2013-09-08

Must-Read: Raptitude

Very, very, very occasionally I find a blogger that's so good, by the end of an article or two, I:
  1. consider my life materially improved
  2. subscribe to the RSS feed
  3. schedule a time to dig into the article backlog
  4. definitely want to meet this person.
The last time this happened was with Mr. Money Mustache, whose articles worked miracles to help me crystallize my as-of-yet dilute solution of thoughts on personal finance, financial independence, and lifestyle engineering.

Well folks, it's happened again.


The subtitle is "getting better at being human".  You should already be interested.

David Cain, the Raptitude guy


From the About page:
So you’re human. Somehow, out of the cosmic soup of time and space you ended up in charge of a human body and a human mind. Surely you never asked for these dubious responsibilities, but you’re stuck with them.

As a human being, you are a beautiful, powerful, and supremely ridiculous creature. Your mind and body may not be perfect, but they do make you an astoundingly potent being.
Ideally, you’d take full advantage, and use these priceless gifts to achieve glorious triumphs, experience great loves and adventures, fulfill your dreams and leave the world better than how you found it.

But it’s so hard. We can only do what we know, and often the results are uninspiring. We end up with careers we don’t like, goals that have slowly become idle fantasies, feelings of lack and regret that won’t leave us alone, even disdain for human beings in general. Some fare even worse than that, and find themselves drowning in debt, poor health, depression, and addiction.

Get started by reading Most Lives are Lived By Default.  This will get you in the right state of mind for the rest of the articles.

Relevant to this blog's Anticonsumerism and Financial Independence streak, check out:


Don't stop there.  There's a lot to absorb, and even an Experiments section.

A lot of what's here would be very much at home on Mr. Money Mustache's site, and easily rivals his best work.  I'm still early on in the reading process, but his philosophical articles are also some of the site's best.

To quote Mr. Cain: "To make a long story short, I used to find life very difficult and now I don’t."

We have something to learn from him.