In all seriousness, I never understood or saw any value in “vacations.” A day trip, or a weekend away, sure. But an elaborate and expensive vacation? You still come back to your life (and when you get back, you’ve lost all that time and a lot of money!)

If you need a break from your life so badly, aren’t you better off putting all that money and effort into changing it?

Maybe “depression” is the weight of all the lives you haven’t or couldn’t live, all the opportunities missed like exits or billboards, the crushing weight of all you could’ve been flattening your spirit like roadkill.

And it’s a different thing for each of us, and for each of us it may change each day. But fending off loss is a constant energy suck whether we are aware of it or not.

Maybe it’s the holidays, or me trying to justify how much money I’ve been spending, or how selfish I feel, but this poem by Delmore Schwartz bubbled up in my mind:

May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz, “Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day

We don’t spend enough time mourning the loss of time because, ironically, we’re too busy keeping ourselves busy.

If you’re not pursuing selflessness in silence, you’re doing it wrong.

There is no better high to ride than one fueled by a new idea.

Well, that’s a wrap. We raised a lot of money and awareness, Joe. Thanks for riding with me.

Special thanks to CrossCountryPowersports.com, Gentlemansride.com, and Movember.com.

Watch the full ride video (from my perspective).

More info can be found at https://www.gentlemansride.com/rider/forJoe

We all know the end of our lives is inevitable and the length of our lives is unpredictable, yet we spend the time we have as if we live forever.

We eagerly turn a blind eye toward our common denominators, ignoring what we know to be true.

If you aren’t already aware, the era of generative AI is upon us. It can and will change how everything that uses text and images is created.

The MidJourney subreddit is full of examples of how images can be created in seconds based on a sentence, but more mind blowing is ChatGPT. This is a text generator – feed it a prompt and it spits out, for example, a story.

In the example below, I gave ChatGPT the following prompt:

“Tell me a story about a really talented and saavy book shop owner who really resents how consuming it is to run an award winning book shop because he really wants to be a writer.”

ChatGPT typed back the following faster than I could read it (remember that ALL I TYPED IN IS THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH):

There once was a man named Jack who owned a small, independent book shop in a bustling city. Despite the challenges of running a brick and mortar store in the age of e-commerce, Jack’s book shop was thriving. He had a keen eye for selecting just the right mix of books to stock on his shelves, and his customers loved him for it.

But despite his success as a book shop owner, Jack had always dreamed of being a writer. He spent his free time holed up in his office at the back of the shop, pouring his heart and soul into his writing. But no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t seem to finish a book.

Jack was frustrated and resentful. He felt like he was wasting his talents on running a book shop, when he really wanted to be a writer. He longed for the freedom to focus all his energy on his writing, but at the same time, he knew that his book shop was his livelihood.

One day, a young woman named Emma came into the shop. She was an aspiring writer herself, and she was looking for advice on how to break into the publishing world. Jack was happy to help her, and the two of them spent hours talking about writing and books.

As they talked, Jack realized that he didn’t need to choose between his book shop and his writing. He could use his experience and knowledge as a book shop owner to help other aspiring writers, just like Emma. And with that realization, Jack found a new sense of purpose and fulfillment in his work.

He continued to run his award-winning book shop, but he also started offering writing workshops and publishing advice to his customers. And before long, Jack finally finished his first book. It was a success, and he was able to pursue his dream of being a writer while still running his beloved book shop.

In the end, Jack realized that it was possible to have the best of both worlds, and he was grateful for the talents for the present and the future.

It has a beginning, middle, and end, and has details I never even considered. Award winning? No. Lifetime movie worthy? Absolutely.