TTT 19: I Was Wrong
Hi friends,
இரவு வணக்கம் (iravu vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening from New York City!
Thing I did
Most people forget 99% of what they learn during a conversation in a foreign language.
I came up with a strategy to combat this. A few weeks back, I shared my struggles recording my Tamil conversations with family. I bit the bullet and upgraded my Zoom account to Pro to get the recording functionality.
After the calls, I reviewed the recordings and noted where I learned something new or made a mistake. I turned each one into its own TikTok and published the first one!
If I were immersed in a Tamil speaking community, naturally I’d get enough repetitions to overcome the lossiness.
But I am not immersed. And not everyone can be immersed. So how can we overcome this gap?
I am excited to see how this affects my trajectory towards sounding smoother :)
Tweet I loved
I’ve always struggled to write hooks.
I always assumed if there was value in the body, the reader would find it. But if the intro is weak, they’ll never get there. It seems obvious in hindsight; but I overlooked this for years.
Luckily, Dickie Bush shared 6 proven hooks for me to refer from.
If you made it this far, you can thank Dickie :)
Thought I had
I’ve never had a decent landlord.
My 1st landlord stole our entire deposit. My 2nd landlord led us to believe we renewed the lease and then evicted us. My 3rd landlord brought painters into our house while I was at work and my laptop was stolen.
My current landlord let the ceiling above the shower collapse 6 weeks after I’d reported worsening water damage over 12 times.
My current landlord is a certifiable piece of shit.
This is not an exhaustive list of the shit sandwiches my landlord has dealt me. You’d think after 15 years of always paying on the 1st of the month I’d get better service. But I usually get behavior that’s straight up illegal.
It would be easy for me to conclude that all landlords are slumlords.
It would be easy for me to conclude that the systemic pressures of landlording necessitate this illegal behavior
It’s more likely that my landlords viewed my rental units as ATMs, not investments.
Big thanks to Louie Bacaj’s recent newsletter, In Defense of Real Estate Investing, for opening my eyes to a landlord with integrity.
There is tremendous honor in operating any system with high integrity. I do this daily with software systems, writing, and learning new languages. I was not extending this courtesy to owning and operating a building.
The first step to improving is admitting you were wrong.
I'd love to hear any feelings you felt while reading this and until next time - be easy.
Love,
Janahan
P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter, feel free to forward this email to your people or share this link. It'll encourage me to keep writing!