I Am About to Freeze My Ass Off

My grandmother is an odd duck.

She goes by the name of Duke. Yes, "Duke".

Duke is a funny character. She's also very assertive with her opinions. My uncle puts it best: "Duke is often wrong, never uncertain."

We need funny characters like this in our life. Those with outlandish views who perceive the world in unique ways.

She's eighty-eight years old. In her prime, she was a Catholic school teacher who smoked cigarettes and wore bright red lipstick.

Yet, she never dressed the way you would imagine a Catholic school teacher would dress. Her ensemble——which she wears to this day——consists of a cut-off gray sweatshirt (Bill Belichick style), and a white "bucket hat". A bucket hat is the type of hat Gilligan wore on Gilligan's Island).

For her entire life, she's insisted on being paid exclusively in cash and, she has a disdain for getting tied down by owning anything. This is why she still lives in an $800/month apartment!

Anyway, why am I telling you this?

I'm telling you this because tomorrow at 2:16 p.m., I, myself, my (tolerant) fiancé, and my two-year-old soul-daughter, will be flying to Indiana to visit her.

I have not seen Duke in eleven years.

This is quite common for Duke. You see, Duke is my father's mother. In other words, she's what you refer to as my "paternal Grandmother." And, on my father's side, it's common for Duke to be estranged from the rest of the family. My uncles, aunts, cousins, and siblings have been estranged from Duke for years——decades, even.

Yet, about a year ago, I decided to reach out to Duke. I wanted to see how she was doing.

From that conversation, we've spoken many more times over the past year. Now here we are today.

The mini-moral in all of this is: life's too short. Reach out to family, loved ones, and people you've lost touch with.

There were several times when I almost backed out of going on this trip. There's always the excuse of being "too busy."

When looking at potential dates for this trip, the only time that worked was mid-November. But I was reluctant to schedule this trip.

Why?

Because I'm very busy preparing everything for the launch of my Antinet Zettelkasten book (it goes live on December 9th)!

You may be wondering why the hell I'm so busy with the launch. You may be thinking, What are you even working on? Why is it so hard to get a book launched? After all, haven't you been finished with it for months?

The answer to these questions stands valid. Yes, I have been finished with it for months. And yes, normally, launching a book is pretty straightforward. You research it, write it, edit it, and get it designed. Then you have your publisher print it or, you print it on Amazon's publishing platform.

That stuff is the easy part.

What I've decided to do, however, is to design and build out a beautiful website to sell the book direct. On top of this, I've enlisted a fantastic print and fulfillment shop to bulk-print the physical book. That way, it allows me to sell the book for 25% of what Amazon makes me charge!

Doing everything yourself comes at a cost.

For instance, today I was busy messing with the API of the print and fulfillment shop. It needs to be hooked up to a server that then securely communicates with the backend of my website so that anytime someone orders, the shipping information is securely created at the fulfillment shop so that they can package and ship out the order.

Thankfully, I've enlisted the help of a pro development team to set this stuff up for me. (The old Scott would've done everything himself). But, even with the top-notch developers in place, I've had to get my hands dirty to pass them the information and test things.

On top of this, behind the scenes, I'm secretly working on something that I'm just as excited about as the book!

Look, the Antinet Zettelkasten book is the most exhaustive, deep, and well-researched book out there on Zettelkasten.

Niklas Luhmann used his Zettelkasten to become a reading, thinking, and writing machine.

In the effort to export his principles to the digital age, much of the magic has been lost.

That's why I wrote the book. To clear up the myths and misconceptions about Luhmann's system.

But there's a deeper reason I wrote the book.

I want to teach you how to build a robust thinking system that helps you ingest books like a professor. I want to teach you how to write prolifically. And, I want to show you how to experience the magic of analog knowledge development.

But here's the problem: The book is 594-pages, and that's a lot.

My goal is to not only inform you; my goal is to also get you results ASAP.

This means answering these questions: First, how can I help you quickly and easily get set up with your own Antinet. And second, how can I help you quickly and easily become a better reader, thinker, and writer.

That, my friend, is what I'm secretly working on behind the scenes.

Not only do I want to give you the robust 594-page tome (the Antinet Zettelkasten book), I also want to equip you with a way to 10x the speed of getting you results.

Stay tuned, and get ready for the intellectual ride of your life. It begins on December 9th.

Peace and love,

And stay crispy, my friend.

Scott P. Scheper

"A Man Who Wrote an Email About His Grandma"