Suppose I wanted to write an entire album of songs inspired by Reddit posts.

(I am picking this idea at random, but it’s kind of awesome, actually.)

One option is to think about it and obsess about it, then tell everyone that I’m thinking about it and ask their opinion or advice.

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In 2003 or so, a site called Friendster appeared, reconnecting me with my high school and college classmates in a way that was exciting and novel even though we were so young we’d barely lost touch yet. It was a delight to see familiar faces reappear and find out what people were up to.

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Rolling past the coastal marshes on a northbound train on the last day of August felt like seeing the summer fade away in realtime.

How could it be over?

The funny thing is, it’s been “over” in some parts of the country for a month. The kids went back to school in Atlanta on August 1, and that’s when I would have returned to school, too — if I were still teaching.

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My friend Tyler is almost a year into a round-the-world sailing trip.

However, he’s in the midst of selling his sailboat and buying a different one. A trimaran, acquired in New Zealand. (He did not sail to New Zealand; he got there by plane.)

One of the things I admire about Tyler is that he doesn’t have a lot of rules for himself. He has lived off the grid. He’s lived on the grid. He does what he wants.

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Perhaps the important thing I learned in The Bootstrapper’s Workshop was to disconnect my identity and my calling from my work.

These circles overlap in the ol’ Venn diagram, but not completely.

There were many other helpful concepts that Seth Godin shared in the videos and prompts, but this was the overarching conclusion I was able to make that changed my life — and a key message I feel compelled to share with others.

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