October 30, 2023

I've been reading about Joseph Priestly lately; the book is called The Invention of Air. It has at least two mind-boggling concepts. First, that we are not, in fact, at the end of human achievement, we're just somewhere along the path.

Think back merely to pre-ChatGPT, which generally exploded just this past year, and you'll realize we're moving incredibly fast and still have so much to discover!

Second, that willingness to just do the work can lead to foundational breakthroughs. Priestly did hundreds if not thousands of experiments, most of which taught him very little, before putting together a large enough body of work to draw connections between everything he'd done.

Without the body of work, there is nothing.

I've been creating and cutting stencils to make up my own t-shirts for the upcoming Rebel Moon series releasing on Netflix. At first it was a laborious business; holding the razor just so, thinking about angles and perspective, making sure I don't cut out (literally) important parts.

Now, no one will be fooled into thinking I'm a professional, but I've been amazed at just how much you can improve if you put in the work.

Our muscles grow stronger, our eye grows keener, our imagination sharper if only we exercise them.

Put yourself to work this week!

My friend Wendy came over for dinner Sunday night (along with AK, for his last San Diego meal for a while). Wendy is one of the most adventurous people I know; she just came back from a 20,000 mile odyssey on a motorcycle, going up to Alaska, across to the Atlantic, and back, stopping and swimming in every body of water she could find along the way.

A pretty cool reminder that adventure is still out there to be had!