LitUp Writers, the quarterly humor reading series I produce, got reviewed in SF Weekly!

I’ve also recorded two video essays “As White As Rice” and “Every Girl Needs a Lift Sometime” (first performed at past shows). View them here.

This applies mostly to California Landlord-Tenant Laws. Because you’re on the lease, the rent cannot be raised. You become the sole tenant on the lease and you’re allowed to find a roommate to replace the existing one on a one-for-one basis — even if your lease explicitly states no subletting allowed.

• San Francisco Rent Board: Topic No. 151: Subletting and Replacement of Roommates
• San Francisco Rent Board: Rules and Regulations Section 6.15
  Contains 6.15A: Subletting and Assignment–Where Rental Agreement Includes an Absolute Prohibition Against Subletting and Assignment

Get in touch with your landlord to request permission to find a new roommate, it sounds like how the landlord handles it varies from place to place. In my case, they don’t allow subleasing, so I’m just getting a new roommate. They will not be on the lease and the landlord will only accept payment from me.

Once I find a roommate, they’re subject to the normal application process that the landlord/rental agency uses (financial records check, etc.). There will also be an amendment to my lease stating that I are the sole lessee and while the new roommate can live with me, they do not have the same rights that I do.

Other helpful resources:

• SFGate: How to Sublease Your Apartment or
• SFGate: How do I Sublease a Room? (Similar to the link above)
• eHow: Sublease Laws

Excerpt:

Deci and Ryan found that at the root of human aspiration, there are three core psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness (the need for social connection and intimacy) … You need to feel autonomous, that you are freely choosing things in your life and are not being controlled. You have to feel effective and competent, doing things you initiate and that make you stretch, not what you’re pressured by others into doing. And you have to have close relationships with others to satisfy your social mandate.

Think about all the flailing we have to go through to find what fills us up. Now there’s a roadmap; satisfy your three core needs and you’ll be happy. You can have all the external success in the world, but you’ll remain unfulfilled if even one of the core needs is unaddressed. The catch is that you can only satisfy these needs through intrinsic motivation, the reverse of the external reflex. You seek no payoff, only the inherent interest of the activity itself — for learning, fun, growth. Do it just to do it and you’ll get a whopping internal reward in the form of the lasting version of happiness, gratification.

On describing someone she had to interact with:
“And I say this without judgment, he was a nightmare.”

On Ephron’s book I Remember Nothing and forgetting your keys, putting your cell phone in your fridge:
“That’s the cute form of mental deterioration.”

On her childhood, referring to her little brother, and how as kids sometimes your job can unintentionally come to be about allaying parental neuroses and quirks:
“[He was] dancing as fast as he could to make sure mom and dad are okay because [that meant] there would be trickle down.”

Commenting on her involvement as a parent to her son’s new baby:
“Everyone gets issued an emotional acre [in life, to be how you are] … you don’t get to be a scary control freak that goes on other people’s acres” and tell them what to do.

Quoting, referencing another writer who commented on his own alcoholism/drug abuse:
“He was deteriorating faster than he could lower his values.”

Talking about today’s teenagers she commented on how teens are starving for people to pay them attention and appreciate them for who they are without the expectations of what they may or will be. “Our [inner] teenager is still alive.”

On writing (or was it seeking help?), regardless good rule for when you’re stuck:
“Take the action and the insight will follow.”

On perfectionism (relative to art/craft of writing):
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor and an enemy of the people.”

Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon.

Since most powerful people operate on the manager’s schedule, they’re in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.

How do we manage to advise so many startups on the maker’s schedule? By using the classic device for simulating the manager’s schedule within the maker’s: office hours.

How to Do What You Love
It’s hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don’t underestimate this task. And don’t feel bad if you haven’t succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you’re discontented, you’re a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you’re surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they’re lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably.

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don’t have to force yourself to do it—finding work you love does usually require discipline. Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they’re 12, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side.

…

“Always produce” is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you’re supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. “Always produce” will discover your life’s work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.

…

Another related line you often hear is that not everyone can do work they love—that someone has to do the unpleasant jobs. Really? How do you make them? In the US the only mechanism for forcing people to do unpleasant jobs is the draft, and that hasn’t been invoked for over 30 years. All we can do is encourage people to do unpleasant work, with money and prestige.

Remedies
Below are activities that have provided some semblance of relief for me:

• Swimming – To stay active and keep up your metabolism (so the fracture heals faster). If you’re not a strong swimmer, stick with it, it gets easier and actually pleasant. If you’re going to be jumping in the pool a lot more, you’ll probably want to save your hair from all the chlorine too. If so, get Aubrey Organics Swimmer’s Shampoo. It works well on your skin too to get out the chlorine scent.
• Vitamin D & Calcium supplements – To accelerate bone growth (this was my doctor’s recommendation, so talk to your doctor).
• Driving – Don’t do it. After spending a month and a half convinced that I could still drive with a stress fracture in my driving leg, I finally stopped. What did it was I noticed how aggravated and painful my leg became after driving for 30 minutes in local stop and go rush hour traffic.
• Crutches – Use them. After less than an hour or intermittent standing at a recent event without crutches, my leg was in pain. My right because of the injury, my left because I was putting the majority of my weight on that leg. I can’t walk more than 2-3 blocks without discomfort, so use your crutches if you’re waking far or going out. Yeah, it’s a pain, bring a backpack if you need to hold stuff or use your significant other’s pockets.
• Ask for help – This has been my biggest problem. After a big fat pity party, I finally started asking for help, to have people meet me closer to my place or to have people drive me around.
• Rolfing – This has been a great source of relief for all kinds of body pain that I’ve had related to the injury (and general pain that I incur from computer work). Rolfing works with your connective tissue. There are days I’ve gone in feeling awful and at about a 7 in body pain on a scale of 1 to 10. And I’ve walked out from a rolfing session feeling so much more grounded, balanced and pain free. It’s temporary and the pain will come back, but it’s a nice reminder that you can physically feel good even during injury. New to Rolfing? Read my awesome Rolfer’s page on What is Rolfing?
• Alexander Technique – Like Rolfing, the Alexander Technique helps with body movement. It’s also help relieved pain (I slightly prefer Rolfing because there’s a finite amount of sessions and it focuses on the body as a whole. Alexander Technique sessions seemed to be helpful for me for a quick fix.). In a nutshell, the Alexander technique helps improve posture and body movement. Read more on Wikipedia.
• Icing – A lot of my inflammation occurs behind my right knee so I ice that often along with the middle of my lower leg.
• Legs Up The Wall Pose – In yoga, this is a restorative pose called “Viparita Karani”. You essentially stick your legs up a wall. The pose helps relieve tired feet and  stretches the calves. For visuals and more instructions, here are the Google results of legs up the wall pose.
• Rest Your Legs On A Chair – Basically, lie down on the floor in front of a seat or couch and put your lower legs up on the chair. Your back and lower leg should be perpendicular to your upper leg. This pose takes more pressure of the knees. I’ve hung out in this pose and the one above while watching tv or emailing and if you stay there long enough you can feel your muscles twitch and then relax. This is the only page I could find on the pose, I think you can skip the sandbag.
• Sleep with a pillow under your knees – My right knee has been inflamed for months, so this helps when I’m sleeping at night.

That’s about everything that has worked well for me. Hope this helps!

In mid-September, I randomly was jumping up an down on concrete with no shoes on (I know, I know, I need to find a better story. So far Dance, Dance Revolution has been the best one). I felt fine at the time but for the next two day after I couldn’t put any weight on my right leg. So I saw my orthopedist again. I had seen him previously because I was experiencing inflammation behind my right knee and it had already been going on for 4+ months. The inflamed knee was affecting my ability to be active (hike, walk, etc.). I got an x-ray then an MRI and neither showed anything. After not being able to walk, my ortho had me do a bone scan. Finally the bone scan picked up a stress fracture in my mid tibia. The doctor says that fractures take at least two months to heal but it can take more than that.

Stress fractures sometimes develop because of repetitive motion, jumping on concrete probably doesn’t help any. I think my fracture was probably already in development before jumping around and that incident just brought it to light faster. Normally, I drive 2 hours each way to volunteer one day a week. I’ve been doing this for the past 2 years. About a year ago, I started to notice that the muscles/tendons behind my right knee would get sore, or were in pain. I ignored it because it usually recovered during the rest of the week. Eventually the right knee became inflamed and uncomfortable (affecting my ability to be active outdoors). Driving hasn’t helped and it’s likely to be a cause or influencing factor in the fracture (who knows). But for now I’ve backed out of my volunteer obligation and hung up the keys to my car.

Update : Acupuncture (specifically electroacupuncture) helped my inflammation of the knee issues.
Additional Resource : eOrthopod, according to the Rehabilitation page “The normal healing times are six weeks to achieve 50 percent of eventual strength, three months to reach 80 percent of eventual strength, and 18 months to complete the process of consolidation and remodeling of the fracture.”
PhysioAdvisor’s exercises for tibial stress fractures.

What to give the man who has everything? by Steve Jordan

Here’s my favorite snippet:

Dan Neary, president and CEO, Mutual of Omaha

In 2001, you gave my 8-year-old daughter a tour of your office. You drank Cherry Cokes together and laughed about the Geico gecko. You photocopied her hand and told her nobody in the world had a hand like hers. Later, she said, ‘He’s more of a kid than I am.’ Congratulations on turning 80 years young.

Here’s another favorite due to dry wit:

Anne and Mike Boyle, members, Nebraska Public Service Commission and Douglas County Board, respectively, Omaha

Since Warren acquired National Indemnity and National Fire & Marine Insurance in 1967, he has grown our statutory net worth from under $7 million to almost $65 billion today. Warren will celebrate his 50th anniversary with us in 2017 at the young age of 86. Assuming he continues his admittedly acceptable performance until then, we are seriously considering taking him off probationary status with us at that time.

Thanks!

We periodically review our records for checks that have been issued but not cashed. The following check has been issued to you and, according to our bank, remains outstanding:

{Check number, check date, dollar amount}

Since this check has not been returned to us as paid, we are concerned that it may have been cashed but lost in the banking system, lost in the mail, or perhaps misplaced once it reached you.

Please complete the section below:

__ I have received and cashed the check in question.

__ I have the check in question and will cash it shortly.

__ I have not received the check in question.

__ I did eceive the check in question but have lost or misplaced it.

Then they’ll re-issue you the check if you haven’t received it or lost it. Can’t wait to have United Healthcare again.

But the point I’m trying to make is that until we make the conscious decision that we alone are usually responsible for our financial situation, nothing material will change. Even in those cases where someone else was clearly at fault, our energy is far better spent applying whatever lessons we can and moving on.

A particularly great point, while here, it’s specific to finance the point can also be applied broadly to life.