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â© â© â© An Existential Excavation â© â© â©Every year, for more than 40 years now.Itâs the most sacred day of my yearâthis day of perfect balance, when life begins anew in the Northern Hemisphere.Iâm up before dawn to be at the ancient mountain altar, to watch the sun rise through the same V in the ver...
âThese are the good old daysâ - Carly Simon (Anticipation, 1971)Iâm as guilty as anyone. I can allow myself to focus on what I donât have, what I am working to create, to be. I can fall into a âdeficiency loopâ that places me squarely on the hamster wheel of wanting âmore.âOur dopamine motivation...
Iâll come right out with it: I donât have an MFA.Neither doesâor didâStephen King, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Neil Gaiman, or Dan Brown.From Hemingway to Heinlein, Tolstoy to Tolkien, Salinger to Steinbeckânary a graduate degree in writing to be found.Isaac Asimov had a doctorate and a handful...
How to Stand Firm in a Chaotic WorldBeware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living within that way of life. - Hunter S ThompsonI started the latest issue of my Shadow & Star newsletter by saying:âEverywhere you look a...
Iâve been gone for a while. I regularly travel the Great American Southwest, and this year has so far been no exception: 4,000 miles through California, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.I spent time in medium-sized towns like Grantâs Pass, Flagstaff, Redding, and St. George. I talked with people...
Sometimes the most important messages come with the fewest words.â© â© â© An Existential Excavation â© â© â©Something miraculous just happened to me.Like a song in a dream, it must be captured quickly, lest it lose itâs vibrance, fade to black-and-white, and completely disappear. I memorialize it here ...
What allostatic load taught me about ambition, burnout, and the hidden cost of high performance.âšI have been a CEO three times, a college president twice, built and ran a multi-million dollar, multiple-site brick-and-mortar business in a tough environment, been through Ph.D. school, twice. All th...
New Yearâs resolutions: the promises we make ourselves for change in the coming calendar year. Everybody does it. And everybody breaks these promises, because we all know that New Yearâs resolutions are conditional: I will do these things, if I have the time and money and motivation and⊠But ther...
________________Existential Excavation âš________________Life is full of questions, all day every day: what to eat, where to go, what to watch, who to listen to, what to buy, what to believe. In my experience, there are three types of questions.First are the trivial questions; the ones that have ...
Whatâs really underneath everything.This essay is different from my usual writing. Iâm a couple of weeks away from the end of my 67th year and not feeling inclined to waste time. Iâm showing up to do some existential excavation today; if youâre here for comfort, Iâm not your guy. If youâre here f...
