Your book recommendations

Thanks to everyone who got back to me with awesome reading recommendations! Now that I've fixed the email forwarding issue, I was able to collect a selection of those writings and have put them together for you here, along with links to enjoy them. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World by Jeremy Rifkin

Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living A Good Life by Mark Manson

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Where Do We Go From Here by Martin Luther King (delivered on August 16th, 1967 at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention in Atlanta, Ga. - not a book, it's a speech. And it's awesome.)

Thank you all for participating. I envision more opportunities for us to come together and collectively & easily build resources for one another. More details to come..........

I'm a dum dum, my bad!

I just realized that I wasn't receiving your responses to my emails over the past few months! My bad! Maybe I thought you guys were being quiet? Who knows! Anyway, I wanted to apologize in case anyone wondered why they never heard back from me. I like being super responsive with my list, or at least thought I did, lol.

I'll get back to you promptly from now on. The email forwarding snafu has been fixed. I promise.

Thanks for reading, please share posts on social media when you love them via the buttons below, and I look forward to what 2017 brings.

Stay up!!!

P.s. I've started scheduling time with the 5 people who reached out to take me up on my 30-minute strategy session freebie! I'm looking forward to learning more about what you guys are working on.

Hopeful haze

As the calendar flips over, many tend to think about making positive change in the year ahead. For all the focus areas of improvement one could identify, for me it's about intentionality in my relationships, focus in projects, and making time to get mentally and physically fit. For as much as we can get bogged down by the daily grind, I'm feeling good about this renewed sense of optimism. As the hopeful haze fades in the coming weeks and months, and it surely will, the question is less about how to maintain the discipline to meet and exceed every single one of our goals, and more about what we do to remain hopeful.

Pessimism is the heaviest of non-starters, immediately vanquishing possibility and leaning back on reduction.

But how do we remind ourselves that optimism is the only clear choice?

More importantly, how do you hit the energetic restart button? I'd love to know. I'm trying to build those skills.

Recommend a book?

As we all downshift into sweatpants & leftovers, I'm hoping to make time for some reading. I'm currently working on Questlove's Mo-Meta Blues, as well as Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between The World and Me. I've got plenty of art books I could meander through but inevitably my favorite reads are suggestions from friends.

So... got any great book recommendations for me?

Just reply with the title or a link, thanks!

What activates you?

New York City. I was just there for 5 days and it always energizes me. It tops me up, keeps me hungry, and inspires me. The art, the food, the pace, the sounds, the smells, the vibrance, the grit, the texture. It's a multicultural, extrasensory kaleidoscope and I love it.

I walked as much as possible, listened to the new Tribe record constantly, took some fun photos, and drank enough espresso to fuel an army.

The feel that worlds are constantly colliding or perhaps more aptly, dancing together is one that moves me.

Whether it's NYC or any other place, idea, concept, community, practice, ethos or state of mind, it's essential that we find the things that activate us.

What activates you?

Superpowers

These times we live in remind me that my pen is a pistola, a microphone, a beacon, an opportunity, a way of being, a light, and a superpower I must rededicate myself to beyond these pages.

I'm not saying this to toot my own horn - it's about being honest with myself and all of you as to how I can best contribute.

How do you gleam? How do you serve best?

What way of being do you possess that is especially needed right now?

Ask your friends, ask your mentors, ask the people that you feel see you as you truly are. We all need each others superpowers more than ever.

23 to 1

What is often called corruption in equatorial nations is referred to as "lobbying" in the United States. Leave it to us to whitewash something that is explicitly about purchasing the favor of government officials thus circumventing the electorate. "For every member of Congress in 2011, there were 23 registered Washington lobbyists. 535 senators and representatives; 12,719 lobbyists."

That's 23 to 1. Twenty three men and women buying dinners and writing checks for every ONE elected government official.

If you're interested in the growth in lobbyist spending, top spending corporations, top lobbying firms, top spending industries, and more, you can view that here.

I'd ask a rhetorical question now but that feels facile. You know what the problem is.

We is everyone

It's a lot easier to blame someone when we don't relate to them. It's just cleaner. No need to question ourselves or those in our camp. Even though we always should.

No need to wonder how we could show up more fully next time. Even though it's worthwhile.

The thing is, the flames of division have been fanned, making it hard to look at our own shortcomings. When we feel attacked or our equality undermined, we rarely give in to logic or reason.

We is everyone, it's just hard to see sometimes.

Please, vote

Our democracy is certainly flawed, but it's imperfections do not justify apathy. There has been a lot of false equivalence floating around this election, and as a progressive neither mainstream candidate truly suits me. The thing is, it's not just about me.

It's about all of us. It's about how one of the options will affect everyone.

You don't have to love either option, but you do need to be discerning about the actual policies, and how scary one of these options truly is.

I certainly have my own opinion (I voted for Hillary Clinton) but I'm not here to convince you how to vote. That said, I do think that standing on the sidelines is the best way to make sure none of the problems you care about are solved. And sometimes, it means things get worse.

In this case that means.... please, vote.

Thank you + cleaning house

Hey everyone! I want to take this opportunity to thank you for being a part of these ideas. For those of you who read these writings regularly, it really means a lot to me. I wanted you to know that.

I also want to thank the folks who check it out once in a while, and the people who have barely opened it at all, lol.

That said, I want to get into the annual habit of cleaning up this list. The last thing I want to do is be a nuisance, and I like the idea of an engaged readership and only sending these writings to people who want them.

I don't want to be part of junk in your inbox.

Because of that, I'm going to unsubscribe any email addresses that have opened these less than 20% of the time. Email inboxes can get out of hand without me adding to the problem, so I'm gonna tidy up and make sure that these questions, ideas, strategies, and reflections aren't adding to the noise.

I'm glad you're a part of this, and please feel free to respond if any of these pieces are particularly valuable, helpful, or fun for you. I'd love to hear why.

Thanks again for joining me.

Pole position (a reminder)

The one thing in which we have utter pole position is being ourselves. No one else is Evan La Ruffa, just like no one else is you. So why not fully embrace our greatest differentiator?

As someone managing a nonprofit & working on various other projects, there are always a lot of variables.

Things changing shape and size, shooting star projects that end quickly, waiting for approvals or funding, artists to wrangle, and all sorts of varying timelines, quantities, & plans.

Within that, I often experience utter confidence and extreme doubt. Sometimes in the same day.

The question at the top of this piece isn't about an open platitude, it's about processing the day to day in a way that hopefully yields insight and camaraderie for all of us.

Managing the uncertainty is about knowing that betting on ourselves makes a lot more sense when we're showing our true colors & thinking strategically.

Pole position + working smarter = what's up.

(a reminder)

Back at it + a question for you

You might have been surprised to get a newsletter from me recently after a two month hiatus. I've been pushing on a few projects that I'm excited to have made progress on (which I'll tell you about soon), but I'm also stoked to get back to sharing and exploring with all of you.

I've been writing despite the slow publishing, so I've got plenty of nuggets to share & questions to ask.

In the meantime, I have a question for you and I'd love it if you took a second to reply... but no sweat if nothing comes to mind.

What's the coolest, most edifying, or interesting article, story, or book you've read this summer? It can be about anything, from self-driving cars to a feature on synchronized swimming at the Rio Olympics! 

I'll get back to you soon and enjoy the end of summer!

Be kind, stay curious...

- Ev

P.s. If you like art, photography, travel, great coffee, insane food & smiles, I'd love it if you'd follow me on Instagram. I just got back from New York and a camping trip at Chain O Lakes near Antioch, IL, so there's plenty of street art and sunsets to peruse.

Drastically upping our game

What I find wild about getting somewhere, is that it just gives us more work to do (if we're willing to accept the challenge of drastically upping our game.) Whether a new realization about strategy, to a philosophical breakthrough that brings us to a new place with something emotionally, trying to be better is a commitment.

It means:

A) Forgiving ourselves for not realizing our latest evolution until now.

B) That this will happen again, because moving from not knowing to knowing is a cycle, and

C) That exponential growth is only possible if we're open to it...

... and that being open to what we'd like to change about ourselves means getting the chance to do exactly that.

Thirsty for music?

One of my projects is writing editorial pieces for Mode Media, and I love it because I can write about anything I want. As a dude of many persuasions, it's an awesome way for me to not only comment on, but explore my areas of interest even more in-depth. My most recent piece is entitled 8 Albums Released in 2016 You Need to Stream Now.

If you're thirsty for new music, go get yourself some.

And in the inimitable words of the A Tribe Called Quest guide whose voice is featured at the beginning & end of various tracks on Midnight Marauders, 'keep bouncing.'

Dadness... & other wild reality shifts

On May 24th, 2016 at 2:32pm, Enzo Fox La Ruffa was born. In that moment, Lindsey and I became parents, and the axis of our world shifted. I mentioned to at least a few people in the lead-up to Enzo being born that I was excited to not be the focus of my ego's attention. Until now, sense of self had always only applied to me.

My autonomy, perspective, and purpose has shifted forever. If I was driven before, I really can't wait to see what I get into now. My life feels classified into two era's: pre-Enzo and The Era of Enzo.

It's amazing how a single event, person, realization, or shift can envelope an entire portion of our lives.

I'm excited to see what this chapter has in store.

Write it down

It's not an idea until you write it down. You have to capture it. As someone who has self-identified as a writer for a long time, I sure haven't written things down enough.

Not that I haven't worked on diverse projects writing editorial and copy for all sorts of applications, I have. But there's also so much that has been sparked and gone undone because of a failure to write it down.

We can't turn ideas into things unless we activate them.

In the think, speak, do sequence, your pen is a pistola.

Be on the lookout

Anytime something has come my way, I was open to it. I haven't created all my breaks, far from it, but I have had open arms when those opportunities presented themselves, or been adventurous enough to extend myself for something I might have otherwise thought was unreachable. Whether the forest for the trees, the mirage on the horizon, the unsent email, the unmade call, or the help not offered, they all have to do with failing to adjust our focus. By zooming in and out, we remind ourselves of the opportunities between mile markers.

I don't know about you, but I wanna do it all. I better be on the lookout.

Intelligent or insightful?

What's of more use, intelligent or insightful? When you want to be right, intelligent is better. When you want to figure out what works, it's insightful all the way.

Time spent, impact created, value added

Up, up, up? Close, but not quite. Down, down, up? Nah, that's not it either. Up, up, down? Surely, not. Down, up, up? There we go, now we got it!

It seems like efficiency, mission, and solutions should be our focus. Less time spent, more impact created, more value added. We gotta work smarter.

I'm finding it's all about proportionality. The more targeted we get, the closer we get to down, up, up.

Being present

Over dinner last night, the topic of distraction and the present moment came up. We were mostly referring to the pace and self-importance so closely ascribed to people who are never where they are. If I'm talking to someone, they're thinking about their next or last meeting. If I'm on the phone with them, they're clearly working on other things at the same time. If I send them an email, they glance at it and miss the meaning.

Our increased digitality has made this balance harder to achieve, which means we just have more opportunities to work on being present.

As I venture into fatherhood, I keep on reminding myself that lack of presence on my part isn't an option. And as important as being a dad is, this level of care for the people we communicate with, even if they aren't our children, is paramount.

We can feel when someone isn't there with us, and it sucks.

Here's to keeping our phone in our pocket when other humans are our present.