Electric Cars Are Not Necessarily Clean - Scientific American

And railroads and shipping?????
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are-not-necessarily-clean/?WT.mc_id=SA_ENGYSUS_20160512

Electric Cars Are Not Necessarily Clean

Tesla Motors has received more than 325,000 preorders for its hot new Model 3 electric car even though it will not be available for at least another year. That almost equals the 340,000 electric cars and plug-in hybrids now on American roads. Tesla has advertised its vehicles as having zero emissions, helping fuel the mania for the fun-driving sedan, but that's not necessarily true. Although the battery-powered car itself doesn't produce any emissions, the power plant that generates the electricity used to charge those batteries probably does. Low emissions, much less zero emissions, are only true in certain places where most of the electricity comes from a mix of low-carbon sources such as the sun, wind or nuclear reactors.

Electric cars are great for eliminating oil from transportation, because very little U.S. electricity is generated by burning petroleum. But electric cars may or may not help the country combat climate change—and it all depends on where the electricity comes from.

Thomas Edison and his electric car.
Credit: Scientific American, January 14, 1911

Cars and trucks are responsible for roughly 24 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution—nearly 1.7 billion metric tons per year. Because those emissions come from hundreds of millions of tailpipes, this source of pollution seems difficult to control. Shifting it to hundreds of smokestacks at power plants that supply electricity to charge electric cars therefore seems like a more effective way to clean up the fleet.

But those smokestacks, many attached to coal-fired power plants, are the single-largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S., at two billion metric tons of CO2 per year. That source would grow as electric cars demand more and more electricity, unless tighter pollution controls are placed on power plants or electric utilities shift to less polluting sources such as solar. As it stands, a conventional Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle, which burns gasoline when its batteries are not engaged, and the all-electric Nissan Leaf produce roughly the same amount of greenhouse gas pollution: 200 grams per mile, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy.

That's an average across the U.S. In California, which has one of the highest proportions of clean electricity in the country, the electric vehicle would produce only 100 grams per mile, half that of the hybrid. Ditto for Texas and even Florida. But in the Midwest and South, where coal fuels the bulk of electricity generation, a hybrid produces less CO2 than an electric car. In fossil fuel–dependent Minnesota an electric car would actually emit 300 grams per mile of greenhouse gases. As a result, some researchers suggest that a regional approach to clean vehicle standards makes more sense than national standards that effectively require electric cars across the board. Minnesota could go for hybrids and California could go for electric vehicles.

Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University

What time of day the recharging electrons flow form a wall plug into an electric car's batteries also matters in this calculation. Nighttime is often when the wind blows but it is also when utilities like to run only their coal-fired power plants. A recent study found that an electric car charged by utilities at night in the regional grid that stretches across Ohio, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia creates more greenhouse gas pollution than if owners plugged in their vehicles at random times throughout the daytime, when the utility fuel mixes are more varied.

The same argument applies worldwide. Driving an electric car in China, where coal is by far the largest power plant fuel, is a catastrophe for climate change. And if the coal plant lacks pollution controls—or fails to turn them on—it can amplify the extent of smog, acid rain, lung-damaging microscopic soot and other ills that arise from burning fossil fuels. The same is true in other major coal-burning countries, such as Australia, India and South Africa.

The good news: the U.S. is making a tectonic shift from burning coal to produce the majority of its electricity to using cleaner natural gas. The changeover produces less CO2, making electric cars cleaner across the country, roughly equivalent to a hybrid. On the other hand, the primary constituent of natural gas—methane—is itself a potent greenhouse gas. If methane leaks from the wells where it is produced, the pipelines that transport it or the power plants that burn it, the climate doesn't necessarily benefit.

In short, electric cars are only as good as the electricity that charges them. (A fuel's source also matters for conventional cars; gasoline derived from tar sands is more polluting than that from most other petroleum resources, for example.) In the absence of clean electricity, hybrid cars that can travel 50 or more miles on a gallon of gasoline produce the least emissions.

Electric cars still constitute less than 1 percent of U.S. car sales, and even less of the global fleet that is now approaching two billion vehicles. So their environmental benefit—dubious for now, until more power plants get off coal—is not very worrisome. The current shift back to SUVs that guzzle much more petroleum than other cars, prompted by low gasoline prices, is a more worrisome sign for future climate change. Perhaps by the time electric cars are ubiquitous, pollution from generating electricity will be zero.

~A den Tex

What Kind of Introvert Are You? - Scientific American Blog Network

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/what-kind-of-introvert-are-you/

What Kind of Introvert Are You?

Are you an introvert? It depends on which book you read.

Here's a sampling of the various conceptualizations of introversion in pop culture [1]:

• Preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments: Quiet by Susan Cain
• Preference for concentration and solitude: The Introvert's Way by Sophia Dembling
• Rechargeable battery: The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney
• Thoughtful-introspective: Solitude by A. Storr
• Shy-socially anxious: The Gift of Shyness by A. Avila
• Artistic-sensitive-creative: The Highly Sensitive Person by E. Aron
• Literary-observer: Jane Austen, The Complete Novels
• Worried: The Positive Power of Negative Thinking by J. Norem
• Lonely-isolated: Just Your Type by P. Tieger
• Loner-alone by preference: Party of One by A. Rufus
• Low Energy: High Energy Living by R. Cooper

Historically, there has been just as much confusion in the psychological literature. Carl Jung originally defined introversion as a focus on one's "inwardly directed psychic energy". However, in the 30s, the psychologist J.P. Guilford showed that various attempts to measure Jung's conceptualization of introversion resulted in multiple, distinct factors. In other words, there didn't appear to be a single dimension of personality that captured all of introversion.

In the 60s Patricia Carrigan echoed this point, arguing that introversion was not effectively captured by a single scale. She cautioned that if the phrase introversion is to continue to be used, "care must be taken to specify its conceptual and operational referent. What appear to be minor distinctions between the various conceptions may in fact be crucial ones." In the 70s, the heated debate continued, with a much older Guilford arguing with H.J. Eysenck over whether introversion can possibly, or even should, be captured by a single scale.

All seemed to be settled in the 90s with the emergence of the "Big Five" framework of personality. The five main factors of personality-- extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and intellect/imagination-- were empirically derived based on what patterns of behavior tend to go together within individuals. Under this framework, introversion is merely defined as the opposite of extraversion.

In the Big Five framework, extraversion comprises two main aspects: enthusiasm (reflecting sociability, positive emotions, and warmth) and assertiveness (reflecting the tendency to take charge, become a leader, and captivate attention). The common factor seems to be high sensitivity to rewards in the environment-- which due to the highly social nature of humans throughout the course of human evolution, most prominently consists of rewards associated with social attention.

Therefore, under the dominant personality framework in modern psychology, if you score low in enthusiasm and assertiveness, you're an introvert [2]. Sorted.

Not so fast.

An Alternative Approach to Introversion

Here's the problem: the Big Five framework forces a definition of introversion onto people, many of whom do not conceptualize introversion in the same way. For instance, one study did a comparison of common-sense/everyday notions of introversion and 'scientific' conceptions of introversion. They found that the most prototypical characteristic of introversion, as identified by the general public, was the following item:

"Thinks often about himself/herself"

Clearly, many people equate introversion with introspection. In the Big Five framework, however, this item is classified as part of the intellect/imagination domain of personality, not the introversion domain. So there's a serious mismatch between folk definitions of introversion and scientific definitions. People who view themselves as introverted because they are highly introspective are being told by scientists: "You aren't really introverted based on patterns of covariation among the general population." To which everyday people rightfully respond: "WTF?" [3]

As noted personality psychologist Jonathan Cheek told me, "by invalidating the ordinary language meaning of introversion by defining it solely as the opposite of Big Five Extraversion, the Big Five researchers are guilty of Psychological Imperialism [4]." Influenced by the seminal work of Jung, Guilford, and Carrigan, Cheek and his colleagues have decided to take a different approach, by focusing on the phenomenon of introversion on its own, free from having to be force-fit into one scheme or another.

As Carl Jung said, each individual is ultimately a unique crystal, but type theories can be helpful for navigating social life. Embracing this Jungian philosophy, Cheek and his colleagues argue that when people use the term "introversion", they should never just use it by itself. Instead, they argue that researchers should put a specific modifier in front of the term. What modifiers could be used?

In her masters thesis (written under the advisement of Cheek), Jennifer Odessa Grimes defined four meanings of introversion: social, thinking, anxious, and restrained (which happens to form the positive acronym STAR). It's possible to score high or low on either of these flavors of introversion. For instance, you could be low in social introversion by preference but not be particularly anxious in the presence of people. Or you could suffer from crippling social anxiety, but still have the desire to be highly social. Or any other combination of these four meanings of introversion.

By this point you're probably wondering what kind of introvert you are. Well, you're in luck. There's a new test for that.

What Kind of Introvert Are You?

Putting together a large number of contemporary tests of personality, Grimes, Cheek, Julie Norem, and Courtney Brown created the STAR test to measure four kinds of introversion. [5] To figure out your primary introverted type, take this online test:

To find out where you stand on each of the four meanings of introversion, answer the following questions by deciding to what extent each item is characteristic of your feelings and behavior. Fill in the blank next to each item by choosing a number from the following scale:

1 = very uncharacteristic or untrue, strongly disagree

2 = uncharacteristic

3 = neutral

4 = characteristic

5 = very characteristic or true, strongly agree

Social Introversion

____ 1. I like to share special occasions with just one person or a few close friends, rather than have big celebrations.

____ 2. I think it would be satisfying if I could have very close friendships with many people.

____ 3. I try to structure my day so that I always have some time to myself.

____ 4. I like to vacation in places where there are a lot of people around and a lot of activities going on.

____ 5. After spending a few hours surrounded by a lot of people, I am usually eager to get away by myself.

____ 6. I do not have a strong need to be around other people.

____ 7. Just being around others and finding out about them is one of the most interesting things I can think of doing.

____ 8. I usually prefer to do things alone.

____ 9. Other people tend to misunderstand me—forming a mistaken impression of what kind of person I am because I don't say much about myself.

____ 10. I feel drained after social situations, even when I enjoyed myself.

Thinking Introversion

____ 1. I enjoy analyzing my own thoughts and ideas about myself.

____ 2. I have a rich, complex inner life.

____ 3. I frequently think about what kind of person I am.

____ 4. When I am reading an interesting story or novel or when I am watching a good movie, I imagine how I would feel if the events in the story were happening to me.

____ 5. I seldom think about myself.

____ 6. I generally pay attention to my inner feelings.

____ 7. I value my personal self-evaluation, that is, the private opinion I have of myself.

____ 8. I sometimes step back (in my mind) in order to examine myself from a distance.

____ 9. I daydream and fantasize, with some regularity, about things that might happen to me.

____ 10. I am inclined to be introspective, that is, to analyze myself.

Anxious Introversion

____ 1. When I enter a room I often become self-conscious and feel that the eyes of others are upon me.

____ 2. My thoughts are often focused on episodes of my life that I wish I'd stop thinking about.

____ 3. My nervous system sometimes feels so frazzled that I just have to get off by myself.

____ 4. I am confident about my social skills.

____ 5. Defeat or disappointment usually shame or anger me, but I try not to show it.

____ 6. It does not take me long to overcome my shyness in new situations.

____ 7. I feel relaxed even in unfamiliar social situations.

____ 8. Even when I am in a group of friends, I often feel very alone and uneasy.

____ 9. My secret thoughts, feelings, and actions would horrify some of my friends.

____ 10. I feel painfully self-conscious when I am around strangers.

Restrained Introversion

____ 1. I like to be off and running as soon as I wake up in the morning.

____ 2. I'll try anything once.

____ 3. For relaxation I like to slow down and take things easy.

____ 4. I like to wear myself out with exertion.

____ 5. I often say the first thing that comes into my head.

____ 6. I generally seek new and exciting experiences and sensations.

____ 7. I like to keep busy all the time.

____ 8. I often act on the spur of the moment.

____ 9. I sometimes do "crazy" things just to be different.

____ 10. I often feel sluggish.

How'd you do?

To find out your score for each of the four kinds of introversion, RECODE the following Reverse-Worded items: (1=5) (2=4) (4=2) (5=1):

Social Introversion items: 2, 4, & 7

Thinking Introversion item: 5

Anxious Introversion items: 4, 6, & 7

Restrained Introversion items: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, & 9

Next, add together all the numbers to come up with a total score.

Here's a guide of how you scored compared to others in the general population:

• Social Introversion -- below 24 low, around 30 average, above 36 high
• Thinking Introversion -- below 28 low, around 34 average, above 40 high
• Anxious Introversion -- below 23 low, around 30 average, above 37 high
• Restrained Introversion -- below 25 low, around 31 average, above 37 high

This alternative way of assessing introversion is not likely to be embraced by Big Five personality researchers [6]. But if it offers you a more satisfying, personally meaningful way to glean insight into your unique personality, feel free to throw the Big Five framework out the window.

© 2014 Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights Reserved.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Connor Child at Qzzr for his help with the online quiz, and Jennifer Odessa Grimes and Jonathan Cheek for their help with this post.

[1] This list is adapted from Jonathan Cheek's book review, which can be found here.

[2] As another example, take people who conceptualize themselves as highly introverted because they are very introspective and value their rich inner mental lives, but who score high in enthusiasm and assertiveness on the Big Five test. These folks are being told by modern personality psychologists: "You are really an extrovert who is also high in intellect/imagination." For those who have spent their entire lives equating their love of thinking and fantasy with their "introversion", they respond: "huh?" In the Big Five, imagination, fantasy, and introspection are positively associated with Extraversion. But if we do away with the label of introversion in the Big Five, then that allows a person to be introverted in the thinking/introspective sense but also be an extravert in the Big Five sense (high in enthusiasm and assertiveness).

[3] Popular writers on introversion are also not pleased with this psychological imperialism. For instance, in Sophia Sembling's book The Introvert's Way, she has a chapter titled "Introverts are Not Failed Extroverts".

[4] Keep in mind, the Big Five is a descriptive model; it merely describes patterns of covariation between people. The labels used to describe the five personality dimensions are subjective. A lot of the arguments over what counts as introversion come down to a naming game. In my view, it's really unfortunate that Big Five researchers started to use the label "introversion" to mark the lower end of extraversion. It wasn't always this way. In fact, the original name for "extraversion" in the Big Five was "Surgency". If it were up to me, it would have stayed that way, leaving the label "introversion" free to continue roaming the personality landscape. As Jonathan Cheek told me, "if the Big Five folks would just go back to that phrase ["Surgency"], they would not be crossing swords with folk psychology/ordinary language introverts. Perhaps introversion should *not* be used as a label in the Big Five system." I agree.

[5] Here is the link to the research report about the new STAR scale. You might be wondering: "What about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test? Isn't that good enough to measure introversion?" Well, no it isn't. As it turns out, the MBTI extraversion-introversion scale only includes items relating to being talkative, gregarious, and sociable (vs. quiet and reserved). Since there's not a single item on the MBTI extraversion-introversion dimension that mentions being introspective or reflective, even the MBTI doesn't measure Jung's original conceptualization of the term!

[6] Big Five researchers could make the case that each of these four meanings of introversion can easily be mapped onto the Big Five framework. For instance, they could argue that:

-Social introversion is really just "low enthusiasm" (part of the extraversion domain)

-Thinking introversion is not part of the extraversion-introversion domain at all, but really is "high intellect/imagination"

-Anxious introversion is really just a blend of "high neuroticism" and "low assertiveness" (part of the extraversion domain)

-Restrained introversion" is a blend of a number of lower-order extraversion-related traits, including "low sensation seeking", "low excitement seeking", and "low activity".

~A den Tex

Yup.
http://blog.ed.ted.com/2016/05/10/7-ideas-about-finding-the-work-you-were-meant-to-do/

7 ideas about finding the work you were meant to do

You don't "find your calling," you fight for it — and other lessons from people who found their passion (sometimes late in life).

Whether it was during a career aptitude test or in a heart-to-heart chat, chances are someone has talked to you about how to "find your calling." It's one of those phrases people toss about. But StoryCorps founder Dave Isay takes issue with it … specifically, the verb. "Finding your calling — it's not passive," he says. "When people have found their calling, they've made tough decisions and sacrifices in order to do the work they were meant to do." In other words, you don't just "find" your calling — you have to fight for it. And it's worth the fight. "People who've found their calling have a fire about them," says Isay, the winner of the 2015 TED Prize. "They're the people who are dying to get up in the morning and go do their work." Over a decade of listening to StoryCorps interviews, Isay noticed that people often share the story of how they discovered their calling — and now, he's collected dozens of great stories on the subject into a new book, Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work. Below, he shares 7 takeaways from the hard-won fight to find the work you love.

1. Your calling is at the intersection of a Venn diagram of three things: doing something you're good at, feeling appreciated, and believing your work is making people's lives better. "When those three things line up, it's like lightning," Isay says. He doesn't suggest that a person has to be a surgeon saving lives to feel like they have a calling; think of the diner waitress who talks to customers and makes them feel loved. How do you find this overlap? "You have to shut out all the chatter of what your friends are telling you to do, what your parents are telling you to do, what society is telling you to do," Isay says, "and just go to that quiet place inside you that knows the truth."

2. Your calling often comes out of difficult experiences. What lurks in that quiet place will be a defining experience — quite possibly a painful one. Isay points to an interview in Callings with 24-year-old teacher Ayodeji Ogunniyi. "He was studying to be a doctor when his father was murdered. He realized that what he was really meant to do was be a teacher," says Isay. "He says that every time he walks into a classroom, his father is walking in with him." This theme of people turning their hardest experiences into a new path runs throughout the book. "Having an experience that really shakes you and reminds you of your mortality can be a very clarifying event in people's lives. Oftentimes, it leads to changes," he says. "We spend a lot of time working, so it can really change your priorities in terms of work life."

3. Calling often takes courage and ruffles feathers. Elsewhere in Callings, we hear about Wendell Scott, who became the first African-American NASCAR driver in 1952, and kept on driving despite threats against his life. From scientist Dorothy Warburton who dealt with extreme sexism as she conducted research to break the stigma around miscarriage. From Burnell Cotlon, who opened the first grocery store in the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina because he wasn't about to let his old neighborhood's spirit fade. Calling, says Isay, very often starts with taking a stand against a status quo that simply isn't acceptable, and then dedicating your work to changing it: "It's work ignited by hope, love, or defiance — and stoked by purpose and persistence."

4. Other people often nudge you toward your calling. Sharon Long had worked odd jobs most of her life. As Isay tells it, "Her daughter was going to college, and as the bursar was helping them with financial aid forms, she said quietly to herself, 'I wish I could've gone to college.' The bursar responded, 'It's not too late.'" Sharon enrolled in an art program, and on her advisor's suggestion, took forensic anthropology as her science. "The advisor suggested it for no other reason than he thought it was the easiest science course for the science requirement," says Isay. "But the minute she sat in that class, it was boom — this is what she was meant to do." Isay tells this story to illustrate how calling, while very personal, is also relational. "People bump you this way and that way," he says, often without realizing it. "When people find their callings, they want to honor those people who helped them get there."

5. What comes after identifying your calling is what really matters. The old 'finding your calling' phraseology makes it sound like a calling is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — you find it, and the story's over. But Isay stresses that your calling is an ongoing process. "Understanding what your calling is — that's very different than the blood, sweat and tears of actually doing it," he says. Pursuing a calling may require going back to school or apprenticing; it may require starting a business. Often, notes Isay, it leads a person into a line of work that's in service of others. "This book is basically a love letter to nurses, teachers, social workers — the people who don't often get celebrated for the work they do," he says.

6. Age is irrelevant. Isay found his calling when he was 21 and interviewed a man who'd been part of the Stonewall riots. "The minute I hit record, I knew that being a journalist and interviewing people was what I was going to do for the rest of my life," he says. "I feel very lucky that lightning struck when I was very young." But collecting stories for the book reminded him that a calling can be discovered at any age. The book includes an interview with someone who knew they wanted to be an NBA referee at age 15, and another who worked as an accountant for 30 years before discovering his passion for slicing lox. "Doing the work you're meant to do is one of the most satisfying, remarkable experiences that a person can have," says Isay, "so never give up."

7. Calling often doesn't come with a big paycheck. Another trend Isay sees in stories of people who find their calling: they often involve leaving a high-paying job for one that's lower-paying but more satisfying. "The message we send to young people is that you want to do as little work as you can to make as much money as you can — that's the dream," says Isay. "But the wisdom in the StoryCorps archive is that there's another, much more rewarding dream of taking risks and working very hard to live with integrity." In the end, that's the lesson he took away from writing this book. "There are no millionaires, no billionaires, no celebrities, nobody with a big Twitter following," he says. "Just stories that can teach us a lot about lives fully lived."

This article first appeared on Ideas.ted.com. To learn more about StoryCorps and the TED Prize, watch this TED-Ed Original video.

Featured image: Emily Pidgeon/TED

~A.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-varon/to-anyone-who-thinks-theyre-falling-behind_b_9190758.html

To Anyone Who Thinks They're Falling Behind In Life

You don't need more motivation. You don't need to be inspired to action. You don't need to read any more lists and posts about how you're not doing enough.

We act as if we can read enough articles and enough little Pinterest quotes and suddenly the little switch in our brain will put us into action. But, honestly, here's the thing that nobody really talks about when it comes to success and motivation and willpower and goals and productivity and all those little buzzwords that have come into popularity: you are as you are until you're not. You change when you want to change. You put your ideas into action in the timing that is best. That's just how it happens.

And what I think we all need more than anything is this: permission to be wherever the fuck we are when we're there.

You're not a robot. You can't just conjure up motivation when you don't have it. Sometimes you're going through something. Sometimes life has happened. Life! Remember life? Yeah, it teaches you things and sometimes makes you go the long way around for your biggest lessons.

You don't get to control everything. You can wake up at 5 a.m. every day until you're tired and broken, but if the words or the painting or the ideas don't want to come to fruition, they won't. You can show up every day to your best intentions, but if it's not the time, it's just not the fucking time. You need to give yourself permission to be a human being.

"If it's not the time, it's just not the fucking time. You need to give yourself permission to be a human being."

Sometimes the novel is not ready to be written because you haven't met the inspiration for your main character yet. Sometimes you need two more years of life experience before you can make your masterpiece into something that will feel real and true and raw to other people. Sometimes you're not falling in love because whatever you need to know about yourself is only knowable through solitude. Sometimes you haven't met your next collaborator. Sometimes your sadness encircles you because, one day, it will be the opus upon which you build your life.

We all know this: Our experience cannot always be manipulated. Yet, we don't act as though we know this truth. We try so hard to manipulate and control our lives, to make creativity into a game to win, to shortcut success because others say they have, to process emotions and uncertainty as if these are linear journeys.

You don't get to game the system of your life. You just don't. You don't get to control every outcome and aspect as a way to never give in to the uncertainty and unpredictability of something that's beyond what you understand. It's the basis of presence: to show up as you are in this moment and let that be enough.

Yet, we don't act in a way that supports this lifestyle. We fill every minute with productivity tools and read 30-point lists on how to better drive out natural, human impulse. We often forget that we are as we are until we're not. We are the same until we're changed. We can move that a bit further by putting into place healthy habits and to show up to our lives in a way that fosters growth, but we can't game timing.

Timing is the one thing that we often forget to surrender to.

Things are dark until they're not. Most of our unhappiness stems from the belief that our lives should be different than they are. We believe we have control — and our self-loathing and self-hatred comes from this idea that we should be able to change our circumstances, that we should be richer or hotter or better or happier. While self-responsibility is empowering, it can often lead to this resentment and bitterness that none of us need to be holding within us. We have to put in our best efforts and then give ourselves permission to let whatever happens to happen—and to not feel so directly and vulnerably tied to outcomes. Opportunities often don't show up in the way we think they will.

You don't need more motivation or inspiration to create the life you want. You need less shame around the idea that you're not doing your best. You need to stop listening to people who are in vastly different life circumstances and life stages than you tell you that you're just not doing or being enough. You need to let timing do what it needs to do. You need to see lessons where you see barriers. You need to understand that what's right now becomes inspiration later. You need to see that wherever you are now is what becomes your identity later.

"There's a magic beyond us that works in ways we can't understand. We can't game it. We can't 10-point list it. We can't control it."

Sometimes we're not yet the people we need to be in order to contain the desires we have. Sometimes we have to let ourselves evolve into the place where we can allow what we want to transpire.

Let's just say that whatever you want, you want it enough. So much so that you're making yourself miserable in order to achieve it. What about chilling out? Maybe your motivation isn't the problem, but that you keep pushing a boulder up a mountain that only grows in size the more you push.

There's a magic beyond us that works in ways we can't understand. We can't game it. We can't 10-point list it. We can't control it. We have to just let it be, to take a fucking step back for a moment, stop beating ourselves up into oblivion, and to let the cogs turn as they will. One day, this moment will make sense. Trust that.

Give yourself permission to trust that.

Jamie Varon is a writer based out of Los Angeles. You can connect with her on Twitter, Instagram, and at her Facebook page.

Follow Jamie Varon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamievaron