I am currently reading “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” by Jared Diamond. In it, he researches ancient civilizations and presents reasons for why they no longer exist. He covers societies including Ancient Egyptians, Maya, Inca, Vikings, Anasazi and several others. A striking similarity in almost all of these collapses was over-consumption of resources…
Rites Of Passage
None of the milestones in my life turned out the way I expected them to. Growing up, my head was full of fantasies about how things would go when I hit major milestones: None of them happened the way I had imagined. Happy Days, Revenge of The Nerds, Welcome Back Kotter, My Three Sons, The…
A Rich Guy Gets Away With It Again
So it appears that Trump has violated a number of laws when he absconded with highly classified documents after leaving the White House. Not only did he take these files, he hid them, lied to the Justice Department when they attempted to recover them and instructed his minions to hide them from investigators. I am…
How Many Chairs Do You Need?
When a celebrity or multi-millionaire sells one of their homes, it’ll occasionally pop-up in my newsfeed with a link to a video tour. Although I don’t pay much attention to famous people, I will check out their homes. I’m curious to see what you get for $10 Million, $50 Million or more. Usually the houses…
No Reunions
My high school class never had a reunion. I’m not surprised. We had one the lamest groups of students to graduate during my four years of high school. Because I was one of the “smart kids” I was able to spend most of my time sequestered with the gifted program thankfully. My mainstream classmates in…
Hair Loss and Anti-Aging Scams
Some of the podcasts I listen to cater a younger demographic – specifically GenZ and Millenials in their late 20s to early 40s. Usually the hosts and guests fall into the same demographic. This makes sense since these generations are the “target demo” ages for advertisers. It also makes sense to me because these are…
I Will Protect You
Part of my core identity is being a protector. I do not know where this came from. What I know is that if I love someone, I will do everything I can to protect that someone. I fail at this. I failed when my stepdaughter died. I failed when my wife suffered while fighting lung…
Muck Dragging
A friend who listened to my Solo podcast episode said that he felt I was very “charitable” when referencing certain people. I knew exactly what he meant, because I did this intentionally. The purpose of the podcast was not to be a public confessional, nor was it to denigrate people who hurt me in the…
We All Hear Different Music
For about 10 years, I regularly did public speaking both professionally and personally. Over the years, as I became more experienced and worked on it, I went from being nervous and terrified, to quite comfortable speaking to audiences up to several hundred people. I remember a mentor telling me, “You’ll be surprised what people take…
Loneliness Cure
I am alone most of the time, but I am rarely lonely Apparently I’m an outlier – or at least I am when compared to many other people. Psychologists, therapists, authors and media report that we have a loneliness epidemic. Ever since the book “Bowling Alone” was written in 2000, people have been feeling more…