Little Victories by Jason Gay
Twitter has always been great and is better than ever. The #1 reason is news. After that, journalist tweets. A long time ago, I saw this tweet: “There’s a guy in this coffee shop sitting at a table, not on his phone, not on a laptop, just drinking coffee, like a psychopath.” Later on, when I found out he wrote a book, I knew I had to read it.
1) “Let me be the ten thousandth person to point out that the house you grew up in does not resemble the house you visit as an adult.”
I appreciate that my parents haven’t turned my room into storage. Even though it looks the same, it feels so different. It’s like going to my own archeological site.
2) “More friends does mean that you will also spend a third of your salary on birthday presents and go to a lot of birthday dinners at loud restaurants where no one can hear anything, but I have come to believe this is a fair trade-off.”
I also appreciate that most of my friends understand deadweight loss and have stopped giving each other presents. Presence >> presents.
3) “No activity on the planet besides talking about real estate wastes as much time and creates more turbulent feelings of personal insecurity than trying to be cool.”
Does everyone talk about housing because they’ve stopped trying to be cool? Are we trading one evil for another?
4) “Your flight is being called and you’re stuck in line at the airport newsstand behind someone taking a half hour to buy breath mints and The Economist. Situations like that, people tend to exhale loudly, as if they’re getting a physical in a doctor’s office. You know that exhale. It’s the you-have-to-be-kidding-me exhale.”
Always go to the airport early. You can waste time there rather than wasting time at home – unless it’s a 6am flight, in which case you’ve already made too many mistakes.
5) “I wish I’d gotten married earlier, I really do. I didn’t need those five extra years of microwave chicken tenders and watching SportsCenter in the morning.”
Interesting point of view that I rarely hear. Meanwhile, I’m wondering how Facebook has dwindled down to two use cases: engagement announcements and meme tagging.
6) “At is best, travel is going somewhere else to find home.”
By now, I have enough data points to conclude that the two best parts of traveling are booking the tickets and plopping down on my bed at the end.
7) “Realizing that you’re never actually going to play tennis in Rome, so there’s no need to fly your tennis racket across the Atlantic, with an entire kit of tennis wear.”
This is me in a month. I won’t heed this advice.
8) “Walk right up to the boss and make eye contact, shake hands, and depart like you’re Nicolas Cage walking away from an exploding van. Leave without saying goodbye to anybody, and be back in your bed watching Downtown Abbey on Amazon by 8:45PM.”
Any gathering where you don’t have to say goodbye is not worth going to. Added to list of life philosophies.
9) “A Thanksgiving paradox: you will spend your entire childhood trying to get to the adult table and then all of your adult life trying to get back to the kids’ table.”
I think I’ve always known that the kids table is superior.
10) “Even-numbered dinners invariably become gatherings of couples, and here’s what’s interesting about a dinner that’s exclusively couples: zero.”
3 is a great hangout number. No one likes the middle seat in the back anyway.
This book is basically witty commentary on random things that happen in life. Little victories are the best type of victory. Life is marginal, so it only makes sense to make the little things better everyday.