As much as I love this blog, what I really want to do is write the next great American novel (yeah, thinking small haha). So I’m putting this blog on hiatus until I complete the novel.
The book is about heartbreak, an audacious plan, and a year of heaven and hell.
I’m 100 pages in and hope to finish it by 2027.
For inspiration, here is Steve Jobs as he was managing a struggle company ο£Ώ in the 90’s talking about saying “no” to most of the things you want to do and narrowing your focus to what natters most. And it worked! I dig it.
I’m dropping music for now too. My killer album will have to wait until after the novel too. π€¦π»ββοΈ
In case you noticed this blog has a new name and logo, and you thought “this blog got hacked,” fret not. The new name, Mental Break Town, is on purpose.
“But that’s exactly what a hacker would say!” you protest.
Okay, okay, in that case, if I start trying to sell you fake Rolexes, phish you, or spread hate speech, then you’ll know I got hacked. π
But why the name change?
Well, patmcg.com was basically just my name, and the blog needed a new name that isn’t about me. It’s about stuff I’m interested in, and hopefully stuff you’re interested in.
Also, this a just a blog and not a company, so I dropped the .com in favor of .blog.
So, I thought of a new name, and luckily the domain name was available. Done. βοΈ
I thought my previous downtown Austin sketch would be a natural fit. But alas, it was too complicated and fuzzy. π€·π»ββοΈI needed something simpler and bolder for this purpose.
So I myself 10 minutes to come up with a few ideas. The “final” logo (bottom left) was not what I had initially imagined, but it felt right after playing around with it for a bit.
Of course, this being my personal not-for-profit, no-expectations blog, I can change it if I ever feel like it. I like this iterative process. π
Continuing to pull some helpful snippets out of Show Your Work, let’s look at the “So What?” test.
I had struggled for a while on this blog with the “to post or not to post” question. I was honing in on a vague “useful or interesting” test when I read Show Your Work, which attacked this idea with a “So What?” test.
I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: βSO WHAT?β She threw the piece of chalk down and said, βAsk yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing.
Now any of my own posts must pass the “Sow what?” test before I will publish it. Clearly I found this “So what?” test useful because I use it here constantly.
As always, the book explains the idea most vividly with an illustration.
I will say that this rule seems at odds (or is it just tension?) with other ideas in the book, namely share something small every day.
I mean, do you really have something interesting and useful to share every day? If you’re a professional writer, maybe. But if you’re just a guy with a blog and limited time, maybe not. π
So I’m letting the “So what?” rule overrule any others for now.
I’ve been doing super summaries on this blog for a while now. The idea is to condense a great book into a super distilled version that covers the core concepts as quickly as possible. Hopefully the super summary is useful, and if your curiosity is teased enough, then you can read the actual book.
I think it’s a win-win, and these continue to be some of my most popular posts.
But some books simply can’t be super-summarized.
The book Show Your Work has has been sitting on my coffee table taunting me for months. I pick it up and read a bit, absorb whatever nuggets of inspiration I get out of it, and then put it away for a while.
I keep thinking I’ll write up a super-summary on this little 184-page book. I mean, how hard could that be?
Ironically enough, this tiny, square, innocent-looking book is so densely packed with good material that a super summary is nearly impossible. I think I could but the book in half, maybe? But who wants a 92-page summary of a book? π€
So I’m starting a new thing here: a book snippet. I’ll take one little concept at a time from a book and post it. And then post a series of excerpts over time for any give book.
This approach fits (so to speak) with my goal of keeping things short. So with that, stay tuned for the first snippet.
Mental Break Town 