| WESTENBERG | https://joanwestenberg.com/ |
| SELF | https://www.thisisstudioself.com/ |
Nothing is allowed to be small anymore. Nothing is allowed to be moderate, partial, ordinary, seasonal, boring, or just good enough.
And it’s driving us insane.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/just-be-normal-about-st?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Human beings are rarely angrier than when they realize they submitted longer than they had to…
In a fight to the death, fixation kills. The hand, the blade, and the feint directly in front of you can consume your attention so completely that you lose the structure of the whole encounter.
https://thedailygeneral.substack.com/p/dont-stare-too-long-at-the-tip-of
June 11, 2026
“We plan to be here in 100 years” is a competitive advantage in a market full of fly-by-night companies looking for the exit.
But you don’t build a 100-year company by announcing one.
You build it by renewing a choice, every day, against every incentive telling you to cash out, bulk up, or drift.
https://www.selfonomics.com/p/can-you-still-build-a-100-year-company
Being weird about shit - extremism in all its forms - might burn hot, and it might perform well, but it always collapses.
Being normal about shit, on the other hand, compounds...
Here’s my radical position:
Just be normal about shit.
That’s it.
Be normal, and opt out of the deranged belief that the only way to take something seriously is to take it to the most extreme possible conclusion.
Power doesn’t make you serious.
It exposes you for who you really are.
Competent or incompetent, the truth comes out.
Talk and swagger are cheap - action is everything.
You can care about nutrition and still eat cake at a birthday party.
You can be disciplined and still be fun.
Don’t confuse self-improvement with self-surveillance.
Don’t confuse certainty with wisdom.
And don’t confuse being a dick with courage.
It’s an obvious axiom that concentrated power can become dangerous. But more than that - all human machinery develops interests of its own.
Once budgets, careers, contractors and prestige are wired into the same apparatus, the system starts to make variously compelling arguments for its own enlargement.
Left unchecked, organizations created to solve a problem tend to acquire a stake in the problem’s persistence.
