This is one of the best advice articles I've read on the internet. So unpretentious, wise and full of personal experience. And this, I love:

"Jesus, Superman, and Mother Teresa never made art. Only imperfect beings can make art because art begins in what is broken."

Happy birthday, Kevin!

Original list can be accessed at the Internet Archive
https://web.archive.org/web...

Hi Kevin, thank you for this article. I'd like to translate it in French and post the link here, would that be ok?

I translated it in Chinese:
https://benearyou.com/kevin...

I did translate it in german: https://www.mokita.de/blog/... All the best!

Korean translation here
https://news.hada.io/topic?...

Thank you sir. Happy birthday!

Wish these were still available to read until the publication. Excited for the book!

https://web.archive.org/web...

Perfect.

Re: playing Monopoly

When playing Monopoly, ask yourself why you're not instead playing any of the 20,000 board games that have higher ratings (as determined by tens of thousands of board gamers) on Boardgamegeek.com.

Monopoly was a decent boardgame in the 1930s, but nowadays there are thousands of simple family board games (e.g. Ticket to Ride, Azul, The Quest for El Dorado, The Crew, Carcassonne, Kingdomino) that give the players more agency, lack player elimination, and generally make use of the improvements made in the field of game design in the last 100 years.

Thank you sir, it do help me understand what I face, where I live, what I say.

god, thank you so much for this, so genuine and true; and happy birthday!

When I was a law student, i learnt that even in love, one should start by the exit strategy, or rather, the end. That came from a divorce lawyer. Having honest conversations about how one would split, what they would expect, generally meant people actually never separated, and if they did, it was much more amicable and painless than when you pretended the end couldn't exist.

"A problem that can be solved with money is not really a problem."

was one of my Father's favorite expressions.

Thanks for the memory.

Even if I'm a little late to the party: Happy Birthday, belatedly!
I don't know for what reason I came across your site just now but something in this universe didn't want me to discover this earlier. Thank you for this listing! It made me laugh a lot, ponder, and keep telling myself "See, this is exactly how you've always wanted to do it." I will keep this as a sort of moral Swiss Army knife.
Would it be ok for you if I translate this into German on my blog?

Many wonderful bits. Covid has inspired me to re-read (and read with different eyes) the inimitable masterpiece of Proust. It's striking just how much life advice is hidden in it, including many of themes you write about.

to share a few examples that I noted down

"The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.”

"After it ceased to be impossible I asked myself, is it desirable?"

"Our desires cut across one another's paths, and in this confused existence it is but rarely that a piece of good fortune coincides with the desire that clamoured for it."

"the better part of our memory exists outside ourselves, in a blatter of rain, in the smell of an unaired room or of the first crackling brushwood fire in a cold grate: wherever, in short, we happen upon what our mind, having no use for it, had rejected, the last treasure that the past has in store, the richest, that which when all our flow of tears seems to have dried at the source can make us weep again"

"We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind that are listening. My words would have come to her only in a distorted form, as though they had had to pass through the moving curtain of a waterfall before they reached my friend, unrecognisable, giving a foolish sound, having no longer any kind of meaning. The truth which one puts into one's words does not make a direct path for itself, is not supported by irresistible evidence. A considerable time must elapse before a truth of the same order can take shape in the words themselves"

"A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it. Being itself a part of the riches of the universal Mind, it makes its way into, grafts itself upon the mind of him whom it is employed to refute, slips in among the ideas already there, with the help of which, gaining a little ground, he completes and corrects it; so that the final utterance is always to some extent the work of both parties to a discussion. It is to ideas which are not, properly speaking, ideas at all, to ideas which, founded upon nothing, can find no support, no kindred spirit among the ideas of the adversary, that he, grappling with something which is not there, can find no word to say in answer.

The bowline is my favorite knot. No matter how much force it sees, it's easy to untie. It's also easy to tie incorrectly. Practice tying it from different perspectives—upside-down, backwards, left-handed, right-handed...

Kevin, great list! But I think you should mention Walker Lamond and his Rules for My Unborn Son, as a few of these bit of advice come from there. Happy Birthday!

See below.

Oops, sorry, this comment is a repeat of sorts, feel free to delete it. My bad.

Kevin, I'm glad you read Rules for My Unborn Son, but I think you should mention Walker Lamond as the inspiration for a few of these.

I've never heard of Walker Lamond but anyway this advice is ancient and perennial and well-worn. I just attempted to reduce them to as few words as possible.

I like to write; I love to edit. - Red Skelton

'That thing that made you weird as a kid could you make great as an adult — if you don’t lose it.' This is magical. So much so that with permission, I'd like to create a playful workshop with it as the premise. What made you weird Kevin?

Weird comes from the Old English "wyrd" which means something like Fate. Everybody has their own "wyrd" or weird, everyone has their own Fate. And sometimes you make your own.

Wow, I didn't know that. Must mean you are fated to your weirdness.

You might want to make sure I'm not mistaken but we are all weird in our own way and should work with it instead of trying to fit in.

No wiser words have ever been written. Well actually they have been written before this and much wiser...but thank you it was enjoyable to read through what you have lived :)

Right, the advice is ancient and timeless, even if the word arrangement is new.

Good stuff, Kevin. Your re-working the words, in whatever way you did, reminds me of someone's making the distinction btw originality and authenticity. Nothing's original [we're ALWAYS influenced by what we see, hear, feel] but your take on it can be authentic. Thanks.

I love this! Thank you for taking the time to write and distill this. I have a question on the meaning of one ... If something fails where you thought it would fail, that is not a failure. I would love to understand more what you mean by this

that is not a failure, because you know why.

It still doesn't fully make sense to me. Can you explain more?

To me, if you knew why something would fail and the thing failed, shouldn't it be a failure on the individual because the individual knew it was going to happen, but failed to act and prevent it?

I feel like I'm missing something.

To me, it means that if you knew it would fail, then it happened exactly how it was supposed to. It's a statement about the infallibility of cause and effect and how the world operates, and matching your expectations to that...not about personal success and failure in your own endeavors.

Makes sense -- thank you :)

Based on my teenage years, I think the hitchhiking advice might be gender-based. But the rest are pure gold. Thanks for sharing and happy birthday!

Do not dance with your hips, especially in Ballroom dancing. It's all about the feet. But sure, if you want go ahead.