I jumped back on Twitter this week after being off the platform for years. I’m just over a week into a challenge that I set out for myself when I launched this website. My goal is to write thirty articles in thirty days, a minimum of five-hundred published words per day. With all the work I’ve been putting into this website I figured it’s probably a good idea to begin to build a presence and hopefully get people reading this stuff. Twitter has always been inherently political due to the fact that it’s so easy to share your opinion to anyone and you’re not restricted to a follow or as a member of a group like other social sites. A week in the sheer amount of vitriol is incredible.

You just can’t avoid the politics, even if you purposely try to follow people that aren’t specifically focused on politics, left, right and center. My goal is to follow positive people, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, etc; people that are working to build businesses and help people improve lives, and there are a lot of really positive people on there. Unfortunately the political angst is an epidemic. There isn’t a day that goes by where someone tweets a positive article or shares their thoughts on subjects such as being a better father, or developing a better mindset and the subsequent comments inevitably turn into a bunch of people pointlessly

Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday, tomorrow is victory over a lesser foe
- Miyamoto Mushashi

There’s a reason I named my website Attentive Man. The name is very personal and stems from the fact that I was extremely inconsistent and often a downright failure when it came to being attentive. This lack of attentiveness was often in all areas, from my interpersonal relationships, to my relationship with my wife and even periods of inconsistency in the areas of engagement with my clients.

The idea of engagement was key. For all the times I was engaged with my family and professional life I would go through periods where I was completely disengaged. It was based on often not having my priorities straight, but it was also based on the fact I had really bad habits when it came to organization and focus. Things that come so naturally to people like my wife (thoughtfulness, organization) just don’t come natural to me. As a result, my wife and I weren’t flying in formation as a couple or as a family. The sad part was this pattern had gone on for years. I would have periods of improvement and then revert back to inconsistency. We men have to be engaged partners. We have to be engaged fathers. We have to be engaged employees and business partners. You can’t be partially engaged. So what was the answer?

Stop Arguing Politics on Social Media: The Buddhist Parable of the Empty Vessel

The Need for Better Habit Forming: the Origin of Attentive Man