Rethinking What Counts as Progress
There’s a waterfall (the lower falls) near Bell Canyon Creek that my wife and I hiked to a few years ago. For many years now (we’ve been married 24 and counting) we’ve hiked on our anniversary, and for perhaps the…
Essays
When Motivation Fades, What’s Left?
My back isn’t what it was when I was 26 years old. Standing up to my waist in a hole, my back and arms ached, and I had at least 2 feet down to go. I’ve dug up the same…
The Moment I Realized I Was Sliding, Not Spiraling
I don’t remember how long I sat in my truck, parked outside our home, before going in. Sixteen hours at the office had left me fried. I wasn’t angry, or panicked, only numb. But the intense gravity of the heaviness…
The Unmarked Casualties of Provision
(You can now listen to this article here .) We rarely talk about the human cost of holding it all together. We talk about duty, hustle, providing. We even talk about burnout — every now and then — as if…
The Conflict of Haphazard Modernism
My life is governed by chaos. The thought floated through my mind like it has ten thousand times before. It started, like it usually does, with a “quick question.” I had just slipped into project mode (head down, caffeine up)…
Don’t Confuse the Waves for the Current
When I was 13, I stood less than 20 feet from a mother moose and her calf. I was with some friends from Boy Scouts, hiking above our camp in the mountains, when we stumbled onto a meadow and saw…
The Fallacy of Economic Risk-Reward
There’s a lie we’ve been sold for decades, and it sounds deceptively simple: if you take big risks, you earn big rewards. That’s the promise. It’s foundational to the American economic story, the one where entrepreneurs bet it all, CEOs…
Mistaking Effort for Progress
I was 30 hours into building an amazing software platform for one of my clients. I was so excited about its potential. It had all the bells and whistles and access to more data from their sales system than you…
Forget Passion. Pursue Your Curiosity.
“You just need to find your passion.” If you’ve spent more than 9.7 seconds on social media in the last four years, chances are very good that you’ve heard that phrase. If you’re a regular on the TikGramChatXBook, you’re probably…
Do You Live In a World of Destination Happiness?
Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I’ll be happen when. . .” or “Life will be better after. . .”? I’ll be happy once I get that promotion. I’ll finally feel whole when I’m in a steady relationship. Life will…
Intention to Impact, One Step at a Time
Grandma sat in her wheelchair, staring out the window but not really seeing. Both of our eyes were moist with tears. Hers, I think, were a mixture of grief and anger. Mine, confused and tender. My mom — her daughter…
Fear Is an Opportunist — Stop Letting It Take Over
Sweat dripped from my forehead and my hands ached as I moved yet another box of hydraulic fittings from the uncounted collection I had sitting around me to the shelf. Mobile phones were still somewhat of a novelty and mine…
Well, At Least I Watched a Lot of YouTube
A good friend died recently. He was 79 years old, but mostly seemed younger than his years. By profession, he was a nuclear engineer; one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. He was also perhaps the most soft-spoken person…
The 4th Industrial Revolution
The last 20 years have been filled with topics that nobody was really talking about until everybody was. A form of generative AI has been around for more than 15 years, but it’s only been the advent of OpenAI that…
Do I Trust God?
One of our family traditions during my teenage years was a yearly family reunion at a camp in a remote area of Idaho, USA. On our second trip ever — the day before we were to come home — my…
