I’m suffering from a horrible cold virus. My third or fourth in as many weeks (I’ve lost count). My thinking, during such times, is both hazy and exausting. Therefore, please accept some of these brief and imperfect ideas that warrant more expounding than I have the energy for right now.

• We all write our own eulogies. We write them with the way we live in each moment. By our acts of kindness or the things we do that delight others. Those things that make an impression on those closest to us. For, if we were to pass tomorrow, it is these things they will stand in front of others to share and remember.

• Those that claim to have no choice always do. What they don’t have is a choice they want. And those that are doing something they don’t want because they feel they have no choice have, in fact, chosen.

• There is no such thing as good debt. No matter how many financial advisors will tell you otherwise. I wish I had learned this before the age of 35. For instance, believing that a mortgage that was less than the value of the home was an investment — "good debt". Or, that a student loan is somehow good debt because it sets you up for the possibility of higher pay or a better career (when the first 10-20 years of said job is spent paying back that debt). Does no one do the math and figure out the only ones making money from this equation are the people that write the paychecks and the people who service the debt? I think if the past several years have revealed anything it is this fundemental fact and the lies that prop it up.

• On every task list should exist the following: One thing that makes your life better. One thing that makes the life of someone else better.

• The more complex your tool, the more likely it is to fail you in some way eventually. And, said failure likelihood will scale in parallel to the added complexity. And, because one’s expectations for said tool also scale in the same parallel, the disappointment from the failure is compounded.

• People who love what they do for a living don’t ever dream of retirement — early or otherwise. Why wait to start the life you want when you can build it now? And, those that call bullshit on this are either a) happy and don’t want others to be so they can feel even more superior or b) as unhappy as the rest and looking for people to share in their sorrow. The truth is that you build the life you wish to have by the choices you make and, if you build a life that makes you happy, you can do it until you die.

• This guy gets up and does the work he loves every morning. So, your excuses are invalid.