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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #💯 (Endurance)

Published about 1 month ago • 3 min read

1 Family Photo:
Endurance

"I'm tired," said Calvin.

"I know you're tired, but if you can still put one foot in front of the other then you can keep going. Don't worry about anything else. Don't worry about how far we've gone or have to go — let's just try to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah Dad," Responded Calvin. "But I'm still tired."
—
"Will you carry me?"

And that's how our family walked/scootered/carried almost a fifth of the Bob Jones Trail.

---

As you can see from the subject line, this is my 100th weekly newsletter. I wouldn't have predicted this consistency when I hit send on newsletter #1. It's been fun to develop a little writing habit. To put ephemeral thoughts into concrete words. To dig deeper into ideas because this medium exists to explore them.

I hope you've enjoyed this journey as well.

#100 is a milestone. A nice round number. It'll be harder to write newsletter #101. I hope I do though.

I hope in ~18 years I'll hit send on newsletter #1,000. That's a daunting task though. We'll see. Until then — let's just try to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

1 Dad Joke:
Never Give Up

Highlights:
Enduring Thoughts

​Still a Trail Sister? A New Mom’s Reflections by Margae Knox​

Why do I like trail running? I like the challenge, the always-present bigger or faster goal. I like the community, their deep wells of inspiration and encouragement. I like blend of physical and mental endurance—how the patience to pace well in the early hours, often before the sun’s crest, pays off when the sun arcs high overhead.
​
Giving birth...was more like an interval workout where you must take each lap around the track as hard as you can, but you have no idea how many intervals remain.
​
There is struggle. There is pain. And then there is a baby’s cry, a tiny human nestled on your chest, and the knowledge that miracles are real.
—
​Nobody told me that a baby’s early days are their own endurance event.

​How People Learn to Become Resilient by Maria Konnikova​

Frame adversity as a challenge, and you become more flexible and able to deal with it, move on, learn from it, and grow. Focus on it, frame it as a threat, and a potentially traumatic event becomes an enduring problem; you become more inflexible, and more likely to be negatively affected.

​Liberalism Is Resilient by Noah Smith ​

There is a clear difference between acting tough and actually being tough. The former is all about outward fierceness and savagery, while the latter is about the inner ability to endure hardship and pain and fear and still keep fighting effectively.

​OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend by Zvi Mowshowitz​

Approximately four GPTs and seven years ago, OpenAI’s founders brought forth on this corporate landscape a new entity, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men might live equally when AGI is created.
​
Now we are engaged in a great corporate war, testing whether that entity, or any entity so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

​Some Things I Think by Morgan Housel​

Schools are good at measuring intelligence but not great at measuring passion, endurance, and character, which tend to be more important than intelligence in the long run.

iamJoshKnox Highlight:

MVP Summit:

Last week, it was my privilege to attend Microsoft's MVP Summit — a weeklong conference at Microsoft's Redmond campus where they acknowledge their superusers, update them on product plans and solicit feedback. For me, it was the culmination of 9 years participating in the Microsoft ERP community.

It was a lot of fun meeting old friends for the first time — the conference was full of people I know and have interacted with for years through blogging, but had never before been in the same room with until last week.

Here's a selfie from in front of the new, modern-art logo at the front of the Microsoft campus:

And if you like looking at trip photo albums without a lot of context:
​This is for you!​

​
Also, my book is still available on Amazon here – or reply to this email and I'd love to gift you a copy.

Fancy a Chat?

Grab some time on my calendar to share a funny story from this week:

​Let's Chat!​

Book some time even if you don't know what you want to talk about:
​https://calendly.com/iamjoshknox​

Until next week,
​iamJoshKnox​​

Thoughts? Feedback?
😊Hit Reply and let me know😊

Josh Knox

Hi! I am Josh Knox. Read more of me here: 👇

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