For my colleagues

What’s the opposite of a posthumous publication? Before I wake from the dead of sleep, my account should publish this post prehumously. Thanks Slack API.

And thank you for reading my words this week. I’d especially like to thank IT for resisting the urge to deactivate my Slack after I volunteered for these morning messages. As this week begins to get decommissioned, a new one, with any luck, will spawn in its wake.

They say there’s a time and place for an existential discussion. Who cracks a Coors at 5:30am? I say, if the big dark end ain't front of mind, then what compels us to rise for our early morning constitutional? Why do we drive 70 in a 65 zone? If tomorrow is no different than today, then what’s the rush? It’s true--besides the evolutionary decline of our skeletal muscle, our hardware is pretty much the same as it was 7 million years ago: 1.9 legs on average, a brain, and a beer belly. In that sense, the great wheel just keeps on a turnin.

But the road changes with each revolution. Plates shift and biomes burn. A change of scenery is inevitable. Tomorrow will always be different than today and entropy will always cause me to misplace my car keys.

Anyone will tell you a series must converge or diverge. If the former is our fate, then the question is--to what? Nothing pretty. Then divergence becomes our prime directive.

So let’s get real personal now. You say life is too short. Would you say the same if you lived to be 200? Of course you would. We’re outlasting our forefathers by 150% these days and still you want more. Rightly so, I say. But you can’t. You can’t have more.

Anyway, it’s late and I forgot where I was going with this. But if I had to guess, it’d be something like this--to diverge, roll the great ball of human achievement forward an inch, and then keep doing it. Thankfully, I’m around people that do that everyday (and I’m not talking about my Jane Austen book club). To purloin a line: it’s better to burn out than to fade away.

Happy Friday!