My head is full of new experiences.

Rowing a boat for miles and miles under the hot sun. Sleeping under the stars. Eating fresh lettuce from the garden. Tying a double half hitch knot. Visiting towns I’ve never explored.

Strangely, I’m finding that I have less to write about these days, not more. I have little to say about the new places I’m going, new people I’m meeting, and new stuff I’m doing. Any new ideas are slowly warming in the rice cooker of my mind, inaccessible for now.

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It takes only a few seconds of Facebook to throw off my equilibrium. I believe this is exactly what it was designed to do.

Even if I went there for a specific purpose, I come away feeling discontented and uncomfortable, as though I accidentally read a friend’s diary. In a sense, that’s what I’ve done.

As a kid growing up, I didn’t know what parties I was missing due to my relative social awkwardness or what opportunities I was losing out on due to my family’s relative lack of wealth. I wasn’t even privy to conversations in which these things were hinted at. I existed in a small world, focused on the people and pastimes that mattered most to me.

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It’s a weird thing to be cast in the role of naysayer on someone’s journey to greatness.

I believe that people can achieve great things if they have the belief in their ability to do so and a strong plan to back it up.

However, having only the belief isn’t always enough. The enthusiasm and motivation will peter out with repeated exposure to hardship if a person isn’t prepared for that.

As a teacher and coach, I’ve sometimes been the one to suggest that someone modify their plan or pursue an incremental goal on the way to the massive, ground-breaking, world-shaking achievement they are seeking. These suggestions are not always welcome. My character is definitely not making it to the second act when this story is turned into a movie.

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This week, another celebrity who loudly gave up on Twitter returned to Twitter.

That’s perfectly understandable. The pain of being criticized by legions of strangers is the price she’s willing to pay for the adulation of other strangers. It’s a deal she’s happy to agree to, especially when it comes on the classic intermittent reinforcement schedule that keeps gamblers addicted to making bets.

How many of those zillions of followers wish they were in this celebrity’s shoes?

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Our family truck (we don’t have a family car) is really ugly.

A white Ford F-150, it started its life as an AT&T fleet vehicle, so it has a service body with ambulance doors in the back. It has an orange strobe light and a misshapen, rusty rack on the roof.

It has since served as a makeshift workshop, which led to a splattering of epoxy on the side that will never come off.

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