you need to be loremaxxing

being a human feels a lot like being in a movie.

you go about your business day to day, but you also realize that, just as every movie has a storyline, sidequests, characters, & challenges to overcome, so does your life.

very few people can live up to that comparison the way my dad does.

his movie is one so absurd that if people saw it on a big screen, i think they’d look at it & say ‘yeah, that’s unrealistic.’

but at first glance, you’d never know.

he’s 5’10, wears blue jeans with an old brown belt, & his spiky salt+pepper hair is lookin’ a lot saltier these days. you’ll rarely find him without some sort of engine grease on his hands.

based on that description, you’d assume he’s some sort of blue-collar worker — & you’d be right.

he has his welding certification, he’s a millwright, & he’s also a gas technician who does jobs every week.

that’s a long list by itself.

but it only includes what he’s done since ‘retiring’ a few years ago.

his list of other jobs is a lot longer:

bar manager
police officer
chimney sweeper
mechanic
blood delivery driver
international consultant
entrepreneur
trained sniper
house flipper
red cross medic
soccer referee
+ more

& those are just the official titles.

i have so many memories of campfires with him, where we’d be roasting marshmallows & he’d casually drop a line like:

‘the first time i was taken hostage-’

what? the first time???

just last month, i found out he was stabbed once & drove himself to the hospital.

growing up, i thought lives like his were normal.

but as i’ve gotten older & met people from all walks of life, i realized how rare people like my dad are.

& with that realization came another one:

people like him seem to be the happiest by far.

in other words,

a life full of stories to tell around a campfire is a life well-lived.

which leads me to the reason i’m writing this whole thing:

you need to be loremaxxing.

if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry.

lore = stories to tell

maxxing = maximizing

loremaxxing = maximizing the amount of stories you have to tell

basically, a person with maxed out lore is someone who previous generations would say has ‘been around the block.’

i want you to think about your answer to this question:

who is the most interesting person you know?

for me, both of my parents came to mind immediately.

but for you, it could be anyone.

the guy on your soccer team who drives a different car each week, the neighbour who hunts bears in the Yukon & has no legs, or your old teacher who threw markers at kids (i’m talkin’ to you Mr. C).

i look around for people like that all the time, & when i find them, i can see it in them right away.

do you want to know what they all have in common?

they approach everything with curiosity.

not fear. not worry. not judgement.

curiosity.

here’s what that looks like in practice:

imagine you’re on vacation in a country you’ve never been to before.

you & your friend are driving on a beautiful, scenic road, when you see a ~30y/o woman hitch hiking, looking for a ride.

where does your mind go?

she’s a criminal who’s gonna kill you & steal your stuff (fear)
if you stop, you’ll be late to your destination (worry)
she’s gonna smell bad & stink up the car (judgement)

those are all valid concerns that i wouldn’t blame anybody for having.

but what if you approached it with curiosity instead?

she might be cool lol

this story isn’t hypothetical!

it happened when my dad & i were in Iceland last year — & getting to know Joana from Barcelona was one of the highlights of our trip.

obviously, picking up hitch hikers is riskier than i’d expect everyone to be comfortable with.

but think about the mini versions of that in your everyday life.

imagine it’s 9pm on a Tuesday, & you’re about to put your pyjamas on when you get a phone call.

it’s your friend who lives 2 hours away, asking if you want to come out for a drink while they’re passing through town.

99% of the time, you wouldn’t want to go — it’s too late, you have work the next day, etc. — nobody would blame you for staying at home.

but what if you approached it with curiosity instead?

‘sure, i’ll go out for an hour.’

this example also isn’t hypothetical.

this happened to me a couple months ago, & we ended up bumping into 3 NHL players at a bar, who i chatted with for a bit.

that’s loremaxxing in action.

it’s the difference between ‘just another Tuesday,’ or having a new story that i can write about in my fucking newsletter.

& the crazy part is, the only difference between those 2 realities is the decision i chose to make.

that’s a good thing.

it means you can start building a life full of stories — loremaxxing — as soon as you have the courage to do it.

you’re so scared of things going wrong, that you forget things could also go right.

& besides,

even if things do go wrong, who cares?

in most cases, the consequences are nowhere near as bad as your mind makes them out to be.

if i had a miserable time at the bar that night, life would go on.

if the hitch hiker smelled bad, i could roll down the windows & drop her off at the next town.

if the hitch hiker was a murderer — actually that one is a bad example.

my point is, no good story came from everything going according to plan.

that’s why you need to be loremaxxing.

do something you’re scared of.

talk to more people.

put yourself in positions for luck to find you.

if life is a movie, i think the goal is to make it a fucking blockbuster.

so let me ask you this:

what stories will be told about you?

some things i learned

this absolute heater of a quote
a lack of air conditioning in Europe kills more people than guns in the U.S.
this is one of those stats that should be fake, but isn’t.
there are an estimated 175,000 annual heat-related deaths in Europe, while there are about 48,000 U.S. gun deaths annually (60% of those were suicides).
there are no rats in Alberta, Canada
look at this map of the global distribution of the common rat:
this map is another thing that seems like BS, but isn’t. Alberta’s rat-free status is the result of a 70+ year government program, specifically targeted at the common rat, which can only survive by living in human structures. the program costs under $500k annually, & it seems like money well spent.

cool stuff i found

a cool path designed by artist Roberto Burle Marx
it’s called the Copacabana Promenade in Rio de Janeiro. stuff like this keeps Brazil high on my list of places to visit!
a guy living the American dream
this happened at the 2021 Superbowl, but i just heard about it today!
a reason not to complain about cold weather where you live
Kamchatka, Russia, got hit with a snowstorm that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. this is not AI: