“Wub wub wub.”

– Every Skrillex song

If I have one regret in life it’s that I never learned to play a musical instrument as a child.

Until my teens I never had a real interest in music. It wasn’t until I was about sixteen that I really started to find songs that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately I was too lazy to learn how to create my own melodies.

Now I’d give anything to go back ten years and start spending an hour a day making music.

Every day when I go online I see dudes who’ve become millionaires and gods off their mediocre recordings.

When I go out I see short, overweight, trollish looking dudes who get smothered with women simply because they play guitar in some incoherent indie-acid-rock group.

When I drive to work I sometimes think about all the dudes who dedicate their lives to curing cancer and solving global warming. I like to imagine them at a party trying to tell people about their jobs, the guests all pretend to be busy and slink off to avoid conversing. Then I picture 2Chainz walking into the room, everyone flocks around him. One of the scientists, probably the one who’s figured out how to solve world hunger, asks “who’s that guy?’ Another party goer responds, the greatest rapper alive, he has a song that goes “She got a big booty so I call her Big Booty.”

Visualizing this scenario always gives me a laugh.

I have this fantasy where I produce one mildly good electronic song. It doesn’t make me rich or famous, it’s just something that I sometimes here when I go out. All I want out of it is to be able to walk up to people and say “I made this.” That’s all, no fame, no money, just a cool little product.

Recently I’ve been trying to make my dream come true. I started playing around with a program called Audiotool, it’s a free app that let’s you compose instrumental music. I’m not very good at it yet, but I’ll improve.

I’m going to spend a couple hours making beats on Saturday, if I create anything worthwhile you’ll be the first to know.

Have a great weekend,

Robert Koch

“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

– Jean-Paul Sartre

When I go out on weekends I usually do so by myself. I don’t dislike my friends or anything like that, but I do feel that we have incongruent expectations for what a night out should be like. As a result I started going out by myself. Going out alone has become second nature, I even vacation outside the country without anyone else.

Once you get used to it, rolling around by yourself is a lot of fun. It also opens up a world of new opportunities that you can’t experience with a crew. From my experiences I’ve discovered that going out solo is:

• A great way to meet new people.

Because I’m by myself I have to actually go interact with others. When I’m out with friends I’ll usually only socialize with people already in my circle. Alone I’m forced to talk to strangers.

• An easy way to get invited to more and better events.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the more new friends I make the more new places I get invited. Back in March I was swamped with places to go and things to do.

• The best way to meet girls.

Going out with ten other dudes is the perfect recipe for a sausage fest. There also always seems to be at least one guy in every crew who either gets horrible alcohol poisoning or is an annoying weirdo, thus ruining everyone’s night.

If you want to have an interesting experience and jump outside your comfort zone, I highly recommend going out alone for at least one night this weekend. It’s challenging, it’s fun, and it’s a great way to become more comfortable with yourself.

“It takes a great man to be a good listener.”

– Calvin Coolidge

If I had to venture a guess, I say that 85% of our daily conversations are just meaningless filler. The vast majority of topics we discuss are nothing more than social niceties, talking points so dull that we completely zone out from them. Saying “that’s cool” while thinking “I don’t care” has become my default response to almost every conversational trope known to man. While it hasn’t happened just yet, I expect that in the future at least one of my exchanges will  go like this:

Me: “How was the family reunion?”

Other person: “Terrible, I got molested by my uncle.”

Me: “That’s cool.”

My apathy isn’t meant to be malicious, it’s just something that naturally arises from not being apart of something. Whether junior just took his first steps or you had a cocaine fueled orgy, I wasn’t apart of it and thus it has little impact on me.

Of course, this lack of interest goes both ways. I can’t even count the number of times when I’ve excitedly retold a story, only to hear “that’s nice.” When you actually care about something, it’s the most infuriating response on earth.

This weekend I’m going to try and pay attention during every conversation I engage in. It’s probably going to be boring and I’ll have to sit through a lot of drivel, but it will mean a lot to others.

When people share a story, no matter how boring you find it, it’s because they thought it was important. Even if their story sucks, which it probably does, you owe it to them to pay attention.

If I hear anything worthwhile I’ll probably Tweet about it. Have a great weekend.

“’I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’”

– Louis C.K.

Until I went shopping for cottage cheese I had never seriously thought about the universe. While in the dairy isle, I began to think about how lucky I was to be born into a first world country in the 21st century. It’s a statistically impossibility. I had an infinitely better chance of being either a single celled organism or insect, than I did a middle class American male. The more I thought about this the stranger it seemed. From that single thought, I branched out and began to ponder the cosmos, death, reality, and time. I went home, dusted off my copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything, and spent all my free time contemplating the entire nature of human existence.

After nerding out with my science books I had another realization, I rarely think about anything serious. The vast majority of my time is spent thinking about things like earning money, what I’m going to do over the weekend, and jokes I should tell people. Outside of that, there’s not a whole lot of high level thinking going on. I want to change this, I want to start using my brain for higher level thought. And I plan to start today.

This weekend I want you to join me in contemplating something serious. It’s entertaining, educational, and completely free.

If you think up anything cool, or interesting let me know in the comment section.

“The best way to ensure you’ll never fail, be ridiculed and mess up is to stay safely home, in bed, under the covers, all the time.”

– Alain de Botton

Some time ago I got my first bona fide internet troll. He tried to post negative comments on every single post. No matter what the subject was, he wanted me to know that he didn’t like it.

Another time I made a guy so mad that he punched me.

On a different occasion, a girl spent an entire afternoon texting me about how much she hated my very existence.

I was once called an a**hole by a teacher.

I’ve probably enraged more people in the last 20 years, than the average person does in their entire life.

If you’re not making people angry, you probably aren’t pushing outside your comfort zone. Even “begin” activities like lifting weights and going on vacation draw haters. If you aren’t catching flack for something at least once a week, you aren’t living up to your potential.

This weekend I want you to make someone mad. You don’t need to walk down the street punching people in the face, or open an abortion clinic for kittens.

Simply choose to pursue something that will infuriate others. Stop eating sugar or quit drinking, and watch how most people react. It’s hilarious. Tell people about how you forfeit watching TV in favor of reading books, brace yourself for an onslaught of criticisms. Start a side business and watch people’s heads explode.

Have fun and troll responsibly.