Non-obvious content

looking under a rock

I love the phrase, “Non-obvious content.”

Gina Pell and Amy Parker are the ladies behind TheWhat, a website and email with curated content that has more feminity than I can digest in one sitting. But they think outside the box. I love that. And they’re behind the phrase “non-obvious content.”

Striving to think outside the box motivates a lot of what I do. I love to reveal tiny things that most people miss in their daily lives. But of course, what I find interesting is not always what you find interesting. Such is the nature of personal taste.

It’s always exciting to find another person who appreciates an obscure thing that you enjoy. It’s thrilling to discover something new and fresh. And it’s more thrilling to share that with someone.

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Inbox 38,000

screen-shot-2016-10-07-at-5-38-12-pmWhy do I have so many emails in my personal inbox?

  • It’s easier to search for something in the pile than trying to process every email when it comes in.
  • Finding an email using search forces me to be creative in what search terms I use – I must use a unique search term to find the email I’m looking for.
  • I’m lazy. It would take too much time and mental energy to ruthlessly file away semi-important incoming emails into the correct folder or take the time to figure out if I should take action now or later on them.

Like most of us, I am a man of contrasts. I don’t believe in eating up too much space on server farms. So I do several things to keep my email account from hitting Google’s free-cloud limit. (Currently, I’m at 33%.) Here are those actions:

  • I go back to old emails and delete the ones with attachments. (Those are the space hogs.)
  • Occasionally, I go back to the beginning of time and delete a few pages of emails, without taking too much time to figure out if they have value.
  • I am ruthless about deleting incoming emails that I see no immediate need to keep. (This is a more recent habit – otherwise, the inbox number would be lower.)

What’s your personal inbox number?

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I am thankful

303-TJS license plate - huge, hanging from the store celiing

Trader Joe’s is in Colorado. I’m thankful. They’ve been with us for a while now (two or three years), and they are a mighty fine store.

Decent value pricing, often healthy ingredients, a wide variety of flavors not available at the big chain supermarkets – and tasty food.

Even though I’m an anti-junk mail person, I love their flyers. Creative writing abounds. And they are effective – I often buy stuff as a result. One time I even cut out the little built-in shopping list and checked the stuff I wanted and bought most of the items the next time I was in the store.

The only thing about Trader Joe’s I’m happy/sad about is that there is one on my way home from work… it’s all too easy to make a detour and buy little snacks I really don’t need.


Take time to be thankful today for something in your life. It worked for me. (I was going to write a complainy blog post – but I listened to my own blog post from last week, Positive.)

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