Only about a week back did I decide to try to write every morning. The words flow easier right when I get up. It’s a nice little ritual where I go and make my coffee and sit down at the counter with my laptop and start getting my ideas out. It’s a nice, cozy way to mentally “warm up” for the day, kind of like when we all show up at 6am jiu-jitsu class and shoot the shit for 15-20 mins before any jiu-jitsu happens.

There’s also this weird desire that I’ve had over the last couple of years to put more content out. I’ve been mostly quiet on social media before then, occasionally posting when something important happens. I basically post every day now. I think it comes from a desire to share and pass on my ideas, and a bit of social validation. I think my ideas are good. Hell, they’ve gotten me this far so they must be, but it helps to confirm that I’m not crazy, and that people get value from the content I post.

There’s this idea from Richard Dawkins of “memes” (before they were internet jokes), where ideas have a kind of “DNA” and their own process of natural selection. Adaptive ideas are passed on to the next generation, and maladaptive ones are discarded. The first draft of the previous sentence had “good” and “bad”, but then I remembered my biology classes. In that biologically-driven way, I want to put more of my ideas out into the world, to pass on the knowledge to others, and leave my mark in society as a force for “good”. Given the previous discussion on adaptive vs. maladaptive, I want to help the human race continue with adaptive ideas that enable people to live their best, fulfilled lives. That’s the ultimate “force multiplier” that I can be.

Largely without religion, this generation and upcoming ones have to create their own purpose in the world. I found mine through physical and mental grappling, and that was over the course of iterating and meandering through a lot of different things. I didn’t get it right the first try, or the second, or even the fourth. Most people don’t even want to start to try to move in a direction for fear of being wrong, and just accept whatever direction they are already going in. Even if you change and go in the wrong direction, you’ll at least know why that was the wrong direction, and you will be able to course-correct for the next change.

One of the phrases that annoyed me most when I was graduating college and had a job offer in hand already was that I was “set”. I was just beginning! What was “set”??? Things were far from “set”, and still are, and won’t be until I’m in the ground.

That’s it. That’s the process. Life is a process. There isn’t an “stopping point”, or “end” to it while you’re living. If it isn’t changing, you’re dead. Things will always change, and you have to decide how to change (or not) along with them.