A list of Beatnik Radio Approved Reads…
Turn off the computer, TV, phone, iPad, iTouch, radio…and read.
This book changed my life. I was working a job that I should not have been working. It did not fit my personality and just wasn’t working out. It was a good job but it was not what I really wanted to do. Know the feeling? I read this book and my mind was blown. I couldn’t figure out how this guy Dan was reading my thoughts and feelings and we had never met. I soon realized that it was because I was not alone. Mr. Miller was just channeling his 17 years as a career coach into this book. All the experiences, thoughts, feelings and emotions from thousands of people where are in this book. I realized that I was not alone, not crazy and that finding my true path in life was the right thing to do. I quit my job.
Thinking of making a career move or starting your own business? Dan is the man. Here is my favorite paragraph, a paragraph that I read out loud at the very first Brain Hurricane meeting. (the super-secret master mind group that I host)
But what if you are one of today’s growing number of self-employed individuals? Then who cheers you on? Who guides you? Who tells you how to be successful and when to show up for work? Do your former coworkers, bosses, family, and friends encourage you, or do they think you are crazy to want to go out on your own? Do they admire you determination, or do they tell you that what you want to do is not practical or realistic? When problems arise, will they be sympathetic? After all, you chose to leave the security, predictability, and stability of a “real job.” -Dan Miller 48 Days to the Work You Love pg 151
Thanks again Dan!
- Essential Essay’s
About the Book
Minimalism: Essential Essays is an edited collection of 29 of our favorite essays about living a more meaningful life with less stuff. This 133-page collection also contains a special forward by Joshua and Ryan, as well as two bonus essays you can’t find anywhere else.
The book is organized into seven interconnected themes:
- Living in the Moment
- Emotional Health
- Growth
- Contribution
- Passion and Mission
- Taking Action
- Change and Experimentation
The order of this collection is deliberate: it is meant to be read from beginning to end. We believe doing so will result in a better overall experience—a different experience from reading our essays all over the web—connecting various concepts that might otherwise seem unconnected.
Background: Pursuing My Passion
Writing and reading literary fiction has been my passion for a long time. I’ve worked incredibly hard this year writing the best fiction of my life—I’ve never worked harder on anything in my life.
While I work through multiple revisions and drafts of my novel, As a Decade Fades, I decided to publish four of my favorite stories (some long, some short). As a bonus, this collection features three great stories from three of my friends: Colin Wright, Chase Night, and Mark D. Robertson.
This book is is deliberately short (about 25,000 words). Its seven stories can be read in just a few sittings (or one story at a time if you prefer). Although this collection is short, it is filled with meaningful content.
About the Book
What does it mean to be human? How does a person find meaning in his or her life?
The first four stories in this collection, written by Joshua Fields Millburn, discuss the struggles we face as we attempt to discover the meaning of our lives.
In It’s All So Quiet in Brooklyn—this collection’s longest piece—we watch a young but aging musician as he approaches thirty and finds himself coping with loneliness and depression in the aftermath of several life-changing events. He feels utterly alone, so he leaves Ohio to search for meaning in the most unlikely place: Bed-Stuy Brooklyn.
A Radically Attenuated History of Generation X is, as the title suggests, an incredibly short story that attempts to summarize a particular ethos for an entire generation through the eyes of two characters on a dinner date.
The title story, Falling While Sitting Down, follows an unnamed boy through eighteen years of growing up in an extraordinarily dysfunctional family, showing the emotional muscles it takes to survive such circumstances (this piece is the closest thing to autobiographical fiction I’ve ever written).
The collection’s final story, The Loneliest Man in the World, considers the loneliness and real-life costs of poor relationship decisions from the point of view of a particularly troubled man.
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