Category: Writing

The Things We Forget to Remember

A friend showed me some old family photos a couple weeks ago.

An uncle of his is getting older and had given him a collection of family photos and other memorabilia he’d accumulated over the years. He knew some stories, and his uncle had told him even more stories about the people in those photos.

We turned a few of them over, hoping someone had written a name or a date on the back.

Nothing.

My friend knew these were his people. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, maybe great-uncles. He knew some remarkable family stories, including stories from World War II.

But we couldn’t connect the people in the pictures with the stories.

Somewhere along the way, the thread between the stories and the photos had disappeared.

I’ve been thinking lately about my grandpa on my dad’s side.

I know a few things about his history.

He was in World War II. He was stationed in England for at least part of the war. My grandma was English (Welsh actually) and worked as an infectious disease nurse. Apparently, Grandpa was allergic to everything and had to report for treatment regularly.

Somewhere in there, they fell in love. Grandma told me some stories about their time in England. She told me about her trip over to the US after the war on the Queen Mary, alone with her first child, my aunt. She’d eventually meet back up with Grandpa when she got stateside, since he came home via some sort of military transport.

That’s a pretty good beginning to a family story.

My dad was born in Michigan, but I don’t know what brought them to Michigan.

Then there’s a blank section of the story.

At some point they moved to Southern California, where they spent the rest of their lives.

Why did they move? I don’t know.

Grandpa was an operating engineer, operating heavy equipment.

What kind?

Bulldozers? Cranes? Graders?

What sort of projects did he work on?

Roads? Buildings? Dams?

Did he like his work? Was he good at it?

Did he ever come home and tell my dad about something interesting that happened that day?

I have no idea.

There was a time when I could have asked one of them.

My parents and grandparents are gone now. So are all the other people I can think of who might have known.

Lots of memories survive.

Wars. Marriages. A child’s birth.

England survives. Michigan. California.

But a regular Tuesday afternoon disappears.

I’ve caught myself wondering what Grandpa’s mornings were like.

What time did he get up? Did he drink coffee?

Did he pack a lunch? Did he have a thermos?

What kind of truck did he drive?

What did he do on his days off?

Was moving to California some big adventure, or did he simply hear about a job and say, “Let’s go”?

I don’t actually need to know that Grandpa drank coffee in the morning. What I’d want is the coffee itself. The smell of it in a kitchen at five-thirty in the morning before anyone else was up. Their dog trying to get attention in the quiet of their house right before his workday started. Nobody thought to write any of that down, because why would they. It was just another day.

We’ve never had more ways to record our lives than we do now.

I have thousands of photos on my phone. So does almost everyone I know.

We post pictures. Send them through family group texts. Put them in shared albums. Our phones occasionally remind us what we were doing eight years ago today.

We may be the most photographed generation in human history.

I’m not sure that means anyone will know us particularly well in the future.

Someone could someday inherit 14,000 photographs of us and wonder what we were like.

I think you get to know someone differently when you stay at their house for a few days.

You wake up when they wake up. You have more time to hear what’s really happening in their lives. You learn which chair they always sit in. You find out that somebody who seems perfectly organized can’t find their keys three mornings in a row.

Traveling with someone does the same thing, only faster.

Someone is always hungry. Someone needs the bathroom fifteen minutes after you stop. Flights get delayed. Reservations disappear. It rains. You get lost. The restaurant is closed.

People reveal themselves quickly in these situations.

Thinking about all of this makes me think of something very particular about my dad.

When I was a kid, we camped a lot. We went to Lake Havasu with our boat. We went to off-road races.

Dad was meticulous about preparation.

If a trip was four weeks away, he’d point out that he didn’t really have four weeks to get ready.

He worked six days a week. That meant he only had four Sundays.

That was how he thought about it. Four Sundays to get ready.

As the trip got closer, gear began appearing.

Camping equipment. Tools. Boxes. Supplies. Spare parts for the boat. Motorcycle parts, and tools.

He was methodical about storing everything so it could be staged in modules.

For weeks, there’d be a growing pile of gear waiting to go…ready to be packed into the truck.

Dad liked being ready.

Then there was departure time.

If our plan was to leave early Friday morning, there was a very good chance that sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday, Dad would begin reconsidering the wisdom of this plan.

Why wait until Friday morning? I’m already taking Friday off. We could leave the night before. I could cut out of work early on Thursday so we can get a jump on our trip.

Who knew what might go wrong along the way? If something did, we’d have extra time.

And if nothing went wrong, we’d arrive early. Being early was useful.

You get your choice of campsites.

You weren’t rushing. We could be fully set up when everyone else arrives.

It made complete sense to him.

Mom didn’t see the genius of this plan in quite the same way.

Dad had the truck and equipment ready.

Mom had the food. And clothes. And two boys. And all the domestic stuff (Mom and Dad used to talk about Mom being in charge of domestics) to get ready.

For Mom, leaving Thursday night mostly meant she’d just lost twelve hours of prep time.

There was no father-son conversation where he explained the importance of preparation and leaving early.

I just watched (and usually helped) him get everything ready.

And now I like getting up early. I like arriving before other people. I like being prepared.

Once in a while, I find myself thinking that maybe we should leave tonight instead of tomorrow morning.

We probably inherit all kinds of things this way.

Ways of preparing. Ways of worrying. Little phrases. Expectations.

The way we organize our garage.

The way we react when we’re running late.

Nobody announces that these things are being handed down. Years later, we discover them in ourselves.

I wonder what I inherited from my grandfather without knowing it.

Maybe that’s why the missing details about him intrigue me.

I’d like to know how he thought long before I came along.

I’d like to know what he did when a trip was four weeks away.

I recently heard about another kind of writing that seems almost unrelated. Writing about grief or trauma. The basic idea is that putting painful experiences into words can help us process them.

I don’t pretend to understand all the neuroscience involved, and I’m suspicious of explanations that make our brains sound like a filing cabinet where we simply move an experience from one drawer to another. But the idea itself interests me.

Something happens.

It’s overwhelming.

Eventually we sit down and try to describe it…to ourselves.

What happened? What did I feel? What am I still feeling?

Even if nobody ever reads it.

Writing like this can give shape to something that didn’t have much shape before.

It’s almost the reverse of what I’ve been thinking about Grandpa’s mornings. There, I wanted someone to have written down the feeling of an ordinary day before it disappeared entirely. Here, writing takes something that’s still painfully vivid and makes it a little easier to understand.

I’ve written for years now.

Most of what I write begins with whatever captured my attention at that moment.

Something I read. Something that happened at work. Something one of my grandkids did.

Something I’m building.

Something that annoyed me.

Something I suddenly understand differently than I did before.

I don’t usually think of it as preserving history.

I’m just enjoying writing things down.

Sometimes I wonder what someone in my family might find in all my writing fifty or a hundred years from now.

Not because my writing is important.

Because the little things in it might be.

A future member of my family can probably find my birth date.

They may know where I lived and what I did for work…maybe as little as I know about my own grandparents.

They’ll almost certainly have photos. A ridiculous number of them.

But something I wrote about pouring concrete with my grandkids may tell them something the photos don’t.

Or building a campsite. Or struggling with some idea that’s stuck in my head.

Or remembering my dad getting ready for a trip.

They might get a glimpse of what caught my attention on a particular Thursday.

I’ve heard people talk romantically about ancient societies gathering around fire pits at night listening to the elders tell stories about their ancestors.

Fireside stories notwithstanding, I suspect a lot of human history has always been lost.

Someone dies unexpectedly. Nobody ever thought to ask.

The grandchildren weren’t paying attention. The one person who knew the story assumed everyone else knew it too.

A photo gets put in a box. Fifty years later, somebody turns it over.

Blank.

We tend to think of history as big events.

The things printed in books.

But I’m more interested lately in the smaller history.

Why Michigan? Why California?

Who’s the man standing on the left side of that picture?

And what was everybody laughing about?

We’re surrounded by history while it still looks like ordinary life. It’s so easy to miss.

I keep thinking about those old photos my friend and I turned over.

Someone took them. Someone kept them. Someone else kept them after that.

Eventually an aging uncle carefully hands them to my friend because he wants someone in the family to have them.

Unfortunately, most of the stories didn’t make the trip.

Photo by Fiona Murray-deGraaff on Unsplash

Friction, A Cure for Premature Confidence

You can watch someone prepare and pour a concrete slab.

You can see how they set the forms, grade the dirt, calculate the concrete they’ll need, screed it, float it, edge it, and apply a perfect broom finish. You can study the tools. Watch videos explaining every step.

That’s still a long way from doing it yourself.

Doing it requires moving every shovel of dirt by hand. You have to decide how the grade should run and where the water will drain. You wonder if the forms are strong enough, if the slope is right, and whether the finished slab will look terrible.

Then the truck arrives. The clock starts.

Tools that looked simple in someone else’s hands feel entirely different in your own. The concrete is heavy. It pushes back. Your shoulders hurt. Your back aches. The clock is ticking.

You begin to see things you couldn’t see before. Low spots. Ridges. Edges that need attention. Sections that are ready for the next step and others that need to be left alone.

Maybe the slab turns out great. Maybe it’ll suck.

Either way, you’ll know a lot more at the end of the day than you knew that morning. The work changes your eye, your hands, and your judgment.

An AI tool can help you prepare. It can list the materials, calculate the volume, explain the tools, identify common mistakes, and suggest videos.

But it can’t simulate the way the trowel feels moving across the concrete. It can’t tell you when you’ve worked it enough and it’s ready to broom.

I’ve been thinking about that distinction after reading a piece by Shawn Smucker that Tim Ferriss highlighted in his Friday email.

Smucker wrote about what we may lose when we turn to AI too quickly. Instead of calling a friend who knows how to cook, camp, fix something, or solve a problem, we can ask an AI tool and have an answer in seconds.

The answer may be good. It might even be clearer than what our friend would’ve told us. But the answer is probably the least valuable part. Calling our friend could lead to a story, an old memory, some unexpected advice, or a forty-five-minute conversation about what’s happening in their life.

Ferriss also shared Kurt Vonnegut’s story about going out to buy one envelope rather than ordering a hundred online. Vonnegut wanted the trip. He wanted to see people, notice things, and have whatever little encounters came with buying that one envelope. The inefficiency was part of the experience.

We spend a lot of time trying to remove friction in the pursuit of efficiency, especially the friction that drains us. Repetitive paperwork. Unnecessary steps. Work that adds very little value.

But some friction asks more of us. Forcing us to pay attention, make new decisions, correct our mistakes, and develop judgment we didn’t have before.

The tricky thing is that both types of friction feel exhausting while we’re experiencing them.

AI is great at removing friction. It can research an unfamiliar topic, organize an idea, compare alternatives, create a first draft, write code, build a prototype, or break a daunting project into manageable steps.

That’s good stuff.

But AI can also produce polished-looking work long before the person using it can see what’s missing. That polish can create confidence the work hasn’t fully earned.

A lot of what we recognize as “AI slop” grows out of that premature confidence.

Friction develops the eye that can see past the polish. When we’ve felt low spots under a trowel, we can see them in someone else’s slab. When we’ve fought a stubborn argument into shape on the page, we can see the soft spot in someone else’s paragraph.

Skip that resistance and we skip more than the difficulty. We skip the experience that teaches us how to judge the work.

A working software prototype is a long way from a dependable product. A quick draft is a long way from a finished piece of writing. The distance between them is filled with the kind of friction AI helps us postpone but can’t remove entirely.

Remember wax on, wax off?

Daniel LaRusso thought he was doing random chores. Mr. Miyagi knew the repetition was developing movements and instincts Daniel would need later.

A lot of formative work is like that. We understand what it was building in us only after we’ve stayed with it long enough to grow.

Friction builds more than the finished product.

It builds the person who can tell when the product is finished.

Photo – My four grandsons were my crew for this job. This was their first concrete project. The two older boys got their first chance to finish concrete, while their younger brothers are already looking forward to taking a turn on the next one. That was a fun day and that little sidewalk turned out great!

Create Anyway

There’s a big difference between having an opinion about what’s broken and taking responsibility for making something better.

We live in a time when commentary is easy.

We can criticize from the sidelines. We can point out what’s wrong. We can explain why the system is broken, why the leaders failed, why the plan won’t work, or why the people in charge should have known better.

And much of that criticism may be true.

Something really may be broken. People may have failed. The system may need to change.

But is criticism going to be our only contribution?

Creating rather than complaining is an act of disciplined hope. It says I can see what’s wrong, but I’m still willing to work.

Complaining usually says, “Someone should fix this.”

Creating says, “I can improve one piece of this.”

That shift moves us from the sidelines onto the field.

Some problems aren’t ours to carry. We shouldn’t excuse the people who caused them. We don’t pretend the risks aren’t real or the damage doesn’t exist.

But we refuse to stop at frustration.

We must ask better questions.

What can I build? What can I repair? What can I encourage? What can I organize? What can I make clearer, stronger, more honest, more useful, more human?

And what can I do even if I didn’t create the problem?

That’s leadership.

Leadership isn’t only authority or title, position, budget, or permission.

Leadership is seeing a gap and stepping into it.

It’s making the call no one wants to make. Writing the note. Cleaning up the mess. Telling the truth. Taking the first small step.

We don’t have to fix everything to make something better.

That’s important to understand, because the size of the problem can become an excuse for doing nothing.

If I can’t fix the whole system, why bother? If I can’t change the whole culture, why try?

But that’s spectator thinking.

Builders think differently. Builders understand that every useful thing starts smaller than the problem it hopes to address.

A bridge starts with a first beam. A book starts with a first sentence.

A movement starts with a first conversation.

A better future starts when someone decides their contribution will be more than complaint.

It says I may not be responsible for the whole problem, but I am responsible for what I do next.

It says tomorrow can be better than today, and I’m willing to put something in motion.

The invitation is simple.

Don’t let your only contribution be commentary.

Find one thing you can improve.

One process. One relationship. One decision. One conversation. One neglected corner of the work.

Start there. Build there. Serve there.

The system may still be broken. The leaders may still have failed.

But the future belongs to the ones who choose to create anyway.

Photo by Alex Gruber on Unsplash – The future is shaped by people willing to begin.

You’re Not Choosing Your Whole Life This Year – A Graduation Message

Graduation has a way of making ordinary questions feel enormous.

What are you going to do next? Where are you going to school? What trade are you going into? Where are you going to work? What are you going to do with your life?

That last question is the one that sneaks into our subconscious. It turns our celebration into a test. It makes a young person feel like their next decision carries the weight of the next fifty years.

Trust me. It doesn’t.

You’re not choosing your whole life this year. You’re choosing the next step.

That next step still deserves careful thought. Some choices will open doors; others will close them…and some will make the road harder than it needs to be.

But don’t hand this one decision more power than it deserves.

Your first job isn’t a life sentence. Your major isn’t your permanent identity. Your first trade, internship, military assignment, certification, apprenticeship, or business idea marks where the road begins, not where it ends.

Most lives travel roads we couldn’t have mapped in advance. One small opportunity today may connect you to a person who changes your direction entirely. One ordinary job may teach you something that becomes useful ten years later. A disappointment may save you from staying on the wrong road for too long.

You may move around. You might take a job that makes sense now and later discover it doesn’t fit who you are or what your life requires. Your priorities will change. The economy will change. A job can be a great opportunity, but it is rarely a lifetime guarantee.

Employers may invest in you when you serve their needs and (fairly or unfairly) move on when they believe you no longer do. Doors may close for reasons having little to do with your effort or character. That doesn’t mean you failed. It means you’re living in a world that keeps moving. Knowing that can help you walk into each opportunity with your eyes open.

Character, hard work, and skills all carry weight, but many opportunities come through people. The people who trust you, teach you, recommend you, challenge you, and remember how you treated them may influence your future in ways no resume ever could.

Build your life on something stronger than the assumption that one company, one industry, one credential, or one carefully written plan will carry you safely from here to retirement.

Learn how to add value. That phrase sounds like a business platitude, but strip away the jargon and it’s the oldest human question. Can people count on you for something real?

Can you solve a problem? Can you make something better? Can you be trusted with responsibility? Can you communicate clearly? Can you tell the truth when it would be easier to hide? Can you learn something new without treating the need to learn as an insult?

Can you help the people around you succeed? Can you walk into a messy situation and leave it better than you found it?

People who can do these things will usually find a way forward. Maybe not on the exact timeline they imagined. But useful, trustworthy, curious, steady people tend to create options for themselves over time.

Graduates hear a lot about jobs, majors, trades, degrees, salaries, and careers. All are serious things, and they deserve real thought. It’s good to learn skills. It’s good to earn your living and eventually support a family if that becomes part of your life. It’s good to contribute useful work to the world.

But your career isn’t your whole life.

A great resume with a lonely heart is still a lonely life. A strong paycheck with shallow relationships won’t feel as rich as you think it will.

A respected title can’t sit with you at the kitchen table. It won’t laugh with you around a campfire. It can’t pray for you, forgive you, challenge you, remember old stories with you, or show up when things are going wrong.

Much of your deepest joy will come from the relationships you cultivate. The people you love. The people who love you. The friends who walk with you. The family you stay connected to. The conversations you remember years later. The long drives. The late night talks.

The unexpected kindness. The forgiveness given and received.

By the time you graduate, you may already know some of the people who will still be part of your life fifty years from now. You won’t know which ones yet. Some will drift away. Some will surprise you and stay.

And after graduation, you’ll meet more. Pay attention. One may become your spouse. Some will teach you. Some will test you. Some will need your help. Some may help save you from yourself.

The world will ask what you do. But life will eventually ask better questions.

Who do you love? Who can count on you? Who tells you the truth? Who do you encourage? Who do you forgive? Who have you helped carry a burden they couldn’t carry alone? What are you doing with your soul?

These questions will stay with you long after the name of your first employer has faded into the background.

Choose the school, the job, the trade, the service path, or the next assignment with as much wisdom as you can gather. Ask questions. Do research. Talk to people who have walked farther down the road.

Listen to your parents, even when you think they don’t fully understand the world you’re entering. They may not understand every tool or pressure you face, but they know more than you think about disappointment, responsibility, sacrifice, and love.

Then move.

Do the work in front of you. Show up on time (which is 15 minutes early). Tell the truth. Be easy to trust. Learn the tools. Respect the people. Ask better questions. Pay attention to what gives you energy and what drains it. Notice where your abilities meet someone else’s needs. Be willing to change direction without turning that change into a personal crisis.

A wise life is rarely built from one perfect decision made at eighteen or twenty-two. It’s built from thousands of smaller decisions made over time. Some will be mistakes and that’s part of the deal.

The goal isn’t to live without mistakes. It’s to tell the truth when they happen, learn what they have to teach, repair what you can, and keep walking with a little more knowledge than before.

Graduation is worth celebrating. You finished something difficult, and finishing should be honored. Enjoy the moment. Thank the people who helped you get here.

Then take a deep breath.

You don’t have to solve your whole life before the celebration is over. You won’t know every turn, every job, every friendship, every disappointment, or every joy waiting along the way.

You have enough to take the next step with care, humility, gratitude, and hope, trusting that life will teach you more as you walk.

Photo by Carson Vara on Unsplash

Drifting Toward the Emotionally Anonymous

After a long day, I love brain candy.

Give me something funny, something distracting, something that asks almost nothing from me. If I accidentally learn something along the way, great. Bonus. But the goal is to let my mind relax and enjoy the ride.

So there I was, doing exactly that. Reading a Substack post about the music industry, the way you read things when you’re unwinding, when an innocuous phrase popped up.

Emotionally anonymous.

The writer was talking about AI-generated music and how the current culture around it was producing art that had all the right shapes and none of the soul. Music that sounded like music but felt like nothing.

This wasn’t just about music.

Think about the last hour you spent scrolling.

A video that made you laugh. A post that made you mad. A headline that informed you for about twelve seconds. A clever line made you nod. A song clip gave you a little lift.

Then it was gone.

Not just gone from the screen. Gone from you.

You can barely remember what you just watched. You remember the feeling, maybe. A little spark. A little hit. A small taste of something sweet.

Brain candy…but all the time.

The sensation of engagement without any connection.

Not that everything has to be deep. Some things are supposed to be brief. A joke. A smile. A beautiful moment.

But brief isn’t the same as disposable.

It feels like we’re living in a world designed to make nearly everything disposable.

Even feeling. Especially feeling.

We scroll past outrage. Beauty. Someone’s best day and someone’s worst day. A song that took three minutes to generate or a song that took thirty years of pain to write.

Our screen treats them almost the same.

Here. React. Move on.
Here. React. Move on.

A little joy. A little envy. A little anger. Some nostalgia. Maybe a little self-righteousness. A laugh.

Next.

I’m not sure what it all means, but it has something to do with attention versus memory.

I wonder if we’re training ourselves to prefer things that ask almost nothing from us, except our attention.

Things that arrive pre-approved for whatever emotional response the algorithm thinks we’re most likely to want.

Which is where Wordsworth comes in.

A strange leap…mindless scrolling to Wordsworth.

But maybe it isn’t strange at all.

He wrote that poetry “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity” (Yes, he spelled tranquility with an extra L).

What’s a recollected emotion?

It’s that song that comes on and suddenly you’re seventeen again, in a car you thankfully no longer own, with people you haven’t seen in over forty years, feeling something you thought you’d forgotten.

You’re not only remembering it. You’re back inside it.

That’s what recollection does. It transports us. In milliseconds, today’s experience reaches back and finds the first time we felt this way, the moment that wrote itself into us.

We’re not just reacting to what’s in front of us. We’re connecting to something foundational, something that helped make us who we’ve become.

That’s the opposite of what the stream offers.

The stream triggers. It harvests. It optimizes for our reaction and moves on before that feeling has anywhere to go.

Recollection goes the other direction. It reaches back, finds the root, and pulls the past into the present. You recognize something. You don’t just remember it.

Real human art has a before and after inside it.

An arc.

Something happened. Someone lived it. Suffered through it, laughed about it, misunderstood it, got it wrong, got it more right, carried it into the quiet, and then tried to make something from it.

A song. A poem. A letter. A photograph. A few lines written late at night when the house is quiet.

The best things don’t merely strike us. They return to us. They become part of who we are.

Then AI enters the room, because of course it does. AI enters every room now.

Music. Writing. Images. Speeches. Lesson plans. Poems. Emails. Stories. Birthday notes. Condolence letters.

Some of it is really good. Or at least good looking.

Smooth. Clean. Properly structured. Emotionally shaped. Technically impressive.

But sometimes nobody seems to be there.

The work has the structure of feeling but not the experience behind it.

It sounds sad but it’s never been wounded. It sounds wise but it hasn’t made life-altering mistakes. It sounds compassionate but it hasn’t loved anyone. It sounds brave but has never faced real fear.

That’s what emotionally anonymous means to me. And once I saw that phrase, I’ve started to see it a lot.

It would be simple to say AI is fake and human work is real.

That’s a clean line. It’s also not quite true.

A person using an AI tool can still be struggling with the work. Still shaping it. Pushing back. Adding their own history. Rejecting lines that sound impressive but don’t feel true. Working until the piece finally says what they were trying to say.

The presence of a tool doesn’t erase the presence of the human.

But it does raise the responsibility of the human in the loop.

There’s a big difference between asking a tool, “Make me something about this topic,” and asking, “Help me understand what I’m trying to say.”

One produces emotionally anonymous content.

The other can be part of a real human process, because the human is still leading. Still choosing. Deciding what matters. Still saying No, that’s too slick. No, that sounds like something but says nothing. No, that isn’t what I mean. Cut that. Keep this. Slow down here.

That’s not outsourcing the soul of the thing.

A pen is a tool. A typewriter is a tool. A paintbrush and camera are tools.

Tools have always changed our work. Sometimes they’ve cheapened it. Sometimes they’ve expanded it. Sometimes they’ve made the impossible possible.

The question isn’t whether a tool was involved.

The better question is whether the human surrendered the work or entered it more deeply.

Did they bring judgment? Did they bring care? Did they resist the easy version?

Did they leave fingerprints?

As people get used to receiving AI-generated content, truly human work may become harder to recognize. A picture might be dismissed as AI-generated. A carefully written essay treated as machine polished. A handmade story received with a shrug.

Did they really make that?

That little question changes something.

Someone may have poured time, discipline, revision, taste, failure, and care into a piece of work, only to have it discounted as another product of the machine.

What a strange burden to place on work that’s already hard enough to make.

Maybe our fingerprints will become more valuable precisely because they’ll become harder to fake and easier to overlook.

Maybe the rough edges will matter more. The old scars. The sentence that sounds like a real person from a real place with a real history.

The human voice will have to become more human. Less generic. Less inflated. Less smooth. Less afraid of being specific. Less afraid of carrying the marks of a life.

Because the stream won’t slow down.

The brain candy will get sweeter. The generated songs will get better. The images will get more convincing. The essays will get cleaner. The machines will become more fluent in the language of feeling.

But fluency isn’t witness. It never was.

The human has to stay in the work for more than just quality control. To preserve something the machine can’t supply. The fact that a real person was there, and it mattered to them.

I don’t want fewer tools. I don’t want people to stop making things because the machine can make an excellent version too.

But I do want us to remember the difference between a reaction and something that stays with us. Something made quickly to catch us, and something made carefully enough to keep us.

I want us to protect the fingerprints.

The hesitation. The humor. The experience.

The strange little detail nobody would invent unless they had really been there. The line that isn’t perfect but is alive.

Brain candy will keep giving us the sensation of feeling.

But the things that last will still need something more.

They’ll need recollection and witness.

They’ll need fingerprints.

Credit to Joel Gouveia, who showed me the phrase “emotionally anonymous” in his Substack piece. Something I’ve been noticing for a while but didn’t have the words to describe.

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash – because Skittles are awesome.

The Space Where Imagination Still Lives

A sentence in a science fiction novel stopped me recently. It was a small line, easy to roll past, but it stayed with me long after I put it down.

“I’m proud of my imagination.”

I found myself wondering if I had ever thought of it that way. Proud. The bigger question that followed was a little more unsettling. Am I still using my imagination fully, or is it something I can see, but always remains just a few steps beyond my reach?

Most of us think of imagination as something that belongs to childhood. Living room forts. Long summer days that lasted forever. Stories invented simply because it was fun to live inside them for a while.

Then life moves forward and the tone shifts. Our imagination grows up with us. It gets invited into planning meetings and project updates. It earns its place by helping things get built, improved, delivered. It becomes practical.

That kind of imagination matters. It’s the force behind homes that rise from empty ground, companies that begin as ideas scribbled on paper, and communities that take shape one decision at a time. Many of the most meaningful things in life begin with a simple question. What if this could exist? And then our imagination stays long enough to help bring it into the world.

Yet there’s another layer, the one that’s harder to reach. Imagination without a destination. The kind that wanders. The kind that lets our curiosity move without a map, without an audience, without a finish line waiting just ahead.

Modern life doesn’t make much room for wandering. We reward clarity. We celebrate speed. Productivity gets our applause. Wandering gets a polite nod and then we move on.

Even creativity, when it happens, can start to lean toward usefulness. We think about who might care, how something might land, whether this is worth sharing. Before long, our imagination is wearing work clothes every day.

Still, the wandering version never disappears. It shows itself in moments we almost miss. A line in a book that makes us pause. A quiet walk where our thoughts drift farther than we planned. Standing on an open piece of land and picturing laughter and conversations that haven’t happened yet, paths that haven’t yet been carved.

Those moments feel different. The air seems a little wider. Time stretches just enough for possibility to breathe.

Imagination is our ability to see long before we start to solve. 

Across a lifetime it takes different forms.

-Playful imagination delights in possibility simply because it can.
-Building imagination turns vision into action and ideas into reality.
-Generative imagination pictures future experiences, future conversations, future memories waiting somewhere ahead.

Most of us live primarily in the second and third forms. We plan, design, and visualize. We imagine with purpose. The playful version visits less often, but when it arrives it carries a spark that feels unmistakable.

Part of what makes it harder to access is our internal voice of evaluation. Our mind asks its questions automatically. Does this make sense? Is this useful? Would anyone care? These questions help us bring ideas into the world. They also narrow our horizons.

Artists talk about the deep joy in creating something they love for its own sake. Then a second round of joy when that creation resonates with others. The order matters. Self first. Audience second. When the sequence holds, the work feels alive. The same may be true of imagination itself.

Imagination grows stronger when it has somewhere to roam. It expands when it’s allowed to exist without immediate purpose. That permission can live in small choices. Letting a thought run a little longer. Following an idea that seems interesting even if it leads nowhere. Sitting with possibility without rushing to decide what it means.

The wandering and the purposeful are partners. Each strengthens the other. The freedom to explore deepens our clarity to build. When imagination has room to stretch, what we create carries more life inside of it.

That line from the novel stayed with me because it felt less like a statement and more like a quiet commitment. To keep my imagination active. To keep it close at hand. To let it wander often enough that it never forgets how.

Maybe that’s the invitation for all of us. Keep a small door open. Let imagination step outside the boundaries of usefulness from time to time. Let it explore without needing a reason.

Because the farther our imagination travels, the richer life feels when we return.

Photo by Dobranici Florin on Unsplash – I can imagine a bunch of things in this photo, but the main reason I chose it is the way the sun glows on the fence posts. I made you look again, didn’t I.

The Short Memory of Institutions

“The King is dead. All hail the new king.”

For centuries, those words marked a moment of transition in a monarchy. They acknowledged loss while declaring that the kingdom would continue.

One reign ends. Another begins. The work continues.

Modern organizations operate in much the same way, just without the ceremony.

When the Ball Changes Hands

Sometimes the transition is visible. A retirement announcement made months in advance. A company-wide gathering, a slideshow of memories, a few stories capturing the arc of a career. Handshakes and hugs. People are grateful for the chance to say thank you.

Other departures unfold quietly. A decision formed over time. A conversation held in private. Recognition that the moment has arrived for something different to begin.

At times, the individual chooses the timing, sensing it’s time to redirect their energy or reclaim parts of life that have waited patiently. At other times, the organization makes the call.

It’s like a manager walking to the mound and asking the starting pitcher for the ball. The pitcher may have thrown well and kept the team in the game. A new batter steps in, and the situation calls for a different arm. The decision reflects what the moment requires. What the pitcher deserved is a different conversation.

The Half-Life of Professional Memory

Spend any time inside large organizations and you’ve witnessed what follows.

A respected leader leaves after a long and meaningful tenure. Their name surfaces occasionally.

Over time, new colleagues arrive who never worked with them. New leaders establish their own ways of operating. The organization adapts.

Work progresses while memories fade into the background.

Institutions carry short memories because continuity is the center of their purpose. Time spent dwelling on the past subtracts from their responsibility to build what comes next. This quality allows organizations to endure. From the inside, it can still be painful.

The Grief No One Mentions

We rarely dwell on the plain truth that this process hurts.

Years of personal investment in people, in solving problems, and in creating a supportive culture eventually become part of who we are. When the organization moves forward without us, it can feel like we’re diminished. Like our work didn’t matter as much as we believed.

That feeling deserves to be called grief. The natural response to losing something we genuinely loved.

Our mistake is letting that grief become a verdict.

The organization’s short memory says nothing about the value of what we contributed. It says something about how institutions are built to function. They’re designed for mission and continuity, with memory serving a different purpose. Understanding the difference doesn’t make the feeling disappear, but it does change what the feeling means.

Where Influence Actually Lives

Our work never disappears. Its impact simply resides in a different place.

The confidence someone discovers because we believed in them. The standards we upheld when it would have been easier to compromise. The steadiness we showed under pressure. The thinking patterns others continue to use long after they’ve forgotten the source.

These moments accumulate.

Lasting influence rarely lives in titles, completed initiatives, or improved metrics. Those matter deeply in their time, yet they rarely define what lasts.

Most of us can trace core insights to a teacher or mentor who shaped us. Someone who challenged us to think beyond ourselves or our capabilities, changing how we see the world. Their insight became part of who we are.

In the same way, we become that teacher in someone else’s story.

The Metric That Matters Most

Leaders who sustain themselves over the long term tend to live with dual awareness. They engage fully and care deeply about the organization’s mission. They invest in people and outcomes.

At the same time, their sense of self rests on something broader. Family, faith, health, curiosity, service, and community form a foundation that holds steady regardless of their title.

They recognize that one day the organization will continue without them, and they choose to lead in ways that remain meaningful regardless. This awareness strengthens their commitment rather than weakening it, because it clarifies what actually matters.

Eventually, each of us hand over the ball. The badge stops working. The inbox grows quiet. Someone else takes the chair.

Our opportunity is to contribute in ways that remain useful long after our names fade from conversation. Lessons carried forward through people we may never meet.

And that is enough.

Photo by Robert Stump on Unsplash

Decision Time

A decision sits in front of us, waiting.

We turn it over in our head. We ask a few more questions. We look for one more data point. We check with another person whose opinion we respect. We wait for the timing to feel right.

And still, we hesitate.

We tell ourselves we need more information. More time. More certainty.

Indecision usually grows from very human places. Fear of being wrong. Fear of being blamed. Fear of choosing a path that can’t be undone. Fear of embarrassment.

Add decision fatigue to the mix and postponement starts to feel reasonable.

Meanwhile, the cost of waiting accumulates quietly. Teams stall. Momentum fades. Confidence erodes. What began as a thoughtful pause turns into drift.

Most leadership decisions are made without perfect information. Progress rarely waits for certainty.

So, what is our hesitation really telling us?

Sometimes, it’s a clear no. A request pulls us away from what matters most. We don’t like what we see, but we’re not sure why. Maybe a partnership doesn’t sit right with our values. In these moments, extended thinking isn’t searching for clarity. It’s searching for a way to explain our decision.

Other times, we hesitate because the decision stretches us. It introduces uncertainty. It raises our visibility. It asks more of us than we feel ready to give. Growth decisions usually feel uncomfortable before they feel right.

At some point, the data stops improving and the waiting stops helping.

Start small. Take a step that tests the decision rather than locking it in. Forward motion reveals new information…something thinking alone can’t.

A decision that turns out to be wrong isn’t failure.

It’s feedback.

And feedback points us toward our next decision.

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
— Peter F. Drucker

Photo by ChatGPT’s new image generator, which is way better than prior versions of the tool.

What If Jarvis Is Available to Each of Us?

One of the best parts of the Iron Man movies is Jarvis, the ever-present AI system that acts as an extension of Tony Stark’s mind. Jarvis is a collaborator. A research analyst. A pattern finder. A problem solver. He handles logistics, runs calculations, surfaces insights, and stays ready in the background until Tony needs him.

Jarvis amplifies and extends Tony’s genius.

Recently, I introduced a friend to ChatGPT. He hasn’t jumped into any AI tools yet, but he can see that people around him are finding real value in them. Like many thoughtful people, his first questions weren’t about features. They were about data privacy. About whether these tools were simply repackaging other people’s work. About what was really going on under the hood.

At one point, he asked a simple question:

Is it like having Jarvis around whenever you need him?

To me, the honest answer is yes.

But it’s also important to realize that Jarvis isn’t perfect. And neither are the AI tools available to us today.

The First Questions Matter. Almost every serious conversation about AI tools begins in the same place.

Is my data safe?

Who owns the output?

Can I trust what I’m getting back?

These are the same questions we ask whenever a new digital tool emerges.

At a basic level, paid versions of tools like ChatGPT don’t use our conversations to train public models. Even with that protection in place, I still guard my data carefully. If I’m asking questions related to finances, health, or legal matters, I use hypothetical scenarios rather than personal specifics. I’m the first line of defense when it comes to my personal information.

In professional and commercial environments, organizations using business or enterprise versions gain additional protections around data isolation, encryption, access controls, and audit logging. At the enterprise level, some platforms even allow customers to manage their own encryption keys on top of the platform’s security.

The tool doesn’t decide what’s appropriate to share. We do.

Who Owns the Output? We do. The tool doesn’t claim authorship. It doesn’t retain ownership of what it produces for you. The output becomes yours because you directed the work, supplied the context, and decided how the result would be used.

But ownership is only part of the story. Responsibility matters just as much.

The tool doesn’t know your intent. It doesn’t understand your audience. And it doesn’t bear the consequences of getting something wrong. That responsibility stays with the human in the loop. That’s us.

In that sense, using AI isn’t fundamentally different from working with many other analytical tools we may have used for decades. The work becomes yours because you shape it, refine it, and ultimately stand behind it.

A Note on Sources and Attribution. Owning the output also means owning the responsibility for its accuracy and integrity. This is especially important when it comes to research and citations.

AI tools can pull together large volumes of information, synthesize ideas across many inputs, and present them in clean, compelling language. That capability is incredibly useful. But it doesn’t remove the author’s responsibility to understand where ideas come from and how they’re represented.

The tool may summarize research. It may surface commonly known concepts. It may produce language that sounds authoritative and polished. What it doesn’t guarantee is proper attribution or assurance that content isn’t too closely mirroring a specific source.

That responsibility stays with the human.

When I use AI for research or writing, I treat it as a starting point. I ask it to surface each source. I follow links. I read original material. And when an idea, quote, or framework belongs to someone else, I make sure it’s credited appropriately. This step also helps catch hallucinations that sound amazingly accurate.

Ownership requires standing behind the integrity of the work to the best of your ability.

Can I Trust What I’m Getting Back? Usually. Only with supervision. AI tools are very good at consuming information, identifying patterns, and accelerating first drafts. They are less reliable when precision, nuance, or real-world verification is required.

They can be confidently wrong. They can lose context. They can blend accurate information with outdated or incomplete details.

AI tools hallucinate regularly, though this tendency improves with each new model release. These aren’t reasons to dismiss AI as a tool. They’re reminders to understand what AI is and what it isn’t.

Trust paired with skepticism is the right approach. AI tools are fast-thinking assistants, never the final authority.

Verification still matters. Judgment still matters. Experience still matters. In fact, the better your judgment, the more valuable these tools become.

Why Memory Changes the Equation. Most people use AI tools like a smart search engine. Ask a question. Get an answer. Move on.

That works. But it barely scratches the surface of what’s possible. The real multiplier happens when the tool is allowed to remember context.

ChatGPT includes a memory capability that lets you intentionally store preferences, patterns, and reference material across conversations. Used well, this transforms the tool from something you query into something you can collaborate with.

Over the past year and across hundreds of prompt conversations, I’ve shared:

-My writing voice and stylistic preferences

-A digital copy of a leadership book I wrote over a decade ago (about 65,000 words)

-An autobiography I wrote for my children and grandchildren (about 90,000 words)

-Hundreds of blog posts published over the past 13 years (roughly 240,000 words)

-How I like to structure projects and approach new work

In total, I’ve trained the tool with nearly 400,000 words of my original content. This began as an experiment to see if I could reduce generic responses and encourage the tool to approach questions from my foundational perspective.

The difference is tangible. Early on, whether I was drafting communication, analyzing problems, or organizing ideas, the tool would produce polished but generic output that required extensive rewriting. Now, it reflects my priorities, uses frameworks I’ve shared, and produces work that feels aligned with how I think. I still edit quite a bit, but I’m refining rather than rebuilding.

Collaboration Requires Judgment. My friend asked me another important question.

Do you still feel like the writing you produce with it is yours?

Yes. Completely.

Every project I’ve worked on with these tools begins with my original content, reinforced by reference material I created long before AI entered the picture. Hundreds of thousands of words written over more than a decade. Clear intent about audience and purpose, using a defined process I’ve established before drafting anything.

The tool supports rather than replaces my judgment. Drafts usually require significant edits, shifts in tone, and sometimes complete rewrites.

Where it excels is in synthesis. In retrieval. In pattern recognition across large bodies of work. In accelerating first drafts that already have direction.

Large projects require constant supervision. Threads get crossed. Context gets muddled. The tool needs redirection, clarification, and sometimes retraining as the work evolves.

This is simply the nature of collaboration.

Why the Hype Misses the Point. There’s a popular narrative circulating that anyone can now write a book, write a complex software application, create a website, start a business, or become an expert with just a few well-written prompts.

This misunderstands both the tools and the craft associated with each of these tasks.

I think of AI the way I think of a great camera. We can all buy the same equipment. That doesn’t guarantee an amazing photo. The quality still depends on the eye behind the lens, the patience and skills to frame the shot, and the willingness to edit ruthlessly afterward.

Ansel Adams once said that asking him what camera he used was like asking a writer what typewriter he used. The tool matters. But it has never been the point.

The same is true with AI tools.

Without intent, taste, and care, straight AI output feels flat and formulaic. Readers will notice. Substance can’t be faked. Depth doesn’t appear by accident.

These tools reflect the discipline of the person using them.

Hitting the Ground Running. For someone just getting started, the biggest mistake is expecting magic. The better approach is to build understanding and training into the process (for you and the AI tool).

Explain what you’re trying to do.

Tell the tool how you think.

Correct it when it’s wrong.

Guide it when it drifts.

Treat it like a junior collaborator. One that’s fast, tireless, and remarkably capable…but still dependent on direction and context.

If you’re looking for a practical first step, try this. Find an article you’ve read recently and ask the tool to summarize it. Compare that summary to the original. Notice what it captured, what it missed, and what it misunderstood. This simple exercise reveals both the tool’s strengths and its limitations in a low-stakes way.

From there, you might ask it to help you draft an email, outline a presentation, or brainstorm solutions to a problem you’re facing. Start with tasks where you can easily evaluate the quality of the output and provide feedback on what the tool provides. 

Over time, you’ll notice the quality improves. That’s when the tool begins to resemble the Jarvis we imagined. It isn’t perfect, but it becomes more aligned with what you value most and how you like to approach your work. At the same time, your understanding of its strengths and limitations becomes clearer through consistent use.

AI doesn’t replace thinking. It requires it.

Used carelessly, it produces noise. Used deliberately, it sharpens your insights.

The question is whether we’re willing to slow down at the beginning, set expectations, and engage AI tools with proper intention.

Only then can these tools truly serve us well.

Photo by Chris Haws on Unsplash – photographers often say, “It’s about the photographer, not the camera.”

If this post was helpful, please feel free to share it.

Words Around Christmas

December turns our words to gold,
Tidings, joy, and peace foretold.
Lights like stars along our eaves,
Hope returns on winter’s leaves.

Forgotten words begin to rise,
Childlike wonder in our eyes.
Tinsel, sleigh bells, candle-glow,
Songs of Christmas we all know.

Jingle bells and sleighs take flight,
Rudolph glows through frosted night.
Elves and workshops, North Pole cheer,
Santa’s laughter draws us near.

Snickerdoodles and mulling spice,
Our kitchen’s warmth feels soft and nice.
Welch cakes, pasties, stories told,
Trimmings bright against the cold.

Village lights and carols ring,
Wishes whispered, children sing.
Holly, ornaments, and good cheer
Mark the turning of the year.

Laughter spills from room to room,
Chasing winter’s early gloom.
A gift is only paper bright
Till love folds edges soft and tight.

Traditions bloom in winter air
When generations gather there.
Past and present intertwined,
Stories passed from heart to mind.

Nutcrackers guard, reindeer in flight,
Stockings, holly, silent night.
Sacred stillness gently kept,
In the hours while we slept.

Speak with warmth in every line,
Merry heart and joy divine.
Let kindness shape the songs we sing,
for Christ is born, our promised King.

Let peace on earth be more than art,
let joy take root in every heart.
Let words become the lives we live,
hope to hold, and grace we give.

For all these phrases loved and dear
return to us but once a year.
They point us toward God’s Word,
the sweetest story ever heard.

Love made its dwelling in the hay,
a Child who gave the world its way.
We speak these golden words because
He came to live His love through us.

Photo by Rafał Danhoffer on Unsplash