In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne had some great advice for all of us:
“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
The actor who played Andy, Tim Robbins, also has some good advice for all of us in the latest episode of the Smartless podcast:
No matter what age you are, maybe you should take a page from Tim’s book and consider “retiring” from “the daily anxiety of opposing something” as Tim says.
“The idea that you can find your worth and purpose and virtue by hatred is a terrible, terrible idea… ”
Tim’s absolutely right. That hate isn’t helping. It’s dying from the inside out.
“If the first thing you’re doing is doomscrolling about something that will make you feel better about your political beliefs, you might try a little yoga or you might try a little exercise or take a bike ride.”
Yoga. Exercise. A bike ride. Put down the phone. Turn off the cable news. And get busy living!
“If you’ve been injured in an auto accident, Emerson Jones can get you the money you deserve…”
Emerson Jones is actually a Aussie tennis player. I watched some of her match in the qualifying rounds of the Cincinnati Open last Tuesday.
She’s one of the top 140 players in the WTA. And there she was, on a random Tuesday, in a random city, trying to beat a random opponent, on a random court at the Cincinnati Open complex. Not Center Court. Not the Grandstand Court. Not the Champions Court. Not the Tony Trabert Court. Just one of the many outlier courts, each with a few rows of seats.
At #131 in the rankings, she’s right on the cusp of the draw (128 players each, give or take, in both men’s and women’s).
The match was close, but “Emmo” (as her coaches called her) lost in straight sets. 7-5, 7-5.
She lost to Lanlana Tararudee… great name! Lanlana is slightly higher on the WTA food chain, but still in the “qualifier” group.
FWIW, She’s the highest ranked player from Thailand, too.
As fate would have it, Emerson and Lanlana also had squared off in the previous tournament, in Canada.
Two kids, half a world away from home, trying to make it in a cutthroat sport.
If you look at the prize money totals for both players, you might be thinking that’s some pretty good coin for an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old. And it is. But there’s a price that comes with the prizes.
That prize money has to be split up among coaches, agents, trainers… all the cogs that feed the machine. And then there’s airfare, hotel rooms, meals, equipment…
Not to mention that there’s not much of an off-season for the sport, so you’re on the road constantly. Home is wherever you lay your head on the hotel pillow. And heaven forbid if you skip a tourney – it’ll drop you down in the all-important rankings.
If you want to “go pro” this is your life. Tennis seems like such a glamorous sport. And it is, at the top. But for every woman holding up the winner’s trophy, there are literally hundreds of others that are nearly as good, just trying to make a go of it, on a random court in a random city on a random weekday, trying to beat their opponent so they can do it all again the next day, and the next week.
It’s a lot more grind and grit, and a lot less glamour. Kudos to Emerson, and Lanlana, and all the other “also rans” who are still out there running.
Scott Galloway is a professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, the host of the Prof G and Pivot Podcasts and a best-selling author. His latest book is Notes on Being A Man.
He’s also published a newsletter nearly every Friday for the past 10 years. It’s called “No Mercy/No Malice.” (Or NM2 in Scott’s shorthand.) You can subscribe here.
It was originally a client engagement product for Scott’s company L2.
Before I sold L2, we’d launched a series of media products to create more engagement. Winners & Losers was a video series exploring innovation in the consumer sector, and NM2 was meant to be a newsletter exploring, well, whatever was on my mind that week.
When Scott sold that company, the buyer didn’t want the newsletter. It was orphaned… it turned out pretty well:
NM2 was too salty for Gartner (the acquiring company), and they said it could not be affiliated with the firm, but I could have the IP. A decade later, we have 430k subscribers, and the newsletter is the center of the flywheel for ProfG Media. The tone/aim of NM2 is simple: provide insight and be fearless.
430k subscribers is quite impressive. But getting there took a lot of work. Pen to paper, week after week. I’m biased, but I love what Scott has to say about writing in his 10th anniversary post:
Writing is a full-body cognitive workout. And reps matter more than talent. Amen!
I may never get to 430K subscribers. Or even 43. But the process is good for my brain. And my heart.
Writing is becoming a lost art. You don’t have to be a pro to give it a go, though.
A good place to start is Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages”:
You can learn more in Julia’s book The Artis’s Way. Or you can just do the morning pages.
Mrs. Dubbatrubba and I were supposed to be winging our way to Minneapolis tomorrow, along with our friends Heather, Shawn, Celene, John, another John, (not from They Might Be Giants*), Jon (not at all confusing), Kelsi, Ashley, and a few more folks who are friends of John or John (but not Jon).
We were going to do a 200-mile 12-person relay race:
“Crisp lakes, quaint towns… shaded bike path trails…” sounds delightful, doesn’t it? (OK, other than the 200 miles of running. And to be clear, I’m using the royal “we” – I was just going to drive one of the two support vans.)
We were all set. John (not John) booked the VRBO, the hotel rooms, and rented the vans. John (other john) mapped out the relay legs and all the other logistics.
We’ve run Ragnar races before – they organize the Bourbon Chase in Kentucky and other round-the-clock team relay runs all over the country.
But apparently NOT in Minnesota.
Ragnar cancelled the race on July 13th. Less than four weeks before it was supposed to happen. For… “reasons”…
Sorry, but that’s pretty lame. (And quite nebulous… my guess is they didn’t get enough entries.)
How about “exhausting every available option” BEFORE you collect every team’s entry fee. And if you have to pull the plug, how about offering a full refund to anyone who wants it, instead of just offering a “transfer package” to another Ragnar race. (Sorry, but once bitten, twice shy.)
And because they cancelled less than 30 days before the event, our fun bunch is on the hook for a 50% cancellation fee from the VRBO cabin we rented for after the race. That’s $1800 down the drain. (Unless someone else rents the cabin – I hear Duluth is lovely in August.)
And of course all of us booked flights too. Most had a cancellation fee. Mrs. Dubbatrubba and I were able to get our fee waived and got a full flight credit, but that’s not the same as cash in our pocket. Not to mention the headache and hassle of trying to contact the airline and plead our case.
That’s just for our baker’s dozen. Every other team that signed up has been dealing with similar challenges.
For a race that was supposed to end on Lake Superior, the Ragnar experience has been decidedly inferior.
I know stuff happens. But there was a better way. Ragnar could’ve taken a page from the Kickstarter book – their campaigns are all-or-nothing, and you don’t get charged unless the goal is reached.
In short, Ragnar needed to get their ducks in a row before advertising their “crisp lakes.” Instead, every member of every team is dealing with the headaches, hassles and doo-doo they created.
If you’re considering doing a Ragnar relay, please reconsider.
*They Might Be Giants is a band featuring John Linnell and John Flansburgh…
“Tom Tomorrow” is a darn funny political cartoonist. He puts out a weekly cartoon/comic strip called This Modern World.
It’s actually a single-panel cartoon, but it’s usually subdivided into 6 frames. It’s always amusing, and unfortunately these days, it seems less like satire and more like reality. Here’s his cartoon from last week:
“Tom” (a.k.a. Dan Perkins) has some serious bona fides too:
“Tom Tomorrow’s sharp and iconic work embodies the higher purpose of political cartooning: holding powerful figures to account using satire grounded in good journalism,” the Berryman Award judges said.
(from the article linked above)
I used to read This Modern World in CityBeat, Cincinnati’s alt-weekly. But times are tough in the print biz, and Tom’s strip has been dropped by a lot of alt-weeklies due to budget constraints. You can check it out for free at Daily Kos, but a better way to reward his art is to subscribe to his weekly newsletter, “Sparky’s List,” which includes the weekly cartoon, some commentary on the artwork, and Dan’s personal observations.
You can subscribe to “Sparky’s List” for as little as $20 a year.
A single Jackson a year for a weekly dose of humor from Tomorrow? Totally worth it in This Modern World!
Thomas G Kuhl on Get on the bus!: “I am glad that bus keeps circling………” Sep 8, 03:37
Kevin Sullivan on The full-brain workout: “Yep, keep writing .. in your voice. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-writing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4VA.JFCf.Lr_UK5tlpBRR&smid=url-share” Aug 10, 10:57
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