Grass.

Lessons learned whilst wielding my 5-blade manual push mower. Here's how you keep life from getting away from you... I mow my lawn once a week with an old-school 5-blade manual push mower. Not just because I'm an East Nashvillian hipster with a soul older than *sliced bread but because, with such very little grass on my property, it feels to be more efficient than something gas-powered. However, when you mow your lawn with an old-school 5-blade manual push mower, you have to be religious in cutting the grass weekly. As long as you cut your grass each week, you're as good as gold. But, as soon as you start fucking around, putting it off two weeks and then three, you might as well be up shit's creek without a paddle and no sack lunch. The other day, I let two weeks go by without mowing my grass and when I finally got around to cutting it, it was as if I was attempting to mow down a rainforest in hell with a pair of Fiskars. The blades kept getting struck, which inevitably led to me cursing under my breath, which inevitably led to me picking up the entire goddamn mower and slamming it against my lawn. After the second or third slam, I realized my neighbors probably were getting the impression that I was out of my gourd. So, I reframed from any more suplexes, sucked it up and just cut the damn grass. When I find myself in moments like these where I'm totally miserable, I always look for a metaphor because at least then the miserableness can be put towards something productive like art. The metaphor I looked for the other day, whilst mowing my lawn, was that life becomes much easier when we stay on top of it. Back in college, I went through this phase (as most college boys do) where I wanted to pack on as much muscle as possible. And so I started eating an absurd amount of food and moving around very heavy weights and doing very little cardio and one day I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and was alarmed to see that sitting atop all of my "muscle" was a good, thick layer of fat. I had gained about 25 lbs in a couple of months (25 lbs that took me far longer, nearly 2x - 3x longer, to work off). A lot of times what happens in life is we ignore something (like our grass or our weight) and when we finally go out to cut it, cutting it becomes much harder than it needs to be. While I do think it's important to be able to work in sprints (see the article inspired by Naval Ravikant down below), we also need to recognize that sprinting is made easier when our legs and our hearts and our lungs are in great shape, which requires maintenance. While it certainly belongs on the cement wall of an elementary school gymnasium, there is a part of me that believes that "maintenance allows for greatness" and, perhaps, even happiness. Or, at the very least, an ease in living. But, I digress. By [Cole Schafer](. * Sliced Bread was invented on July 7th, 1928 by an ex-jeweler by the name of Otto Frederick Rodwedder who designed the world's first-ever bread slicing machine capable of slicing entire loaves. [Speaking of good work...]( "The best things in life are free (but you can give them to the birds and bees). I want my money." If you love this shit and want more cool shit, I'll trade you said 'more cool shit' for some dough I can put towards caffeine, alcohol, plane tickets, Duke's sandwiches, dog food for June, expensive Instagrammable typewriter paper, sneakers and the rainy day fund for my 1989 range rover that will inevitably break (because the sonofabitch is older than me)... 1. You can [tweet me]( or [Instagram me]( (free). 2. You can buy my 1st book, [One Minute, Please?]( ($25). 3. You can buy my 2nd book, [After Her]( ($25). 4. You can subscribe to [Chasing Hemingway]( ($10). 5. You can buy my writing guide, [Snow Cones]( ($97). 6. You can buy my freelancing guide, [$100k]( ($97). [Or, you can buy me a Moscow Mule.]( Speaking of Chasing Hemingway, here's a teaser... I recall gunning for Southern Indiana at 70 mph one Friday afternoon to visit my parents and experiencing this shit-your-pants moment when, suddenly, the mechanical beast began bucking wildly on the open road. I felt like a pre-teen taking his skateboard down a neighborhood hill and being overcome with the "wobbles" as my life flashed before my eyes and images of me in my range cartwheeling down the interstate began playing in my head like a bad motion picture. I ripped my foot from the gas, glued my hands to the steering wheel... [To read the rest, subscribe.]( Working well is hunting like a lion not grazing like a cow, according to Naval Ravikant. Naval Ravikant, the infamous philosopher-investor who founded AngelList, approaches work differently than most, a difference he defines through the metaphor of a lion and a cow in his book The Almanack. While cows work and work and work, grazing all day long to stay full and nourished, lions rest until they see an opportunity and then, suddenly, they attack with tremendous ferocity. Most humans approach work like cows rather than lions, a behavior that’s been conditioned in us since the industrial revolution, where “value” became measured in time. You clock in at 8 a.m. on Monday morning. You clock out at 5 p.m. You enjoy an hour lunch sometime in there. You repeat Tuesday and then again Wednesday and so on. Opposed to the standard 40-hour workweek, Naval argues that you’re far better off resting, reflecting, reading and ultimately reserving your energy, until you see an opportunity. Then, you pounce. [Moo.]( P.S. If this newsletter made you weak in the knees, you can share it with the world by selecting one of the four icons down below... [Send it.]( [Send it.]( [Tweet it.]( [Tweet it.]( [Share it.]( [Share it.]( [Post it.]( [Post it.]( Copyright © 2021 Honey Copy, All rights reserved. A while back you opted into a weekly email called "Sticky Notes". Remember? If not, you can always unsubscribe below... and risk breaking this writer's heart. Our mailing address is: Honey Copy 3116 N. Central Park Unit #1Chicago, IL 60618 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.