Living The Dream

The more I think about happiness, the more I come to the conclusion that it’s overrated. Maybe it’s even detrimental to actually living a productive and healthy live. You see, evolutionary humans weren’t designed to be happy all the time. For example, you’re having a great day, maybe you made progress on a project, then you have think what would make you happy and boom—the mood goes down if you don’t get it.

Happiness is simply not wired into our brains and nervous system by millions of years of evolution. Humans were designed to survive, and survival doesn’t mean happiness. Survival is at the bottom of the Maslow’s pyramid, and it’s what our oldest brain is doing perfectly. Why work hard trying to achieve something you’re doing sub-optimally?

Lower expectations bring more satisfaction, right? Once I realized that we weren’t born to be happy, I had an epiphany which liberated me:

• Forget about this illusive happiness. In the never-ending pursuit of it, you’ll remain miserable.
• Stop thinking that you’re supposed to be happy all the time. Banish the entitled to feel good or thoughts on how to achieve it.
• Just live in the moment, survive and be productive, instead of worrying about illusive feeling.

Stop pursuing happiness; search meaning in your life instead.

You only live once, but not in the context of how most people think about this phrase such as: party, drink, reward or entertain yourself. In other words, they justify some epicurean activities.

On the contrary, I use YOLO when I’m deciding to take on new projects, work, or tasks. My mindset is to create as many useful things as possible. Time is the only finite resource that we, humans, have.

Don’t postpone any longer something you wanted to do yesterday or last year. Time will pass anyway… So don’t spend your time on frivolous activities. Make your time count big time.

Be ignorant about everything except two or three things you are really interested about. Those things are your priorities and dream goals. Everything else is a distraction.

The myth that we can do everything, should know about a variety of subjects and accomplish everything is just a myth. You cannot be everywhere and do everything… If you try, the outcome is mediocrity.

Tech advice: if you need a simple website for your project, then use GitHub pages. It’s free and better than cheap $4.99/mo hosting, which can be easily hacked, is slow and requires you to use cPanel.

Here’s what you’ll need to get your website up and running:

1. Create account on GitHub (do it once).
2. Create a new repository.
3. Send your developer a link to that repository, and a Twitter Bootstrap theme of your choice (Google it if you don’t know where to get a beatiful theme).
4. Point your CNAME records in Godaddy, or whatever you’re using, to GitHub IPs (192.30.252.153 and 192.30.252.154).
5. Merge pull request from you developer on GitHub.com.
6. Boom! You’ve got your website.

I use this technique for my 10+ websites, some of them quite fancy:

• http://rpjs.co
• http://150x.co
• http://azat.co
• http://proexpressjs.com
• http://expressjsguide.com
• http://azat.co/blog
• http://nodeprogram.com

There’s no need for WordPress or PHP. GitHub Pages is free and it is faster than BlueHost.

The site must be static only without any PHP, Node.js or any other server-side logic. You can use foxyform or EmailMeForm for contact forms, and Gumroad for sales. For blogs, you can use Wintersmith or Jekyll.

Inspired by the famous TV show Man vs. Food, I went on a 7-day BBQ challenge. Please don’t try this at home.

Just kidding! I lasted only three days, because apparently cole slaw and sweet potato fries weren’t enough veggie for me. ;-)

We love to go out and treat ourselves to nice meals! But it’s unhealty, because almost all US restaurants are bad for you in the long run. Why? This is a common sense and it has to do with us when we favor cheaper places.

In order for restaurants to stay in business they need to generate profits and cut costs:

• Would a restaurant use more expensive extra virgin olive or coconut oil instead of cheap vegetable (mutant) oils like Canola? No.
• Would they use more expensive wild caught fish (especially salmon in sushi places) instead of antibiotic-filled farm-raised one? No.
• Would they use more expensive organic vegetables and fruits instead of conventional ones? No.
• Would they use more expensive organic grass-fed meat and poultry instead of conventional grain-fed one? No.

Therefore, when we vote with our dollars, we shouldn’t just choose cheaper places. If we continue doing it, organic good food will never become mainstream and cheap. Same thing happened with high-speed airlines: Concorde became extinct because passengers preferred cheaper but slower flying options.

What if it’s too expensive to eat at a good place like Laughing Planet? Just cook at home! :-)

Over the years of being on a paleo lifestyle, I’ve noticed that I don’t want to go back to the S.A.D (Standard American Diet), for the reason that living on paleo feel is akin to having superpowers. I just don’t want to give up these perks:

• I don’t get food coma
• I don’t crave sugary treats
• I don’t get cold or flu as often (this year I took zero sick days!)
• I have more energy
• I can skip meals (when I travel or for fasting) and don’t feel bad, exhausted or anxious
• I spend less time shopping because a lot of food options eliminated (cereals, breads, cakes, etc.)
• I have more free time

Why someone wouldn’t want to be a real-life action hero?

Oftentimes, we are on the go, have to travel or just want to indulge in the staple of the standard American diet (SAD) — fast food. Personally, I find most fast food restaurants convenient. They are quick, offer a good value and have predictable quality.

Here is what I order:

• Salad with proteins (chicken or beef) and without croutons/bread/corn/grains
• Burgers without buns, some places call them “wrapped in lettuces”

There’s nothing wrong with treating yourself once in a while to a small side of french fries (with garlic, yum!) or a smoothie/milk shake. Even Mark Sisson says that we should’t be hard on ourselves all the time (80/20 rule). Just be careful not to make it a daily (or for some even a weekly trip can be dangerous) meal!

My favorite joints are:

• SuperDuper Burgers
• Chipotle
• Panera
• Mixt Greens / Chop’t
• McDonald’s

Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico is only 9-11 hours driving from the Bay Area. It’s a relatively large port city that serves as tourist cruises port of call. It has nice Pacific Ocean views and great seafood. The commerce is thriving on the US border with street vendors, acrobats and windshield window washers.

Hard not to love this place.

Much aho — extra garlic.

Extremely fresh and meaty oysters at the marina cafe.

An hour spent manivering between hustling people.

The Road to Ensenada by Lyle Lovett

In lieu of events that started in December 2013 and still are happening in Ukraine (originally part of the Russian Empire and then the USSR), events that resulted in Crimea becoming a part of Russian Federation, I picked up a book about the Crimean War of 1853-56. The book turned out to be a longer than I expected, about 600 pages, but I enjoyed every single page of it because the author gives such a good geopolitical picture of what was going on before and after the war, as well as the atmosphere and trends of the major part of the 19th century. The book is called The Crimean War: A History by Orlando Figes and it’s available in Kindle on Amazon.com.

I vaguely remember the very brief coverage of the Crimean War during my high school history class: something about the heroism of soldiers and Russian backwards technologies. It was good to look at the events from the British author’s point of view. Here are the things the surprised and impressed me the most:

• The Crimean War was the first modern war which involved heavy industrialized manufacturing — at least on the side of France and the British Empire — and the attrition warfare closely resembled World War I.
• The public opinion was the major factor influencing French, British and Russian rulers in entering and ending the conflict — just like now!
• The war started for many geopolitical (weakening of the Ottoman Empire), populist (the British press was very anti-Russian) and personal agendas (Nicholas I believed in the holy mission and the third Rome idea, and Napoleon III needed a victory to increase his influence).
• Nobody liked the poor Turks, not even their French and British allies.
• There were highly effective and flamboyant French Zouave troops after which the American Civil War Zouaves were modeled just a few years later.

Interestingly enough, not many things have changed over 160 years in terms of the influence of public opinion and attempts at controlling it. Back then, the British Empire had free press, but there was some censorship of photography and in the army, e.g., the officers writing about the horrors of the first winter were considered traitors by their commanders. Orlando writes that the French emperor Napoleon III had spies everywhere and a tight grip on the press with censorship. The same things were true for the Russian Tsar Nicholas I.

One thing that changed dramatically was the speed of communication. The news traveled very slowly during the Crimean War — it took a few days in the beginning of the conflict for the news to reach its destination until the telegraph line was laid under the Black Sea (for the allies). Now, we can just sit in the comfort of our homes, scanning Twitter with the #Ukraine hashtag, and getting real-time updates, photos and even live streams of events miles away!

PS: Twitter stops indexing search results after a couple of days, so you might want to try Storify for historical searches, e.g., https://storify.com/search?q=ukraine.