38 lessons in 38 years

I’ve greatly benefited from “power diets.” Twice in my life, I’ve gone from being in management at a large tech company to just a guy with no titles or even income for long periods. Status feels great. A fancy title can be fun to show off while it lasts. But I’ve learned the hard way (burnout, for one) not to make my career central to my identity. Turns out, it’s pretty fun being just some dude.

Kurt Vonnegut said we should write to please just one person. And I think it helps if that one person is a bit hard to impress. My early drafts of my novel, sadly, did not impress my English-major wife.

I have a family member who doesn’t like traveling and wonders why we’d go all that way when we can find pictures of touristy places online. The latter is certainly cheaper. But for me, life feels longer when I make memories, and memories are a function of engaging the senses. The more senses I engage at once, the more I remember. Like, I know what Machu Picchu smells like now. And I know that when crowds of French people gather, their chatter has an airy, soothing sound, like flowing water.

Just because there’s a line to get in doesn’t mean it’s worth going in.

New York has energy. Paris has flow. I can walk ten miles through the streets of NYC and never get lost or tired. In Paris, I genuinely worry I’m going to get trampled. But the butter is worth it.

The best people-watching in NYC happens when your subway car rides up alongside another, the train car windows align as you speed along, and you spot little vignettes of every type of person riding together.

There’s no question: writing a novel is the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on, and my life will never be the same after having completed it. It’s writing several hundred thousand words to find the best 90,000 and still finding problems well after it’s done. But then a friend reads a few pages that seem to sweep them away, and every minute spent agonizing over those pages feels worth it.

Having recently finished said novel, I’m freeing myself from productivity hacks going forward. The only productivity habit that mattered was daily progress, however small—fifteen minutes, a couple hundred words, maybe.

I don’t think there’s anything that disqualifies anyone from being able to write a novel—even a good one. A person who can write a novel is simply someone who sits down and makes it happen, regardless of credentials. I’m proof it can be done.

I needed two things to finish my first novel: an idea that made me sob in public just thinking about it, and an unshakable belief that it was the best idea ever committed to a page. A little delusion goes a long way.

I’ve been on an extended career break for over a year to finish my book. This break from office life might be the closest I can get to the Overview Effect1 without launching into space. So many of the frustrations I had at work over the past decade feel so small now.

The idea of “That’s just the way things are” applies to absolutely nothing in the long run.

Rebecca Solnit had a lovely line in a recent interview: “A huge amount of important work is done by communities of nice ladies. Too many people expect changing the world to be like war. But it’s really more like caregiving.”

Smoked paprika is a superb spice.

To have a cat is to engage in psychological warfare daily and never win.

I live a very quiet life, but I don’t feel isolated. I still have the occasional video call or check-in text with out-of-state friends, and I get to share my life with my best friend. Even though my private life baffles my extended family, it agrees with me.

What a lot of people seem to miss about AI: it’s not fun to rob yourself of the crafts that AI attempts to replace. Like, I used to love coding HTML and CSS by hand. But now, it would shock me if people were still doing this for anything other than learning.

Speaking of which, I’ve accepted that there are technical skills I might never use again for the rest of my life because the tech—or even the job—no longer exists.

Music is a foundational part of my life, and no matter how much music I listen to or write, I’m always chasing that high of hearing the last two minutes of “Lateralus” by Tool for the first time2.

It fills me with dread when a doctor tells me I can “call them later if anything comes up.” When? What’s their number? Call them directly? What do I say? What if it’s after-hours? I don’t know what to do!

Whether audiobooks count as reading or not, I don’t care. I love listening to an audiobook while reading along with the physical book. This is what makes Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders one of my favorite books—hundreds of narrators all bickering over each other. It’s sublime.

Living in NYC builds a high tolerance for daily annoyances. What used to be shocking is now barely worth remarking on. That guy on the street screaming at me? Eh, moving along.

Pepsi Zero is far superior to Coke Zero.

I’m amazed at the amount of nonsense people will put up with to make money. I don’t mean that in a judgmental way. I respect people who hustle, but honestly, so much of my happiness comes from regularly passing up an opportunity to make a buck. Once the immediate needs are taken care of and bills are on autopay, I love having the pleasure of saying “no” to almost everything.

On the other hand, I admit I’ve gotten very good at inventing problems for myself. My wife and I are both currently “fun-employed,” spending most days eating ice cream, watching movies, and sleeping in, but I’ve somehow convinced myself I should be spending my time more productively. It’s a feeling that doesn’t hold up to self-reflection, thankfully.

Too much food has that “shareholder” flavor to it now. You know what I mean. Less sweet, a bit stale.

There are a lot of things I’m thankful to know nothing about. Like, I have no idea how gambling works. I don’t know what an over-under is. When someone says something has 3-to-1 odds, I don’t know what those numbers mean. I wouldn’t even know where to begin making a parlay, and I’d like to keep it that way.

It’s nice having no personal vendettas or beef. My only sworn enemy is saturated fats.

Everybody asks me if I’ve driven a car in New York City (yes) and what it’s like (chaotic). Those same people assume there must be nonstop accidents with flaming cars barreling down the avenues. It’s not like that at all. When you drive in NYC, you’re actively driving. You’re so focused on the shifting lanes and careless pedestrians that you don’t have time to take your eyes off the road. I visited Peru last fall and found the driving in Lima even more aggressive than in NYC. But drivers there confirmed that wrecks are so rare, they make the news.

In Peru, I spent four nights deep in the Amazon rainforest. In the early morning hours before daybreak, the forest would come alive with the sound of Howler Monkeys. Their shouts echoed in all directions, like they were circling our camp. So, I know true terror now.3

Everything in the Amazon rainforest is trying to kill you. Every speck of life is fighting for light and nutrients. There were spiders the size of my fist and scorpions the size of my foot. I saw tree-trunk-sized impressions in the grass where an anaconda had passed by just minutes earlier. Then there was the swarm of piranhas that surrounded our boat. Scary, yes. But none of that compares to the day I accidentally drank the Peruvian tap water. I prefer the piranhas over…that.

I’ve heard that if you visited every restaurant in NYC—a new one for every meal—it would take you 75 years to eat at all of them. Having put in a solid effort to eat at as many as we can, that number somehow feels too small.

I love the word “presume.” As in, Sherlock Holmes, I presume? A presumption is an assumption with evidence.

I live in a crowded building, but I love my neighbors. Many of them go out of state for the winter, but those who stay all have friendly, tiny dogs named things like Moose (a Corgi) and Sheeshoo (a Shih Tzu). I admit that the neighbors and I don’t talk much. We’re both okay with that, because they all seem happy enough when I talk to their dogs.

I was talking to my wife about my aspirations for the coming years. I brought up an idea I’d been mulling over, and she asked me, “Is that a dream, or just a way to make money?” I conflated the two for a very long time.

Looking back, I went on to finish my first book because of a minor event early in the process. I handed my wife a chapter I’d been rewriting and agonizing over for weeks, and when she finished reading it, she said, “You’ve found your book.” It’s amazing what a well-timed affirmation can do.

I still haven’t found a mental boost as effective as going for a long run or lifting heavy weights. Next-day soreness is its own little dopamine hit.

I’ve now reached true middle age according to life expectancy for men in America (76.5). It’s okay. I don’t mind the thought. My life up to this point has been more fun than I could ever have dreamed. Just yesterday, I rode one of those roller coasters where you lie face down and get whipped around like Superman. I screamed the whole time and nearly threw up right after, but it was yet another of those moments when I realized that of all the lives I could live, I’m so glad to live this one.