I’m my best friend’s oldest son’s godfather.
Tradition says if anything happens to my best friend, God forbid, I become his son’s paternal figure.
I hope I don’t have to play that role ever.
The notebooks…
I’m visiting before the school year starts.
I’m bringing my godson some hero-themed notebooks—he adores superheroes.
The first two pages of every notebook are full of superhero stickers.
As soon as he opened them, he set aside a couple of notebooks for his little brother and started to use the stickers on his own.
His dad hid the notebooks on a shelf.
Otherwise, they’d lose every sticker and blank page before school started.
Lesson: What’s the point of having something but to share it?
The heroes’ competition…
I had started small talk with my best friend when my godson pulled a huge receptacle full of toys out of his bedroom.
He started to show me his collection.
Every action figure is there.
Batman, Wolverine, all the Avengers, Goku and his friends…
You name it!
Then the action figure parade became a racing competition.
The couch was an imaginary obstacle course.
The last hero reaching the bottom was suspended.
Gravity chose the winner.
But the rules kept changing to bring back suspended characters.
For some reason, Freeza from Dragon Ball Z was always suspended even before starting.
As the game went by, I tried to keep the small talk with my best friend.
But when my godson noticed I wasn’t playing my role as the referee, he tapped my cheek, called my name, and pulled me back into the game.
And when the phone rang and he was told, “It’s grandad. Are you going to say hi?,” he simply said, “I’m playing with my godfather.”
Lesson: Do one thing at a time and give it your full attention.
The innocent gaze…
After countless rounds and suspensions, the game stopped for a second.
My godson noticed my Viking-styled bun.
He looked at my hair from one side and the other.
I expected an innocent, but uncomfortable question—one only kids dare to ask.
But after the pause, the game continued.
No questions, no judgment.
Lesson: Recognize others’ differences and keep playing without judgment.
The semaphore…
Once my godson had dinner and a shower, the heroes’ game became the semaphore game.
Green allowed you to move.
Yellow made you slower.
Red froze you.
The couch wasn’t an obstacle platform anymore.
It was the finish line for a race with his little brother.
I didn’t check my phone while I was there.
Playing, laughing, and bending the rules of physics with a toy semaphore lifted my energy.
I felt like I was six again.
More recently, on my birthday, he sent me a WhatsApp voice note.
He wished me lots of presents.
It was the first birthday I celebrated after my mom passed away.
He didn’t need motivational quotes or a psychology degree to cheer me up.
He did it in a few seconds with only a few words.
Lesson: Find someone who lifts you up…or borrow my best friend’s son. Just be aware his schedule might be packed. He’s a productivity mentor, life coach, and therapist—and he’s only four years old.
The success metric was 1 organic sale.
By that definition, the experiment was a success.
I announced it on Friday Links and it made 1 direct sale on Gumroad.
Then I gave away some copies and it got its first Amazon review.
To keep the experiment going, I tried two promotion strategies:
The day of the mention, my book got 19 sales on Amazon and 9 the next day.
It went from #165 to hitting #1 in Personal Transformation & Spirituality.
10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas hitting #1 on Amazon
The sales spike lasted 2 days, then the #1 spot disappeared.
By week’s end, the book ranked #44 in One-Hour Health, Fitness & Dieting Short Reads.
Still on the first page.
Overall, the RobinReads mention brought 33 sales that week.
One was refunded—hopefully not because of a typo.
To cap my budget, I limited each ad to $5, paying per click.
Not much, but it was enough to test the ad copy and to learn about book ads.
Here are the stats of the ads I tried:
10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas BookBub ads
Over 22,000 people saw my book cover in one day. Wow!
The ad on April 23rd had the best clicking rate.
It drove 4 clicks and 3 book sales.
But there was a catch with the experiment:
Book promotion sites expect discounted prices.
Despite 38 sales in total, pricing at $0.99 wasn’t profitable.
This time, I read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons through writer’s eyes.
Here’s how he writes flashbacks:
#1. A situation, character, or object triggers a memory that takes you to the past.
“Langdon wanted to say something to her, offer his sympathy. He too had once felt the abrupt hollowness of unexpectedly losing a parent. He remembered the funeral mostly, rainy and gray…“
#2. A sound, character, or external element takes you to the present.
After describing Langdon’s father funeral,…“The ping of an elevator pulled Langdon back to the present.”
That’s exactly how we daydream or time travel: a snap or tap on the shoulder takes us back.
The right time to do something is when you don’t feel like doing it.
If you don’t feel like going to the gym, that’s when you should go.
Don’t feel like getting out of bed? That’s when you should count up to 3 and get up.
Don’t feel like writing? That’s when you should do it.
Today I didn’t feel like writing my daily post.
To spice things up, I challenged myself to write this draft without looking at the text.
I opened LibreOffice Writer, set the font to white, and wrote blindly.
