Conservation of Life Force

dwiseman mentioned that some people are polite and civilized, but because of the way they act, may be unknowingly "extracting positive life force from those who will let them."

I think that's an interesting way to look at things. Many years ago when I was first starting NITI, someone I know referred to such people as "hangers-on" and warned me to avoid them - the people who are friendly and supportive, but don't really add anything to what you're doing. They just want to be pulled along with your momentum.

There are lots of people like that. The question is really: do you really have a limited amount of positive energy to share? Does sharing it with someone really mean you have less of it left over? If someone can be happier because they can bask in the warm glow left by other people around them, is that a problem?

I decided it's not a problem for me. People who get in my way - they're a problem. People who just play along and enjoy the show - at worst, they can be safely ignored.

But if you let them get to you - if you start to feel like these harmless people are "stealing" energy from you - that's when you start to lose your energy. But it's not them, it's the way you think about them, and thinking that way is what demotivates you. The good news is the way you think is in your control, not theirs.

I think of it this way instead: how can making someone else's life better possibly be a bad thing?

(Must... resist... urge... to compare... life energy... to MP3s...)

RSS Housekeeping

To appease the whiners I have updated my copy of NITLog to produce valid RSS 2.0, including If-Modified-Since and a GUID field. That was interesting: I've never implemented If-Modified-Since in a script before. The auto-title-sucking algorithm has also changed again to rip all the subtitles, not just the first one. I hope that doesn't confuse your RSS reader too much.