that barks at any time of day or night. Suddenly every walk is terrible because of poor air quality in the winter and unbearable swelter in the summer. Suddenly there’s all this construction work around us and the neighbors are having karaoke birthdays in their yards until 3 am and we wonder where the quiet has gone.

Perhaps our biggest strength as species — adaptability — is also our Achilles heel. We adapt not only to the worst and make settlements in the harshest of environments, north of the Arctic circle, but also to everything else, including the most high-end luxuries we can imagine. Given enough time, everything becomes meh. Maybe we become adults when we look with embarrassment at our most cherished childhood delusions, like believing that a sports car will make us permanently happy and realize that this happiness rarely lasts more than a couple of weeks or months.

Don’t get me wrong, I like high-quality products. But I also know that chasing quality after a certain price point doesn’t make sense not only because of the law of diminishing returns but also because of this damned adaptation that makes me unable to enjoy anything that is of slightly lower quality. One example of this is higher-end coffee which now makes the regular store-bought one much worse than it was.

I think the world is like a mirror which reflects back what you’re looking for. If you focus your attention on finding things to be annoyed at, that well will never dry up. But I am slowly learning that I can choose where I focus that attention. I can choose not to become the grumpy old man and that is the beauty of it all. The fact that we can choose, at every moment, as long as we live. Swearing at dogs or being grateful for not having to commute to work every day. The choice is ours.

Dear reader,

The ceiling light in the leaking entryway died the other day or week, so I had to unscrew the oval fixture to replace the bulb. I was lucky the fixture didn’t fall on my head, as it was full of water and looked like a dog bowl when I placed it on the floor. The reason I’m telling you this, dear reader, is because I want to let you know that the best season has finally arrived and it has, as always, brought excessive rain.

Unlike summer’s hot days, which make me irritable to be indoors because the weather is so inviting, yet punish any attempts at venturing outdoors with unbearable swelter, this rain always makes being indoors more pleasant, which is why most of my ever-diminishing free time has been spent reading essays, novels, and, after quite a while, the diary.

You see, the diary ages like wine, which is why I regret not having anything better than a 2018 vintage. Writing in a diary is sometimes looked down upon, since writing about the everyday might seem like a frivolous activity, but I disagree with that line of thought. It is not frivolous because it makes you pay attention and look at the world differently. In that way it’s similar to photography, which changes how you see things, as you’re always on the lookout for a good photograph. They are similar in another respect: both the diary and photography aid the memory, but somehow the diary makes the memory more vivid.

Like these essays, the diary captures my current state of mind, which is why any form of lying or pretending doesn’t make any sense — it ruins its future potential. Finding a reason to lie is, as with all vices, never difficult, but the common one from my diary is the fear of it getting a larger readership, which is why I’ve toyed with the idea of handwriting the diary — an idea that was quickly abandoned when the said handwriting was seen in all of its indecipherable glory.

These snapshots of my current state of mind are later useful as evidence. Although I would like to say they show how insightful I can be, they most often reveal all the various flaws of my character, which is to say that reading the old diary is not for the thin-skinned. It’s often a humbling experience like no other. For example, just looking at my 2018 diary writing makes me cringe a little because of the obvious lack of writing skill. But I’m still thrilled it exists because it documents what my life looked like at that point in time. It’s a much better snapshot of my life than any photograph from that time, if that makes any sense.

Capturing the mundane and describing it in the highest resolution possible is fulfilling. We think the specific flavor of the mundane is going to last forever, but it perishes quickly. And capturing it has taught me just how quickly that is. Learning this made me more grateful in a way that the naive attempts of my younger self to list the same five things I’m grateful for every day never came close to.

As always, thank you for reading,

SH

This past month has been a month of unbelievable swelter that bound me to the indoors. The tragic attempts to restart the old habits, to catch the glimpse of some discipline, to prove to myself that there is more to life than waking up, working, and then going back to sleep again. Parenthood makes me gravitate towards the indoors and the swelter that grips me and puts me inside and slams the doors shut doesn’t help. I dream about the autumn candles and the sound of red, brown and yellow leaves, rustling after every step in the forest and the smell of rain. I dream about the cold days of autumn, of the overcast skies, of the sound of cars passing through the puddles. The rain splattered windows, Bon Iver songs, waterproof jackets. But I also know that I’m going to miss the sun, because I’m going to forget about the swelter.

We try to catch some fresh air as early in the morning as possible to go for a walk, because otherwise these walls start to feel more and more like solitary confinement. I also started going to the gym again after eight months of parental leave. The feeling afterwards makes me remember why I liked going in the first place. But then I get sick and the discipline goes down the drain again. Again, I need to start from the beginning. Again, I need to learn the lesson I keep re-learning.

In one of his interviews, David Foster Wallace said how literature enables us to inhabit the mind of the writer and see the world through their eyes in a way that is not possible with other forms of media. All art seeks communion with the artist and this is especially true for literature. What is undivided attention, a resource that is mercilessly being harvested in the age of social media, and the requirement for any reading, but a form of affection towards the creator. This is why I’m immensely grateful to you, dear reader, for taking the time to read my attempts towards the beautiful, good, and true. This is why I have an obligation to try my best with every attempt; I don’t take it for granted.

I am grateful for being born in the age of the Internet, since it has not only enabled me to put bread on the table, but also exposed me to a lot of great writing which taught me things about myself that I didn’t know I knew. The earliest example of this I can remember is me realizing that I’m a slow thinker after reading an essay about it. I don’t like to get into debates. I don’t talk fast and I think people who do are trying too hard to leave an impression that they are intelligent, which often stems from some sort of insecurity.

The Internet makes geographical proximity irrelevant which is not only useful when searching for a job, but also when searching for like-minded people. Isn’t it wonderful that you can find people excited about any of your niche interests, often not understood by friends? Everyone likes to think they are very unique, yet there is something immensely comforting in finding that almost any thought you can have was already had by someone from the past or present. There are few joys in life greater than stumbling upon my own brewing thoughts in their crystalized form in someone else’s writing. “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts”, Emerson wrote,” they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

Reading Murakami made me realize that some of my strange thoughts are not that strange after all. Reading great fiction is a form of therapy — you’re not paying someone to listen to your craziest thoughts and validate them, but you are witnessing that your craziest thoughts are not that crazy and not that unique. Great fiction enables inhabiting other’s inner worlds which always leads me to the same conclusion: beneath the surface we are all more similar than we think.