http://markmanson.net/life-purpose

1: What is your favorite flavor of shit sandwich and does it come with an olive? (What pain do you want in your life?)

I love writing. I love words. I love ideas. I love expression. I can imagine spending the rest of my life being obsessed about words. I can imagine having written thousands of essays, of which maybe 10 might be any good. I like the idea of that.

2: What is true about you today that would make 8-year-old you cry?

8 years old? I was in Primary 2. What was I doing then? I was playing video games. I was getting into Red Alert, Galaga, Starcraft. I was very into computers then. I was about to start learning HTML. I was about to build my own website. I’m still kinda doing all of that.

Oh. Oh. I used to read books. I used to read them intensely. 8-year-old me would cry to see that I didn’t make time for books anymore.

3: What makes you forget to eat and poop?

• Video games
• Reading
• Writing
• Social Media
• Arguing on the Internet
• Giving useful, constructive feedback to people
• Great conversations

4: How can you better embarrass yourself?

I think there are a bunch of things that I ought to write about that I haven’t written because I’m nervous or scared. I guess I ought to just throw things together and ship them without thinking so much.

5. How are you going to save the world?

I used to have grand plans for this. On hindsight I think the grand planning was a sort of escapism. But here’s what I want to do now– I want to find kids out there who are suffering from what I suffered from, and I want to help them do better than I did. I’m going to write to them, write for them, talk to them, think with them, and then ultimately help them help each other. All the good stuff will spillover from that.

6: Gun to your head, if you had to leave the house all day every day, what would you do?

I was going to say “go to a coffeeshop” but he ruled that out. That bastard. No useless websites, so no Tumblr, no Twitter, all of that stuff.

• Well, I’d do word vomits. I’d wake up in the morning and write a thousand words.
• Then I’d go for a run.
• I’d learn to cook and I’d keep track of whatever it was that I was cooking. I have this irrational fear of cooking and a generally unhealthy relationship with food, I would try to fix that.
• I would feed myself better, I would start lifting weights again.
• I would spend a couple of hours a day just reading books, and that itself will go a long way in informing what else I’d do.
• I’d write book reviews. I’d watch movies and do movie reviews.
• I’d write, write, write, write,write.

7: If you knew you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you want to be remembered?

1. The first thing I would do is sit down and externalize all my thoughts about what I do at work so that my colleagues can go on to create great work without me.
2. I would reach out to all the smart, thoughtful people I know and try to help them get unstuck on whatever they might be stuck on, try to provoke and motivate and inspire them to do the great work that I know that they’re capable of.
3. I would travel. I would go to New York and San Francisco to experience modern life. I would check out Soviet architecture in Russia. I would try to make it to every continent, or at least one or two others, to get a real feel for what life is like elsewhere in the world.
4. I would try to tie up all the loose ends in my writing and leave behind some sort of legacy that allows others to climb up and above me, like a ladder. I want to be a ladder for others.
5. I would try to connect people with other people who might be interesting and useful to them.

I should be doing all of those things right now.