TheListServe Blog

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things An experiment: please write to me at helenfromthelistserve[AT]gmail.com if this poem matters to you in some way. Helen helenfromthelistserve[AT]gmail.com Palo Alto, CA

1. Yesterday, I did the math. I tallied up the hours spent in a cramped room with a laptop surrounded by people doing the same. If my job’s based on 160-hour months, then so far this year I’ve worked through June. It was 8 pm. I almost fell asleep in the elevator. This is leading to something. I'm counting all this time spent 26 floors up as time spent with my head scraping the sky. I have to. 2. My last cigarette ever was in the Mojave desert, bathing in moonlight halfway up the Kelso Dunes with a Mag-Lite and a bottle of scotch. I felt small, quiet, so I promised to myself that I’d reach the summit someday when I’m not off an overnight Vegas bender, with proper gear and a lung cleaner of tar. That was New Year's. 3. I could never see myself living in New York. I’ve got so many ghosts in New York. Hell, everyone’s got ghosts in New York. Chicago’s a smaller, cleaner take on that city, brutally cold but with humble Midwestern charm. The spring may thaw, but this winter softened...

I spent most of my life believing that if you were gay, you must have known it from a young age. Most of the coming-out stories I had heard involved always feeling different and just knowing that you were, most definitely, not straight. I believed this until about three years ago. Three years ago, I found myself in a social group of mostly gay women and whenever I was asked if I was gay, I said no. This was not a lie. I have self identified as straight my whole life…I’ve had crushes on boys since I was in elementary school and I’ve had many dates, boyfriends, lovers, etc. Maybe it didn’t always work out and maybe I didn’t find ‘the one’, but I loved men and I never had a crush on a girl…so I was straight, obviously. Right? Well, no, not exactly. When I first met her, I just couldn’t stop staring. Soon we started talking and I felt compelled to always be near her. Anytime we were in a group of friends, I had to stand near her. It felt almost subconscious, this desire to be around her. ...

Hi Listserve!!!!!!! Do me a favor. Take a minute and think of everything good in your life. You are blessed beyond measure when you count the simple things. 1. (A little about me) I was born and raised in Northwest Indiana. I recently graduated from Purdue with a full scholarship, a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Management, excessive experience and a dream of being a CEO since I knew what one was. I want this because I want to change the world for the better and impact a multitude of lives. 2. (Something that I’m passionate about) I have a deep fascination and love for solar technology. I hope to one day create a thermostat-like device that measures the solar footprint of a house/building and allocates energy from solar panels my company has installed in effective locations. My company would then buy the excess output and allocate it to those that need greater amounts of energy. I would also like to target the automotive industry. Electric cars are not reasonable to many because th...

I have a secret. A secret marriage. A year ago my husband and I just popped down to the Chicago courthouse and said our “I Do’s.” But was that’s it, we didn’t share it with everyone else, I didn’t tell my coworkers or friends or family. We don’t pick out colors, menus or spend $60,000 on a wedding. We don’t wear rings, but at home he’s my husband. It’s our marriage. And it’s turned out quite nice. But it did not start that way. See my boyfriend is an immigrate, which has left our lives limited in many ways. We were backed into a corner by the government, if we wanted to continue date we needed to get married or he would have to leave the country. So many people face situations like this in their lives. A shit or get off the pot moment. This was mine. We had been dating and living together and knew that marriage would be down the road but we did not feel ready to “be married.” So we filed our marriage license and deepened our commitment to each other. It’s been a stressful year,...

I can't believe I won this; I haven't been to Thailand yet. I find myself pretty jaded and cynical about the listserv emails. The advice and life's lessons that get bandied about are often naive, under-informed, or one-sided. You can't really start your life until you've backpacked across Tanzania on a kangaroo's back. How did that kangaroo get to Tanzania? It swam. Obviously. TV likes to talk about midlife crises a lot. Or at least it did in the 80s and 90s, when we didn't have amazing prestige television. I'm almost 37, which is ancient to many of you, young to a few. For me, it's definitely not a midlife crisis, it's more of a midlife malaise. I'm solidly living the American middle class dream, such as it is. But I still really don't know what to do with my life. I'm clearly in no place to give you life advice. The things I know I should do, but probably won't: Exercise more. Drink less. Be more patient with my kids. Stop procr...

When I got the email that I won the lottery, I spoke to a few people and asked them what they would write. My dad said something in particular that sparked the “aha” moment in me. He said, “What is it that you think about before you fall asleep?” A little about me. I’m 23, born + raised in Vancouver, Canada. I spent about 3 years in Montreal, Quebec - living, working, learning French. A year after I graduated high school, 2011, my parents bought me a ticket to Montreal to visit a friend, who was studying @ McGill. I instantly fell in love with the city (middle of February in Eastern Canada, mind you). I expressed an interest in revisiting the city to my mother and brother. On my way to the airport, with 4% battery life on my phone, my brother calls me up and tells me: “If you like it over there so much, why don’t you stay? I’ll throw you $250 tonight if you don’t board your flight. I’ll even pay for your first months rent. Then you’re on you’re own.” I didn’t even have enough money to ...

“OMG I won the pressure is so and i don’t know what to 28000 people will be oh my god zoh my God” -- everybody A quick story about my childhood - there's no advice or anything in it, I promise. I mean I think diva cups are probably a good idea too, and you should good will hunting the duck out of your carpe diem you kings of Maine, but that’s getting really boring. This is about the biggest decision I ever had to make. I had a great job with a great company making great money and I left all that to become a “tugboat captain” This is the story of that journey... The day before I decided to give up being a sysadmin for BuzzFeed started as one of the best days of my life. It began with a pod of dolphins and a few shrimp boats on the horizon & ended with the most amazing fireworks show in the sky. I laid on the deck of my tug staring into the heavens identifying constellations & watching shooting stars for hours. Tonight was different. I wasn’t yet comfortable enough with my ...

I’d like to share a great success story involving a problem (and solution) you probably have never heard of. First, some background. Most people I know (at least those who live in the US) never give a moment’s thought about their access to a basic resource: clean water. For them, it’s abundant, cheap, and safe to drink. That’s not the case in many other parts of the world. Millions of people do NOT have a reliable source of safe water, despite charities and foundations spending huge sums attempting to solve this problem. When their solutions don’t work, there’s often a common cause: they may be based on technology that is inappropriate or unsustainable outside the developed world, and they often ignore or don’t understand the social and economic context in which they’re going to be used. Thus, a new well and pump may provide water to a village for a while, until the pump breaks, and nobody is responsible for fixing it, and nobody knows how or has access to the parts and tools they woul...

I don't believe in luck but sometimes the universe throws us a bone and balances life out. Today was one of those days. I woke up in a good mood only to have it momentarily crushed when I arrived to work and my Mac died. Two and a half years of work suddenly gone (well not technically, but you catch my drift). After finally giving up and letting it be, I check my email and found out I wont the listserve. I am never one to win lotteries, sweepstakes, or anything where luck is involved; clearly I was elated. I thought that I would always know what to say if I ever did win. I probably had it all typed out and here I am looking at the screen trying to figure out what to say to 20K subscribers. Here's a little insight to my life currently: The day before starting my second part-time job as a waitress (hey, Brokelyn is expensive), my boyfriend of four years and I broke up. It's a song and dance we've been doing since the beginning of our relationship but I have no hopes or de...

Hi there, I have always had this thought in my mind, there is no better place to validate it than Listserve, here it goes. Is everyone good in this world? Right from childhood, we always categorize people into two groups, the good guys, the bad guys and you. People whom we like are good and they are presumed to have good deeds and there is this bad people. Let us say, you become friends with one of those bad guys, then you realize that they are not bad, they have reasons behind their actions and they seems good to you now. I have wondered, what if we get to know every bad person, then will they all look good to you after you become their friends? How come we never label the people whom we know as bad or how come our vision changes when we know them. Does that mean everyone in this world is good and it is only our perception? Take Fast and Furious movie for example, (if you have not seen that, then take any movie/book where the protagonist is a bad guy, who steals/robs/kills etc). How d...

It’s funny, because I feel like my life has been full of surprises lately. In 30 days, I'm moving from NYC to Boston, which isn't that big of a deal geographically speaking. But it's unusual because I made this decision on my own which is rare for humans today. I'm taking my job with me, because I can. I'm not moving for a guy-- as so many of my peers assume. As soon as I made the decision to do this, it all started to fall into place. So it’s par for the course I won the listserve right now. 7 thoughts: 1. Today alone, on my way into work I saw a cat on a leash and a woman rollerblading into a Home Depot. All before 9:30am: only in NYC. 2. When I was about 8 years old, the 'bad boy' in elementary school went around asking all the girls if they were 'still virgins'... and the thing is, I thought a 'virgin' and a 'vegetarian' were the same thing... so when I shouted 'NO' back because I REALLY love cheeseburgers, things got ...

[TW: Sexual assault] Almost exactly one year ago, a show I wrote and directed, called Morning After, opened at my college. The play is about sexual assault on college campuses, and it was inspired by my own rape in the fall of 2012. In honor of the show’s anniversary, I went back and reread everything I could find from the production process. One of the things I uncovered was my director’s note, and I want to share part of it with you all here: “Morning After is my reaction to a national dialogue that too often focuses on the act of violence itself rather than the aftermath. It is a response to the numerous plays I read that depicted sexual assault survivors as broken and defeated rather than working to feel better. It is my challenge to a culture that continues to blame victims instead of the perpetrators, and that shames survivors into silence. Most of all, it is my attempt to do what I previously thought was impossible: turning a traumatic experience into a personal triumph. An imp...

“To go it alone or to go with a partner? When you choose a partner, you have to make compromises and sacrifices, but it’s a price you pay. Do I want to follow my every whim and desire as I make my way through space and time? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, do I need someone when I’m doubting myself and I’m insecure and my heart’s failing me? Do I need someone, who, when the heat gets hot, has my back?” “So…do you?” “I do.” Here we are again, although I have never written in this exact setting. We are both right here, so close, but also incredibly far away. As far as you are concerned, I’m probably not even here. I don’t know why I continue to try, but here I am anyways. Because, I continue to be an idiot. I’ll keep on living with the false hopes of someday requiting this unrequited crush. And deep down, I know it’s foolish. That I keep glancing and hoping that this time it’ll be different, while you are possibly oblivious and texting someone else. Laugh...

Hey there! Can’t believe I actually won the listserve! I’m a 22 yo marketer who moved to San Francisco last year. Startup culture is pretty amazing, but I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in ourselves that we miss the bigger picture. Here are some of my ideas on running a great startup: 1. Make a 10x improvement. The world doesn’t need another messaging app. Sure, messaging apps like FB Messenger, Line, and WhatsApp are the craze of the moment, but I’d much rather start something like Theranos (their lab technology could save the US healthcare system ~$200 billion over 10 years). 2. Always put people first. Both for customers and employees, putting people first might be more expensive in the short-term, but it always pays off in the long run. It’s easy to focus on the numbers, but invest the time to build a humble, transparent company culture. 3. Don’t be mediocre. Lots of companies can build pretty decent products, but the really epic experiences are fairly rare. I recently h...

I have thought and thought about this opportunity to write for the Listserve several times. Each time I thought I would write something long and touching. Not necessarily profound, but maybe a story or a piece of writing I have locked away on my computer. I used to be a writer, or at least I wanted to be. Now it feels like a life I never lived. But, of course, I win the lottery at the worst time, the busiest time of my life. For the past two years I have been planning and building a restaurant. By no means should it have taken this long, but it has. The lottery win didn’t come two years ago, a year ago, or even last week when I was waiting for construction to end. No, it has come today, when construction is finally complete, and I have finally passed all three required inspections. It means that I can announce my Grand Opening date today. It means that I have so much more work to do. So I part with an invitation to my Grand Opening event. If you live in the Bay Area and love fantastic ...

One Saturday last summer, I had a stretch of Fifth Avenue in New York City all to myself. It was the day of my favorite race, the Fifth Avenue Mile, where runners sprint from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Grand Army Plaza. Since I was training for a marathon and had to run 12 more miles that day, I decided to go easy. I wasn’t going to race. I positioned myself at the very back of the field, knowing that everyone else was going to go out hard. After a block, I was completely by myself. As I ran, I watched all of the other runners get farther and farther away. I wondered, what did the spectators and other runners think of me, falling back so quickly, going so slowly? Did anyone think that I simply wasn’t capable of running faster? Did I look fat? Were people wondering why I signed up for this race at all? Then I noticed another runner on the west side of Fifth Avenue. He ran slowly, hunched over, using a walker to help him balance. A woman was walking alongside him, talk...

HOLY SHIT I WON THE LISTSERVE. I'll cut the crap, this is my story. My life took a complete change for the better when I took matters into my own hands. I was always a bright kid and at the insistence of my parents I went to the university, put myself in debt, and got a BA in a field that I wasn't too crazy about, Psychology. Had it been up to me, I would've studied art. After I graduated I was burnt out from school and I knew I didn't want to pursue Psychology any further. So I did what any other angsty, passionate twenty-something year old does and ran away into the wilderness. Yeah, actually, what I did was I picked up a seasonal job and spent the next five months living, working, and exploring in Yosemite National Park. To say it rejuvenated my spirit is a complete understatement, I not only had a national park as my playgrounds and backyard, I was in YOSEMITE. I was hiking, having a great time, and taking photographs of my adventures along the way and the scenic la...

I'm a 46-year-old woman, married with an eight-year-old son. I'm funny and talented and extremely creative. I have a rewarding career in the nonprofit world. I'm also autistic. Autism is a difficult concept to grasp unless you're living with it or dealing with someone close to you who has it. Most people are quite uncertain about what it actually is; they just know that it's something really, really bad. That's because autism is a very wide spectrum, and it's nearly impossible to paint an accurate picture with just a short definition or soundbyte. So I'd like to paint a picture of what autism looks like for me. I've always been "different." Quirky. Odd. When I was a baby, I crawled backwards. I'm hyperlexic; I started reading at age 2 (yes - really). Before I was diagnosed, I used to say that I felt like I was "born without skin." You know how, if you hurt yourself and abrade away the outermost layer of your skin, suddenly eve...

The best words are generally actions, so when I got the "You've won!" yesterday I decided to make us all a present instead of a lecture. You can open it at thelistserves dot com. Seriously. Check it out. It's for you. But as long as I've got anoJSON! 559 words... Why'd you make this? --------------------- Because, man, what happened to the listserve? "What would you say to a million people?" That was the (super excellent) idea three years ago when it launched and popped up to ~20k subscribers. Since then ... since then I've gotten way too much fluffy life advice. And we're still at ~20k subscribers. Occasionally there's some really good stuff on here (The Dark Room was neat, and the Summary of changes, and probably others I missed) and I want to discuss them with listserve people. But there's no way to do it. This present is a place where we can get together after an email comes out. Props to Simon Weber for encoding past emails as JS...

I love reading books. I read a lot. Basically I can't imagine a single day without reading at least one page.I've learned to read when I was four. I was seeing my mom immersed in some book - It fascinated me (though I didn't know the word "fascination" back then). Slowly, letter by letter, I was putting together first words and sentences. I was reading. No one will take this joy from me. neither back then, nor now. Thanks to the books I was able to experience a lot - to be afraid, to feel joy, to despair, to know a lot about the world and simply spent good time reading. From this passion, my first blog came to life. There I share my thoughts about books I read & I promote reading. If you would like to share with me about you favourite book or one that had impression on you or changed your life - feel free to write to me. Or maybe you could recommend me some authors from your country (with some explanation). I will write about it on my blog and read the lecture...

I'm writing this with 2 hours left to respond to the email informing me of winning the ListServe. I feel like I'm back in school writing an essay the morning it's due. I am going to publish an audio version of this email on my podcast - just search for "Goodstuff Daily(ish) 85". I'm often interested in the voice of a person behind a story or article so if you're like me and would prefer to listen, here's your opportunity. For Lent this year I gave up using my personal Twitter account. It wasn't done in some grand, dramatic statement over the evilness of Twitter - just a desire to see what kind of effect it was having on my day to day thoughts and ideas. (You can hear my thoughts on this from another podcast I was on by searching for "Goodstuff Grown-ups 17".) And I have to say that despite feeling like a Twitter addict - in the best sense of the word - it wasn't as difficult to stop using Twitter as I thought it would be. The main ben...

A five-sentence story: I spent 5 summers as a camp counselor. One summer I arrived a few weeks late and met two awesome female counselors who already had a great friendship. I clicked with them both almost instantly, and soon all three of us seemed to be hanging out every chance we got. I was drawn and romantically attracted to both of them, but I "knew", as far as romance was concerned, I had to “pick” just one of them, even though it felt in some ways arbitrary, especially since we all got along together so well. Why did I have to “pick"? After more than 7 years of reading, thinking, and experiences after that, I came to recognize myself as polyamorous. Polyamory (poly for short) is the belief/feeling/act of having multiple loving relationships, loving multiple people at the same time. Polyamory is usually contrasted with monogamy. Polyamory is distinct from other non-monogamous forms because of its focus on relationships, not just sex with other people. Additionally, ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Intro Part 1 - Pick your passion Part 2 - Keyword Research ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part 3 - Creating Content Now that you have Picked Your Passions and Discovered what people are searching for online – it is time to create content! When you are writing content for your blog, this is your time to shine! This is when you get share your passions, visions and knowledge with the world. Let people know who you are! 2 Purposes of Content 1 - Give Value 2 - Be Entertaining People pay hundreds of dollars a year to go the movies to be entertained and thousands of dollars a year to go to college to get the value of education. These are 2 example, but people spend $100,000s on these 2 things alone. Keep in Mind - If you did your keyword research correctly, People are searching the internet for the informati...

Hello, The reason why I read the Listserve emails is not for the stories, the anecdotes, the new insights or the advice. What interests me is the question: what do people write when they have the chance to say something to a lot of people? And, why do they choose that particular topic? If I were to summarize the different responses people gave over the years, I would say that they most often use one of the following forms: this is what I do, this is who I am, this happened to me, this is what I love, this helped me, this could help you, this is funny or this tastes very good. So, what does this say about us? Well, frankly, I don't know. What I do know is that I miss one kind of category. This category entails emails about the Listserve itself. No lengthy discussion on this peculiar, virtual platform. No comprehensive study on the way people answer the Listserve's request. Don't worry, I am not going to start now, but it is kind of interesting, isn't it? I, for one, alwa...

As a deaf person in the United States, I live in a kind of deaf world where I can see different communities and individuals interact and clash and collaborate, where I can see deaf accomplishments and struggles shared on a daily basis. It makes me wonder how much a hearing person knows about any of this if they only have a secondhand impression of deaf people. There's so much that goes on, and I hope to provide some insight in this email. To be Deaf, with a capital D, is to see one's deafness as a cultural trait instead of as a disability. (Hence the term "Deaf culture".) Today, there are hearing aids and cochlear implants that treat hearing loss, but before this technology, sign language was (and still is) the linchpin of Deaf people. The advent of this technology has led to a clash of perspectives: disability vs. cultural. Hearing people see deafness as a disability that needs to be fixed. Deaf people do not see deafness as a disability to be fixed. These differing ...