journal features

three good things

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2017.11.22

As part of my ongoing attempts to get my migraines under control, I'm trying to recognize more good things as they happen. As a book borroed from my mum points out, recognizing and internalizing good things can actually change your brain. At home, we've been trying to capture our "three good things" around the dinner table at night. It's not always easy, but it feels good even if there's no other long term health benefit.

Three good things that happened today:

I solved a substantial puzzle at work.

We've made an important milestone on a committee project for a non-profit.

I've nearly got the tax return done for my numbered business. So close.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton