Mark D. Jacobsen — Relentlessly Human

Reflections on Paolo Bacigalupi's "Navola"

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Almost twenty years ago, I read a science fiction story that blew my mind. It depicted a dystopian near-future, in which severe drought had depopulated the southwestern United States, states were practically at war with each other over water, and California was enclosing the Colorado River in castle-like fortifications to prevent leakage, evaporation, and theft. The protagonist eked out a meager living collecting government bounties on water-thirsty tamarisk plants. The authorities didn't know that he was secretly replanting them to safeguard his livelihood.

This was my favorite kind of SF story, with brilliant prose, sharp characters, exquisite worldbuilding, and a tight plot. But I liked it for two other reasons. First, like the novels of Kim Stanley Robinson, it showed deep engagement with this world—which I gradually learned was my favorite kind of SF. Second, it put water competition on my radar as a critical topic worthy of study.

After reading the story, I lost track of it. I couldn't remember the title or author. Still, those vague dreamlike impressions of U.S. states warring over the Colorado River stayed with me.

The timing was fortuitous. As best I can gather, I encountered a reprint of the story in the May 2007 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. One year later, my family and I moved to Amman, Jordan, where I began a two-year Olmsted Scholarship to earn a Master's of Conflict Resolution at the University of Jordan.

During my time in the Middle East, inspired by the short story, I wrote a lengthy research paper on the history of competition over the Jordan River, which among other things included interviewing a former Jordanian Minister of Water who had negotiated water sharing agreements with Israel. I uncovered a fascinating history as bleak and violent as the short story, with Israel, Jordan and other actors shrewdly outmaneuvering each other for control of the Jordan: diverting rivers, digging canals, bombing waterworks, draining aquifers, and undermining water agreements as soon as they were signed. The competition was slowly murdering the Dead Sea, which is on track to vanish by 2050.

That paper helped get me accepted at Stanford for my PhD in Political Science. It also left me with an enduring fascination with water scarcity. I later read Cadillac Desert, which chronicles the hubris, audacity, and corruption of American efforts to make the southwest desert bloom. Water continually reappears in my own short stories, especially The Weight of Oceans and "Abundance", a story about efforts to save the Dead Sea.

Rediscovering Paolo

Last year I stumbled across Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife, a science fiction novel about violent interstate competition over the dwindling Colorado River. I bought the book immediately and devoured it in a few days. It was dark, gritty, and bleak—Blade Runner meets Sicario meets Cormac McCarthy. Bacigalupi's apocalyptic nightmare extrapolates a real-world trendline and would make anyone think twice before moving to the southwest.

The novel felt an awful lot like that forgotten short story. To my delight, I discovered that the author was one and the same. Paolo Bacigalupi's short story The Tamarisk Hunter (still excellent) had set him on a long journey that culminated in this brilliant novel.

When I finished The Water Knife, I immediately began reading Bacigalupi's earlier novel The Windup Girl, which won the Hugo and Nebula and several other awards. The worldbuilding is among the most unique I've ever encountered, which makes the novel both breathtaking and difficult to penetrate. It is set in Thailand in a barely recognizable future, where biotechnology has supplanted information technology in organizing and shaping human civilization. The novel is just as dark and gritty as The Water Knife, and its themes about climate change, genetically modified food, and corporate malfeasance apparently struck a chord with readers, catapulting Bacigalupi from obscurity to fame.

Although I enjoy science fiction and write it myself, it's rare that I find SF novels I truly love, so discovering Paolo Bacigalupi was a special treat. When I learned recently that he was releasing another novel, I preordered it immediately.

Navola

Bacigalupi's third adult novel is fantasy, not science fiction, which makes it a courageous departure for an author who has built up certain expectations with his readers. It is doubly courageous because, as a few disgruntled reviewers have observed, it barely qualifies as fantasy; it is set in a fantasy recreation of Renaissance Italy, with only a faint magical luminosity pulsing through its mythology and through a dragon's eye introduced in the novel's first chapter. The worldbuilding reminds me of Guy Gavriel Kay, who writes novels reimagining various historical times and places as fantasy worlds. Fortunately, this is exactly the kind of novel I love. I devoured most of this 550-page tome on a single flight from Atlanta to Honolulu.

Everything I love about Paolo Bacigalupi's writing is here: incredible worldbuilding, rich characters, gorgeous prose, and a skillfully woven plot. The novel also features the gritty brutality that characterizes Bacigalupi's SF novels. The political intrigue is first-rate and reminded me of both Dune and Game of Thrones; like those works, the novel centers on a young man coming of age in a family that must fight for its survival among enemies who circle like wolves. Young Davico's relationship with his father is extremely well done, as is his complicated relationship with his sister Celia, forcefully adopted into the family as a means of revenge against an enemy family.

I won't provide a full review (I liked Gary Wolfe's), but wanted to mention two themes struck me with unexpected force.

First, the sophisticated mythology and philosophy of Navola differentiates between two dimensions of the world: Cambios and Firmos. Cambios is the world of things built and touched by men, while Firmos refers to the natural world that precedes and transcends mankind. Bacigalupi develops this dichotomy with tremendous skill. Most inhabitants of Navola view Cambios as the proper domain of power and action, but Davico never feels at home there; he prefers to inhabit Firmos, with all its natural power and wild unpredictability. Many characters consequently view Davico as strange and aloof, but we continually see him tapping into a source of power greater than any they can access.

It's a beautiful artistic representation of a tension I feel constantly in our own real world: between the material and the spiritual, civilization and nature, the visible and transcendent. I have spent my military career immersed in Cambios, studying the laws of power, practicing the arts of war and politics. Yet my constant yearning has been to leave Cambios behind entirely and revel in pure Firmos. The result has been a sense of homelessness in the halls of power. This novel expresses that tension better than anything I have read, and it came during a season when I have specifically sought time in Firmos after long years of immersion in Cambios.

Second, and related, a key theme in the novel is Davico's struggle with whether or not he has the strength to rule over his father's commercial empire. Davico was born into a world of ruthless Cambios, but he was also born decent and good. At every step, scheming allies and enemies—and Davico himself—wonder if that disqualifies him from leadership. The novel explores the primal fear—common to all people, but especially men—that one lacks the strength and fortitude the world demands. In the novel this becomes a tangible and practical question, propelling the plot to a brutal reckoning. Along the way, Davico must grapple with his weaknesses and also discover his own unique forms of strength.

I opened the novel expecting to be entertained and mesmerized. I did not anticipate the degree of reflection the book triggered. I remain a huge Paolo Bacigalupi fan, and look forward to seeing where he goes next.

Day 21: The Wilderness Cathedral

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Cathedral Peak is the second of three "easy" alpine peaks in Tuolumne that constitute the Triple Crown. John Muir wrote that it had more individual character than any mountain he'd seen except Half Dome. In My First Summer in the Sierra, Muir wrote:

No feature, however, of all the noble landscape as seen from here seems more wonderful than the Cathedral itself, a temple displaying Nature’s best masonry and sermons in stones. How often I have gazed at it from the tops of hills and ridges, and through openings in the forests on my many short excursions, devoutly wondering, admiring, longing! This I may say is the first time I have been at church in California, led here at last, every door graciously opened for the poor lonely worshiper. In our best times everything turns into religion, all the world seems a church and the mountains altars.

Today, after two rest days in Tuolumne, we plan to follow in John Muir's footsteps. Today we aim to climb Cathedral Peak.

I am still smarting from turning back from Tenaya Peak, the easier climb. I know we could have done it, but it didn't feel wise. We were tired, Hannah was a newer climber, and I had never led anything of that scale.

Cathedral Peak is a little harder, but there is a big difference today: my friend Knight Campbell, an experienced mountain guide and the CEO of Cairn Leadership, reached out about doing a climb together. He offered to lead. This is exactly what I need: an experienced partner. He brings the experience and judgment I lack, can teach me a few tricks as we go, and can guide me through my first technical mountain climb before I lead my own. Hannah and I are also eager for the simple pleasure of climbing socially with a friend.

The approach trail is easier than Tenaya. The length and grade feel comparable, but the trail is well-groomed and the mosquitos are marginally better. Still, it's a workout. We stop to refill water where the trail approaches the river, then make the last strenuous hike up to the base of the peak. We're huffing and puffing by the time we arrive. Climbing, ironically, will feel easier.

Cathedral Peak is stunning, a sharp fin of granite tapering to a fine point 700 feet above. Ample cracks and features offer myriad pathways up the rock. We see a couple parties ahead of us, and meet another group descending a trail that winds around the peak.

Knight wastes no time. The moment we arrive, he begins flaking his rope. We follow suit. Knight is on a schedule today. After our climb, he will hike into a backcountry campground to join his family for a backpacking trip. Guidebooks suggest the climb can be done in 5 to 7 hours, but I have warned Knight that Hannah and I will likely be slow. He assures us we can take as much time as we need, but we still feel obligated to help him stay on schedule.

We climb caterpillar-style, which means we use two ropes to chain the three of us together. Knight leads, I follow, and Hannah trails behind. After quick safety checks, Knight starts the first pitch. He moves swiftly and deftly upwards. I'm shocked by how little protection he places. He makes long runouts between cam placements, which would make a fall a significant event. This is a product of his experience, and has the benefit of allowing him to climb fast and make long pitches without running out of gear.

After he completes the pitch and sets up a belay, I follow his route. I climb without trouble, and don't fall once during the day, but I'm still glad he's leading. I could lead this, but I would place far more gear and would likely need to make additional pitches.

The climbing itself feels amazing. The route is interesting and varied, offering a wide range of climbing styles, from finger-cracks to face moves to off-width chimneys. The views are breathtaking. This is exactly what I wanted my last day of this trip to be: an epic adventure, bigger than anything I've climbed before, taking me into new territory.

We reach a bottleneck at the off-width crack. We arrive at the belay station just behind another couple, so have to wait for them to clear out. While we wait, two fast simul-climbers reach the belay ledge and ask if they can pass us. We agree, which further delays us. It's probably for the best; with three climbers, we're the slowest group up here. Knight hoped to complete each pitch in roughly 30 minutes, but by the time we get to the uppermost pitches, we're running more like an hour.

The fifth pitch is supposed to be the last, but from the belay ledge, I can't see up over the next feature. I try to read Knight's motions by the movement of the rope, which communicates a surprising amount of information. Towards the end of the pitch, the rope does funny things. I feed him a ton of slack, then take a ton of rope in, then feed him more slack. I have no idea what he's doing up there.

I understand once I finally climb up to join him. The climb doesn't taper up to a point; instead, we have to navigate around big, heaped blocks of stone to clamber our way to the summit. They looked like stacked children's blocks. Our route requires belly-crawling over a stone ledge, descending down a ways, then climbing other blocks to the summit. The summit itself is the size of a dining room table. I find Knight sitting happily at the top, legs dangling over the edge, three cams wedged in a crack behind him. I clamber up next to him, clip in, and soak in the views while Hannah climbs up behind me.

This is the most visually stunning hike or climb I've ever done. Hannah, breathless, plops down next to me. I wish she could stay longer to savor the views, but another party is queued up behind us. We give her a few minutes, then rig our ropes to descend back down.

Descents intimidate me more than anything about big multi-pitch climbs. Climbers have access to clear maps, photos, and textual descriptions of ascents, but getting down again always seems like a poorly-documented afterthought. Prior to this climb, I spent hours trying to mine nuggets of information out of climber reports. I gathered that the descent from Cathedral Peak could be sketchy.

The uppermost moves are definitely intimidating, as they involve downclimbing through exposed terrain. Fortunately, Knight belays us, which removes all the risk for us. Next, we have to circle around the summit and descend down steep slabs towards a feature called the Eichhorn Pinnacle. This unexpectedly proves to be the most terrifying section of the day's adventure. The slabs are highly exposed, with scary fall potential. Many moves feel precarious. The trail isn't clear, so we repeatedly have to make calculations about the safest way through sketchy terrain. Knight sets up a short rope system, which means we are tied together but not anchored to the rock; if one of us falls, the others should be able to arrest their fall. In practice, it feels like there's a risk that one of us could pull the other two off a slab and send us tumbling down.

Our descent is painfully slow. Knight moves through the terrain like a mountain goat, but Hannah and I are less sure of our footing. We are both acutely aware of the passing time. The more time we take here, the longer before Knight can catch up with his family on the backpacking trail. The sun is also getting low on the horizon. Still, there is no rushing.

I'm very glad I didn't try leading this climb on my own. The climbing would have been okay, but this descent would have left me at a loss. A party behind us sets us up a rappel. I probably would have done something similar.

Eventually we make it down to the trail at the Eichhorn Pinnacle, where we have to clamber uphill again over a ridge and then descend the other side of the mountain. This part of the trail, though not treacherous, is cumbersome. Then, at last, we find ourselves on a well-marked trail that descends stone staircases alongside the face we just climbed. At last we reach the ground and commence the two-mile hike back to civilization.

By the time we reach the van, what we hoped would be a 5 to 7-hour climb has turned into an 11-hour saga. Everything has gone smoothly; we are just slow. I feel bad, but this is what it is. Knight seems eager to get back but is also unperturbed. We're having fun out here, it's a gorgeous day, and this climb was spectacular.

My lingering frustration about not climbing Tenaya Peak finally dissipates once and for all. I wanted to end my Sierra Nevada trip with a climb that stretched my abilities. This was exactly what I needed: safe, fun exposure to a new kind of climbing, in the company of a friend and experienced guide. This day feels like a breakthrough. We're tired, sore, and exhilarated in the best possible way. That is exactly how I wanted to feel before my trip concluded.

We've done what we came to do. Now we can think about going home.

Day 20: The Call to Return

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Our second day in Tuolumne, like the first, begins early. I roll out of bed at 4:00am, drive into Tuolumne to beat the 5am reservation-only window, and go back to bed. Sleep proves elusive. I'm torn about whether to try Tenaya Peak again, after our aborted attempt yesterday. We should have decided this last night, but I felt too tired to make a decision and deferred it to morning. Now I'm still not sure.

I want the climb so badly, but I'm not feeling good about another attempt. Nothing would really be different from yesterday. We also have a major climb planned for tomorrow, up Cathedral Peak, with a friend who is an experienced mountain guide. It wouldn't be wise for us to climb two mountains in a row without a rest day. Even so, I feel sad and frustrated at my inability to climb this peak. I can't shake the feeling that I'm failing somehow.

Dawn brings a sobering realization: after almost three weeks of van life in the Sierra Nevada, I'm tired. Every single day of this trip has been amazing and life-giving, but life on the road takes a cumulative toll. That is now manifesting as physical fatigue, as well as emotionality and indecisiveness. That alone, I know, is a good reason to stay on the ground today.

When we first embarked on this trip, Hannah and I wondered how we would feel at the end. Would we be ready to return home, or would we want to stay on the road forever?

I suppose I have my answer. As much as I love this trip and want to steer my life towards places and activities like this, I'm beginning to yearn for stability and routines.

More than anything, I miss my kids. They are back in the U.S. after two amazing weeks in Tanzania, and are now staying for a third week with my ex-wife's extended family. It's the longest we've been apart in a decade. Later, sitting by Tenaya Lake, I watch a family enjoying their vacation. Dad floats in the glacial water with the kids, while mom lays out a picnic lunch. They look so happy, sun-browned, carefree. The sight opens a wellspring of emotion in me. There is so much goodness in my life now, so much momentum in this new season of my life, but so much brokenness still lies beneath the surface; I feel it every day, an arthritic pain that will never go away. I'm ready to be with my kids again.

I also miss the comfort of routines. On this trip I achieved exactly what I set out to do: embrace my alter ego as a writer who loves nature and sees life as a spiritual journey, write daily for myself, and share that writing with others. While this has been liberating, it's also detoured me away from my core writing projects, specifically my book on belonging. I'm ready to get back to it, and that will be easier at home.

Finally, new adventures await. In a month, I will start a new job that will exercise my skills and abilities in entirely new ways. The flexibility and freedom in this new season will, I hope, allow me to write more seriously. My oldest son will turn 16 and start driving. A new school year will start. My children have extensive activities lined up. I'm excited to see how my relationship with Hannah develops, and we are already planning a range of family activities. Life is calling us back.

I have been here before: yearning to remain on vacation forever, but feeling the inevitability of return, gathering on the horizon like a weather front.

This trip has always only been a transition period, an intermission between chapters of my life. Time and inertia are sweeping me forward, and stubbornly clinging to this trip would be unnatural and self-defeating. I need to let go, to trust this river sweeping me onward.

That is what I'm feeling today, I think: the need to slow down, to savor these last days, and to prepare for our return.

I do my best to let Tenaya Peak go. We sit on the beach beside Tenaya Lake, with our books and journals, taking in the lazy morning. Later, we go for an easy hike around Tuolumne Meadow. I keep looking back at the towering mountain. I feel deeply conflicted, but I also know the mountain isn't going anywhere; we can return someday.

And we aren't quite done yet. Tomorrow will be our biggest challenge of this entire trip, the capstone, the culmination of all our climbing: scaling Cathedral Peak.

Day 19: A Hard Reckoning

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Up to this point, everything on this trip has gone amazing. I feel tremendous momentum, as if all the benevolence of the universe is with us, filling our sails and propelling us forward.

It was bound to happen sooner or later: the setback, the crash, the collision between unstoppable momentum and an immovable object.

That immovable object proves to be Tenaya Peak.

For years I have wanted to see Tuolumne, a high-elevation region in the northeastern portion of Yosemite Valley. The beauty of this area is legendary: lush meadows, granite domes, and the winding Tuolumne River, tucked away in the subalpine heights, far from the crowds and traffic jams in Yosemite Valley. The National Park Service's webpage for Tuolumne opens with a fitting quote from John Muir:

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

Tuolumne is also home to phenomenal rock climbing, including three relatively "easy" alpine mountain climbs: Tenaya Peak, Cathedral Peak, and the Matthes Crest. All three can be linked in a day by strong climbers, a feat known as the Triple Crown. In the runup to our trip, I studied all three routes. I read guidebooks and watched YouTube videos.

Although Hannah and I were still relatively new to multi-pitch climbing, I thought these peaks would be within our abilities. They would be bold, huge, and intimidating, making them a fitting climax to our trip. Before we returned to Alabama, I wanted to accomplish something that would take me to my limit.

I set my sights on the Northwest Buttress of Tenaya Peak, supposedly the easiest of these three classic climbs. The hardest pitch is only 5.5, which is well within my limits, and most pitches are even easier. However, the route is 14 pitches and gains 1400 feet, which is monstrous compared to any technical climb I have done. Completing the climb would require not just raw climbing skills but the ability to tackle a long approach hike, navigate an ocean of granite, make decisions in an austere and unforgiving environment, and find my way down a long descent trail at day's end.

All this intimidates me, but I feel quiet, easy confidence. I know I have the ability to safely climb this mountain. I often shirk back from the boundary edge of my abilities, afraid I won't be up to the challenge. This formidable mountain poses a question: whether I will trust myself. This time, I'm resolved, the answer will be "yes."

Shortly before our arrival, I realize I made a rare planning mistake: I forgot that Tuolumne Meadows actually sits within Yosemite National Park. In June, Yosemite only required entry reservations on Saturday and Sunday. In July that changes to every day. It's July now, and reservations are sold out.

Fortunately, the park offers a sensible option that limits the crowds in Yosemite while still allowing dirtbag adventurers virtually unlimited access to the park: visitors don't need a reservation if they enter before 5am.

We leave our RV park at 3:30am. I make a bleary-eyed drive up the winding mountain road, past the deserted Yosemite entry booth, and towards Tenaya Lake. It is utterly dark; the sky is full of stars. I keep my focus on the winding two-lane road, but I can sense gigantic shapes rising up around me and am acutely aware of the black void to my left. This landscape must be breathtaking. I can't wait to see it.

I park beneath Tenaya Peak, slouch back to my bed, and go back to sleep.

My alarm rouses us at 8:00am, the latest I want to embark on this climb. We rub our eyes, make coffee, and grab our climbing gear. Then we step outside and get our first glimpse of Tuolumne.

Tenaya Peak is immense, shining white overhead. It evokes my feelings of looking up El Captain. It's only half as tall, but that's still huge. Unlike El Capitan, which is starkly vertical, this granite sea is sloped, which is what supposedly makes the climb accessible to someone like me. Despite the peak's formidable size, I feel good. We can do this.

We start up the two-mile approach trail, which gains considerable elevation through a series of overgrown deer paths, switchbacks, and low-angle slabs. Our good feelings quickly sour. I've never seen this many mosquitos; twenty or thirty cling to our clothes at a time, and we're constantly swatting them away from exposed skin. We're both feeling the elevation and the morning heat; after twenty minutes of hiking, I'm dripping with sweat. We both have daypacks and climbing gear, and I'm hauling a heavy rope over my shoulders. We're also tired from our early-morning drive into Tuolumne.

At one point, we lose the approach trail. We need to go back down, I conclude. We have to make a sketchy move on wet, slippery granite. It's only a few feet, but a fall would entail tumbling down the next slab. I take the time to set up a belay. It's awkward and time-consuming. No sooner do we get down than another couple appears, telling us we had it right the first time; the trail continues above us. We climb back up the sketchy move, this time without the benefit of a belay. The back-and-forth leaves me tired and shakes my confidence; if I can't navigate the approach trail, how will I routefind through 14 pitches of rock? We're also chugging through our water quickly, and we aren't even on the climb yet. We stop to filter water, which leaves us at the mercy of mosquitos. Hannah's patience is cracking; she wants to charge ahead, away from the mosquitos, but without rests we're both getting tired.

Two hours after we set out, we finally arrive at the granite slabs marking the start of what I think is the first pitch of the climb. We're exhausted, covered in bites, sweaty, and emotionally rattled. We need to rest, but rest means a feast for the mosquitos. The path ahead is all exposed slabs, with easy walking but the potential for long falls. I feel ill at ease. A long way ahead, I can see climbers gathered beneath a tree that marks the start of the second pitch. Above that it's pure granite.

Hannah and I look at each other silently, inquiring. We're both in the same headspace: fatigued, sketched out, swamped with negative emotions. "I'll keep going if you want," Hannah tells me, but I know she doesn't want to. I don't either. Not today.

We turn around.

The onslaught of negative self-talk is immediate and relentless. I ache with self-loathing. I feel worthless, cowardly, a failure. This is supposed to be an easy climb. I know I can do it; the only thing holding me back is my own lack of confidence.

"Jacobsen is a whiny sissy," begins the harshest review I've ever received for my book. I stopped reading right there, but those words lodged in my brain like a splinter. They perfectly embody one of my deepest fears: that I'm not strong enough, that I'm singularly weak or fearful.

I have come a long way over the years, recognizing these disparaging internal monologues, analyzing them, and leeching them of their power. I wonder why these thoughts and feelings are attacking so strongly now. Why is it, I wonder, that my feeling of self-worth is bound up in climbing a mountain peak that would utterly terrify most people? Clearly, this is unhealthy. I wonder what I am trying to prove, and to whom. The only coherent answer is myself.

I'm frustrated and angry, trying to swim my way out of the black whirlpool of emotions. I know I'm being irrational. I know this response is deeply unhealthy, and that it's pointing me towards something important I need to learn about myself. Maybe that is today's task, I think: to battle this demon, to face something in myself even harder than the mountain.

A short ways into our descent down the approach trail, we meet two climbers on their way up. They look like brothers, lean and strong, wearing sunglasses, day packs, and identical sun shirts. When they ask us about our plans, I sheepishly tell them we're bailing. I'm embarrassed, I say, but we weren't in a good headspace to do the climb.

Their tone changes immediately: they become overwhelmingly kind, gracious, and encouraging. Bailing is normal, they say. They do it all the time. The guidebooks might advertise easy climbing, they say, but climbing in an alpine environment is radically different than crag climbing. They applaud our decision and offer thoughts on other, easier climbs. We learn they are Yosemite Climbing Rangers, which sounds like the best job ever. Their names are Eric and Gus, and they are the kindest and most encouraging people I've ever met on the trail. They arrived at a crucial moment, like angels.

I feel marginally better. We continue down, through the mosquito-infested forest, to our van.

Hannah and I spend the afternoon at Lake Tenaya, where the breeze keeps the mosquitos away. We don't feel like climbing; instead, we read and nap in our hammock. It is a perfect day, a day of unexpected, blissful rest in each other's arms in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

I try so hard to fully relax into the beauty of the day. Even as I savor this beautiful togetherness, I can't quite shake the demons. They still prowl in the shadows, whispering hate. My eyes keep drifting up to Tenaya above. We discuss possibly trying again tomorrow; now that we know the approach, we'll be in a better headspace.

We depart early to find a dispersed campsite. A helpful app leads us into the Inyo National Forest, which doesn't look much like a forest at all; it's a bleak landscape of gravel, dirt, and desert shrubs. I feel cranky. I don't want to camp in a dirt patch in the desert, but that's exactly where we end up.

I turn off the engine and climb out of the van. Almost immediately, my feelings change: it is truly beautiful here. We are utterly alone in this desert wilderness. The sky is enormous. Mountains range from north to south as far as we can see, layered behind each other, some of them snow-capped. It looks like Middle Earth. It's warm, but pleasantly so; we're still at considerable elevation.

We cook dinner and open a bottle of wine. The quiet is incredible. Our spirits settle as we yield to the stillness. We sit on a rock and watch the sun go down over the mountains to the west; they are shrouded with haze, each successive peak a lighter shade of blue than the one before. We talk for hours, about everything under the sun.

I can tell already that this will be the darkest sky I've seen in years. We are miles from anything, and tens of miles from a city of any respectable size. The moon won't rise until 3:00am. We lay a blanket and sleeping bags out on the sand. The stars begin to appear, Arcturus and the handle of the Big Dipper at first, then others I don't know. Thousands of smaller, fainter stars fill in the remaining emptiness. The Milky Way reveals itself as the last blue light melts into the mountains, a winding river low over the horizon, so faint I can't be sure it's real.

Hannah curls into me. I teach her constellations. We watch for shooting stars and count satellites. We are alone in the universe, and the stars are our own private possession.

I wonder what I learned this day.

I confronted something in myself I don't like, a painful but necessary reckoning.

But I also learned something about relaxing control. I failed to climb a mountain; the ensuing space became fertile ground for Hannah's and my relationship. This unexpectedly became a day for us. I could never have planned something like this, with so many magical unfoldings. To appreciate these little miracles I needed to be still, quiet, and receptive to serendipity.

I'm not sure how to put all these disparate pieces of the day together. But maybe I don't need to; maybe lying here beneath these stars, marveling at the mystery of it all, is enough.

Day 18: The Art of Departure

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It is a day of departures.

We spent the first few days of our Sierra Nevada trip in Truckee. After leaving to spend time in Yosemite, we missed Truckee so much that we returned for several more days. Those day were magical, allowing us to settle into the place in a deeper way, but now it's finally time to move on. We want to visit one more destination on our Sierra Nevada Trip: Tuolumne Meadows, the high country in the northeast portion of Yosemite Valley.

I deliberately planned this trip to be a transitional event in my life: the end of one chapter, the beginning of another. Over the past few ways, I have asked what it means to truly arrive in a place—to wholeheartedly commit, slow down, observe, and learn. Our time in Truckee became an experiment in arrival, a rehearsal for whatever arrivals will mark my entry into a new season of life.

Now I find myself contemplating what it means to intentionally depart a place. The easy thing would be to simply jump in the van and leave. I want better than that; I want a departure that both honors this place and safeguards it in my memory.

We make our last day in Trucke slow by design. After visiting the Donner Summit Tunnels, and paying homage to Steinbeck's Lee and the Chinese railroad workers he represents for us, we string up a hammock between two pine trees on a granite dome overlooking the Donner Summit Bridge. We read in the warm sunlight, with the valley sprawled out beneath us. The breeze occasionally carries the voices of climbers on the granite walls above us. Eventually we drift off into naps, curled together in a tangle of limbs. It is a perfect moment, of absolute stillness, with all our senses absorbing the fine details of this spectacular summit.

Afterwards, we head to Good Wolf Brewing, which a barista at the local coffee shop recommended. The brewery is small, cozy, with earthen tones and stone pillars. We order flights of local beers and sit and process everything we've experienced over the past two weeks. It feels like a fitting way to say our goodbyes.

In the morning we make one last visit to our beloved coffee shop, then start our drive. It's a long descent out of the mountains, which somehow feels symbolic. The temperature steadily increases. Alpine beauty fades to desert. Billboards for personal injury lawyers appear like blight. We enter Reno, the biggest city east of the northern Sierra, the artery of civilization that nourishes and sustains human life in these spectacular mountain places. It feels uninspiring. I remember what a mountain guide told me, near the summit of the Grand Teton, sweeping his arms around at the majestic peaks: "THIS is civilization."

After Reno is Carson City and then nothing: just vast stretches of desert, choked with dry shrubs, pale green or yellow or almost blue in the harsh sunlight. Perhaps calling all this "nothing" is unfair; perhaps I simply haven't learned to see what this new place offers. We are in a new climate, a new biome, a new place that must be met on its own terms.

We arrive early at a small RV campground in Bridgeport, a meager town that serves as a highway stop between other, more important places. We dock like a ship entering port. We replenish fresh water, dump our sewage, do laundry, and take real showers, which is a special treat; our usual "dirtbag" showers entail shivering outside the van, sponging ourselves down while dribbling water from the van's limited fresh water supply.

It is a lovely little oasis in our journey. We are in a space between worlds, having departed one place but not yet arrived in the next. Tomorrow will be Tuolumne: alpine beauty again, real mountains, and hopefully the biggest and hardest climbs we've yet done. A new arrival.

Day 17: Steinbeck, Lee, and the Chinese Railroad Workers

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

When we returned to Truckee, I committed to learning about the place. I wanted to be more than a tourist. I wanted to learn something of the history, culture, geology, and biology of this town that Hannah and I love so much. Reading about the Donner Party seemed like a natural place to start, which led me to purchase The Best Land Under Heaven. We also visited the Donner Memorial State Park Museum. We browsed the various exhibits recounting the dreadful history of the Donner Party, which nicely complemented the book, but it was a separate exhibit on the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad that truly caught my attention.

In the late 1860s, thousands of Chinese migrants converged in the uppermost heights of the Sierra Nevada near Truckee, to build the most difficult stretch of the Transcontinental Railroad. It was grim, difficult, and dangerous work. Track wound along precarious mountain summits. In numerous places, these migrants had to blast their way through solid granite using black powder. When that proved too slow, demanding administrators introduced nitroglycerin. As many as 1,200 Chinese migrants lost their lives. What they accomplished was extraordinary: the completion of a railway through some of the most hostile terrain in the country, a feat that many experts considered impossible. A transcontinental trip that used to last months could now be completed in days. This iron weaving came just years after the Civil War, during a time of healing, reconstruction, and reunification of a broken country.

I knew the general contours of this history, but like most Americans, never gave it much thought. My U.S history textbook in high school mentioned the terrible conditions under which Chinese railroad workers constructed American railroads. At Stanford, my kids and I took a moment to marvel at the golden spike, which Leland Stanford ceremoniously hammered into place, completing the railroad.

However, an exhibit at the Donner Memorial State Park Museum triggers another association: one that hits closer to home.

Back at the van, I fish out my Kindle and search through my digital copy of East of Eden, my favorite novel.

East of Eden is a magisterial book, as weighty as scripture, spanning multiple generations in a profound contemplation of the human condition. Each character speaks to me in different ways, but one of my favorite characters in the book—perhaps in all of literature—is Lee, the free Chinese servant of Adam Trask, one of the book's main characters. When Lee first appears, he speaks pidgin, a dialect that evokes all the worst stereotypes of Chinese migrants to the U.S. Later, we discover that Lee is a sophisticated autodidact who speaks English not just fluently but eloquently. Lee is a genius, well-versed in many academic disciplines and gifted with deep emotional intelligence and a keen understanding of human nature. Even so, he shows extraordinary humility as well as loyalty to the Trask family.

Like Mark Twain's humanizing depiction of Black slaves and fierce criticism of slavery, Steinbeck's depiction of Lee feels ahead of its time. Lee speaks pidgin in public, he says, because that's all most people can see and hear: “Pidgin they expect, and pidgin they’ll listen to. But English from me they don’t listen to, and so they don’t understand it.” Steinbeck seems acutely aware of his society's deep prejudice against Chinese-Americans, and he endows Lee with traits that showcase the best of humanity.

Lee's wisdom, empathy, and sensitivity to the goodness and suffering of the human condition do not come out of nowhere; they were forged in hardship. In Chapter 28, during a conversation with Adam Trask about whether Adam should disclose a difficult truth to his boys, Lee recounts his father sharing the terrible truth behind Lee's birth.

This is the passage I vaguely remember, as I look at the museum poster board with its grainy photos and captions about Chinese railroad builders. There is a connection here.

I find it quickly. Describing his parents' migration from China to the U.S., Lee says, "In San Francisco the flood of muscle and bone flowed into cattle cars and the engines puffed up the mountains. They were going to dig hills aside in the Sierras and burrow tunnels under the peaks."

This is it! This is the connection I was grasping for. Lee's parents toiled in these very mountaintops, above the town of Truckee, near Donner Summit. I can see their handiwork every time Hannah and I climb here. Each time we clamber up onto the slab of School Rock, we can see the ugly serpentine tunnel wending its way through the opposing rock face, just beneath Donner Peak.

Previously, I held the tunnels in contempt. I saw them as symbols of bold visions sold by fortune-seeking developers. I have read so much about the environmental calamities unleashed by entrepreneurial humans in these mountains, like the drowning of the Hetch Hetchee Valley behind the O'Shaughnessy Dam. Developers even wanted to drown Yosemite Valley, a crime against nature so terrible that it makes me shudder; thank God other voices prevailed. These tunnels seem to fit that pattern: festering wounds carelessly blasted through pristine granite older than human history. I understand their existence—human civilization always requires compromises with wilderness—but every time I look at them, they remind me that our taming of wilderness entails a price.

Now, lifting my eyes from the pages of East of Eden, I see the tunnels in a different light. They have just flared to life in my imagination. They are now imbued with a story.

Accessing the tunnels is easy. AllTrails includes a Donner Tunnels Hike, which appears to run in a straight line for a mile and a half. When we first arrived in Truckee, Hannah's local friend told us to avoid the tunnels, which she described as a filthy eyesore. We agreed.

The Lee connection changes everything. Not only is East of Eden my favorite novel, it holds a central place in Hannah's and my relationship. Our romance began to flare when a friend pointed out her tattoo of the world TIMSHEL, a reference to the novel. When we began dating, Hannah and I read the novel again, as well as the journal Steinbeck kept while writing it. We met at Prevail Coffee dozens of mornings to discuss our insights.

There's no choice in the matter: we need to visit the tunnels. We need to visit Lee's family history.

I feel self-conscious, developing such a powerful connection with a place via a fictional character, when so many real human beings lived, labored, suffered, and died here. But perhaps that is what fiction offers: it distills human experience into Story, a pure and essential form that our minds and hearts are hardwired to latch onto. A heartfelt attachment to an entire people is too much to hold, but an attachment to one well-crafted individual comes easily. That individual stands as a representative, holding everything else.

Still, if Hannah and I are going to make a pilgrimage to the railroad tunnels at Donner Summit, I owe it to those real, historical Chinese railroad workers to learn more of their history. I return to Word After Word Books, where I pick up the best single-volume history available: Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad by Gordon H. Chang, a history professor at Stanford, my alma mater, another connection. The book grew out of a six-year, cross-disciplinary effort to painstakingly recover a history that had largely been lost and forgotten.

The bookstore's owner, Andie, spots the book in my hand. "That's a fantastic book," she tells me. We chat a bit, and I ask her if she's read East of Eden. To my delight, she has. I tell her about Lee's parents, about the connection to Donner Summit. I'm eager to tell anyone who will listen. My googling hasn't yielded any mention of the connection. I feel as though I've stumbled across a forgotten treasure.

I wonder if I'm imagining all this. Perhaps there were other summits, other tunnels. I wonder how much Steinbeck knew, where he lived, what influences shaped this particular chapter of this novel.

I discover that Steinbeck lived on Lake Tahoe for two years, early in his writing career. Very little is known of these years. He worked odd jobs without enthusiasm, then wrote his first novel during the winter snows.

Tahoe would have put him in close proximity to Truckee and Donner Summit. He was here. He knew.

The Tunnels are, as advertised, an eyesore. The AllTrails route begins in a dirt lot at the mouth of one tunnel opening. The amount of graffiti is staggering; every surface is covered, layered like geological sediment. In any given tunnel section, one could scrape through the brightly colored spraypaint to travel backward through time. The visible layer broadcasts today's concerns. FUCK NETANYAHU, I read as I enter the tunnel.

According to East of Eden, Lee's father grew up in a small village in the Cantonese-speaking region of southern China. When he fell into debt, his family repaid it. Now obligated to his family, Lee's newly-married father repaid them with a signing bonus he earned by agreeing to work in the United States. Midway through the ocean crossing, Lee's father discovered that his bride had smuggled herself aboard, disguised as a man. Only once she was aboard did she learn she was pregnant, which put them both in great danger. When the railroad company learned she was a woman, it would not treat her kindly.

Lee's parents arrived on the California coast, then found their way up into the heights of the Sierra Nevada.

They likely arrived on this very mountain top, working this very tunnel.

The first tunnel feels the oldest: a black maw blasted and carved out of the mountain, leaving blocky unfinished edges behind. It took an entire crew of Chinese railroad workers a full day to advance a few inches. The floor is uneven. A trickle of water dribbles through. We sweep our flashlights over the walls, studying the graffiti, which is appalling but also breaks up the endless, monotonous dark. Endless names and initials. "JESUS" and a cross, Christian vandalism, always amusing. BUSH DID 9/11. TRANS IS BEAUTIFUL.

The tunnels are poorly cared for. They are on private property belonging to the Union Pacific Railroad but are not well maintained. Locals have been fighting to protect these tunnels as a national landmark, but they have not yet been successful; there are too many colliding interests. Union Pacific has never officially opened the tunnels for public access, partly due to liability concerns, even as it turns a blind eye to the hundreds of tourists who hike here each day. I wonder how they ensure the structural integrity of tunnels. Maybe they don't; maybe one day a catastrophic collapse will bury tourists. The neglect of this place adds to the air of sorrow: a forgotten history, a forgotten people.

I imagine Lee's parents here, slaving away in the dark, swinging hammers or setting explosives. In the later tunnels, which are fortified with more modern concrete slabs, we encounter thin gaps and windows. Outside, beyond the endless dark, is indescribable beauty: lush meadows bright with wildflowers, neighboring granite peaks, pine forests fiercely clinging to their slopes. These views must have been both a blessing and a torment to the Chinese laborers within these tunnels. Such stark beauty so close at hand, and so unattainable.

Lee's parents, laboring in the underbelly of these mountains, knew they must escape before others discovered their secret. They hatched a plan, stashing away rice and scraps of clothing, fashioning fishing line and hooks. When they were ready, they would flee to some alpine meadow, where they could fashion a home for themselves and prepare for the baby.

Their hope was beautiful, fragile, desperate. Every time his father told the story, Lee says, he yearned for the outcome to be different. Just once, he wanted this fairy tale ending to come true.

The third tunnel goes on forever. This one feels modern, with straight edges and beams framing the rockpiles on the inner wall. We wonder about the history of drilling and improvement. There is no one to ask, no signboards offering explanations. It feels like an abandoned subway in a post-apocalyptic film. The only variation on the endless walk is the graffiti, but even that starts to feel repetitive. We smell urine.

Eventually, somewhere deep in the third tunnel, we turn back.

Back between the second and first tunnels is a grassy opening, with overgrown footpaths leading off into the mountain slopes. We scramble upward, eager to be in nature again, then stand looking back at the tunnels with their endless outflow of tourists.

This is the spot, I think. This is where Lee's parents might have escaped. I imagine those little figures below as railroad workers, busy, heads down, not looking to the hills. It would be the easiest thing for Lee's parents to turn their backs and keep walking, higher into the hills.

Alas, this was not to be. A terrible tragedy befell Lee's parents before they could make their escape, a tragedy that shaped Lee's upbringing and his life.

But Hannah and I are here, now. We could make their escape for them, a symbolic gesture, a re-enactment of a past that Lee's parents only dreamed of.

We continue up the dirt path, leaving the tunnels behind. It carves through thick, bright foliage. I imagine us as Lee's parents, terrified, excited, hopeful, out in the fresh mountain air with the sunlight pouring over us. Only a little further to alpine meadows, to freedom.

When our forest path ends in deep, sucking mud, we double back and ascend a different path up over the tunnel. It descends again on the far side of the mud. There is no trail here, just easy walking amidst rockfall and grass. Little flowers carpet the terrain. I can picture Lee's mother here, plucking a few flowers, tucking them away for her baby.

I want to do something for them, something to commemorate the arrival they never had. Erect a small cairn, maybe, or carve their initials into a stone. But I don't know their names, and even though this little pilgrimage is weighty and serious, I feel a little silly. I settle for pausing, soaking in the sights and sounds, and holding Lee's parents in my memory.

I have a new appreciation for the "ghosts of Gold Mountain" who carved a path through these mountain heights. I'm only a short way into Chang's book, but finishing it will be my next commitment, my way of honoring the real laborers who made these tunnels.

Our pilgrimage ends back at the dirt lot where our dusty van awaits. We leave memory and imagination behind and return to the modern world, conceived by entrepreneurial visionaries with their dams and railways and interstates, and built by laborers like Lee's parents. We start up the van and descend on a pleasant high back to Truckee, repeating the benefits of their work.

Day 16: Desolation Wilderness

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

One of my greatest regrets is that I didn't take fuller advantage of the outdoors while living in California. To be fair, I was under tremendous pressure during these years, competing my PhD and working a demanding government innovation job while raising three young kids. We did the best we could with the outdoors, which was still respectable: frequent trips to northern California's many beaches, a few ski trips to Tahoe, day hikes, summer vacations at alpine lakes, and a couple backpacking trips. Yet I craved more: more wilderness, more nights under the stars, more epic adventures.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and California began enforcing strict lockdowns, I suggested spending long stretches of time in the mountains, Captain Fantastic-style. While most Californians were huddled at home, the national parks and forests would be practically empty. We could homeschool our kids, teach them wilderness survival and first aid skills, and explore some of the world's most beautiful places, all while complying with social distancing legislation. My target for this mountain fantasy was Desolation Wilderness, southwest of Lake Tahoe, a place I had only heard of. The name alone was enough to evoke wonder.

My family quite didn't share my enthusiasm, and rapidly-evolving government policy left us unsure whether this would even be legal. I let the fantasy go.

When we live in a place, we take it for granted. This seems to be a universal element of the human condition. We travel the world to see a destination's most famous sights, but many of us sheepishly confess that we've never visited the sights in our own backyards.

Moving to Alabama from California felt like exile. I made a nice life for myself, but I yearned for West Coast beauty. I appreciated the Southern mountains for what they were, but I knew the truth: they were only hills. I pined for the mountains and escaped when I could, on brief trips to the Sierra, the Tetons, and Red Rock National Park. I also sought the wilderness in books.

This trip has finally given me the opportunity to return to California, this time as a visitor. I resolved to not take the mountains for granted. I would have abundant time to revel in the beauty and truly learn each destination we visited.

I prepared for the trip with books. First and foremost was Kim Stanley Robinson's High Sierra: A Love Story. I'd first discovered Robinson while a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy. I attended a conference about sending a manned spacecraft to Mars, where he was a keynote speaker. He won me over immediately: a sophisticated science fiction author, deeply intellectual, clearly brilliant, lean and handsome, and reportedly a mountain climber. I bought and read Red Mars, his most famous book, and then all the rest of his novels. He was unlike any other science fiction author I'd read. His work showed a deep love of nature. Unlike many SF authors, he seemed enchanted with this world, and he took that love into his science fiction settings.

High Sierra is a significant departure from his science fiction. It defies genre, combining personal memoir with mini lessons in geology, essays on the naming of wilderness features, sketches of key figures in Sierra history, and wilderness travel tips. Robinson writes that his own love affair with the Sierra began in the Desolation Wilderness in the 1970s, which only doubled down on my determination to visit. Hannah, who loved the book as much as I did, agreed we needed to go.

We planned to visit Desolation Wilderness earlier in our trip, but it became a casualty of our finite schedule. Now that we're back in Truckee, we thankfully have another opportunity. Mallory, an old friend of Hannah's we want to spend time with, suggests a hike.

The hike runs roughly six miles, from Echo Lake to Lake Aloha, and then six miles back again. It begins in an overflowing parking lot, where we are exceptionally lucky to nab a spot from a departing vehicle; later, when we return, we find citations on the windshields of dozens of vehicles crammed along the roads. From the parking lot, a road leads down to a bustling store and boat launch. Friendly trail volunteers issue us a permit, then we set off along the shore of the lake.

We aren't actually in Desolation Wilderness yet; this hike begins in civilization and climbs its way out. The lake is teeming with recreational boaters. The trail passes dozens of small lakefront cabins, accessibly only by boat or trail. Vacationing families sit on patios, listening to loud music, talking. The trail is packed, a wilderness highway. It's the kind of hike that I suspect Kim Stanley Robinson would avoid.

Still, the scenery is beautiful, and I don't mind crowded trails. Seeing people outdoors makes me happy. When we pause to filter water, a delightful woman from a huge Korean group shares her childhood memories of drinking unfiltered water from sparkling creeks. We pass a boy scout troop, backpackers lugging heavy packs, and a group toting snowboards and skis in search of shady slopes still packed with snow.

Past the lake, we start a steep climb to a ridge. At last we reach the top and then the wilderness on the other side. The beauty keeps unfurling. The trail flattens and winds through alpine meadows. Snowmelt is pooled in dozens of unnamed ponds.

Then, suddenly, we get our first glimpse of Lake Aloha. I had no expectations for this hike, but the vista is literally stunning. I stop to take it in: a black-and-white painting, white snow on bright granite, the broken white trunks of pines. This grayscale landscape makes the crystalline blue lake all the more brilliant, like a partially colorized photo.

The lake houses a backcountry campground. Brightly colored tents are wedged into every open space among the trees. Camp stoves and pots sit on tables improvised from chopped logs. Bear canisters lay about. Hikers and backpackers are sunning themselves on the rocks or swimming in the glacial water.

We dump our daypacks on a rock, eat lunch, and drink warm beer. The sun, breeze, and alcohol make me sleepy. I nap while the women talk. Mallory takes a plunge in the lake. It's tempting, but I'm feeling happily lazy. Eventually we rouse ourselves, gather our belongings, and start the hike back.

Literature and nature, my two great loves. It feels wonderful to combine them on this trip. Books bring places to life, and I love visiting places special to authors. Hannah and I often make references to "Stan", as though Kim Stanley Robinson is our personal guide, who has somehow wandered off and left us. Every time one of us wonders about some unique geological feature, the other says, "We need Stan." Little references to the book pepper our conversations.

As we descend, our journey into wilderness reverses itself: back to the crowds, to the lakeside rentals, to speedboats and stand up paddlers. At the lakeside store we buy popsicles, then make the long drive back to Truckee.

It was a reasonably long hike, but it offered little more than a glimpse of Desolation Wilderness. We would need days or weeks to properly experience this place. Maybe a lifetime. And if Kim Stanley Robinson is right, this isn't even the prettiest place in the Sierra. But at least we were here, seeing it for ourselves, sampling the riches it offers. I remind myself that this doesn't need to be my last trip. I am taking notes about where I want to return, hopefully with my kids.

Day after day, this trip reminds me: take nothing for granted. Experience everything. There is so much life to be had.

Day 14: The Art of Arrival

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

On day 12, I wrote about the infinite variety of a single place. On Day 13, I wrote about how writing enables an author to hone his senses, see more, more fully inhabit the present moment and the remembered past. For me, the virtuosos of mindful living are writers who embed themselves in particular places. Writing becomes a way of life, a means of crystallizing experience into something hard and pure, enabling them to develop a greater intimacy with human experience than most people think possible.

This is what I want my writing to be. My desire to write springs not just from a love of the written word, but of a ravenous love for life itself.

Over the past two decades I have exhausted myself on politics, nations, war, religion, movements, causes, grievances, the things that most of us take for granted as the stuff of life, partly because news and social media waterboards us with it 24/7; we have forgotten a world in which we're not choking and sputtering for breath between forced, gurgling intakes.

But the closer I move to local, immediate experience—the cold sunlight spilling into our meadow, the feel of pen on paper, a rich conversation over dinner with a friend, an engrossing book—the more intoxicating and enchanting life becomes. For these three weeks I have intentionally dialed my world down to raw, immediate experience, and the result is rapturous. Repeatedly each day, I feel like I'm in a mystical reverie. Every single thing becomes a world unto itself: wildflowers on a hike, a wandering crack in the granite, an insight from a book. I could fall into the infinite offerings of each moment. I want to pull every thread, follow every footpath. This awesome feeling is bittersweet: the world's offerings are infinite, and there aren't enough lifetimes to experience them all.

In the early days of the Internet, prior to its enshittification into ad-congested doomscrolling, digital pioneers "surfed" hyperlinks through a web of unique, lovingly hand-crafted pages. The world itself feels that way to me now, an intricate living web, so much larger and higher-dimensional than the flat pixelated world I so often inhabit. I keep finding connections between places, people, history, ideas, books; I want more; I want it all. I'm starving to learn, to absorb, to more fully live.

Today I wholly give myself over to that impulse. We've been pushing hard the past few days, and now it's time for a day of empty, unstructured time. I want to indulge my appetite to truly learn a place. Now that we're back in Truckee, I want to truly arrive.

A couple years ago, while on a backpacking trip in the southern Sierra, my colleagues at Cairn Leadership changed how I thought about "arrival." Until that moment, arrival was nothing more than a checkpoint or milestone at the end of a journey. Arrival held no intrinsic significance, except as a marker of something else ending.

But the guides at Cairn were deeply thoughtful about every step of their outdoor adventures, which they use to train business leaders and teams. We met at a coffee shop in town, ran through some preliminary introductions and intention-setting exercises, and then loaded up our vehicles for the trailhead. We spent a solid hour in the parking lot, handing out gear, dividing up food, doing last-minute inventories, and packing our backpacks. Technically we had "arrived", but by the time we wiggled into our packs and started up the trail, we'd hardly had time to notice.

A short ways into a strenuous uphill hike, our guides unexpectedly told us to stop. It was time to arrive.

We dropped our packs in a shady grove of trees near some granite slabs overlooking the valley below. The guides told us we had fifteen minutes to arrive however we wished. That could be meditation, journaling, prayer, walking, yoga, enjoying the views, or sitting and doing nothing at all. Our only rule was silence.

It was such a simple but deeply countercultural ritual, taking so much time to truly arrive in a place. After the frenzy of driving, navigating, packing, and hiking, this unstructured time gave us an opportunity to slow down, observe, listen, and quiet our own thoughts and emotions. We became attuned to this new place.

After fifteen minutes of silence, the guides gathered us together. They shared some of the history of these mountains, beginning with indigenous peoples and moving forward through colonization and development. Then they invited a few of us to share insights from our own private arrivals. The whole ritual lasted less than thirty minutes, but gave me a deep appreciation for the power of intentional arrivals.

Hannah and I start our day in the coffee shop like usual. Hannah has her own project today: handwriting a letter to a dear friend, hoping to restore a relationship that fractured years ago. It's a hard thing for her, answering an inner call that she has put off for too long. She needs time and solitude.

I write quickly and fire off the day's blog post, then leave her to write.

I'm delighted to discover that Truckee's independent bookseller is just two blocks from the coffee shop. I'm eager to learn more about this town I'm falling in love with, so a local bookstore seems like the next natural stop. Word After Word Books doesn't disappoint; the moment I enter, I'm greeted with a huge table advertising "Outdoor Inspiration." I notice stacks of Kim Stanley Robinson's High Sierra: A Love Story, which Hannah and I both read prior to our trip, a book that I have to assume doesn't sell widely elsewhere. Obi Kaufman's gorgeous field guides promise to familiarize the reader with the flora and fauna of the Sierra. Two books cover the history of the ill-fated Donner Party, for which this mountain pass is named. Gordon H. Chang's Ghosts of Gold Mountain covers the Chinese-American railroad workers who paid an appalling price to blast their way through the granite peaks with black powder and nitroglycerin. A cheaply-printed book, which looks to be written by locals, recounts Truckee's history. Another book, from the Images of America series, features historical photographs.

Behind this table, multiple bookcases hold the kind of soulful nature writing that I've come to love. I spot reflective indigenous wisdom like Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass; memoirs like Cheryl Strayed's Wild; environmental classics like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring; and intriguing books I've never heard of like John Valliant's Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World.

I want to read it all. I could spend days here.

Walking through the rest of the bookstore is dangerous for me. It is small, with roughly one bookcase per genre, but the selection is fantastic. The owners seem to have curated the most thoughtful, intelligent titles in every genre. The Science Fiction section prominently displays The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler, a brilliant new SF author who isn't yet widely known.

I need to stay focused. I select only one book: The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny by Michael Wallis. Then I leave.

I spend a little time wandering around this little patch of Truckee. It's touristy, but I somehow love it. Maybe touristy is the wrong world. This place is a base camp for adventurers, which is different; it just amounts to tourist prices.

I halt before a candy cane-striped barrier when a train rushes through. I've never stood this close to a moving freight train before; I note the vibrating earth, the graffiti scrawled on the box cars, the way the train recedes into distant pristine mountains. It evokes nostalgic associations with gold rush history and Jack London stories from my childhood. I stand in a shimmering portal between the modern world and 19th century life on the American frontier.

I walk past the coffee shop and across a small bridge that spans the Truckee River. Then I clamber down the big stones into the shade beneath the bridge. No one can see me down here; I have the river to myself. I fish out my new book.

Two hours later, I'm lost in an entirely different world. Wallis argues that the westward-bound pioneers of the 1840s were living embodiments of "manifest destiny", the contemporary movement that saw a Providential mandate for white settlers "to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent." The Donner Party made catastrophic and time-consuming errors, which resulted in a dangerously late arrival to the Sierra. When winter snows trapped the party for months, the desperate and starving pioneers eventually resorted to cannibalism. Nearly half the party died.

According to Wallis:

The Donner Party's fate highlighted the ambitiousness, folly, recklessness, and ruthlessness that marked the great expansionist westward movement. The party became a microcosm of the United States which, while busily consuming other nations (Mexico and Indian tribes) that stood in the way of westward migration, had the potential to consume itself.

It's a bleak, nightmarish read, but also a profound reflection on the best and worst traits of the American psyche. The first hundred pages leave me rattled, and I'm not even to the bad parts yet.

I often feel trapped between my engagement with the world and my desire to retreat from it. The latter feels wholesome, healthy, and life-living, but I'm acutely aware of the dangers of spiritual bypass.

At a personal level, spiritual bypass means the "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks." At a societal level, individual spiritual pursuits can disengage people from collective problems that urgently require attention, like racial inequality, economic inequality, environmental degradation, and various forms of injustice.

Today's reading time reminds me that "going inward" can be a necessary and important precursor to "going outward" again. My contemplative time has pulled me right back into serious and weighty issues at the national level. But today I'm coming at them from a different angle, a more reflective one, with time and space to contemplate meanings.

I often return to a line from Wendell Berry, who faced criticism for "dropping out" when he left the New York literary scene to buy a small farm in his native Kentucky. He insisted he wasn't "dropping out"; he was "dropping into" his real life's work.

One day, I hope, I will solve that puzzle for myself: how to drop into the work I'm most passionate about, in a way that still gives generously and usefully back to the world.

Hannah and I reunite at lunch time. Continuing our theme of Arrival, we decide to visit the small Donner Memorial State Park museum. It recounts the same history I'm reading, in brief but colorful detail. Another exhibits pay tribute to the Chinese-American railroad workers. This fires a hint of a memory for me. I struggle to follow this elusive thread back through the years. Yes, there it is... a John Steinbeck connection. Later, at camp, I sift through my Kindle edition of East of Eden, confirming what I remember. A deeply meaningful connection for me and Hannah, one which will earn its own blog post soon.

We settle in for a quiet evening. It was a good day, of doing nothing in particular, of simply arriving and paying attention. I have only scratched the surface, but with each passing day, this place is coming to life for me. And by truly learning this one place, I am gaining insights that will stay with me when I go.

Day 15: Confidence, Endings, and Beginnings

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Over the past two weeks, Hannah and I have made five climbing excursions to School Rock at Donner Summit. Each time, we push ourselves a little harder. We like this crag because its six major routes span the lower range of difficulty levels, allow a new multi-pitch trad climber to work their way up a nice ladder of progression. We started with a 5.3, then a couple 5.6s. Today we plan to climb Mary's Crack, a three-pitch climb that starts with a 5.7 crack, then an easy 5.3 slab, and finally a 5.8+ crack with a reportedly difficult crux move.

I feel ready for this climb, but I still feel intimidated. I have very little experience with crack climbing, which requires different skills from face climbing, so even a 5.7 or 5.8 crack will be at the edge of my abilities. My left shoulder is still weak from a partly-failed surgery, so I don't know when or where my body might let me down. The crux move is near the top; if we can't make the move, we'll need to find a creative way off the face.

My greatest fear in climbing is getting stuck. I worry about reaching a point, muscles straining, struggling to hold on, where I can no longer safely go up or down. This isn't as much of a concern when single-pitch sport climbing, because fixed bolts offer regular protection and can facilitate a quick and easy bail off the route. Multi-pitch trad is different. Although it shouldn't be a problem on these specific routes, it's possible to encounter long runout sections without cracks for placing protection. These routes also don't typically have fixed anchors for rappelling off a route, so bailing can be tricky. Each time I climb a multi-pitch trad route, I feel like I must commit to the unknown.

All of this is familiar; I have written about this dynamic before. But today's climb feels different. I have rapidly gained experience over these past two weeks, and I know this climb is within my abilities. The cracks might be challenging but offer abundant placements for protective cams.

Mary's Crack makes a straightforward demand: that I show confidence in my abilities. It mirrors a much larger calling in this transitional season of life.

The past two years have been a time of transitions—not mere moves or job changes, but seismic upheavals in the foundations of my life. Repeatedly, life has presented forks in the road: do I stay or go? My wife and I faced the question every single day, teetering between divorce and reconciliation. Military retirement presented another dilemma. Once I crossed the 20-year mark, I had the power to retire virtually any time I wanted. Staying became a choice I had to renew each day. I exasperated my bosses by submitting retirement papers, pulling them back, and staying for another year.

All of us find ourselves at such crossroads multiple times during our lives. We face anguished choices between the familiar and the unknown. Most likely we feel restless discontent with the status quo, which is why we contemplate a new beginning at all. Yet we also recognize the good we'd be leaving behind, and we are mindful of the dangers and uncertainties that lie ahead.

A common response in these situations is to hedge. We try to have it both ways, clinging to safe and familiar shores even as we test the waters of this unknown sea.

Sometimes this approach makes sense. Our fantasized new life, which we are so hopeful will deliver greater happiness, is only a hypothesis. It often makes sense to test this hypothesis by making small bets, an approach Bill Burnett and Dave Evans advocate in Designing Your Life.

Other times, hedging simply reflects decision paralysis. We cling to our purgatory, trapped between past and future, afraid to let go of either. The fear of regret haunts us. We might also lack confidence in our ability to chart a new course through life.

During this season, I read two things that finally helped me step into a new future.

First, I read that an overwhelming majority of people who finally commit to a major life decision believe that the decision made their lives better. I can't find the source now, but it may have been an extrapolation from studies showing that most people's regrets are about inaction rather than action (54% vs. 12% in one study; in several later studies, around 70% of respondents regretted inaction; see Gilovich and Medvec (1995).

Second, I read William Bridges' classic book Transitions. Bridges argues that "transitions" are different from mere "changes"; changes are situational, while transitions are psychological; furthermore, changes often result from the pursuit of goals, while transitions start with letting go of something in one's life that no longer works. From there, Bridges develops a three-part model of transitions: an ending, a "neutral zone", and a new beginning.

The Bridges model is simple, but it shook me deeply. He showed me that I needed to decisively commit to an ending before I could reap the benefits of a new beginning. Once I took that step, things fell into place quickly.

I think about this now, facing Mary's Crack. It's a different context, to be sure. No major life transition is involved in making this climb, but it feels like a metaphor for much bigger stirrings in my life.

A life transition calls for courage; it asks us to trust ourselves, our abilities, and the goodness of the world around us. When we burn the boats behind us—or leave the ground on a climb—we need confidence that we can overcome whatever obstacles lie ahead. We can never count on a problem-free future. Our fairy tales teach us that any hero embarking on an adventure will face perilous dragons, but they also teach us that this unlikely hero can rise to the occasion and triumph.

This is the truth I've tried to avoid for so long: in life, in my writing, and in my climbing. I want control. Through endless study, skill-building, and practice in safe environments, I want to eliminate every source of uncertainty before I embark. I want to guarantee success before I leave the ground, submit my retirement request, or publish a blog post. It's a fool's errand, time-wasting, draining away potential.

This trip is challenging me to approach life differently: to try things, to write with abandon, to climb routes with uncertain outcomes. Life is asking me to trust that I can handle what comes.

I feel the usual fear prior to beginning the climb. As always, I'm silent on the drive. When we reach the wall and rope up, I start up immediately, before my nerves can stop me. It's the same way I approach leaping off rocks into swimming holes with my kids: a single, fluid movement to the edge and out into the air. Nothing good comes from hesitating.

I hit the first tricky move just a few feet off the ground. Fortunately the cam placements are good, protecting me. After testing various handholds and footholds, I commit to the move. I stick it on the first try. Hannah and two nearby climbers cheer me on.

I quickly climb the rest of the pitch. The second pitch is unremarkable. We eventually arrive beneath an imposing roof, spit by an off-width crack, too small to fit my body but too large to jam hands. This is the crux, the hard move I'm not sure we can make. Even if I complete the move, I'm not sure Hannah can, which would leave her stuck beneath me. I breathe through the anxiety and consider options. From her belay station, we can traverse sideways to another, easier route. If we really get stuck, that will provide a viable escape; it will just require some downclimbing and take time.

I climb up to the off-width crack, place my first cam, and wedge part of my body up into the crack. I spend a long time studying the rock's features, identifying opportunities for good cam placements. I try twice to pull the hard move, but I struggle. I'd really like another cam, but the piece I need is with Hannah. I lower myself out of the crack, build a new anchor, and belay Hannah up to me. I return to the crack, place a black Totem, and try the move again.

I heave and struggle and groan and curse. I know I'm capable of this move, but I can't do it. If I recall what I read earlier, the usual way to pull the move is to jam a left fist overhead in the top of the crack. But that's my bad shoulder, and as I try to contort my arm upward, my shoulder seizes up; it refuses to move at that angle. I feel twinges of pain. Even if I can place my fist, I'd hate to take a fall, sinking my whole body weight onto that shoulder. I try other approaches.

After twenty or thirty minutes of effort, I decide to call it a day. I grab the strap on a cam and pull myself upward. It's cheating, pulling on gear instead of the rock itself, but it gets me through the move. A reasonable way of adapting and ensuring we can complete the route.

I build an anchor above the crux. Hannah follows. She tries just as hard to make the move. I can see her down beneath my feet, squirming and cursing. At one point she falls and slams her shoulder hard into the rock. She shakes it off. Eventually she repeats my move, pulling on a cam, and hoists herself up onto the next ledge.

When we reach the top, we don't feel our usual exuberance; we're simply tired. However, we do have the deeper satisfaction of knowing we reached the top. This might be one of my biggest confidence-improving climbs yet, because it showed me I can safely handle a climb even when I can't make all the moves.

It's not altogether different from my writing. I'm still writing at a wild pace, publishing daily, and trying not to worry about readership. That's admittedly hard to do. My readership is small, not growing. Each social media share attracts only a few likes, probably because of the ways the algorithms work; I suspect very few of my friends even see my posts. I also know I'm violating all the rules, writing so frequently and at such length, without a clear value proposition to attract readers. However, I'm doing exactly what I promised myself: writing for myself, battling my inner critic, proving to myself that I can put my work out into the world.

It's a way of leaving the ground, or sailing away from safe shores. The safety I'm leaving behind—the thing I'm decisively ending—is staying hidden, where I won't face criticism or rejection. I'm up among the bright granite now, searching out holds, trying things, seeing what happens, open to danger and trusting I can handle what comes.

Messages of affirmation trickle in. A high school classmate tells me she is living vicariously through my posts. A Navy friend who has been navigating his own decision about military retirement tells me how meaningful my posts are. An old Air Force colleague, out of the blue, writes an encouraging multi-paragraph message about his deepest lessons learned while processing divorce and his post-military transition.

Magic is happening, the first hint of a new beginning.

Day 13: The Experiencing Self, the Remembering Self, and the Art of Weaving Time

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

At the start of my trip, my blog posts ran two days behind my travels; now, thanks to a lack of time and cell service in Yosemite Valley, I'm up to four. It's tricky, managing the flow of two separate timelines. Both are equally real to me; I'm seeing double, glitching space-time.

Cognitive scientists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have written extensively about the Experiencing Self vs the Remembering Self. We experience life as a succession of moments—around 500 million in a 70-year life, if the measure of a "moment" is three seconds. At any moment, our rich individual pasts and infinite possible futures form an hourglass of human experience. At the center, where the sands of time flow, is a present singularity that never stands still. The sands twist and writhe in a blur. As fast as a moment arrives, it disappears forever. There is something haunting and tragic about this, the succession of ungraspable moments that wink out of existence the instant they are born. The fragile, ghostlike Experiencing Self dwells in this instability.

The elusive nature of present experience means that we spend most of our time as a Remembering Self. This more stable, permanent self gives us solid purchase in the world, but living in remembrance comes at a price: our experience is already distilled, reduced, compressed into memories. What our brains store and retrieve is imperfect, not wholly reliable, and filtered through the interconnected web of every other past experience. This is the subject of Kahneman's and Tversky's research on this front: the cognitive distortions that drive a wedge between a present moment and our memory of it.

A well-lived life thus entails hard inner work on two fronts: training ourselves to live more fully in the present, and becoming better custodians of our own past.

Virtually every religion and wisdom tradition acknowledges a critical truth: a good life requires living mindfully in the present moment, fully experiencing what it offers, and welcoming that moment with positive regard.

Most of us, myself included, are so fretful over the past and future that we fail to experience the rushing torrent of moments that constitute our lives. Mindfulness practice trains us to slow down, relax our concerns about the frozen past and unwritten future, and live the life we actually have. When one slows down and pays attention, any moment can be unfurled into a nearly infinite landscape. Mindfulness classes teach students to spend an uncomfortably long time observing a single flower petal, or resting a single square of chocolate on their tongue. As the initial discomfort or embarrassment subsides, the senses awaken. Unnoticed details emerge. The object of contemplation comes to life, takes new forms, dazzles in its intricate complexity.

After learning to dwell in a present moment, students of mindfulness must learn to receive it compassionately. This is easier said than done, as anyone who has practiced meditation or prayer knows. The mind reels and bucks against stillness. Anxieties over past and future crash over our bulwarks. Our evolutionary instincts, calibrated to keep us alive in a dangerous world, continually scan for threats and attune us to every possible hint of negativity. Through hard inner work, we can learn to re-train these responses. Stephen Covey, inspired by Victor Frankl, wrote, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Mindful contemplation can create rapturous moments, in which we wake up to the true magnitude of the universe. We are immersed in a world so enchanted, vibrant, and wondrous that it takes our breath away. These moments are heartbreaking—full of indescribable beauty, but also devastating in their revelation that we can only experience the tiniest fraction of what the universe offers. The saints among us, both religious mystics and secular naturalists, seem to dwell in a magical haze of present experience; they live in a different world than the rest of us, more enchanted, more fully alive.

Modern psychology confirms what our religions and wisdom traditions have told us for millennia. Buddhism, Stoicism, religious mysticism, experimental psychology, cognitive based therapy, flow, productivity hacks—all converge on the vitality of learning to dwell more fully in the present.

Thus my first, continual challenge on this trip: to live fully in the first timeline, the one in which my Experiencing Self hurtles forward through time.

Today's climb is a new route for us, as we work our way across the routes at School Rock. This one is called Junior High, and the guidebook describes it as a gentle, easy route for a new multi-pitch trad leader. Exactly what I'm looking for. The route offers two starting variations: a 5.8 crack, or an easier 5.6 traverse across an angled slab. I opt for the slab.

When we arrive at the base of the route, my confidence evaporates. I need to traverse sideways for about fifteen feet across an angled ramp. Traversing (climbing sideways) is always scary because falls tend to be nasty, involving big pendulum swings, possibly slamming the climber into rocks or other features. If the rock has sharp features, a pendulum fall can sever the rope. Falls are also risky for the follower, who is not underneath the rope; they're subject to the same type of pendulum swings as the leader.

Two other features make this particular intimidating: there's almost nowhere to place protection, and if I slip, I'll slide right down that ramp into a pit of sharp, broken boulders beneath.

Although the climbing looks easy—shuffling right across a thin, consistent ledge halfway up the ramp—the fall consequences make this one of the scariest trad pitches I've led.

I always feel sheepish, describing these climbs as if they're some epic adventure. Figuratively, I'm just splashing around in the kiddie pool. My friend Sam urges me not to downplay my accomplishments. Even if these climbs rank lower on the ladder of climbing achievements, they still require knowledge, skill, and concentration and would terrify most people.

I climb up to the thin ledge and inch my way to the right. I manage to place my tiniest cam in a crack a quarter of an inch wide. It doesn't seem likely to hold in a fall. Then I go further right. Now I'm in the no-fall zone: I need to move another ten feet, with so much rope out that the cam won't keep me off the ground even if it holds. I spend a long time stationary, scanning for somewhere to put another cam. There's nothing. I have to trust myself and move out.

Eventually I do, and my fingers soon curl around a positive handhold at the end of the traverse. I place a solid cam. Thank God. I make an awkward, clambering, "beached whale" move onto the next rock up, placing a couple more cams as I go. The guidebook says to climb another crack before building a belay anchor, but I decide to stop here. It's an awkward spot, highly exposed over a sheer dropoff, without much room to stand; once I build the anchor, I have to lean back over the void, letting my tie-in rope go taut, to find a stable stance. On the positive side, I can watch Hannah make the traverse and rappel down if she has problems. Fortunately, she doesn't; she breezes through the traverse, climbs up onto the ledge, and ties in next to me. She passes me the cams, flakes the rope, and prepares to belay me up the next pitch.

One reason climbing enchants so many people is that it collapses human experience into the present. Mind and body become totally absorbed in the task of moving safely over rock. Past and future vanish; the present swells in size, becoming as solid and graspable as the granite itself. Climbing delivers pure, intoxicating life to the Experiencing Self.

That leaves the other timeline, which sometimes gets overshadowed in our quest to more fully inhabit the present moment: the Remembering Self.

I have considered myself a writer since kindergarten, but the nature of my writing has evolved over the years. I've written academic journal articles, national security op-eds, and science fiction stories, but the lion's share of my writing recently has been journaling or memoir—a challenging genre that leaves one open to accusations of narcissism, not least of all from one's inner critic. I have to constantly remind myself that sharing one's life with others is a generous act, and that my writing might offer guideposts to others as they navigate their own lives.

But I also write for myself, especially now, on this trip. This extensive personal writing has taught me a powerful lesson: reflective writing grants the opportunity to live life twice.

Reflective personal writing allows a person to intentionally guide their Remembering Self through the past, fusing memory, interpretation, and imagination. When I re-enter a memory, I e-live the experience. I recall my sensory impressions and emotions. I make connections to other memories, to things I've read, to deeper meanings that might have eluded me at the time. By writing, I crystallize the memory into harder and more durable form.

Writing about memories ultimately shapes how we remember them, which is a sacred power not to be taken lightly. Writing assigns interpretation. But the alternative is letting unconscious forces do all that shaping and re-shaping for us. Carl Jung wrote, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

Writing about memories also attunes the mind and heart to the details and subtleties of human experience. By sifting through memories, we become better students of the present. We learn how to pay attention to those onrushing moments as a writer would, ravenous for every detail.

Sitting here in the coffee shop, I recall the rest of my climb up Junior High. Each choice I make now, each word I commit to the page, will define how I remember this climb.

According to the guidebook, the rest of the climb should be easy. Still, I don't like the unknown. Our second pitch is straight up an easy crack with good protection, but from our belay anchor, I can't see what lies over the top. The only way to find out is to continue up, deeper into the unknown, further committing to the route.

(A constant theme in my writing, my inner critic warns. I'm being repetitive. Inner journeys, standing at the cliff edge of one's abilities, daring to go further.)

From the top of the crack, it's an easy clamber up to a gnarled tree embedded in the rock like a wise sage in some austere alpine monastery. I sling the tree, then back it up with a cam just in case today is the day this ancient tree decides to surrender to its inevitable demise.

(I like the metaphor of a sage, but it falls apart in the second sentence. I could do better. If I was revising my work, I would polish this to a sheen, but I'm not revising; I'm writing fast and loose.)

I belay Hannah up. From here the climbing is trickier. In the guidebook, dashed blue lines spiderweb up a photo of the rock face, indicating multiple possible routes, some easier than others. I opt for what I think is the middle route. The climbing isn't hard, but after a short ways, I want to protect a specific move. I need my blue Totem cam, but I've already used it. I build another anchor, taking my time, in no rush, content to choose safety over speed. Hannah joins me and passes me my cams.

(Is this play-by-play too boring? Who would even read this? Ignore those questions; keep writing...)

It always feels so good when Hannah passes me the gear I placed on the previous pitch. I clip each one back on my harness, where it will be available to protect a move on the next pitch. Hannah told me once that each time I place a cam, she silently thinks the names of my children. That black Totem is for I... the blue C4 is for M... the hex is for C. An ongoing cycle, keeping this sport as safe as I can make it.

We feel exhilarated when we top out. Even though most of the climbing moves were easy, this was our hardest multi-pitch climb yet. We're getting better, a little each day.

And here I am in the coffee shop, weaving all these memories and reflections together as though on a loom. As I surface from flowful reverie, my mind flickers between Remembering Self and Experiencing Self; past and present; days-old climb, and Hannah sitting across from me penning a handwritten letter to a friend. The future leaks in: thoughts of this afternoon's planed climb, and planning logistics for the rest of our trip.

I'm out of the zone, human again, sloshing about in the eddies where time's many rivers meet. But hopefully a better human now, more alive to the present, more alive to the past.

Day 11: The Anguish of Our Finitude

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday, aboard the bus shuttling tourists from the parking lot to the Mariposa Grove, a big red LED display display the date and time. I'd barely looked at a calendar since our trip began. The date startled me. It struck me, all at once, that our trip was half over.

That thought has sat heavy with me since then. Twenty-four days of unhurried time, between jobs, with no major commitments hanging over me, is an incredible gift. When we set out 11 days ago, time felt infinite. My ambitions are always sweeping, and I had a long list of achievements I hoped to realize: daily blogging, finishing a draft of my book, leading my first multi-pitch climbs, climbing some classics in Yosemite Valley, and then climbing the three most famous peaks in Tuolumne Meadows. All of that, of course, would be in addition to lazy afternoons reading in alpine meadows or by quiet rivers, spending time with Hannah, and showing Sam around Yosemite Valley.

Now, for the first time, I feel the rush of time. I'm on a clock. With just 11 days before driving back to Idaho to drop off the van and catch our flight, I need to make choices, and those choices entail tradeoffs. I cannot do everything. I cannot be careless or wasteful with the rushing hours. Even here, on a timeful vacation, Hannah and I must make choices about the life we want, the way we want to be in the world.

Early in our fledgling relationship, Hannah and I read Irvin Yalom's Existential Psychology, a doorstop book and foundational text from an earlier era. Every morning we met at Prevail Coffee to discuss Yalom's exploration of four existential dilemmas all human beings face: death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglesness. The usual light fare for an early dating relationship.

Yalom believed that "death anxiety" lay at the heart of human experience. He writes, "Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude." In his book, Yalom traces this anxiety through every stage of human development, from infancy to old age.

At first, I was skeptical about the grip of death anxiety on my life. I don't want to die anytime soon, and the risk weighs heavily on me every time I rock climb, but I also don't have the suffocating fear of death that many people seem to. Perhaps that is one of climbing's unusual gifts: it keeps an awareness of mortality front and center, in the purifying light, instead of leaving it to skulk in the shadows.

But as the book went on, Yalom made his case that death anxiety isn't always explicit. Our deepest fear is not necessarily of dying, but of finitude, and this fear manifests in ways that seemingly have little to do with death. Ambition is one manifestation that resonates deeply. I feel an unquenchable thirst to learn, create, grow, achieve. I want my life to count for something, and I can't help but measure its worth by tallying the things I've done and made.

My midlife passage, which I described in Eating Glass, included a painful reckoning with this deeply-rooted impulse. When I don't achieve, who am I? When all becomes still, what is my worth? In what way has my fierce ambition blinded me to other sources of goodness, beauty, and worth in my life? I emerged from that self-confrontation a little bit wiser, more settled in spirit, and more attuned to the centrality of relationships and simple pleasures, but I still grapple daily with ambition's role in my life. A life of desperate grasping after achievement leads to misery; on the other hand, healthy ambition plays a constructive role in fueling personal growth and our contributions to the world.

Now, in the heart of this vacation, I'm grappling with my finitude. My inability to do and become everything that I once hoped.

The day starts out rough. We are camped at an RV park outside in Fresno. The evening heat was so severe that we couldn't cool the van below 80, and the stove malfunctioned because of a perceived temperature error. We only slept an hour or two in the stifling heat.

We wake at 5am, drive Sam to the airport, then drive straight back to the RV park to sleep a couple more hours.

Once we are up for good, we drive to an Urgent Care clinic. We have survived a week of rigorous rock climbing and hiking without serious injury, but a minor scrape on Hannah's finger—obtained while fishing cams out of cracks—has become infected. Half her finger is swollen white and pink. Fortunately, the doctor sees her quickly and prescribes antibiotics.

Our itinerary up to this point was well-established, governed by Sam's flights and our days allocated to Yosemite. Now that Sam has departed, Hannah and I are on our own. We can go anywhere.

This leads to the most difficult decision of our trip: leaving Yosemite Valley behind. Before our trip, I had imagined wandering into Camp 4, the legendary focal point of Yosemite's climbing scene, and finding experienced partners who could lead us up some of Yosemite's classic climbs. I hopefully packed an extra-long rope, ascenders, ladder aiders, and other gear I'd never needed before. With imagination, determination, and the right mentor, we could make a leap forward in our climbing ability, tackling epic climbs I never would have dared to think possible.

It's hard, letting that vision go, but we have to make choices. The crowds, traffic, and heat in Yosemite have been getting to us, and we've missed peak climbing season. But we both loved Truckee: the cool clean air, the milder temperatures, our cozy coffee shop mornings, the climbing at Donner Summit that is right at the edge of our growing abilities. Until this morning we had never considered going back—there were so many new places I wanted to explore—but Hannah and I agree it's the right move.

This is one of life's many tradeoffs: exploring widely, or settling deep into a place, paying ever-closer attention to its offerings, and internalizing its rhythms.

This decision also involves an important tradeoff related to our climbing. My vision for Yosemite entailed following on routes: finding an experienced partner to guide us up climbs that exceeded our own abilities. There is nothing wrong with this; I've climbed with more experienced partners before, taken classes, and had wonderful experience following guides up the Grand Teton and Looking Glass. However, returning to Truckee will demand something harder: I will lead the climbs, which means operating at the fringe of my comfort zone, pushing myself in challenging new situations, and gaining the skills and confidence to lead progressively harder climbs. The climbs won't be as epic as those in Yosemite, but I will really, truly be learning.

This is the long, slow, disciplined path to mastery. When we return to Yosemite someday, it will be with real skills.

We spend the rest of the day driving. A major construction project has begun on I-80, and we hit four major slowdowns. We have no choice but to take it in stride.

Returning to Truckee feels like coming home. I've stored coordinates for our favorite campsites, so dispersed camping has become easy and routine. Our favorite meadow is occupied, but we settle in a secluded dirt turnout not much farther.

We are back. We cook dinner, prep the van for the coming night, and drift peacefully to sleep beneath familiar trees and distant mountain peaks.

Day 12: If You Want Infinite Variety, Stay With One Place

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In her profound defense of monogamy, Joni Mitchell cites a striking quote from an Esquire magazine article: “If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.” Mitchell writes, "What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories—and in a way, that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over. You can’t do that with a longtime mate because he knows all that old material. With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love."

That feels wise and true, both in relationships and other domains of life.

I encountered the quote while immersed in books about nature, place, and belonging, partly to prepare for my trip and partly because I'm weaving this thread into my next book. It's impossible to separate belonging from place, but in our modern world, we are so disconnected from place that we don't even comprehend our disconnection.

I can't help but think about how Joni Mitchell's wisdom applies to place.

If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different places. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.

What would it mean, if that were true?

It's a salient question, as we give up Yosemite Valley in favor of returning to Truckee.

When it comes to place, I have lived the spectrum of faithful exclusiveness to rampant promiscuity.

I spent the promiscuous years flying C-17A Globemaster III cargo planes around the world for the United States Air Force. Most trips lasted two to three weeks. We departed Washington state, typically stopped on the east coast for gas and cargo, and then ping-ponged around Europe, Asia, and the Middle East until it was time to come home. Most of my flying was 2004 to 2008, at the height of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Both countries had the gravitational attraction of black holes; we were lucky to fly anywhere else.

Still, we did travel. I flew to 21 countries in those four years. I spent dozens of nights in Germany and Spain, both major hubs for U.S. airlift at the time. My first deployment—a hardship tour, I know—was to Frankfurt. These were rewarding but exhausting years. Missions typically lasted twenty to thirty hours, hotel to hotel. I awoke in a different city and time zone each night. My body lost its circadian rhythm entirely. I usually slept in blocks of four to six hours, sometimes at night, sometimes in daylight, always hoping they would set me up properly for my next flight. Sometimes they did; when they didn't, flights were excruciating. Occasionally my body crashed; I once slept 20 hours straight.

During these years, I practically lived on the road. I tallied 230 days away from home one year. At first I felt the thrill of adventure, but over time, I felt a dreary sameness about every new location I visited. Each overseas military base offered different versions of the same features: a commissary, a base exchange, restaurants, and a market where local merchants sold souvenirs and hand-made goods. Cities without bases were marginally more interesting. We stayed in the best hotels the government would pay for, picked famous restaurants that sometimes offered neatly-packaged cultural experiences, and piled into crew vans to hit the most famous tourist attractions. In Ghana, we went to a modest museum and wandered through a local market marveling at skinned animals hanging from hooks in the summer heat. In Athens, we squeezed in a trip to the Parthenon. Full days off were rare, but we took advantage of them, driving hours in rental cars to Rothenberg or Brussels.

I'm grateful for all these experiences, and mindful that many people would do anything to have similar opportunities. But over time, such travel wears thin. My travels were a succession of one-night stands, novel and thrilling at first, but then dreary in their unfulfilling repetition. With each departure, I left nothing but a vacant hotel room.

I have had richer travel experiences, of course, typically while off-duty. My wife and I favored quiet getaways nestled in nature: the Olympic Peninsula, Mendocino, Point Reyes. Two years in Jordan gave us the chance to truly learn a place. We left with memories, friends, and a new language. We also traveled extensively to other countries in the Middle East, which was wonderful for learning the region but also left me with that weary morning-after feeling from my whirlwind C-17 days.

During these years, two things taught me that a much deeper sense of embeddedness in place might be possible. First, we saw and experienced how deeply rooted Jordanians and Palestinians were in their land. Generations lived together. They knew their lineage, their ancestral homes, particular houses and olive groves.

Second, I began to encounter masterful books by authors who knew particular places and landscapes with astonishing intimacy. These books were an acquired taste—protracted meditations that entailed sitting still, observing, listening. They demanded of the reader the same qualities that the authors internalized. A few early influences spring to mind, like Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, inspired by a year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, and Dakota by Kathleen Norris.

As I've gotten older, my reading tastes have shifted further in this direction. Mary Oliver's poetry and essays, crystallizing the beauty and wonder of the forests she roamed; Wendell Berry's works, doing the same for rural America and for Kentucky in particular; Barry Lopez's 500-page Arctic Dreams. In Desert Solitaire, another work of meditation on landscape, Edward Abbey writes, "If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument." Those dazzling lines express the same love that Joni Mitchell evokes: the infinite variety of a single thing.

I have been writing this post off-and-on since my trip began, not sure where it would fit. Now we are returning to Truckee. One place, chosen over a multitude of places. It's a pleasure to wake up in our meadow—I think of it as our meadow now—and make our morning drive to the Dark Horse Coffee Roastery. Hannah, who has a long background managing coffee shops, strikes up a conversation with the head roaster. He joins us at our table for a few minutes. Our first thread of human connection, weaving us into the tapestry of this place. Hannah texts a friend who lives nearby. We make plans for dinner and a hike together the following weekend. Another thread of connection.

After our morning writing session, we drive to Donner Summit. I find it harder and harder to write about these climbs because the novel has quickly become routine.

I've read that the lives of highly successful people often look rather boring, because they have structured their existence around the disciplined pursuit of their craft. Our afternoons at Donner Summit are beginning to have that feel. We park in the same gravel turnaround, put on the same harnesses, equip ourselves with the same gear, and make the same hike to the base of the same wall. I know most of the climbs on this face now: the route names, the cracks, the belay spots, the notches where one can easily climb over the imposing roof atop the slab. I enjoy this intimate familiarity. We are building a relationship with this place.

We climb Kindergarten Crack again, repeating a climb we made before our adventure in Yosemite. It's not the masterful performance I'm hoping for. My awareness seems dulled by a brain fog, and I need to hang on the rope to rest at the same spot I did last time; it's not a hard move but it feels intimidating, and I wear myself out summoning the courage to commit to it. Later, I struggle to find good placements to build a belay anchor.

Our progress is painfully slow. But this is the nature of building a real relationship: forward progress through ups and downs. The intoxicating novelty has worn off, and now we're just working, trying things, learning, discussing what we can do better.

All of this holds lessons for my eventual homecoming to Montgomery, Alabama. It's not the place I would have chosen for myself, but it's the place I have. I haven't met many Montgomery residents who love the place, even those who've lived there for decades. We swap stories about the unlikely ways we arrived in the city, and we all marvel at the fact we're still there. Somehow, life pinned us in place. Although we daydream of moving elsewhere—and maybe someday we will—a deep, patient love flows like a subterranean river. In a city where every step forward seems matched by a step back, we each feel a quiet calling to make the city better than it would otherwise be.

I keep reading authors of particular places because they teach me how to love a place: how to see, how to learn the names of things, how to weave together the history, geography, biology, and sociology of a place into a coherent and meaningful understanding.

We will likely only be in Truckee for a few more days, but our return is giving me the opportunity to practice faithfulness to a place. The disappointment I felt yesterday at leaving Yosemite Valley has faded. I'm happy we're here.

Day 10: Rest at Sentinel Dome and Mariposa Grove

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

The day after our almost-Half Dome hike, we are tired and sore. It is Sunday. A day of rest.

I want to make the day meaningful for Sam, given his short time in California, but we agree not to return to the Yosemite Valley floor. We're ready to be away from the traffic and the crowds. We also don't have the energy for any big adventures. Instead, we decide to wind our way up out of the valley on Highway 41, back towards Fresno.

We do a short hike up Sentinel Dome, which is the best reward-to-effort hike in Yosemite Valley. At only 2.2 miles and 500 feet of elevation gain, it nonetheless offers a 360-degree panoramic view of Yosemite Valley. It is the perfect recovery hike to stretch out our sore muscles without overdoing it.

Afterwards, we visit the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. The more one knows, the more one sees. I keep trying to get smarter on forest ecosystems—with novels like Richard Powers' The Overstory and nonfiction books like Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees—but I can't seem to hold onto the details. They flow right through me like water, and I find myself simply marveling at big pretty trees like everyone else.

Developing the eyes to truly see a place like this is a lifelong effort, requiring extensive time and patience. The forest won't yield its secrets on a quick drive-by. On my way out, the sequoias challenge me to keep reading, learning, looking, listening. I will see more next time.

In the evening we stay at a RV campground, where we do laundry, take well-earned showers, and watch Valley Uprising, the best single documentary about Yosemite's climbing history.

And that is all for today, a day of rest.

Day 9: Half Dome (Almost)

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Yosemite's Half Dome might be the most iconic hike in the United States. This soaring granite batholith, which is second only to El Capitan on Yosemite's impressive skyline, looks as if a divine scimitar has cleaved it in half; its southeast side slopes up to a summit like any other dome, but its northwest face is a sheer vertical wall that plunges back to the valley floor. Half Dome rouses the imagination and practically begs to be climbed. George G. Anderson first ascended it in 1875, barefoot and without modern climbing equipment, by drilling holes in the granite and placing iron spikes. Over the decades, those holes evolved into a set of cables that park rangers raise every spring to help day hikers clamber up the final 400 feet to the summit.

Ascending the Half Dome cables to the summit is an intimidating lifetime achievement for many hikers, but it takes tremendous effort just to get there. AllTrails clocks the roundtrip trail at 16.5 miles, with 5,305 feet of elevation gain. Even without the cables, this would be the hardest hike I've ever done, excepting a 23-mile up-and-down of Pike's Peak when I was 25 years younger.

This is the one must-do hike during Sam's visit.

Unfortunately, Half Dome's reputation entices more hikers than can safely ascend and descend the precarious cables. In 2010, Yosemite began requiring permits, which are assigned via lottery. The park issues only 300 permits per day. I've read that during peak seasons the probability of winning the lottery is around 15%.

We only have two full days in the park, Saturday and Sunday, the hardest days to win the lottery. Nonetheless, we try. Hannah, Sam and I each dutifully pay $10 to enter Saturday's lottery. When none of us win, we try again for Sunday. No luck.

The summit is out, then. That's unfortunate, but it doesn't deter us. We'll do as much of this hike as we can. I hiked the first three miles of this trail several years ago, with my family. The twin waterfalls, Vernal and Nevada Falls, make this a world-class hike even without Half Dome.

We get a later start than I hoped, but since we're not summiting, I don't feel rushed. When we arrive on the valley floor, we encounter our first setback: all the roads near the trailhead are closed for construction. We drive to Yosemite Village, two miles away. Our plan is to catch the purple shuttle back to Curry Village, but when we arrive at the bus stop with our daypacks and trekking poles, we learn that the purple line is shut down. Our options are to take the green shuttle the long way around, requiring 50 minutes, or walk. I'm a little shocked at what feels like disastrous logistics planning in support of the construction; somehow, I expected park management to be as pristine as the wilderness.

We opt to walk, which means our 16.5 mile hike has just become 20.

The trailhead is located on the far side of a footbridge that crosses the Merced River, which we'll be following upwards for most of the day. The trail is initially paved to facilitate the throngs of hikers, but it also climbs steeply, as if resolved to shake as many of them loose as quickly as possible. Many turn around at the first scenic overlook, beneath Vernal Falls. After that the crowds begin to thin, and the trail turns to dirt.

The diversity of tourists here makes a striking and happy contrast to Truckee. Nobody likes crowds of tourists, but I'm legitimately happy to see people of all shapes, sizes, and skin color enjoying Yosemite. We hear a dozen languages. Elderly people and small children share the path with intrepid hikers outfitted with cutting-edge gear. I'm not sure why they flock here and not places like Truckee; Yosemite isn't any less expensive. Possibly it's just awareness; Yosemite is legendary, while most people have probably never heard of places Truckee or Yosemite's lesser-known but equally gorgeous sibling, King's Canyon.

I'm impressed by how many people continue the hike past the overlook. We soon reach the trail's most spectacular stretch, steep stone stairs winding past Vernal Falls. My daughter remembers these stairs with fear. They feel more dangerous than they are, a fleeting brush with mortality, which left a lasting impression. A refreshing spray hangs in the air, cooling our bodies and wetting the stone. Bright rainbows twist and play at every angle.

At the top of the falls, hikers warm themselves and eat snacks on the bright granite. The squirrels are hopelessly domesticated, fat and fearless. We know better than to feed the wildlife, but Hannah feeds them anyways; they're already ruined.

From Vernal Falls, it isn't much more of a hike to Nevada Falls. We make another steep climb, this time out of the spray, to a spectacular overlook. A footbridge crosses the Merced, right where it hurls itself down the steep cliffside with unimaginable force. I look for a sign I remember, which warned tourists, "If you go over the falls, you will die." I don't see it. Maybe the park service's refreshing candor has fallen out of fashion. That's a pity; I've read that the leading cause of death in Yosemite is tourists falling in the river from this trail. That doesn't surprise me, given the number of people I've seen jumping over guardrails for selfies.

The upper reaches of the falls is where my family and I turned around before. It feels like a natural ending place, flat, expansive, with a feeling of summiting.

It's hard to believe we're only halfway, measured by both distance and elevation. We're tired. I'm concerned about Hannah, who has never done anything this strenuous. She's been strong and consistent thus far, but sooner or later, she'll hit a wall. And Sam, for all his hiking prowess, has little experience with hikes this long or at such high elevation. His hydration consists mostly of Mountain Dew, his lifelong vice of choice, with occasional gulps of water at my insistence.

We take our time eating lunch. We take naps. I still feel unrushed. We have all day.

The next stretch of trail is hard. It gets harder, and then it gets miserable.

The majestic views of Yosemite Valley, and the refreshing waterfalls, are gone. We hike a long flat stretch of forest trail, coming around Half Dome from the back side. Then the ascent starts. We have 2,000 feet to gain this way, trudging up meandering forest switchbacks. Everything hurts. Our prolonged rest gave our muscles time to seize up.

Our breaks become more and more frequent. I ignore mileage but check my watch altimeter every minute or two. We need to gain 2000 feet but are only ascending 50 to 75 feet between breaks. Time flows by. At first I insist we can take our time, saying we can rest as often as needed. But as the afternoon rolls past, I start to watch the clock. I'm meticulous about safety, but of all things, I forgot to pack the headlamps. Sunset will bring a precipitous drop of temperatures and then absolute darkness. We discuss options and turnaround criteria.

Hannah gradually approaches her limit. Eventually, an hour before our hard turnaround time, she makes the decision to wait on the trailside while Sam and I finish the hike. Sam and I forge ahead. I'm still checking my altimeter. We can't climb the Half Dome cables without a permit, but we plan to climb the subdome. Not long after we part ways from Hannah, we break into the open and see Half Dome and the subdome looming above us. I'm still wary of time. The subdome looks brutal in its own right, with 400 feet of elevation gain on steep switchbacks.

And then, suddenly, we're at an end. At the base of the subdome, a sign warns that permits are required to go further. That's it. We're done, 400 feet lower than expected. There isn't anything to do; I'm not interested in defying the rules. Yosemite's rangers have seen it all, and I don't expect they'll have any qualms about hitting us with the advertised $280 fine.

It's disappointing to be this close, watching those little toy figures above us inching their way up the cables to the summit. But we've done what we can. Maybe someday we'll return.

Over the years, I've learned that I never need to save much for the descent. Descending takes care of itself. Gravity does most of the work. I only need a little water, and no food. The main challenges are knee pain and blisters. Still, I'm not sure if the same will hold true for Sam and Hannah.

The descent is mostly monotonous trudging. I'm amazed how long the trail goes, how much ground we covered on the way up. I didn't realize.

We stop for water at Little Yosemite campground, near the top of the waterfalls. The moment Sam stops, he gets severe cramps and feels nauseated. Dehydration is almost certainly a factor. We force him to drink water, and this time he acknowledges that would be a good idea.

Then we continue on. Somewhere along the way, the sun disappears behind Yosemite's tall granite walls. It gets cooler. Hours pass, and still the trail goes on.

When we reach the valley floor—the supposed end of our hike—we still have to find our way those two miles back to our car. We walk a mile to Curry Village, then mercifully catch a green line shuttle direct to Yosemite Village.

Outdoor enthusiasts talk about Type 1 vs Type 2 fun. Type 1 fun is "enjoyable while it's happening." Type 2 fun "is miserable while it’s happening, but fun in retrospect." (There is also Type 3 fun, which isn't actually fun at all, even in retrospect)

This was good old-fashioned Type 2 fun. For someone without much experience hiking, Hannah's performance was incredible. Sam is happy. By the end of the hike, I never want to hike again. In a few days, I'll be eager to go again.

Day 8: Yosemite and Friends

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

We wake early at the Love's truck stop, drink coffee, and then drive to Fresno Yosemite International Airport to pick up my friend Sam. Our journey is entering a new phase.

Sam and I have been friends for more than 25 years, since I began attending a church youth group he helped lead. After I graduated, our mentoring relationship evolved into a friendship. We corresponded via lengthy emails, and on my visits home from the Air Force Academy we took hours-long walks around the parks and beaches north of Seattle. We could talk for hours about anything and everything. I was drawn to his intellectual curiosity, encyclopedic knowledge, and quirky sense of humor. We accompanied each other through major life events like marriage and the births of our children. We also accompanied each other through many shared interests, like Antarctica and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott.

We still correspond almost daily, although we've shifted from emails to lengthy asynchronous voice recordings in which we recount the books we're reading, the outdoor adventures we're undertaking, or the ups and downs of our lives.

Sam loves the outdoors and hiking, but his work and family commitments have kept him in the greater Seattle area for most of his life. He has developed an extraordinary intimacy with the stretch between Edmonds and Lynnwood; he knows every beautiful spot for a quick walk of any duration, every amusing piece of graffiti, and every arcane bit of urban lore. He has also adopted a disciplined but flexible approach to exploring the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges, ticking off every notable hike as trail conditions and weather allow.

The first time I visited Yosemite Valley, I thought "Sam would love this." We made a tentative plan for summer of 2020, but the pandemic upended that. Now, finally, it's time.

This entire trip is an experiment in a different way of living. For as long as I can remember, I've felt like an awkward composite of two selves: the Air Force pilot-technologist-entrepreneur and the spiritual writer on a lifelong pilgrimage. For these three weeks, I've resolved to give the latter free rein. In this seam between major chapters, I have the opportunity to be someone new, to live a different kind of life, to test out possibilities I might cultivate later.

Trying to design a dream life is an illuminating exercise. In 8th grade, my English teacher tasked us with describing a dream "pod" in which we might like to live. Much later, while reading a book about healing from relationship wounds, I encountered a similar exercise that entailed envisioning a dream house. It was a way of using creativity to circumvent reason, to get in touch with deeper impulses.

My imaginative dream life has stayed remarkably consistent over the years, and takes the form of what I call The Forest House. I sit outside this remote mountain cabin in the mornings, writing and meditating and watching the deer go by. In the early afternoon I go for long walks or other outdoor adventures. These long, slow days satisfy my deep need for solitude and meaningful, cerebral, focused work.

But in the evenings, this solitude is transformed. My dream life is, as the poet David Whyte calls it, a well peopled solitude. I light candles and switch on the party lights, casting my patio on a warm yellow light. My forest house looks like a Thomas Kincaid painting. Friends drop by. I uncork a bottle of wine. We talk for hours, pausing to grab blankets when a chill settles. When the cold becomes intolerable, we migrate indoors, light a fire, and pour more wine. In the wee hours of the morning, my guests slip away one by one, leaving me to the next morning's solitude.

Friendship needs to be a pillar of the well-lived life. It is in dangerously short supply today, especially for men. This is one reason why my daydreams of escape into the mountains will never entirely satisfy. I want a life rooted not just in good places, but among good people. Even Thoreau, who we imagine living alone at Walden Pond, valued friendships, entertained visitors, and didn't dwell far from human society. One commenter suggests he was a bit like "a child pitching a tent in his parents’ backyard."

So after a week of idyllic solitude, Hannah and I are glad Sam can join us. I'm eager to share Yosemite Valley with a friend.

It doesn't take long for reality to rear its ugly head, when we hit a 1.5-hour traffic jam entering Yosemite's south gate. I try to keep my irritation in check. At least the conversation is good, as we catch up on the months since we last saw Sam in Washington state.

Then we're through the entrance and on our way. We pass through Yosemite's famous tunnel and are rewarded with the sudden, overwhelming spectacle of the entire valley: El Capitan looming over the Valley floor, Half Dome peeking out behind Glacier Point in the distance, Bridalveil Falls pouring unfathomable volumes of snowmelt into the thick trees below. Sam snaps a photo that, in black and white, looks uncannily like an Ansel Adams. Amazing, the gifts modern technology bestows on us. The Tunnel View parking lot is packed, but it's hard to complain when we're part of the problem.

Our next stop is El Cap meadow, where climbers and tourists gather to gawk at the monstrous 3,000' granite dome dominating the park. Sam, like Hannah and I, has seen all the documentaries, read all the books, and is conversant in the decades of climbing history that have unfolded here. The more one knows, the more one sees. I'm learning, slowly, and point out iconic features like the boot flake and great roof.

From the meadow it's only a short walk to the base of El Cap. We crane our necks and give ourselves over to vertigo, looking upward at the frozen ocean of granite. Two haul bags sit at the base of the Nose, arguably the most famous rock climb in the world. We hear two climbers somewhere up on the first pitch, calling out to each other. I'm surprised they're starting up this late in the evening. I catch the word "shitshow."

We turn right and follow a steep ascending trail along the wall's base. We're beneath the Dawn Wall now, although I regrettably don't know where the route actually starts. At one point, we scramble up onto a gentle slope of granite, where it seems that El Capitan has begun melting into the valley floor and then hardened again. We sit for a while enjoying the view, imagining what it would feel like to be up there, lost in the granite sea. I can at least say I've climbed "on" El Capitan, even if climbing it remains a distant dream.

Our van is crowded enough with Hannah and me. With Sam, it's simply hilarious.

We find a satisfactory parking spot on a dirt road just outside Yosemite National Park, but nobody wants to go outside because of the mosquitos. We play musical chairs while cooking dinner: chicken stir fry tonight, which requires two pots and a frying pan. It's a lot for our little 1-burner stove and limited counter space.

We talk as we cook at and eat dinner, reliving the day's adventures. Sam is as mesmerized by Yosemite Valley as I hoped he would be. It feels good to share this with him, as if Yosemite Valley was ever a possession of mine that I have to give.

Day 7: Routines and Departures

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

After our rest day —the day of plumbing and then a quiet riverside afternoon—we are ready to get back into action.

For an adventure trip on the open road, it's amusing how quickly we have adopted routines. We love our coffee shop mornings and our afternoons climbing at School Rock. Today we see no need to deviate from that routine.

Travel always reminds me of the value of routines. The word routine has a negative edge, connoting dreary repetition or boredom. But at their best, routines are essential to helping us live the lives we want. The word derives from "a way, a road, space for passage" and suggests a "customary path for animals", perhaps to drink water. Good routines are efficient, repeatable processes for reliably doing the tasks we consider important. As I've gotten older, I've appreciated the ability to create home routines that sustain my passions. On a good day, I wake up around five, brew a cup of coffee, and write until it's time to wake up my children or prepare for work. That routine helps me complete one of my most meaningful and important tasks before most of the world rises. My afternoon and evening routines include exercise, time with my kids, and time with Hannah. I've repeatedly read that the lives of highly successful people often look quite boring, because their entire lives are structured around routines that support their calling. Stephen Wolfram comes to mind, who has taken this to an extreme; it looks over-the-top, and yet one senses he has designed exactly the life he wants.

A trip like this upends routines. We wake up in different places each day, and at different times. Our sleep quality varies with our campsite and itinerary. It's after seven by the time we make it to the coffee shop, and my journaling has taken me out of the flow of writing my book. We eat intermittently throughout the day at odd times. Every day holds a different schedule. The rewards of this lifestyle include novel experiences, adventure, and delight at the unexpected. Yet our vagabond existence also comes with tradeoffs: tremendous time given to daily chores, a growing sense of fatigue, a severe decline in productivity. I partly came here to write, but I'm writing less than I did at home.

So we naturally develop new routines, structuring our vanlife days to swiftly deal with chores and maximize the things we care about: reading, writing, talking, climbing, resting in nature.

Those routines are about to be disrupted, however: today is our last day in Donner Pass. This evening we will drive to Fresno, where we will stay the night at a Love's truck stop to facilitate picking up my friend Sam from the airport in the morning. Then it's off to Yosemite Valley.

Before leaving, we make one last trip to School Rock. On our previous two trips, we climbed Kindergarten Slab. Today we take on a new two-pitch climb, Kindergarten Crack, which begins by following a crack up a dihedral. Unlike the previous climb, this pitch is vertical. It isn't hard climbing, but climbing anything vertical on trad gear is still a mind game for me. But it's important to do something new, to keep pushing my limits outward, to ensure that our routines don't lead to complacency. Within the daily framework we have established here, I want to keep growing.

The climb is uneventful. I feel good; I'm learning. What spooked me a few days ago now feels at least somewhat routine. Halfway up the climb, we belay next to another pair of climbers. I love chatting with strangers at our little improvised outpost 75 feet up a rock face, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Hannah and I both dream about trying "big wall" climbing someday and spending a night in a porta-ledge, a kind of hanging tent for multi-day climbs. This brief belay stop is enough for today.

After our climb, we start our long descent down Highway 80 toward Sacramento and then Fresno. The pristine alpine environment transforms with each passing mile. The temperature rises. The pure blue sky becomes hazy with dust. This isn't the California of postcards; it's the inhospitable white space on the map between San Francisco Bay and the Sierras.

Still, it's California. I introduce Hannah to In'N'Out Burger. Afterwards, we stop by Winston Smith Books in Auburn, a lovely independent bookstore. Continuing on my nature kick, I pick up a first edition hardcover of Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. Hannah finds a copy of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, inspired by a discussion of the book in Kim Stanley Robinson's High Sierra: A Love Story. Kerouac wrote the book after spending time in the Sierra Nevada and Cascades with the outdoorsman and poet Gary Snyder.

As we leave the mountains behind, we talk about the accessibility of wilderness. We're both enchanted with Truckee, but the population enjoying this area is almost all white and affluent, with high representation from Silicon Valley. I spot three Tesla cybertrucks, a vehicle I've never seen in person before, amidst the Jeeps and luxury SUVs and other Teslas. I wonder about the barriers preventing other demographics from enjoying such a beautiful place. Basic supply and demand play a huge role. Wilderness as beautiful as Donner Pass is scarce, and what's scarce inevitably becomes expensive. The median property value in Truckee was $675,000 in 2020, then nearly doubled after the pandemic. I can't get upset at the demand, because I'm a part of it; I'm a reasonably affluent tech-minded professional who dreams of living in a place like Truckee. Perhaps the problem is on the supply side. Perhaps we have a crisis of wilderness scarcity, just as we do of housing scarcity.

The economics of California's wild places are very different from Alabama, which lacks the concentrated grandeur of California's mountains but has abundant forest, hundreds of small lakes, and a much smaller population vying for a place outside. I have learned to love this about Alabama: the multitude of campsites, the ease of making last-minute travel plans, the accessibility of the outdoors to all demographics. If the state's wilderness lacks majesty, it at least offers everyone a place.

We pull into Love's Truck Stop just after sunset. It has been a long time since I've seen such a big sky. It has its own kind of beauty, with the bold lights of the travel stop glowing hazily through the dust of the flat, empty landscape beyond. We're at the opposite end of the socioeconomic hierarchy now. In the parking spot beside us, a leather-faced man sleeps in the driver's seat of a battered blue pick-up truck. What I assume are his worldly possessions are wrapped in trash bags in the truck bed, presumably to protect them from rain. An emaciated trucker with a cigarette dangling from her mouth sets her pet possum loose in the dog park; when it escapes into the parking lot, perhaps drawn onward by some primal instinct to fulfill its destiny as roadkill, she leaps the fence and drags it by the tail back to the dog park, where she stuffs it into a zippered handbag.

There is something beautiful about all this too, this crossroads where the lives of so many human beings briefly intersect. This is my first time overnighting at a travel stop. It has its own subculture, and I take the time to slow down, look, and try to appreciate everything happening around me: the 24/7 bustle, the hundreds of families pouring through on their roadtrips, the rows and rows of semi trucks that serve as the arteries and veins of modern civilization. It's a modern-day caravanserai, an American silk road.

Reflections on Beth Rodden's "A Light Through the Cracks"

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

One of my inspirations is rock climber Tommy Caldwell. I briefly recount his story, and its influence on me, in my book Eating Glass.

Caldwell's story is one of growing through severe hardship, discovering new inner strength, and leveraging that strength to tackle a seemingly impossible challenge: free climbing the Dawn Wall of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. Caldwell's ordeal began in 2000 while climbing in Kyrgyzstan. Armed terrorists kidnapped him, two friends, and his sort-of-girlfriend, professional climber Beth Rodden. For six days they endured severe privation and forced marching. They didn't know if they would live or die. At one point, the terrorists marched another prisoner out of sight and executed him. Their ordeal only ended when Caldwell shoved a captor off a cliff, enabling them to escape to a friendly military camp and back to U.S. protection.

The next year, Caldwell accidentally sawed off his left index finger with a table saw—an injury that would have ended the careers of most climbers. Caldwell came back with a vengeance, climbing harder than ever and knocking out one history-making climb after another. Then, in 2010, he divorced. In his memoir The Push, Caldwell writes candidly about Beth's unhappiness, her emotional distancing, an affair, and an agonized back-and-forth season about whether the marriage could be saved. In the end, it couldn't. Instead of succumbing to his anguish, Tommy directed his pain into a new project: climbing the Dawn Wall.

The documentary chronicling Caldwell's life and ascent, The Dawn Wall, is one of my favorite movies. It came at a time when I needed it. I was dealing with challenges in my own life, and I found Caldwell's relentless striving deeply appealing. I had given up climbing eighteen years earlier, after a near-miss that could have killed me. The film made me wonder how much I was letting fear rule me, both in climbing and life. What if I, like Tommy, possessed strength I could scarcely imagine? What might I be capable of?

In the past years since watching The Dawn Wall, climbing has become an important part of my life again, a source of community, and an arena for developing strength. I've faced and overcome fears and advanced further than I ever thought I could. I have Tommy to thank for that.

Given the personal importance Tommy's story holds for me, I immediately took note when Beth Rodden released her own memoir, A Light Through the Cracks. Rodden is a titan of climbing in her own right, with a long list of historical achievements, which alone would make the book worth reading. But she was also Tommy Caldwell's wife and lived through many of the same hardships.

The best literature, in my view, does not take sides; it portrays three-dimensional characters, human, well-meaning, imperfect, finding their way through the world. That brings them into inevitable conflict and tragedy but also brings opportunities for goodness and redemption. That was the mindset with which I approached Rodden's book. Much of the climbing world treated her harshly after the divorce, but I was eager to understand her story.

A Facebook post from Rodden set the tone for how I received this book. She posted several photographs, including an endearing scanned photo of herself and Tommy, barely more than teenagers. She acknowledges there was a time she never wanted to remember these moments again. But now, she wrote, she sees "two kids, doing their best, young and eager, learning how to adult together." The compassionate tone hinted at a deeper story beneath the divorce, and the possibility of at least partial healing.

I needed to believe in that moment. Over the past two years, my own 19-year marriage had unexpectedly ended. There was so much I didn't understand. Beth's book and story, I hoped, would somehow speak to mine.

The Light Through the Cracks is a very good book. Rodden is raw, brutal, and honest. It is surreal, re-living Tommy Caldwell's well-told captivity story with her incredible gift for detail. Rodden's version is visceral, nightmarish, and intensely physical. The horror of her captor squeezing up against them for warmth at night, and his public masturbation throughout their forced march; the lack of a discernible "thud" after their captors execute another prisoner behind a nearby boulder; the embarrassment of menstruating during their rescue, the congealed mess when finally peeling off her filthy clothes.

It didn't take me long to realize that this is not a book about climbing at all, not at the heart. It's a book about Rodden's deep trauma, her reckoning with her deepest wounds, and her journey to healing and the reinvention of her life.

Rodden brings the same unflinching honesty to every dimension of her life. She does not shy away from the dark places but turns them over carefully, exposing them to the light. She writes about her struggles to feel attracted to Tommy, their lack of sexual chemistry, and her sense of being overshadowed by him (and by men in general) in the climbing world. Even so, she is unfailingly courteous to Tommy; one senses he has done nothing wrong, apart from being cheerfully unable to comprehend the depth of her struggle. She writes honestly about her affair, her guilt, and her feeling of being trapped between the "good girl" impulses that have always served her so well and her desperate yearning for a new kind of life.

The theme of embodiment emerges from every page of the book. Few us are comfortable in our bodies, especially women. Female athletes have long faced pressure to appear sexy. Climbers face additional challenges, and have a long and unfortunate history with eating disorders. The arch-nemesis of climbers is gravity, and a desire for incremental performance gains can drive toxic weight-loss behaviors. Rodden explores all of this: the way she carries her traumas, her ruthless disciplining of her body, its subsequent breakdowns, the way her sense of self-worth becomes entangled with body image and performance.

By the end of the book, Rodden escapes this destructive spiral. Pregnancy and childbirth, more than anything else, give her a new appreciation for the goodness of her body and help her to reimagine her relationship with both her body and climbing. A short, free Reel Rock documentary, This is Beth Rodden, provides a wonderful overture of the book's themes on this point. She also finds constructive challenge and healing in her new relationship.

I'm glad Rodden waited as long as she did to write this book, because it gave her time to complete a dramatic life transformation. This is a woman who has grown through her midlife journey into someone tougher, wiser, and just as fearless. She has learned to relax her definition of achievement, pursue healing from her traumas, value friendships in a new way, and enjoy the simple pleasures of ordinary life outside of climbing.

The book also satisfied my hope for at least some insight into her post-divorce relationship with Tommy and his wife Becca. One senses they have put hard work into maintaining a positive relationship. Beth's description of her friendship with Becca is particularly heart-warming. None of this could have been easy for anyone—I'm sure it still isn't—but I found these passages hopeful as I navigate my own post-divorce life.

Writing such a raw memoir is not easy, and releasing it into the wild is even harder. I know, because I wrote a raw memoir of my own. Eating Glass is about navigating feelings of personal failure, and along the way it becomes a much larger meditation on living a meaningful life. To this day, I fret over its rawness, the risk of oversharing, the critical ways it might be received. Occasional e-mails from readers assure me that the book speaks powerfully to those who need it.

Tommy Caldwell expressed uncertainty about writing his own memoir, The Push, in a 2023 podcast with Finding Mastery (31:00). He acknowledged that writing the memoir helped him understand himself and his experiences better, but he "was uncertain whether he was any better off for it." It made him "darker" and "a little bit more angstful." He was glad he wrote the book but also wondered if there is a "little bit of wisdom in blind optimism." A listener senses that he will always look back on the book with mixed feelings.

I suspect Beth Rodden has similar anxieties about her book, so I just want to say loud and clear: its unflinching honesty is the source of its power. The highest praise I can give is that I told my 14 year-old daughter, a fiercely driven athlete, that I want her to read it.

I have to wonder what Tommy thinks about this. It's one thing for Beth to lay it all out there; it's another thing for him to see private details of his life in print. I'll circle back to what I said about good literature, about the complexities of well-meaning people doing their best in life. If anything, the book heightened my respect for him. It's possible to hold the humanity of both individuals, appreciate their honest humanity, and recognize that they walked very different life journeys in processing their captivity in Kyrgyzstan and everything thereafter.

As I conclude, it strikes me that I've written very little about Rodden's rich descriptions of her formidable climbing career. Maybe that's because the book fulfilled its purpose. Rodden's career is impressive, but she puts it in the much larger context of a life.

Day 6: The Earned Life, or, There Will Always Be Plumbing

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I have been in remote areas without Internet or cell service for the past two days. Rather than try to catch up, I'll continue to post a day at a time, lagging my actual travels.

My trip entails a delicate balance of being and doing, and we've been doing quite a lot over the last three days. We decide to take a rest day.

We spend the morning in the usual coffee shop. We enjoy this morning ritual. Hannah likes slow starts, and this is my time to write. I'm supposed to be relaxing, but I'm churning out words at a crazy rate. I'm normally a ruthless editor of my own work. I whittle successive drafts down to sparse, pure essence of my original idea. My final drafts are usually half the length of the first. Now I'm barely editing at all—an experiment in letting go. Hannah tells me she prefers this style. It's freer, looser, more approachable.

Afterwards, we seek out a deli where I have faint memories of eating the best sandwich of my life. I find a familiar photo on Yelp: the Full Belly Deli. We drive there and order sandwiches (the sandwich is the Dirka Dirka on jalapeno cheddar bread, and yes, it's still good). Our plan is to find a quiet lakeside, eat our lunch, and spend the afternoon reading and talking.

As we head out to the van, I freeze. Something is wrong. Liquid is dripping out the bottom.

Plumbing problems are one of my triggers. The original wound came one night in Jordan, when on a whim I decided to fix a dripping cap in my radiating heater. I rotated it a quarter turn, righty-tighty. The slow drip turned into a rapid drip. Oh no! Was it threaded backwards? Was this a Jordanian thing? I turned the valve a quarter turn back to the left. The drip turned into a steady stream. Then the whole thing came apart in my hands, and water gushed across the marble floor of my fifth-floor apartment. It was late at night, in a foreign country. I had no idea how to find a plumber.

My wife and I raced to find every pot in the apartment. We rotated pots under the gushing water, while I made frantic phone calls in babbling, broken Arabic to our building manager.

A plumber eventually arrived. He worked quickly and deftly. In minutes, he'd fixed everything. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants.

"I spent several years working with the Americans in Iraq," he seethed. "You Americans think you can fix everything."

According to the Enneagram, my greatest fear is being "being useless, helpless, or incapable." Nothing does this more than plumbing.

On another occasion, I cracked a toilet tank while making an easy ten-minute replacement of toilet hardware. We had to replace the entire toilet.

Recently, compounding problems under my kitchen sink threw me into an abyss of rumination. I knew I should be able to fix this myself, but all I could think of was that day in Jordan, turning the cap the correct direction and watching a slow drip explode into a midnight crisis. It upended the orderly rules of the world, reversed logic. I was in a maze-like world where cause no longer matched effect. If I couldn't trust myself tighten a cap, how could I fix anything?

I called a plumber. He charged $250 to tell me that he could fix it next week for $1200. Even I have my limits. I threw the plumber out (nicely) and started watching YouTube. A week-long saga ensued, with multiple Home Depot runs to buy armfuls of fittings I didn't quite understand, and later putty, trying to make mismatched parts fit without dripping. Turning my curbside water off and on—what I thought was a sensible precaution—caused hammering that blew an underground valve and turned my front yard into a marsh.

And now this: my van, my escape pod, my portal into mountain life.

Plumbing has followed me here.

A frenzy of troubleshooting ensues. I call my dad. I'm 44 years old, but dad still knows everything. I send him photos and videos. A cap is leaking under the the vehicle, below the shower. Back in the van, I find half an inch of water pooled in the bathroom. That's frightening, indicative of a more serious problem. Where is the water coming from? We run some experiments and conclude the toilet is leaking, although we're not sure if it's the fresh water supply or the outflow.

My calm, cool persona cracks. I fall into the pit of self-loathing. I didn't come out here for plumbing. I hate vans. I hate travel. I want to be in a tent—a fantasy of escape, nested like a stacking doll within the escape fantasy I'm already living.

My dad thinks I can fix this. I'd rather pay someone than spend an afternoon dealing with this, but the nearest RV servicer I can find is 30 miles away. This is supposed to be our day.

"Let's take a break," Hannah says.

We make a stressful drive north on Highway 89, deep into Tahoe National Forest, away from RV service shops and from cell reception. We spend twenty minutes trying to find a quiet lakeside spot along Prosser Reservoir, but can't public access. We return to the highway and keep driving, but no spot looks appealing. My phone indicates that we'll cross the Little Truckee River in seven miles. I'm not comfortable driving that far into the forest with a malfunctioning van, but we do it anyway. My last bar of cell phone service vanishes.

We finally cross the river, and the spot is indeed heavenly: a convenient gravel turnoff, with secluded copses of trees along the banks of a shallow, babbling river. We set up camp chairs in the shade and eat our sandwiches. I listen to the silence. Gradually, the dark emotions drain away.

We run a few more experiments. The leak seems minor, it isn't continuous, and it only manifests when the van is parked at certain angles. We can probably live with it. We'll stay here for the night, broken plumbing and all.

A delightful afternoon ensues. Time slows down. I plow through another pages of Macfarlane. Hannah alternates between Love & Will and climber Beth Rodden's new memoir, about which I will write soon. We have leisurely conversations. The goodness of the day washes over me.

A phrase keeps surfacing in my mind: the earned life. It's the title of a book by Marshall Goldsmith.

The earned life. I want life to be easy. I'm continually searching for ways to simplify, to eliminate complexities, to carve out time and space to live in a state of permanent fulfillment. It will never be that easy. Life never ceases presenting challenges, twists, and turns. There will always be plumbing.

A well-lived life has to be continually earned, over and over again, moment by moment.

As the sun goes down and Hannah and I button up the van for the night, I feel content. We have earned this afternoon together.

Day 5: Sketched Out

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

My wilderness journey thus far has been a tale of escalating adventure: arrival, settling in, hiking, rock climbing. The words have come easy. Today is different. It is a day of labored progress, creeping self-doubt, and persistence.

Our itinerary repeats the day before. We wake up beside the same concealed meadow, break camp, and head into town for several hours of writing at the Dark Horse Coffee Roastery. Then we head back to Donner Summit to repeat yesterday's climb. By doing the same climb twice, we can focus on skill-building and efficiency. We aim for smoother climbing, faster belay transitions, and completing the climb in two pitches instead of four. If we're fast enough, we'll have time to knock out a second route.

I feel good, driving up to the summit. Yesterday's anxiety has melted away; having done the climb once, I feel good about repeating it. As we gear up at our van, we are already incorporating lessons learned: leaving excess gear behind, bringing walkie talkies in case the wind is howling, using a better technique to coil and carry our rope.

It is another gorgeous day. I still can't believe I'm here, in this gap between lives old and new. Hannah and I still feel exhilaration from yesterday's successful climb. It's a good day to get on the rock again, for continual improvement, for pursuing mastery, even if it's just on a baby route.

My biggest challenge when I lead trad is running out of gear. As I climb, I place protective devices like cams or nuts in cracks, then clip the rope though them with slings and carabiners. If I fall five feet above a piece, I'll theoretically only fall about ten feet—five to the piece, and then five past it before the rope goes taut. If the top piece pops, it means a terrifying fall to the next piece down. This incentivizes a new trad leader to "sew up" routes by placing gear often. If I place cams every two feet, falls will always be small. The pieces also back each other up.

Unfortunately, gear is finite. I carry two full sets of cams plus an assortment of nuts, which is a lot. Still, I run low on gear on every trad route I climb. A climber needs to end each pitch with at least three good pieces, to build a triple-redundant anchor for belaying the other climber up to join them. Those pieces need to be the right sizes to fit the cracks at the intended belay spot. This is one reason I'm so anxious about the unknown; I don't know what size of cracks await. It would be highly inconvenient to arrive at the belay without the necessary gear.

This is why Hannah and I needed four pitches yesterday to complete a two-pitch route. We wanted to stay within sight and earshot of each other, but I also wanted to create belay anchors while I still had adequate gear clipped to my harness.

To improve as a trad climber, I need to place protection less often. This means longer runouts and the potential for longer falls. Doing this safely requires developing an exquisite ability to evaluate risk. This route is less than vertical, which means there are long stretches where a fall is highly unlikely or would just mean a short tumble. The safe and efficient thing to do, counterintuitively, is to cruise through without placing protection.

The first pitch starts strong. I move efficiently, placing gear where needed, forcing myself to avoid placements when unneeded. I feel healthy and strong. Movement over rock always feels good, a comprehensive exercise of body and mind, like yoga. I pass the ledge where we belayed yesterday. Good. I'm doing better.

Something changes after that: brain fog, unease, difficulty. I struggle to find the right way to protect my next move. I remove one cam after another from my belt loops, hunt for a good placement, and then trade it for another size. My headspace is suddenly different from yesterday: I feel less confident, more fearful. I eventually find a good placement, but my nerves remain abuzz.

It's hard to pin down why I feel "sketched out" at some times and not others. Yesterday was the scarier climb: my first multi-pitch trad lead, my first time on this route and in this location. I felt sick with anxiety beforehand, but once I started, I felt great the whole way. Today everything is familiar, so why the nerves? I suspect it's because I'm pushing myself harder, expecting more of myself. This is yet another case where climbing mirrors life.

Later, sitting down to write, I feel the same sense of being "off"—a headspace not quite right, a simmering anxiety. The writing has flowed naturally thus far. Despite my nerves, I've felt good about sharing these posts. I'm ignoring the howling demons, writing what I want, with no expectation of an audience.

Not today. Something has changed. The thought of writing feels wearisome. I'm feeling something I hoped to avoid on this trip: pressure. The writing takes time, but at least it's time I enjoy. Sharing online entails less enjoyable tasks: copying into Wordpress, reformatting, adding hyperlinks, sifting through photos, posting, sending an email version to my mailing list, sharing links on Facebook and Instagram. Every time I share, I'm reminded why I hate social media. And yet the only way I'll ever break through my current barriers as a writer is to share, to dispatch messages in bottles. Social media is the devil's bargain every creative has to reckon with. It's a bit like placing gear, I suppose, doing it just enough to stay alive but not so much that I find myself bogging down.

The sense of pressure springs directly from the strength of my commitment to writing. Just like this climb, I suppose. I'm sketched not because of inexperience, but because I'm consciously trying to become better.

Climbing while sketched is a necessary part of the sport. Just like writing while sketched, or running a business, or committing to a relationship.

At day's end, after we return to our van and enjoy a dinner of ravioli and meat sauce with a bottle of Cabernet, we watch the wonderful documentary Fourteen Peaks, about Nepali climber Nirmal Purja's record-shattering effort to climb all 14 peaks taller than 8000 meters in just seven months. Nirmal is a larger-than-life character, charismatic, bold, passionate. He repeatedly emphasizes the need for courageous leadership in precisely those moments when our nerves are fraying.

I don't dare compare myself to a veteran mountaineer like Nirmal Purja. But I can at least take his lessons, apply them in my own small way.

I set up my first belay station thirty feet higher than yesterday, which is something, at least. I could probably go higher, but there isn't much gear left on my harness. I build an anchor and prepare to belay Hannah up. We miscommunicate, and she nearly starts climbing before she's on belay—a dangerous goof. We both catch her mistake immediately, but it's enough to rattle her nerves.

She climbs on. We're orderly and efficient at the belay station, but neither of us feels the joy we did yesterday. We're too focused on process and technicalities to savor the views. Again, the price of improving.

The second pitch goes much better. My nerves settle down. I'm feeling confident again. My placements feel solid and safe. I use less gear than yesterday. I very nearly make it to the top, but once again, I run low on gear. I sigh and build an anchor, which means we'll need to make a third pitch. Not ideal, but better than yesterday.

When Hannah arrives at the belay station, we're both in good spirits again. We take our time there, enjoying the views. This whole trip is, in our shared vocabulary, a dance between being and _becoming—_of enjoying the present moment without expectations, and striving to grow. Today's climb embodies that tension.

Day 4: Expanding Boundaries

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Location: School Rock, Donner Summit

I feel sick with dread as we chug up the winding mountain road west of Truckee. I am about to do something hard, something I've never done before, something that fills me with fear.

The fear feels incongruous with everything else in my life. It is a gorgeous day, the best kind of California day, with brilliant sunshine and fresh mountain air and temps hovering in the 70s. There isn't a cloud in the sky. Before our trip I was worried about California's notorious wildfires and the consequent smoke, but I can see to the horizon in every direction: Donner Lake gleaming blue far beneath us, great cracked walls of granite rising out of the evergreen trees all around.

It feels good to be in an adventurer's paradise. During our morning in the Dark Horse coffee shop, where I did my day's writing, we watched them file through one after another: puffy down jackets, hiking boots, unkempt hair. They drank their coffee and scrutinized guidebooks before embarking on their adventures of choice.

On our long, winding drive towards the summit we pass hard-working cyclists. We wave. Climbers work their way up cracks. Everyone is happy, wind-blown, bathed in sunlight and mountain air. The vehicle turnarounds are full of Jeeps, trucks, and vans with off-road tires, adorned with solar cells and jerry cans. It's Mad Max in photographic negative, a mechanized utopia.

But my sense of foreboding grows as we approach the summit. I'm about to lead my first multi-pitch trad climb, a major milestone in my climbing journey.

The only way to get better at hard things is to do hard things. It's a truth I hate to admit. If we want to expand our limits, we have to continually step over the line of everything we've done before. I think of Sam Gamgee's famous words to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring: "If I take one more step, it will be the farthest away from home I've ever been." Expanding our limits always means a step into the unknown, where anything might happen.

This day has been a long time coming. I've had the raw climbing ability to do multi-pitches for years. In theory, I also have the skills. Two years ago I took a multi-pitch climbing class in North Carolina, which taught me everything I needed to get started. A year later, I hired a guide to take me up two routes on Looking Glass Rock. The next step was to "tie into the sharp end", as climbers say, and lead a climb of my own.

The problem is that I live in central Alabama. The nearest climbing gym is 90 minutes away, the nearest crag twice that. The hills of northern Alabama hold some wonderful climbing, but the walls are all single-pitch, meaning no taller than a single rope length. To find multi-pitch climbs, I must travel even further, to North Carolina. The climbing there is different and unfamiliar; my skills aren't quite matched. I live too far away to practice. The end result is a plateau of my climbing skills as flat and featureless as Alabama itself.

One of my goals for this trip is to break through that barrier. We chose Donner Pass as our first destination for a specific reason: the aptly-named School Rock. I couldn't ask for a better first multi-pitch. The impressive-looking slab contains a row of relatively easy two-pitch routes. It's only two minutes from the highway, and after each climb, climbers can simply walk off the back and down a gully. Even better, perched as it is near Donner Summit, the views are extraordinary. For a beginner route, it feels like an epic mountain adventure.

My fear seems silly. This is as easy as it gets. The bold, frightening route I've picked out for myself is called Kindergarten Slab. My guidebook rates it as 5.3; if that's right, then it's theoretically the easiest vertical route I've ever climbed. Further to the right is Kindergarten Crack, and a little ways after that is Junior High. Meaning: I'm at the bottom of the bottom of the multi-pitch learning curve. At least we're skipping Nursery School Slab, which is full of kids on top rope.

Despite the low grade, climbing is climbing, and a mistake can kill you. Fears circle like bats. Climbers talk about differentiating between rational fears and irrational fears, but it's often hard to know in the beginning which are which. I fret over all the things that can go wrong. This is a "trad" route, which means there are no bolts in the rock to clip the rope into as I climb. Instead, I'll be placing cams and nuts in cracks. Falling on a bad placement could pop a piece, extending a fall. If I use up my pieces too early, I'll find it hard to protect the upper reaches of a pitch. I also have Hannah to think about, a much less experienced climber. My life is in her hands, and hers in mine.

If something goes wrong partway up, getting down again won't be trivial; there are no rappel stations to facilitate a rapid descent. Once I leave the ground, the safest and easiest way to get off the rock is to reach the top.

All of this raises the question: why climb? Meditating on this question is part of my ritual encounter with fear. First comes the anxiety, then the reflection, then the thought that perhaps it's time that I quit. Maybe climbing has already given me everything I need. But each time this happens I eventually overcome my fears and start the climb, and rediscover the sport's rewards all over again.

Many of us are familiar with the concept of flow, of being so immersed in something that we lose our sense of time and our awareness of the world around us. Unfortunately, the concept has often been reduced to a productivity hack, a tool for getting more done. It is indeed critical for productivity, and I have largely tried to structure my working life around the achievement of flow states. But when I read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's marvelous book Flow, which introduced the concept, I was surprised to discover that he wasn't writing about productivity at all; he was writing about happiness.

"It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly," Csikszentmihalyi writes. Flow is a state of immersion and participation in life itself. Challenge and expansion are essential to these moments of optimal experience. “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

Climbing, at its best, is a pure expression of optimal experience—the crystallized essence of the conditions that create flow. And the continual process of encountering and transcending limits brings a feeling of vitality that carries over into other domains of my life.

There is a yin-yang quality to the two major aspects of this trip: climbing and writing. My fears as I drive up to School Rock mirror my fears about my writing. Writing daily reflections, and sharing them online, awakens the same primal sense of danger. I don't know why. But doing hard things requires doing hard things. Writing requires writing. Climbing requires climbing.

When we arrive at the turnoff near Donner Summit, other climbers are gearing up nearby. I verify we are in the right place. Then I pull out my guidebook. The guidebook's pictures are good, and I immediately identify the wall. That alone is enough to dissipate some of my fear. Knowledge is power. It is the uncertainty I fear above all else.

We hike to the base. The climb feels intimidating but it also looks very doable. Alongside my anxiety rises a new feeling: confidence. This climb is asking me trust that confidence: my years of climbing, the skills I've acquired and that Hannah and I practiced relentlessly in the weeks prior to this trip. It's the same thing that my three-week writing project is asking of me: to trust myself.

We gear up and double-check each other. Then I start the climb.

The climbing isn't hard. I could do this whole route in ten minutes on top-rope. But leading is a different animal, especially trad leading. I feel compelled to protect every move where a slip would be consequential. I climb slowly, placing abundant gear.

Pushing our limits can be messy. Most of my forays into the unknown are highly embarrassing, at least at first. It's a necessary stage in building competence. One model depicts four stages of competence: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and then unconscious competence. I'm somewhere between stage 2 and 3, sewing up the route with too much gear, knowing that developing competence will take practice and time.

I build a belay anchor earlier than planned, then belay Hannah up to me. When she arrives, we are both beaming. Something miraculous has happened during that first pitch: my fears have mostly dissipated. I feel vibrant and alive. I'm realizing that an imperfect performance is still good enough, that we can still climb safely, that I have the skills and flexibility to adapt. We feel intoxicated by the sunshine, the wind, the exposure. We're really doing this!

Our hours practicing in the garage and at Sand Rock pay off at the belay station. We are slow but safe, meticulous, and orderly. When we're ready, I start up the next pitch, and we do it all again.

It feels exhilarating, topping out. Our performance was laughable. It took us almost four hours to complete the easiest climb on this face and it somehow took us four pitches to compete a two-pitch route—an extra safety precaution so we could always see and hear each other, given our novice skills. But we did it.

At the top I make a list of lessons learned, things we need to do better, skills we need to practice. It's a lifelong habit, rooted in my training as an Air Force pilot: the flight isn't over until the debrief is complete. It's how we get better.

We hike down the gully back to our van, clean up, and sit in camp chairs overlooking Donner Lake below. We have taken one more step. Our world is larger.

Day 3: Why Do We Travel?

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Location: Dispersed Camping on Highway 89, Donner Peak

Travel forces a reckoning with the question: what is it that we're seeking?

If the great 20th century psychologists taught us one thing, it's that unconscious impulses guide so much of our lives. We follow yearnings and impulses that we ourselves scarcely understand. A person can spend a lifetime sifting through the accreted geological layers of their own life, unearthing reasons and explanations, all of which are only hypotheses. We never find bedrock, just mystery and wonder the whole way down, into the substrate of which Annie Dillard so poetically writes.

I feel those impulses quite strongly, because I've committed so much time and effort to listening to them. I continually try to dial down the noise, to shut out distractions, to let that faint pulse be heard. It's like searching for starlight in a sky irradiated with the light waste of industrial society. The faint glittering swath of the Milky Way does not yield itself to casual glances skyward; one must intentionally seek those rare spaces left in the world where ancient ways of seeing are still possible. One must shun every other light.

We live in a society that has invented and commercialized innumerable ways to protect us from the dangers and uncertainties of our own deepest stirrings. To listen, we must dismantle, create space. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." That is true of all crafts, not least writing, and it's true of life. As we subtract the non-essential, we see and hear more. As our own inner callings become audible, they pose hard and vital questions about their origins, their meaning, and what they ask us of us.

It is those impulses that brought me here, away from my usual life, away from a cycle of striving and achievement. It was a near thing. Three weeks in the mountains was not my original plan. I'd applied for and been accepted into a Complex Systems Summer School at the Santa Fe Institute, the beating heart of complexity science, a kind of shining tower for my academic ambitions that I felt unable to achieve in traditional academia. It was a stepping stone towards a book I want to write, a magnum opus distilling two decades of studying war—another call from the soul. But something felt off in a way I couldn't explain. Something deeper called. A time of letting go, of relaxing ambitions, of disappearing into a wilderness where anything or nothing might happen.

Why do we yearn to travel? I ponder the question throughout my first full day in California.

It is everything I hoped. We awake in the forest, brew coffee, then drive down to the Boca Reservoir, where we set up camp chairs. I write for hours, at first freezing in my down jacket and then roasting when the sun breaks over the hills. Mountain life always entails a forceful surging between extremes. I alternate writing with reading, Hannah beside me. We periodically break the silence to share an author's brilliant insight or gorgeous line of prose. Some conversations fall away; others take on a life of their own. We follow the thread back into eventual silence and a return to our books. We feel we've had a full, rewarding, and timeful day, and it's not yet 1:00pm.

Enjoying a moment atop Donner Peak

In the afternoon, we drive up Donner Pass Road to the summit. Along the way we pass climbers, clinging to cracks in towering granite walls like brightly colored insects. It's awesome and intimidating. We'll be back here soon, making our own forays into the vertical. Today it's a hike, beginning at the highway and progressing up steep winding switchbacks, across a short snowfield, and up through a stream of snowmelt to the summit of Donner Peak. The scenery is spectacular. It is, I hate to say, everything that Alabama is not.

The questions about why we travel surface as we descend back to Donner Lake and the town of Truckee. We need showers. This is no trivial matter. The van has small indoor and outdoor showers, suitable for quick sponge baths, but we're conserving our finite water supply. The nearest truck stop is thirty miles away. We call gyms, asking if we can pay to shower. No. We pay $10 to enter a state park, disregarding signs notifying us that showers are for campground guests only. My brief foray into outlaw life ends when we enter the bathhouse and discover that the showers require tokens.

We give up and search for a campsite. A pullout in Tahoe National Forest leads us to a dirt road and on to a secluded meadow. The meadow is huge, invisible from the freeway, ours for the taking. It's dreamlike, alive, the kind of meadow that would catch my breath in an open-world video game, speckled with bright flowers and aflutter with butterflies. We shower outside, unconcerned about being seen.

Anxiety creeps in as the sun sets. For all its beauty, the open meadow leaves me feeling exposed and vulnerable—some evolutionary instinct, I suppose, protecting me against predators that might be stalking me from the bushes. We have no cell service. Before bed we place a can of bear spray near our heads and ensure the van is ready to drive away.

I sleep well, despite my sense of vulnerability. Then, around 1:30am, we both awake to a loud thunk under the van. Five minutes later, it happens again. It is a heavy mechanical sound, like something striking the van's exterior. Such an isolated sound can't be a bear. A sneaking human? I jump when it happens again. Eventually, I take the dreaded step of yanking the sliding door open and stepping outside with a flashlight, fully expecting bear claws or human hands to reach out of the darkness. Hannah is in the driver's seat, ready. I sweep the flashlight beam through the dark trees. It's a scene from a horror movie, the suspenseful moment before all hell breaks loose. There is nothing. We're alone.

Back inside, I systematically work through the van's system. I'm a C-17 pilot again, running checklists, isolating systems. When I disconnect and reconnect the van's batteries, the sound stops. A gremlin in the electrical system, then. We sleep.

What is it that I'm seeking out here? What are any of us seeking?

It can't just be simplicity. Van life, like the tiny house movement or its other minimalist cousins, makes promises of ultimate simplicity. Living small and mobile is not simple. Even the simplest task is hard. Backpacking, tent camping, or hotel stays aren't any easier. Simplicity is a home, hot water, a kitchen, storage space.

I have a theory about this, after researching and daydreaming about simpler ways of living: the simplest way to live is the suburb. Humans are biologically programmed to conserve energy, and the suburb is the pinnacle of low-energy living. Cookie-cutter houses, straightforward appliances, small yards, easy access to schools and grocery stories and all the other essentials of living. Maybe it isn't simplicity that I'm really after.

Travel offers beauty and wonder, to be sure. The Sierra Nevada mountains offer it in spades, and there's no doubt that's one of my major motivators. The mountains bring me to life in a way that nothing else does. That is Alabama's one great deficiency for me. And yet beauty and wonder aren't enough to sustain a whole life.

Adventure is another draw. I'm partly here to climb, to test myself, to expand my limits. That is another one of those elusive unconscious drives, which raises deep questions worth unpacking another time.

Many of us want to learn about places, people, and cultures different from our own. I share this desire, and yet I've never felt like my travels live up to my hopes in this regard. The way to know a culture is not to pass through, but to plant oneself in its cultural soil. Two years in Jordan gave me the opportunity to begin learning a culture. My other travels feel superficial, a mere window tour. I feel guilty, admiring mountain vistas when I don't know the names of the trees, the geological processes that thrust these peaks up through the earth's crust, the history of the peoples who lived here. As for getting to know a culture, the native populations of a town like Truckee are almost invisible; Hannah and I live among the countless other travelers, the vagabonds, the tribeless.

I wonder if what I'm seeking is simply novelty itself. Difference for its own sake. There is a long evolutionary story to tell here, anchored in the complexity science of which I'm so fond. Complex systems—human minds, civilizations, life itself—need novelty the way humans need oxygen. Novelty is the raw grist for evolution, the source of all new features and ideas and behaviors, the material we sift through and parse and separate and recombine to move ourselves and our world forward. Without novelty, there is only stagnation, a dreary sameness. Stagnant systems are dead systems. Chaos and complexity scientists have long known that life thrives at the edge of chaos, where an influx of novelty keeps systems fresh and adaptive. Thriving systems balance familiar, effective patterns with continual change.

It's an abstract way to think about camping in the mountains, but then, I've always been an abstract thinker. That's my own personal way of developing familiarity with a subject that catches my interest: not merely observing the empirical details, but pondering the deeper structures, the mathematical scaffolding that lies beneath.

These abstract insights lead me right back to practical living. If novelty holds intrinsic importance, then it must do so for good and practical reasons. I can think of many. The novelty of travel allows me to experiment with being someone new. Novel experiences provide the raw material for my writing. Shared novel experiences allow Hannah I to grow our relationship, learn about each other, and build memories. Novelty seems to be important for revitalization. For me, rest does not entail passivity but rather active enjoyment of meaningful experiences.

But if complexity science teaches us the importance of novelty, it also teaches us the importance of stability. Systems thrive at that knife-edge. Many of us, myself included, daydream of travel as a permanent state of being. That's a siren call, I think; a life of permanent novelty would prove exhausting and eventually unfulfilling. If we are wired for travel, we are also wired for homecoming.

In my reading of Landmarks this morning, I came across this lovely passage in which Macfarlane offers a tribute to his friend Roger Deakin, a writer who lived in the same home for forty years while also traveling extensively and indulging his love of wilderness:

"... his writing [showed] people how to live both eccentrically and responsibly, and by both dwelling well and travelling wisely, he resolved in some measure the tension between what Edward Thomas called the desire to 'go on and on over the earth' and the desire 'to settle for ever in one place.'"

Day 2: Lifting Our Eyes Beyond Ourselves

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Location: Boca Reservoir, Tahoe National Forest

This morning I am reflecting on the relationship between mankind and the natural world. Specifically, I am thinking about my own relationship to nature.

The first book I've selected for my three-week mountain trip is Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks, a book about "the power of language to shape our sense of place." Macfarlane compiles rich glossaries of words describing the subtle details of particular landscapes. These are dying vocabularies, on the verge of extinction because human beings have lost their connection to the land.

Language defines how we think; it filters what we can even see. A seemingly barren desert or moor springs to life when we can speak the names of all the variated lifeforms inhabiting it, the subtle hades of color, the contours and features of its geography. Human beings have largely lost their sense of enchantment with the world—the feeling of mystery, the awareness of incomprehensible forces shaping the world around them—but Macfarlane writes that the right language can restore intimacy with nature and re-ignite enchantment.

I read Macfarlane while sitting outside my van, in the biting cold before the sun breaks over the hills to the east, watching the mist rise off the Boca Reservoir west of Reno. Macfarlane's writing always gives me much to think about, but this morning I'm thinking about his intense focus on the land itself. When he writes about nature, he writes about things outside himself. He almost recedes from view as an author, at least in this morning's chapter. He is not so much a character in the book as the invisible cameraman filming the cinematic masterpiece.

It's very different from how I write, and how I think about the world around me. Here I am, sitting in a gorgeous landscape I've dreamed about for months. I am watching sunlit ground slowly overtake shadow, while formations of birds soar silently past over the reservoir. I could spend hours walking the shoreline, enumerating the different species of life I find, even if I don't know their names. But I struggle to turn my attention outward. The locus of my attention is so often inward, on my place in this landscape.

Yesterday was the load-and-go day: a series of lessons from dad on operating the van's systems, grocery runs to Costco and Walmart, transferring our belongings from suitcases to cramped storage lockers in the van. After that we made the seven-hour drive from Boise to Reno.

It was a good drive, easy and uneventful, full of rich conversation. Hannah is reading Rollo May's Love & Will, which led to discussions about free will, determinism, and sources of hope for human beings who feel so little agency over their lives. May, writing in 1969, believed the invention of nuclear weapons broke something in mankind; humans lost all sense of control over their lives. I think May is wrong; I think humans have always felt this way.

At long last, just past Reno, we turned off I-80 in search of a campsite. On certain public lands campers can engage in "dispersed camping", which is an elegant way of saying they can camp wherever they want. That is our plan for the next three weeks. We have no reservations, just a self-sufficient vehicle with all the life support systems of a small spaceship.

That doesn't make it easy. I'm new at this. It's simple in theory, but there's a lot to learn.

Our arrival was exactly what I feared. I'd chosen Boca Reservoir based on a reddit thread about dispersed camping recommendations, but believe it or not, the Internet was wrong; the reservoir was serene and beautiful, but when we arrived we discovered that dispersed camping there was illegal. After a pause for dinner, we loaded up the van again and headed deeper into the forest, to a set of GPS coordinates I'd also unearthed on reddit.

This area looked more promising. Signs permitted dispersed camping. We saw tents through the trees. The paved road turned to dirt, but it was in good condition and we were clearly close. We continued up the road in search of a good spot. Things quickly got dicey, when the road narrowed and steepened. We found ourselves ascending a winding forested hill, with nowhere to turn off. The van had low clearance, and worse, had highly flammable Lithium batteries mounted behind the rear axle. The sun was getting low; it would be dark soon. I felt rising anxiety, wondering if we should reverse all the way down the hill before sunset or keep going in hope of a turnaround. My mind played vivid scenes of striking the batteries on a rock and burning my parents' new van to cinders.

In the end, we found a place to turn around and pulled into a patch of dirt in an otherwise unremarkable expanse of trees. By this point, I was mentally and emotionally drained. I don't like feeling incompetent. Hannah consoled me. We're fine, she said. We're here.

We buttoned up the van, shutting out the darkening forest, and went to sleep.

Our first night of van life is a parable, I suppose, for the complex ways we interact with nature. I yearn for close contact with pure nature but it's always mediated by human needs and the technologies of survival. Even our purest excursions into nature, such as backpacking, now rely on extraordinary technology: down jacket, boots, Gore-tex, water purifiers. We spend inordinate amounts of time meeting basic needs for water, food, and shelter. Even as we enjoy a landscape, we're thinking about the logistics of moving safely through that space. On this trip I'm also thinking about state and local camping regulations, axle clearance, and Internet availability for GPS guidance.

Even in the heart of nature, it's easy to lose sight of nature. We have ourselves to think about.

That becomes especially apparent when I write. When I write, there's no hiding. Writing makes my thoughts transparent. I'm partly on this trip to find my voice, and I'm little appalled at where my voice wants to go: inward, to myself, to what my encounters with these places unearth in me. It is hard to let the places themselves be enough. I have a new reverence for the masters like Macfarlane, who can so effortlessly disappear in their writing.

Maybe that is one reason why it's so healthy to enter the wilderness. The wilderness poses a continual challenge: to lift our eyes, to look beyond ourselves, to see a world more rich and immense than we can imagine. It is sometimes good to feel small, to sense our own unimportance in the bigger scheme of things.

Day 1: Escape and Commitment

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Location: Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport; Meridian, Idaho

Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

Those are the concluding lines of Donald Justice's brilliant poem Men at Forty. It is a hopeful and dignified characterization of the threshold at which we stand. Something good and noble is rising in us that will allow us to give back to the world: experience, confidence, a truer sense of self, a willingness to set aside the unimportant to focus on the vital and vitalizing. It's true that we feel our limitations and the rush of time—"Men at forty // learn to close softly // The doors to rooms they will not be // Coming back to"—but this only creates the space for an expansiveness of soul.

That poem has resonated for years. My military retirement feels less like a career move than molting or metamorphosis: wriggling out of one skin into a new, larger life. Erik Erikson's 1950 model of psychosocial development posited that human beings grow through eight stages. Each stage entails a developmental task, which the individual must complete or else face "stagnation and emotional despair." In late middle adulthood, Erikson posited, we shift from "career consolidation" to "generativity", one of my favorite words, which has earned its way onto my personal list of core values. For Erikson, it meant "Concern for establishing and guiding the next generation." The word also denotes creativity, building, "the quality of being able to produce or create something new."

So: midlife, renewal, a swelling sense of purpose, a recommitment to my writing, three weeks in the mountains to forge a new identity.

But about those mortgaged houses...

Rewind one year, in the thick of the bad times. My wife and I are separated and waiting for the divorce papers to clear the court. Then she gets cancer (she is better now). I'm drowning financially, paying two mortgages and for a slew of home repairs after our long-term renters suddenly bail from our rental house (I eventually get repaid when we sell).

Everything seems to climax at once, right as we're entering the infernal summer, a time when even native Alabamans say you should escape the state with your life. It's miserable, sweltering, mosquito-ridden. Right at this moment, my home air conditioning goes out. The unit is old and failing, the HVAC technician tells me. He can re-fill it with coolant for a lot of money, but it will probably leak again, or he can replace the unit for an ungodly amount of money. I can't afford the replacement so I pay for the band-aid fix. We limp along through that summer.

Fast forward to a week ago. The kids are out of school. I'm done teaching. Life is amazing. Hannah and I take the kids camping before they leave for Africa, then prepare for our three-week getaway in the California mountains. We're only a few days out from the trip when Montgomery's temperatures skyrocket and I have a dreadful realization: it's getting really, really hot in my house. It feels exactly like last year. Our house sitter comes over to feel things out. He'll be fine, he says. Given our upcoming trip, we decide to wait to replace the air conditioner until we return.

Now it's the night before our trip. We've just dropped the kids at the airport. We return home late and pack our last things for a 0430 morning departure. We go upstairs to catch a few hours sleep, only to find that it's 83 degrees. On that very night, the night before my celebratory escape into the mountains, my home HVAC system has completely died. A heat wave is forecast to begin the next day, with temps rising to the high 90s. We have four pets.

I've been through too much these last few years to feel rage. Instead we lie there hopelessly, unable to sleep, sweating in the heat, feeling a kind of despair at the universe's cruel jokes.

Hence Donald Justice's last line, with his 40-year old father gazing out at the woods and his great new destiny. He can only see it because he has momentarily turned his back on the house, the mortgage, the entangling commitments.

I'm hardly the first person to daydream of escape into a commitment-free lifestyle in the mountains. The #vanlife movement exploded in popularity during the pandemic. The symbol of retreat today is not a $300,000 RV or a second home in Tahoe, but rather a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Van, tricked out with a bed and kitchen. These vans are Instagram ready, enabling intrepid adventurers to celebrate #vanlife amidst spectacular vistas from exotic locales.

Nellie Bowles wrote in the New York Times, “Vanlife has been an influencer trend on Instagram for years. It usually involved a good-looking young couple in a van posting gauzy portraits of each other and sweeping scenes of the places they visited. The fantasy life they sold is freedom and simplicity, a radical reduction in burden — but not comfort. For these are not backpackers looking tired and worn, with massive calves and wild hair. Vanlife is an aesthetic trend, closer to the tiny-home movement, yet even richer, lusher and typically sexier.”

I find this movement fascinating. One day I search for the #vanlife hashtag on instagram. Bowles nailed it. Three of the top nine photos are of attractive young people posing in lush, exotic locations. In the first, a ripped, shirtless man and bikini-clad woman stand waist-deep in some jungle pool, kissing. In the second, a topless woman in cutoff jean shorts, shot from behind, surveys a field of vivid green grass. In the third, a nude woman stands calf-deep in crystal water, arms outstretched in a sun salutation. Above her bare ass, naked back, and outstretched arms, her van is parked on the shore. I couldn't create a better parody of this hashtag if I tried.

The bullshit factor is so high, but I won't lie; it doesn't stop me from feeling the appeal. I yearn for escape. I want an escape pod that can sweep me and my family off on incredible adventures in the outdoors. I couldn't afford a van, but I did buy a tiny converted cargo trailer that holds our camping gear and sleeps three. We've used it dozens of times. It's exactly what we wanted it to be: a mobile base camp for family adventures, crammed into every open space of our calendar between work days, guitar lessons, and basketball practices. My life involves a continual shuttling between civilization and wilderness.

And this is where I part ways with the Instagram-style #vanlife crowd. I'm not interested in selling a myth of eternal escape, even though that sounds superficially appealing. I do get it. I yearn to shed commitments. I'm tired of paying bills. I'm bored to tears with much of what passes for work. I'd love to erase events from my calendar for once, instead of continually adding them. It's an appealing fantasy, hitting the road with a few loved ones in pursuit of wonder, joy, and adventure, with none of the work entailed.

But none of us live such commitment-free lives, even those who advertise otherwise. Those who try are destined for disappointment. A commitment-free life is a life without relationships, meaningful work, or a greater sense of purpose, as David Brooks has argued. We live lives of purpose and meaning by carefully choosing commitments that align with our values, and then leaning into those commitments with everything we have.

That means each of us lives in the tension between commitment and retreat. At times we give to people, projects, or causes outside ourselves; at other times we draw inward for times of refreshing. Each of us lives this balance differently, and different times and seasons of life call for re-adjustment. Rather than marketing escape, I'd much rather ask: how can real people best inhabit this tension between our commitments and our dreams?

After all this, I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I'll be living in a van for the next three weeks. Not just any van, but a really nice borrowed van, with solar panels and a stove and a sewer tank and every other amenity. Yes, I'm excited. Yes, I'll post pictures on Instagram. Yes, I feel like I'm stepping into a dream, which is only possible because I've had opportunities and good luck that many people don't. I feel both grateful and sheepish.

But I'm still that man in Donald Justice's poem, standing between the dreamy woods and his mortgaged house. My air conditioner is still inoperative, and I spent a frantic day coordinating with HVAC service technicians from an American Airlines flight somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. I'm worried about my pets in the sweltering heat, and the gargantuan repair bill. I'm worried about my kids, who are currently on a plane to Africa. I am enjoying this quite moment on a patio, writing, but in a few minutes I'll need to go deal with a litany of travel-related logistics. I'm also clear-eyed that these three weeks do not constitute my new life, but rather an interlude before I willingly embrace my next set of professional commitments.

But this is good. This is life as it is supposed to be, in all its multi-dimensionality. I don't think Donald Justice was being prescriptive; he was acknowledging the tension each of us inhabits.

Day 0: A Hopeful Wilderness Journey

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

For the next three weeks, I will be blogging about my post-military retirement trip to the Sierra Nevada mountains. This first post explains the project. You can subscribe to my blog posts here (it's free) and follow my author page on Instagram.

"Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost."

So begins Dante's Inferno. The lines are quoted in almost every book I've read on midlife; Dante's description captures the midlife passage with archetypal power. The Forest Dark. I personally spent years in that dark wood, that "forest savage, rough, and stern", wondering how I got there and how I might get out again. I describe much of that journey in my book Eating Glass. I write about wilderness experiences, of deserts where prophets are forged, of hard lessons about acceptance and the release of control.

Dante's Forest Dark is not a place we seek, but rather one we sleepwalk into. Dante describes himself as full of slumber "at the moment, in which I had abandoned the true way." In midlife, we confront all the ways we have abandoned our true self. The dreaded forest gives a gift: consciousness. We wake up to life.

Yet there is another tradition of wilderness passages: the journey consciously chosen, the voluntary exile, the compulsion to lose and then discover oneself. The forest becomes a place to find wisdom, to train, to prepare for the next ordeal. The traveler is explorer and pilgrim.

My upcoming three-week trip to the Sierra Nevada mountains is, I hope, in the latter category. I've already done my time with Dante, trudged through the hellscape of my own Inferno. Professional setbacks and a sense of lostness. Divorce. Learning to date again, feeling it go sideways. Supporting my children through the upending of their lives.

Now I'm on the other side of that first wilderness journey. I'm in a loving, healthy new relationship. Recently, while sitting around a campfire after a day of climbing and rock-jumping at a remote swimming hole, my children told me they are happy. It has been a really good year, they said, making an implicit contrast with the damnable year before. Professionally, it was a good year too. I ended my Air Force career in exactly the right teaching assignment, passing on everything I've learned about defense innovation to a new generation of entrepreneurs in uniform

Now it's time for a more joyful kind of wilderness journey.

My years in Dante's wood woke me up, taught me to listen. I read such good books during those years: about the soul, and unlived lives yearning for expression, and subconscious energy breaking through the surface with violent ferocity. Something within me is trying to be born.

I'm at a crossroads: down one path lies safety and stability in a continued government role, at the price of sameness. It's a good path. Many of my colleagues choose it, for good reasons. But I've learned to trust my energy, and the compass needle points elsewhere. I need a new beginning, new challenges. A reinvention.

I train hard in the weeks leading up to my wilderness trip. Older people remind me that I'm not old, but when I was young, 44 looked positively ancient. In any case, the wear and tear is getting real. A partly-failed shoulder surgery patched up some damage but also left me with a torn rotator cuff and a long rehabilitation process. I'm still getting strong again and testing my limits. I run and climb stairs. The better my fitness, the greater the adventures I might enjoy.

I'm also helping Hannah get ready. Before we met, she had never climbed--only dreamed of it. She devoured climbing documentaries, which is what brought us together in a chance coffee shop conversation. My friends and I had her on a rock wall just a couple weeks later. A year on, she's making her first outdoor lead climbs and I'm teaching her multi-pitch climbing skills at mock belay stations in my garage. Also, we're dating--another subplot in this great division of my life into Before and After.

We spend our last weekend in Alabama climbing at Sand Rock, our local crag, practicing multi-pitch skills on stubby rocks that probably don't even need ropes. We move slowly, meticulously, practicing every step of our belay transitions until they're perfect. Better to work out the kinks here, ten feet off the ground, than five hundred.

Our upcoming trip is supposed to be a joyful retreat, but as it draws closer, I feel immense pressure. Three weeks in the mountains is exceedingly rare for me, made possibly only because my children are overseas with their grandparents. I want my trip to count. I want it to mean something. It feels like my life depends on it.

Life typically progresses in a continuous line. That line makes great big ups and downs, and sometimes careens in wild drunken loops, but the pen never lifts from the page. Each event sets the stage for the next. Skills compound, networks expand, we progress through adjacent jobs and friends. Momentum carries us downstream like a river, until one day...

"I felt like I was living someone else's life."

That's another recurring line in books on midlife. One day, many of us wake up to realize we have abandoned something precious in ourselves. We could have everything in the world going for us, and yet we crave some kind of renewal.

That's the puzzle I've been stuck on: how to lift the pen from the page. How to create a discontinuity.

Everyone in my professional life knows me as a defense innovator. That is true. I am a defense innovator, and I will still be a defense innovator when I descend from the mountains and begin my next job in a defense technology startup. I'm excited about an amazing opportunity ahead.

But I'm something else too. I'm a writer, with a deeply spiritual nature and a profound love of the natural world. I use words like "soul" and "belonging" that don't compute in my professional circles. I read books by psychotherapists and meditations on landscapes. I use precious vacation time to make pilgrimages to Thomas Merton's monastery and Wendell Berry's town in rural Kentucky. I write as a way of perceiving, experiencing, and understanding the world. So much of my writing is an effort to answer my own biggest questions: how does one construct a well-lived life? How does one find a sense of belonging in the world? How do we reconcile our deepest human needs with our dehumanizing technological society?

I never really harmonized my personal writing with my military career, which is one reason I finally felt compelled to hang up the uniform. Military leadership demands a certain persona, especially as one advances through the ranks. The kind of writing I like to do demands almost the opposite qualities: a penchant for solitude, an inclination for observation over action, a temperament that asks hard questions rather than provides confident answers, a willingness to distill life experiences into narrative rather than bullet lists.

Collisions came with increasing frequency. The Air Force wanted and needed the Colonel, so I kept the writer quiet.

Now it's time.

So: military retirement. An interlude. Three weeks around Donner Pass, Yosemite valley, Tuolumne Meadows, and Bishop.

On the surface, it's about getting outdoors for a few weeks. But it's really about personal reinvention, which is very hard to do. It's difficult enough overcoming twenty-two years of career momentum and social expectations. What makes this even harder is that I'm taking myself with me, with all my habits, self-doubts, and distractibility.

My strategy is this: for the next three weeks, I am going to live as that alter ego. No defense innovation. No coding. No military persona. No responsibility, real or perceived, to write the way a Colonel or technologist is supposed to write.

Instead, I will give that other persona free expression. I am attempting to craft a temporary new life, in the same way I might craft a short story. Hannah and I will be living in a van, going where the winds blow. We're seeking a kind of simplicity, although that will entail its own complexities, like where to empty sewage or do laundry. My reading list encompasses soulful nature writing, like Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks and Kim Stanley Robinson's The High Sierra: A Love Story, and rich psychology books like Rollo May's Love and Will. I am a do-er and Hannah as a be-er, so I expect our days to exhibit a healthy fusion of our natures: leisurely hours sitting in beautiful alpine landscapes, and rigorous hikes or ascents of rugged rock faces.

And writing. Writing, writing, writing. That is the heart of it all, my real motivation, the thing I'm trying to set free. I've spent two decades feeling wound up too tight, worried about readership and positioning and branding. I've never felt comfortable making the leap into writing because I don't have a business strategy. Walt Whitman said, "I contain multitudes." That celebration of eclecticism resonates powerfully. It's a great way to live and a terrible way to craft a value proposition to buyers.

Enough of all that. My goal, in these three weeks, is to let go of that need for control--to live lightly upon the earth, to write for the love of it and for no other reason. I will write for myself.

And then I will share it.

Thats the catch, the terror-inducing crux of this long ascent. I've always had a paralyzing fear of sharing my personal writing, especially if I haven't spent weeks rigorously editing and polishing. That has held me back for two decades. So my commitment, for these three weeks, is to write what I want and then share it. Whether anyone reads it, likes it, or hates it doesn't matter. It's all flint on steel, a shower of sparks, the hope of igniting something.

I only have a small readership, and I expect I'll shake some of you loose, especially those who came looking for defense innovation writing. That's fine; no hurt feelings. I'll do more of that writing later in other forums. But I hope I'll gain a few new readers as well. I give you absolutely no promises concerning what I will write about, except that it will be important to me. You can subscribe to these posts by e-mail (it's free) and see shorter updates on Instagram. If this is too much, you can unsubscribe below or--better--switch to an infrequent newsletter, so you'll know when I release new books.

What will happen after those three weeks? That's a three-weeks-from-now problem.

"The Weight of Oceans" at Asimov's SF

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It's been a long time since I've checked in here, but I'm delighted to announce that my new short story "The Weight of Oceans" is now available in the July/August 2024 issue of Asimov's SF. You can subscribe through the website or find the issue in major bookstores.

It's great to be published in Asimov's again. I have a long history with the magazine, beginning with my receiving the Dell Award (known as the Asimov award in my time) for my writing while at USAFA. It only took me 20 more years to finally get published in Asimov's, with my 2023 story The Repair.

It's funny... I generally approach writing stories like an engineer or carpenter. I brainstorm ideas, sketch out characters, develop initial plotlines, and then set to work writing. The story always takes on a life of its own, but this initial engineering work provides a kind of scaffolding that gives the story shape. I've written many stories this way, but the only two stories I've sold to Asimov's began with a completely different approach. Both originated as unplanned "freewrites", in which I simply sat down with a notebook and started scribbling out a scene. With "The Repair", I wanted to try writing a single cyberpunk scene. I had no plan for turning it into a story, nor any idea where that first scene would lead. Only over time did I discover what the story was actually about. It was a humbling and almost frightening lesson about the power of the unconscious to guide creativity.

"The Weight of Oceans" had even less thought behind it; I sat down to freewrite to warm up my creative muscles. Somehow, the image came to me of two women in a bar fight. I was in a fiesty mood and ran with it. The words kept flowing. I'd recently been telling a friend that the zeitgeist of contemporary science fiction often involves strong independent characters standing up to soulless and abusive capitalist machinery, so I decided to try taking this story in that direction. It was tricky, because as a military officer and political scientist who reveres capitalism's achievements even as I detest its faults, I hold a much more nuanced view than many other SF authors do. Fortunately, I was pleased with the story that emerged. There was a particular moment during revisions when my impression went from "this is really weak, but I should just see it through" to "wow, this is actually pretty good."

Ultimately, this story explores the common feeling that the world’s challenges are bigger than we can comprehend or manage. It asks how we can find hope and agency, when we are holding back... THE WEIGHT OF OCEANS.

"The Repair" at Asimov's SF

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Twenty-two years ago, as a college sophomore, I took 1st runner up in the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing (then known as the Asimov Award). Sheila Williams (the editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine) and Rick Wilber flew me and the other finalists out to a writing conference, where I sat by the pool and talked writing with Joe Haldeman, Sean Stewart, Kelly Link, Charles Sheffield, Nancy Kress, Daniel Keyes, Ted Chiang, Octavia Butler, Brian Aldiss, Neil Gaiman, and many others. The next year, I won the contest and went back. These were life-changing experiences for a young person with only distant dreams of being a writer. I realized that “making it” was well within reach and began submitting stories, without success.

I got busy after that, with my Air Force career and a young family. Writing came and went. In 2020, amidst the pandemic and a transition into a teaching job, I committed to writing more seriously. It has only taken 22 years, but with “The Repair,” I finally made it into Asimov’s.

The story began as an experiment, as I tried to stretch my usual style and write a cyberpunk tale with the atmosphere of Blade Runner. It took on a life of its own and grew into a commentary on cancellation, asking that classic speculative fiction question: "What if this continues?"

Asimov SF's blog also ran an interview with me about the story.

I'm a little late getting this post up, but you might still be able to find the March/April issue on the shelves at your favorite bookstore. You can also order it at www.asimovs.com or purchase the digital issue via Amazon Kindle. Even better, you can subscribe!

My new article on prospects for drone delivery in Ukraine

Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I have a new piece out at War on the Rocks, titled The Dubious Prospects for Cargo-Delivery Drones in Ukraine. It draws on my 2014-2015 effort to develop a siege-breaking capability for Syria.

This was a tricky piece to write. As an innovator, I believe few things are impossible and I always want to encourage people who try hard things. I also earnestly want to see this paradigm realized. At the same time, two years in the trenches taught me just how hard the problem set is. If we want to build a capability like this, we need to be clear-eyed about the challenges that must be overcome. We must also invest properly in the requisite capabilities and organizational capacity.

I hope this piece will drive some healthy conversation and lead to much-needed investments in last-mile battlefield logistics.

Coincidentally, Walmart announced yesterday a significant expansion of its experimental drone delivery service. The timing meant that I wasn't able to comment on this development in my article. However, I think it reinforces my core message: that developing a scalable drone delivery paradigm requires tremendous organizational capacity and expertise. Walmart has been building this capability up over years, in partnership with companies experienced in drone delivery. They originally started in a single small town, use certified human pilots, only deliver to locations within 1.5 miles of participating stores, and require control towers to maintain visual line of sight with their drones. These are promising developments, but a model like this can't easily be replicated from scratch in a warzone like Ukraine.

What I Learned Self-Publishing a Book, One Year In

Tue, 24 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Friends often ask me how things are going with my book, Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal, which I released in March 2021. For those unfamiliar, the book aims to help readers navigate the aftermath of a failure experience and find new life on the other side.

In this 5000+ word mega-post I'll share some reflections, which might be relevant if you're curious about my process as an author, curious about the book, or want to know what it's like releasing a book of your own into the wild. There are no secrets here; I'll share the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm not claiming to be an expert; you should look elsewhere to learn about marketing. But based on data I've seen, my experience is pretty typical, especially for a newer self-published author.

Publishing this book was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, but it's extremely rare for a standalone book to gain financial success or a significant readership without being part of a much larger strategy. Eating Glass has consistently received glowing reviews from readers. Sales, however, have been lackluster; I've sold around 500 copies, mostly to people who know me. I knew this would be a difficult book to market but it hasn't gained traction in any of the niches I expected it to. I will admit that I have not been nearly aggressive enough in marketing it, but it seems like every marketing attempt I've tried has failed to yield significant returns. I'm still trying to crack that code.

Fortunately I am being compensated in other ways—in deeply personal emails and phone calls from people who were moved by the book in the best possible way. The book had exactly the impact I hoped it would, on the people who needed it.

As I forge ahead, I'm doing three things: (1) Doing my best to not let the low sales get me down (2) Cherishing the positive feedback and (3) Putting on my entrepreneur game face, studying what's working and what's not, and taking pragmatic lessons on how I need to grow as an author-entrepreneur.

The Road to Publishing

I should back up and talk about my goals for the book. Eating Glass began as a series of cathartic reflections I wrote purely for myself, while navigating the aftermath of a startup failure. Over time, I saw the potential for turning them into a book that could help others. Even so, I agonized for months over whether or not I should publish such a vulnerable book. Maybe I was oversharing. Maybe I was in too raw of a place, and would look back on my experiences later with different eyes. Maybe I'd damage my reputation. Maybe the vulnerability on display would make others cringe.

In the end, I chose to publish two reasons: first, I was tired of being afraid, and needed to fully embrace my own journey. As I've written before, publishing the book was one of the most empowering experiences of my life.

Second, I wanted to help others. I wrote the book that I wish existed when I was struggling. Nobody, to my knowledge, had written anything quite like it. I also knew that I was hardly alone in my journey. I periodically read reflections from failed founders and other high achievers who suffered soul-shattering experiences. I knew the book would speak to them.

In the end, I wrote this book for people who needed it. Even if the world at large found the book mystifying, I would be satisfied if it spoke to the audience that needed it.

Positioning a Book About Failure

Once I made the decision to release the book, that still left numerous tactical decisions. How would I publish the book? How would I position and market it?

These were hard questions. I wanted to create an artistic masterpiece, but the tension between artistic quality and commercial felt real.

Too many artists blow off the business side of writing, and then pout when they don't sell. I made this mistake with my self-published military SF novel The Lords of Harambee, which I'd spent a decade writing. I still think it's a good book—certainly better than a lot of what gets published—but I only sold around 250 copies. I largely have myself to blame for that, because I designed my own cover (a huge no-no) and did almost no marketing.

My 2012 military SF novel.

This time, I wanted to set my book up for success. I researched extensively. I tried to get smart on balancing artistic integrity with commercial sales appeal. (For what it's worth, Ryan Holiday's Perennial Seller is the best I've found on this).

Still, this is a hard balance to strike. I repeatedly found myself facing decisions that would probably increase sales but undermine the book's artistic integrity.

For example, the market is full of books with titles like "Fail Your Way to Success" or "Fail Big: Fail Your Way to Success and Break All the Rules to Get There." If I ran market surveys or A/B testing to arrive at a title, the market would ask for more of the same. This is how you convince people to read a book about failure—by appealing to the deep, human thirst for guidance about how to succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

But this branding trivializes the painful reality of failure, which is the core of what I wanted to write about. Eating Glass was in many ways a reaction against this genre of pep talks. I designed every part of the book to convey to the reader that we would embark together on a serious, thoughtful journey through the underworld of a high-achieving life... from the title to the black matte cover with cool colors to the phrase "inner journey" in the subtitle. The word "renewal" promised an arrival and an inner transformation, but also suggested it would be subtle, perhaps wiser, and perhaps not quite like the "success" other titles promise.

If I was optimizing for commercial success, I also would have replaced Eating Glass with multiple smaller books targeted at different niche audiences. I would have written one short, practical book specifically for failed entrepreneurs and another for struggling graduate students. By focusing on niches, both would probably have outsold Eating Glass. But I was after something larger—a commentary on the universal human journey, with all its ups and downs, which spans an entire life through all its stages. The book's most important but subtle themes, about growth from "first half of life" concerns into "second half of life" living, would have been lost.

In the end, Eating Glass is exactly the book I wanted it to be. I refused to compromise my vision for the book, but I was clear-eyed about the consequences of my choices. Eating Glass would probably not be a commercial success, but I hoped that it would be a hidden treasure for those who did read it. I hoped that struggling high achievers would pass old, dog-eared copies around when they met someone else walking a similar path. They would say, "Dude, you need to read this."

Traditional vs. Self-Publishing

My next decision was about how to publish. I believed Eating Glass was high-enough quality to traditionally publish, so I put months of effort into writing a proposal, building a marketing plan, and sending query letters to literary agents. I built a platform—to include my website, blog, and mailing list—so I could show publishers that I was serious about helping Eating Glass reach readers.

I sent roughly a dozen query letters, in two batches separated by a couple months. A few wrote back form rejections, typically one or two months later. Many never wrote back at all.

This is pretty typical, and a dozen agents is not a large number. Authors routinely have to query far more than that, for far longer, before they get a lead. Becoming a writer takes a thick skin. With that said, I found this process infuriating, dehumanizing, and borderline abusive. There is no reason an agent or publishing house can't take twenty seconds to send a form rejection letter, instead of leaving an author on the hook for months, until their hope slowly fades and then dies. The fact this is considered acceptable testifies to the power imbalance between writers and the publishing industry, and the desperation of most aspiring authors to be published.

I already have some deep life wounds related to rejection, so pitching a vulnerable book like Eating Glass wasn't easy. The rejections (and silences) felt like a referendum on my life. I knew this dynamic would get even worse later, because even if an agent agreed to represent the book, I'd face another round as the agent pitched to publishers. The process would take years. And unlike most nonfiction books, which are sold based on a proposal and outline, Eating Glass was finished.

The more I researched and learned about the industry, the less sure I felt about the benefits of being traditionally published. Most of us view books through the lens of "survivorship bias." We only know the books we see on the shelves at Barnes & Noble or on Amazon bestseller lists. The vast majority of traditionally published books never reach those shelves, or attain any level of fame at all. Furthermore, everything I've read says that in today's world traditional publishers largely rely on authors to do their own marketing—and won't even consider publishing your nonfiction book unless you already have a following of thousands.

After a few months of playing this game, I had to think carefully about my goals. I was frustrated and annoyed at the process. I had no desire to wait three years to hold a book that was ready for publication today. The agent dating game only fed my sense of rejection, when what I really needed to move forward was to embrace my story, get it out into the world, and move onto a new writing project. Furthermore, I was spending a huge amount of time building my own marketing plan. If a publisher wasn't going to do much other than tell me to execute my own plan, why would I give them the lion's share of my royalties?

What I really wanted was creative autonomy, agility, and the ability to tell my story the way I wanted. Self-publishing appeared increasingly attractive—not as a second-rate alternative to traditional publishing, but as a creative choice that gave me full control over my artistic vision and allowed me to work with agility and speed.

Self-publishing has become highly professionalized in the last few years if you do it right. James Altucher argues that the critical distinction today is no longer between traditional publishing and self-publishing, but between professional and unprofessional publishing. What he calls "Publishing 3.0" entails professional author-entrepreneurs leveraging freelance designers, editors, etc. to professionalize the self-publishing process.

I likely had enough access to my target markets—entrepreneurs, graduate students, creatives, and other high achievers—to reach them on my own. However, this would put a huge burden on me to market the book. Nobody would know it existed unless I told them.

Releasing the book

In keeping with Altucher's philosophy, I tried to self-publish Eating Glass in the most professional way possible. I hired a professional cover designer through Reedsy. The result was amazing and exactly what I'd hoped for. I did deviate from best practices by doing my own editing and typesetting, but these are areas where I already felt strong, and I still relied on a team of early readers to provide feedback. I went through multiple rounds of paperback proofs from Amazon KDP. When everything was ready, I went through the Air Force's media review process—then released the book in March 2021.

Browsing cover designers for hire at Reedsy

My initial advertising mostly consisted of social media posts on Facebook and LinkedIn and my small mailing list. I figured I would start with friends and family, then start a more intentional marketing campaign later. (In retrospect, I should have had a much more ambitious marketing plan at launch)

Friends and family embraced the book with great enthusiasm. I sold a couple hundred copies during launch week. I received many kind notes and affirmations from friends. After my months of fear leading up to the release, I found this hugely rewarding. Over the next couple weeks, friends texted photos holding their newly arrived copies. Those were priceless.

However, once I exhausted my own immediate network, sales practically stopped. That was hard emotionally but also exactly what I expected; nobody will know a book exists—especially a self-published one—without marketing.

The warm reception

The good news is that many people who read the book love it. Even as I struggle to sell books, I continue to receive kind, thoughtful notes from readers who feel deeply touched. They see their own experience reflected in its pages. "It's like you're reading my journals," one reader wrote.

What I love is that each of these readers is on an entirely different journey. One recently left Los Angeles after a couple decades failing to build a successful career in the film industry. Another is an incredibly successful professional who struggles with hidden traumas that most people know nothing about. One is recovering from divorce, while another is a military NCO who has been on his own journey of healing from childhood trauma and combat PTSD. Eating Glass spoke to all of them, which is exactly what I hoped it would do. Something in the book speaks to a universal human experience.

For at least some readers, the book also has a timeless quality. One reader emphasized that he would return to the book again and again in his life, trusting he would continue to find new insights. Another reader told me the book now sits on a special bookshelf along with four or five other classics that he returns to continually throughout his life.

These personal notes mean the world to me. I have to think back to my original goal: Even if this book does not sell widely, I wrote it for those who need it. I love receiving individual notes affirming that the book has exactly the effect I hoped for. This is the success I want, although it is a very different metric than we usually think about. It is a metric about touching individual lives, not necessarily selling at scale.

The scaling challenge

With that said, I do want the book to sell widely. I have a message I want to share. I want to touch more lives. I have also invested thousands of hours in writing, with few readers and little financial return. This has entailed considerable opportunity cost, and it would really be nice to earn a return commensurate with my efforts.

However, scaling has proven to be an incredible challenge. I have tried a variety of methods to promote the book but none has made a significant impact. It is entirely possible that I just haven't tried hard enough on any of these fronts; I will share more on that below. The book is also intrinsically difficult to market.

Amazon Ads

One of my first efforts was to use traditional advertising. I tried Amazon ads, which can be carefully targeted. I configured my ads to appear on the pages of books by authors who write on similar styles and themes—like Jerry Colonna, David Whyte, Parker Palmer, and Richard Rohr. I also configured ads to appear on the pages of other books about failure. The ads resulted in very few clicks and no sales. Because I only pay for clicks, and was receiving barely any, I stopped following the campaign. I just checked again, and apparently Amazon shoppers have seen my add 3500 times in the past year, clicked 11 times, and purchased 3 times. I suspect that because my click rate was so low, Amazon's algorithm stopped showing my ads entirely.

I haven't looked at this Amazon ad dashboard in a year, but apparently I sold three books a year ago.

Google Ads

Later, I tried using Google ads. I triggered these ads to appear for terms like "startup failure", "founder depression", and so forth, thinking these would lead to the exact niche I wanted to target. I was a little amused when, a few days in, Google's dashboard informed me that most people were finding my ads by googling terms like "can you eat glass." I did my best to exclude glass-eater terms but I'm not sure this ever fully worked; Google's ad dashboard is highly opaque. By the time I was done experimenting, 158,000 people had seen my ads and 192 had clicked the link, which took them to my book's Amazon page. However, zero of those 192 purchased the book.

The minimalist Google Ads dashboard, which didn't provide enough information for me to determine who was clicking my ads.

A 1 in 1000 click rate didn't sound unreasonable to me, but the zero sales were concerning. That could indicate two things: (1) something about the product page was turning people off or (2) the people seeing and clicking on my ads were not the people I was trying to target.

Option 1 was a possibility. The cover was (I thought) beautiful and the book had 4.9 stars with dozens of thoughtful reviews. However, the product description was focused on my personal journey. Perhaps that didn't catch people's interest? I rewrote the product description to emphasize the universal journey through hardship towards richer, wiser living. The new blurb focused on what the book could do for readers. I continued the ad campaign for another week but still sold no books.

Option 2 looked increasing likely. Maybe the glass-eaters were seeing my ads, not startup founders; when they realized that my book was not, in fact, a manual for how to eat glass, they bounced. Given that I was losing money on each click, I shut down the campaign.

Blogging

I initially hoped my blog would gain readership if I shared blog posts on Facebook or LinkedIn, but almost every post only receives 1-2 likes. My suspicion is that the algorithms on these platforms significantly downweight posts that link to articles on external sites.

Blogging is hard work and it can take years to build a following. I have no doubt that if I blogged three times a week for years, I could build a following of thousands. The problem is that this becomes almost a full-time writing commitment, and what I really want to do is write books, not blog posts. The most successful blogs also have a tight focus on a specific theme, but I like to write across a range of interests—a common situation that prevents many aspiring writers from finding commercial success. My difficulties resolving these tensions have been the hardest aspect of trying to launch a writing career, and explain my erratic presence on the blog and social media.

Guest Posts

Given the small size of my own readership, I experimented with writing guest posts for other blogs with large readerships. For example, I am friends with the editor of From the Green Notebook, a wonderful blog about leadership and personal growth, which has over 17,000 email subscribers and a large social media footprint. I sent him a free copy of Eating Glass, which he read, loved, and reviewed on his mailing list. He also gave me the opportunity to write two different posts for his blog and mailing list. The net result of all this activity was around 10 book sales.

I also wrote a lengthy article for Failory, a site that specifically shares resources about startup failure. This is as close to my target niche as you can get, but I sold zero books after the article went live.

Podcasts

I'm pretty good at connecting with live audiences, so webinars and podcasting seemed like a great way to draw people into my story. I did a book launch webinar with the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum and have done ten or so podcasts so far. The webinar drew perhaps 10 people, about half of whom were family.

Some of the podcasts presumably reached hundreds or thousands of people. Each of these engagements was a positive, intimate, and heartwarming experience. My podcast hosts loved my books, and we had sincere, authentic conversations. However, after the release of each podcast episode, I typically only sold a few books.

Forum Participation

I have also actively engaged in relevant startup-centric forums for discussions about startup failure, impostor syndrome, burnout, and other themes my book addresses. The primary site I monitor each day is Hacker News (incidentally, my favorite place on the Internet), where a lot of entrepreneurs hang out. In addition to talking about coding, the site features surprisingly frequent and rich conversations about how to construct a well-lived life.

There is a danger of coming across as sleazy and self-interested in forums (repeated posts that say only "buy my book!") so I have tried hard to make each post value-adding. I personally address the original poster's issue, share a link to a free chapter, or even offer to send a free copy of the book to the original poster. When a conversation about loneliness appeared on Christmas, I wrote a post making the e-book free to anyone who wanted it for 48 hours.

I have similarly reached out to strangers on Facebook in groups focused on graduate student mental health.

Each of these engagements typically yields between 0 and 2 sales.

HackerNews also has a feature called "Show HN", which allows users to showcase new creations that might be of interest to other HN members. These posts can go viral, generating a windfall of interest and support for compelling projects. I thought "Eating Glass" could do quite well, given the composition and interests of the readership. I spent weeks preparing my website with abundant free content. Unfortunately, my "Show HN" post failed to gain any traction and was swept downstream immediately. I sold no books.

Releasing an audiobook

The best thing I did for Eating Glass after its original publication was record an audiobook version and release it on Audible. Although not really a form of marketing, it created a second product that made the book accessible to those who might not have time to read. In a few months I have sold more than 100 copies of the audiobook.

Recording and post-processing my audiobook with Audacity

I recorded the audio myself. In keeping with Altucher's philosophy of professional self-publishing, I spent considerable time researching quality microphones, tweaking settings, and setting up a recording space with good acoustics. By the time I had finished, I'd recorded every chapter two or three times to get the level of quality I wanted. I also did extensive post-processing, using automated filters and then doing the manual, painstaking work of removing breath noises and lip smacking.

The learning curve was steep, but in the end, I think the book sounds terrific. Listeners have commented on its professional quality. Now that I've done it once and developed a workflow, it will be much easier to do again for future projects.

Hitting my networks

Part of my marketing plan was to reach out to networks I'm a part of, such as my high school alumni network, the USAFA alumni network, and a large national security listserv that I'm a part of.

My messages to the alumni networks led to a decent number of sales in the first weeks, probably all from people who personally knew me.

As for the national security listserv, the moderator loved the book and enthusiastically recommended it to the entire list. Net result? Possibly 1-2 sales, along with a personal email from one member about why most members of a national security-focused group would never read a book about personal reflection.

Personal outreach

My biggest line of effort has been reaching out personally to individuals who I think might like the book and sending them a free digital copy. When that didn't yield the results I'd hoped, I switched to mailing physical copies along with handwritten notes on elegant, personalized stationary.

I have written to numerous failed founders who have taken the brave step of writing publicly about their experiences. I have written to venture capitalists who run mental health programs for their founders. I have written to psychologists who specialize in entrepreneur mental health, and CEO coaches who specialize in vulnerability. I have written to authors I cite and podcasters I listen to.

I like doing this kind of advertising more than anything else, because it is far more personal and feels more like a mutual exchange. I am writing people I respect, whose work I have read and loved. However, it can also be the most demoralizing form of advertising, because the rate of engagement still remains low, even among people I thought would absolutely love the book. I suspect the vast majority of these people are simply busy and overwhelmed. For every 20 notes I send, I might get two or three polite dismissals and one lead.

The rare wins

The key words here are "one lead." That seems to be where the magic is found. I mentioned earlier that I put a great deal of work into reaching a friend's mailing list of 17,000 but only sold 5-10 books. One of those 5-10 people was an Army NCO named Mike Burke who runs a podcast called Always in Pursuit, about leadership and vulnerability. He is the guy who now keeps Eating Glass on a special shelf with his other classics, and he quickly reached out to arrange a podcast interview. He now shouts about Eating Glass from the rooftops, so I sent him a box of free books to give away. I, in turn, get to tell you about how much I love his podcast and the way he is inspiring more authentic, introspective leadership in his listeners.

His enthusiastic support for my book led me to a few other supporters, each of whom led me to more. Compounding interest is at work here, but I have to fight for it aggressively.

Some of these leads have also led to enjoyable moments of connection. Dr. Michael Freeman, a psychologist and psychiatrist who focuses on startup founder mental health, read the copy I sent and sent a nice note. So did Dierdre Wolownick Honnold, a rock climbing hero I discuss in the book (although, embarrassingly, she informed me I'd made a couple factual mistakes when I told her story... another lesson learned, about fact-checking during editing).

Even as I consider how to generate more sales, I try to stay focused on these interpersonal relationships. I have to remind myself that Eating Glass achieved my original goals, and that each of these one-on-one moments of connection is its own reward.

My Lessons

Where do I stand today? A year after publishing Eating Glass, I have sold around 400 books and just over 100 audiobooks. I continue to sell 5-10 copies a month. People who read the book seem to love it; it has 4.9 stars on Amazon and receives heartfelt praise, but getting people to read it often feels impossible.

It is easy to get discouraged. This is the point where many writers quit, but the writers who succeed mine their experiences for lessons, learn, and get back to work. So what can I learn from all this?

As a writer, I have the privilege of making my own choices... but I also live with them. Eating Glass is exactly what I wanted it to be. I did not compromise my artistic integrity in creating the book I wanted. I knew from the start that I was making choices that would hurt its commercial viability, but I also knew it would speak deeply to the audience that needed it. Both predictions proved to be true.
I think 'failure' is a negative emotional trigger. The science around advertising is fascinating. A single word can activate powerful subconscious forces that lead a consumer to buy or avoid a product. I can't prove it, but I now strongly suspect that the word 'failure' is a negative emotional trigger that most consumers recoil from.
Marketing experts are right: work that doesn't fit neatly in a genre is a hard sell, and memoir is among the hardest genres to sell. Eating Glass sits between a personal growth book and memoir. That ambiguity enriches it but also makes it hard to position. Also, I may have branded it too much as a memoir. What's become clear is that selling memoirs is hard, because people are most inclined to read memoirs of celebrities or people they know personally.
Writers must fight for every reader. When I was running my nonprofit, an advisor who had expertise in fundraising told me that he had to court each individual donor personally, no matter how big or small their donation. That advice stuck with me. It's tempting to wait for a magic bullet that will generate waves (Brené Brown, if you're reading, you're welcome to endorse my book!) , but most writers need to fight for the heart of every reader. Even if I'm only selling 1 or 2 books each time I engage with an audience, I should embrace that audience.
Exponential growth is slow in the beginning. Almost every writer has to slog their way through years of slow growth before they reach a bend in the curve. This is normal. Breakout writers keep putting in the work.
Writers need to be persistent and aggressive in marketing. I have admittedly fallen short here. I tend to market in intermittent waves, rather than maintaining a consistent pace. Successful writers spend as much time managing their business as they spend actually writing. This is my biggest growth area as a writer. It's not too late for Eating Glass; there is a lot I still need to do.
Building a writing career is a strategic enterprise that plays out over years. Writers often say that your next book is the best marketing for your current one. If you build a readership over years, hungry readers will look to your backlist. Professional writers to continually produce new work in order to grow a career. I won't be able to assess the performance of Eating Glass for years or decades.

Lessons for Others

Readers who have made it this far, and are considering publishing their own book, should know that my experience is pretty typical. According to Scribe Media, the average self-published digital only book sells roughly 250 copies in its lifetime. The average traditionally published book sells 3000 copies. These are not large numbers.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't publish a book; you should!

It just means that you should have realistic expectations about what publishing a book will or won't do for you. A standalone book probably won't make you a fortune or catapult you to fame, but it can serve many ancillary purposes: satisfy your thirst to create, give you pride in a difficult achievement, grow your skills and confidence, help you build relationships with readers, demonstrate your expertise, attract clients or customers to your other business services, or usher you into new relationships and communities.

Anyone considering self-publishing a book should also get smart both about the self-publishing process and the business of writing. One of the best places to start is with Joanna Penn's website, The Creative Penn.

Once you publish one book, it becomes much easier to write a second. I learned a ton with Eating Glass. I know how to publish an e-book in minutes. I know how to hire freelance cover designers, typesetters, and editors. I know how to obtain ISBNs and make my books available for distributors to major bookstores through IngramSpark. Although I haven't quite cracked the code on gaining value from paid ads, I know the basics of how to use them. With these skills in hand, publishing a second book will be much easier. I can see how highly productive author-entrepreneurs become engines for continually delivering new books and services.

In Conclusion

In summary, releasing Eating Glass was a milestone for me. It was one of the most empowering experiences of my life, and I love knowing that I have touched at least a few lives through the magic of writing. However, publishing a book is only one milestone in its journey, and it's an even smaller milestone in an author's career. I have to continually navigate feelings of hope, disappointment, and exhilaration, even as I have to keep doing the hard work of connecting the book with the world.

As I consider my lessons learned about publishing and marketing, two stand out. First, creators operate in a realm of exponential math and compounding returns, which is not necessarily intuitive. It is easy to get demoralized when our mailing list grows by 1 person a month, our posts only get one or two likes, or our sales numbers hover near zero. But each additional connection we make links us into an ever-deepening web of relationships and opportunities. As exponential magic goes to work, a rise might come any time. I'm learning that the hard part is staying committed to the work—to producing—regardless of what the numbers seem to indicate.

The second thing I've learned is the primacy of individual, personal relationships. That is where I've found my value as a writer lately, as I shared in my post about Messages in Bottles. That is what keeps me going. All of us want to make a difference with our lives, so there is no higher pleasure than receiving a note about how my words have positively influenced somebody. As long as I continue to receive occasional notes like this, I know I am succeeding.

The real magic is that these two lessons fit so well together. In a world of compounding returns, it is individuals who matter. A new relationship with a single reader is not merely an additive increment to a sales chart. A new reader is a unique individual with his or her own passions, perspectives, and community of relationships. Each new reader connects a writer to a much broader community and an entirely new web of relationships. That is exhilarating and scary, but it's also... well, magical.

Life in Three Acts: Adventure, Tragedy, Comedy

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I recently came across this excerpt from John Williams' novel Augustus:

The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality.

The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal.

But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them.

Wow, that landed. Life in three acts: Adventure, Tragedy, Comedy.

This is really what my book Eating Glass is about. In fact, it's a major plotline in the story of every human life. Our youthful hopes and aspirations eventually collide with a broken world. One of life's great tasks is to navigate this difficult middle passage. Hopefully, we learn to make our peace and find a new path towards joyful, hopeful living.

Eating Glass chronicles my Tragedy years and my first forays into the sunnier lands beyond. That's a journey I'm still on, and my daily life now seems like a daily intermingling of tragedy and comedy.

Fortunately, I at least know what questions to ask now, and they're the questions I like to explore in my writing: What does it mean to be human? How should we live in this chaotic, crazy, fast-changing world? How do we find purpose and meaning when the institutions we traditionally relied on for stability—organized religion, government, marriage, corporations, civic society—seem so dissatisfying to so many? How can we find genuine joy, hope, and beauty in a world so full of hatred, heartbreak, and anguish?

The preoccupations of my Adventure years seem far less interesting these days than those ultimate questions.

In an online discussion about this quote, one commenter asked—perhaps cheekily, perhaps seriously—"how would one go about skipping directly to the third stage?"

If only we could, but that's part of the universe's sense of humor: you have to advance stage by stage. It's the hardships themselves that plant the seeds of wisdom and make such lightness of being possible.

Sometimes I feel like my Years of Tragedy were wasted, but an inner voice of Wisdom is quick to intercept that thought. Despite the challenges, those years brought plenty of goodness and beauty, particularly as I watched my three small children grow and spread their wings. Beyond that, these years were a transformative period that ushered me into a richer, wiser life that is ripe with possibility.

I would like to think that my apprenticeship is complete and my real life's work is just beginning. I'm grateful to have experienced that metamorphosis so soon.

Photo credit: The Oceanpreneur

Trust Emergence

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I recently listened to a podcast episode with Joanna Penn, a prolific indie author and expert on independent publishing. In it, she made a passing mention of a sign she keeps above her desk:

Trust Emergence

I love this so much.

I hear the word "emergence" in a very specific context: complexity science, a cross-disciplinary paradigm that is an important lens through which I see the world. It also has a lot to say about life.

Complexity and Emergence

Complexity scientists study complex systems, in which interactions among independent units give rise to overarching structures and patterns. Classic examples include the human brain or an ant-hill. The human brain houses a neural network consisting of tens of billions of neurons, which interact through relatively simple electrochemical signals but collectively give rise to the full depth and range of human intelligence and creativity. Ants obey fairly simple behavioral rules, but these collectively give rise to complex colonies. The most fascinating systems to me are complex adaptive systems (CAS), in which "agents" have the ability to study their environment and learn from their interactions. The global economy is a CAS, as are all political systems. I have spent much of my adult life studying complex wars, in which multiple "sides" maneuver for strategic advantage in cauldrons of political violence.

Complexity science provides a helpful way to think and reason about the world, but it also provides tools to help scientists model these phenomena. Traditionally, scientists have modeled complex systems using a "top down" series of equations. For example, scientists studying traffic jams might model them by inputting the number of cars and highway capacity into an equation that outputs an average driving speed.

Complexity scientists model "from the bottom up." They might write a software program to model an individual car, noting such details as a driver's reaction time to a car braking in front of her. They would then unleash a bunch of these programmatic cars in a virtual world and watch what happens. Realistic, familiar patterns of stop-and-go traffic emerge.

Emergence results from innumerable interactions among agents pursuing micro-level behaviors. We find it everywhere in both the natural and social worlds, and it is a wellspring of wonder. A forest, with its unfathomable diversity of symbiotic species, is the emergent outcome of individual plants and animals trying to survive and reproduce. I am currently reading Robert Macfarlane's magisterial Underland, which includes an astonishing discussion of the living subterranean mesh of tree roots and fungi that allow trees to care for their sick, warn of predators, and exchange resources in times of need. I find equally magical the emergent patterns in urban metropolises.

Living with Emergence

So why would a writer like Joanna Penn have "trust emergence" written over desk, and why would those words resonate so deeply with me?

Complex systems have frustrating properties. For starters, you can't control them from the top down. Each change you make triggers reactions and counter-reactions that may be difficult or impossible to understand or predict. That's why planned economies rarely work. And unfortunately, many aspects of our personal lives play out within complex systems. I have spent inordinate amounts of time writing up life strategies, charting out goals, and pondering how to attain certain life outcomes. These can be helpful sometimes but life rarely goes according to plan.

Trusting emergence gives us permission to live bottom-up instead of top-down. It shifts our perspective towards the immediate now. We worry less about system-level outcomes, and focus more on (1) individual behaviors and (2) local interactions.

In our productivity-focused culture, we talk a lot about the former. James Clear's Atomic Habits makes the strong case that, paradoxically, to improve outcomes we should worry less about outcomes and focus more on daily habits. When we get the habits right, goodness emerges. For me as a writer, that means worrying less about my long-term writing career and focusing more on sitting down to write each day. This shift brings a healthier, purer way to live. We worry less about the future. We focus on activities that bring us joy and meaning, which delivers us more often into states of flow.

But it gets better, because improving our individual behaviors is only half the story. Emergent magic happens through our interactions with others. The wondrous world around us shimmers into its full capacities as neurons exchange signals, ants follow pheromone trails left by their predecessors, or two friends exchange powerful insights over a drink.

Trusting emergence points us towards a certain kind of life: a life characterized by deep connectedness, of seeking out others, of continual rich exchange, and of mutual learning. The more we connect, the more room we create for emergence to work its magic. And as it turns out, we have considerable evidence that this is the most fulfilling way to live.

As I sat down to write this post, I was surprised to discover that the phrase "trust emergence" did not apparently originate with complexity science at all, but rather with meditation teacher Gregory Kramer, as part of a practice he calls Insight Dialogue. He writes:

To Trust Emergence is to enter practice without the bias of a goal. This does not mean we do not hope for better communication, wise relationships, or the emergence of collective intelligence, compassion, or peace. Rather, we recognize that we don’t know what these things really are or how they can be attained, and we give our full and energetic commitment only to this moment of experience. The images and judgments that hinder clear and fluid awareness are set aside, freeing our natural intelligence.

Perhaps Gregory Kramer studied complexity science at some point. Or perhaps, as so often occurs, our most brilliant contemporary scientists "discovered" a truth that our wisdom teachers have been quietly holding for millennia.

Of course, caveats are in order. Emergent phenomena can be good or bad. Social media's crippling polarization of Americans is a particularly extreme case in point. We must be wise, both as individuals and as citizens helping construct the laws, norms, and institutions that guide our bumbling complex democracy along into the future.

Still, I find the idea of trusting emergence magical. It is a good way to live.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

New Podcast: From The Green Notebook

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I'm delighted I had the chance to sit down with Joe Byerly at From The Green Notebook for a podcast about defense innovation, reflection, personal growth, and my book Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal.

This is one of the best discussions I've had about the unique challenges and opportunities of leaving the "well-lit" path in DoD and making unconventional career choices--a common reality for many of us who care about creating change inside our organizations.

Joe and I go back a long way, as we discuss in the podcast. We met at the first annual conference of the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, which was a pivotal experience for both of us. A group of young grassroots military innovators had been steadily finding each other and forming relationships online, culminating in the decision to hold a conference so we could all meet face to face. Joe and I met at that conference and although we only loosely kept in touch afterwards, that conversation was apparently influential for both of us and we've admired each other's work from afar. That conference gave Joe the confidence and courage to start seriously blogging; years later, From the Green Notebook has become one of the best resources available for teaching military members (and the general public) about leadership, personal growth, self-reflection, and other related topics. So it was a real pleasure to reconnect after all these years, catch up, and compare notes on our respective journeys.

Violating the Cold Equations

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT

We are living through dark times, which is reflected in our preferences in art and entertainment. For years Americans have shown an insatiable appetite for post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories, perhaps to help themselves cope with the real-world dystopia we often seem to be living in.

I'll admit to sharing this fascination with dystopia. My fiction writing often explores how good human beings cope with breakdown. My novel The Lords of Harambee is about how members of a shoe-string peacekeeping operation confront a genocide, and I'm finishing the first draft of a post-apocalyptic novel set in Jordan.

My ruminations on breakdown are firmly rooted in the real world. I have given twenty years to military service. I spent much of that time studying how to prevent state collapse and restore order in shattered countries. It's easy to feel like all that was in vain, especially as I watch the political turmoil in our own country and contemplate the disastrous end to the American expedition in Afghanistan.

Yet in the past few months, a new current in Science Fiction has caught my interest: many SF writers are tired of dystopia.

I recently came across the term hopepunk, a nerdish label for stories that pushes back against the bleak dystopianism of our age. It sits between nihilistic grimdark tales and noblebright stories that pit white-shielded knights the forces of evil. Alexandra Rowland, who coined the term, wrote that the fight is the essential thing. "Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength." The genre is about a relentless fight to build a "better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there." Hopepunk makes an existential proclamation to the universe.

The label has flaws, as numerous critics pointed out. It is nebulous enough to mean almost anything. I agree, but the term resonates. We need it today. Even if the term is superficially banal, the "punk" reminds us that such determined hope is countercultural in today's world. This kind of hope is angry and hard-edged, but it's still hope—and it should inspire us to action.

Tracing the The Cold Equations

I'm on vacation today, and spent my morning tracing the lineage of a famous SF short story called The Cold Equations. What makes the story fascinating is that writers keep revisiting it, and each retelling reflects the spirit of the age. In this lineage we can see status-quo resignation evolve into fiery determination to create change.

What set me on this exploration was Aimee Ogden's new story The Cold Calculations (read for free, consider supporting Clarkesworld), a retelling that brings a hopepunk spirit to this old classic.

(spoilers follow for the older stories but not Ogden's)

Godwin's "The Cold Equations" (1954)

In Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" (1954, full text here), the pilot of an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) discovers a teenage girl stowaway. These lightweight ships have little mass and carry razor-thin fuel margins, so the extra mass of a stowaway will cause a ship to run out of fuel and crash. Physics dictates a brutal necessity, codified in law: stowaways must be jettisoned out the airlock. The compassionate pilot tries to find some way to escape the cold equations, but in the end, he succumbs and jettisons the girl.

I vividly remember reading the story as a teenager. It felt contrived but also powerful—a way of capturing the hard austerity of space, but also a vivid thought experiment. I thought a lot about the story when I wrote Celestial Object 143205, which is more optimistic but presents a similar vision of the unforgiving harshness of space.

However, the story has provoked no shortage of outrage.

Some saw a streak of misogyny, as the story's male characters suffer in their effort to save a woman from the consequences of her foolishness.

Many felt the story was too contrived. Godwin had to carefully engineer every aspect of the story to justify its appalling conclusion. This was not easy to do; editor John Campbell sent back three drafts in which Godwin found ways to save the girl, insisting she must die.

Cory Doctorow wrote a scathing critique. The cold equations did not kill the girl; the author did. Doctorow writes, "[The story] is, then, a contrivance. A circumstance engineered for a justifiable murder. An elaborate shell game that makes the poor pilot—and the company he serves—into victims."

By focusing on the inexorable logic of the cold equations, the author lets the real culprits off the hook: executives, managers, and engineers who designed such a tenuous interplanetary resupply infrastructure.

Sakers' "The Cold Solution" (1991)

Almost forty years after "The Cold Equations" appeared, Don Sakers published The Cold Solution in Analog, which won a "Reader's Favorite" award that year. The story exactly mirrors the original, except a female pilot discovers a young boy stowed away. In the end, the captain says she would give anything to save his life—and a solution becomes clear. She and the boy wake up in a hospital ward, regenerating missing multiple limbs that she sacrificed with her laser knife.

In an afterword, Sakers writes that he saw the grimness of "The Cold Equations" as a necessary corrective to an earlier generation of SF "that said it was always possible to come up with a new force, ray, or vibration that could save the day." At the same time, however, he saw "The Cold Equations" as rooted in a debunked view of the universe: clockwork Newtonian mechanics, hierarchical, rules-based, binary, and stereotypically male.

Sakers wanted to write in a stereotypically female "networked, exceptions-based, fuzzy-logic way" more consistent with a quantum mechanics universe (he issues appropriate caveats about the limits of these gender stereotypes).

I found this story a bit tedious, particularly reading it back-to-back with the original. Its main contribution is suggesting a "solution," but if you view the original merely as a provocative thought experiment, then a solution was never really needed.

Still, the story is interesting because of how it reflects changing attitudes between 1954 and 1991. Authors like Sakers refused to accept a rigid, hierarchical view of the world that implicitly justified the status quo.

Ogden's "The Cold Calculations" (2021)

Aimee Ogden's new story in Clarkesworld takes this critique a step further. Ogden isn't content to save one stowaway; she is indignant at a system that creates such appalling moral dilemmas in the first place. In the first lines she asks, "when once upon a time becomes so many, many times, surely someone must think to ask: had to die? On whose authority?"

The cold equations are simple physics, she writes... "Unless, of course, someone’s been fudging the numbers."

The story has the same setup as "The Cold Equations": a dropship pilot discovers a young female stowaway. Ogden breezes through the necessary contrivances in the first few paragraphs so we can get to the real story: how the pilot will cope with a broken system that has forced this choice upon him.

Ogden's anger is rooted in the real world. She makes that clear by interweaving multiple vignettes from modern history, in which characters suffer at the hands on corrupt organizations focused on power and enrichment. I found these disorienting at first until, on second reading, I googled and realized they were all based on real people and situations (the vignette about Soyuz-1 was chilling; I can't believe I never knew that piece of history).

This is a grittier story than its predecessors, deliberately harnessing pain and anger, with a ship's supply worth of F-bombs along the way. Yet it also burns with compassion and self-sacrifice. This is a protagonist who will not go quietly into the night, nor will the supporting characters in the vignettes.

I won't spoil the ending, except to say that the story ends with an ambiguous twist that raises more questions than it answers, and leaves the reader wanting a full accounting from the corporation. It was perhaps too ambiguous, hinting at sinister machinations that aren't adequately explained, but I thought it was a great story overall.

From Surrender to Agency

These three stories reflect a broad societal trend from accepting power structures to overthrowing them. Ogden's story even features an omniscient narrator urging readers to find their anger and overturn the tables. This is potent stuff, revolutionary stuff, Jesus-in-the-temple-throwing-out-the-moneychangers-with-a-whip stuff.

The characters across these stories show increasing agency. In "The Cold Equations", the protagonist is helpless; in "The Cold Solution", she finds a way to save a life; and in "The Cold Calculations", he stands ready to challenge an entrenched interstellar corporation.

As a political scientist and military officer, I have mixed thoughts about calls to overturn power structures. On the one hand, mass mobilization against entrenched power structures has led to some of the greatest advances for justice and equality in history. On the other hand, human societies need some measure of hierarchy to function. Revolutionary fervor goes so quickly awry, and the inability to form hierarchical institutions spells anarchy (you can read my dissertation if you're bored). A healthy civilization requires a constant tension between stability and revolution.

Despite my broader reservations, I do support the role of writers and artists who embody the force for change and renewal. They play a critical role in a democratic society. More than anything, I'm inspired by the SF movement underway, during these dark times, to present optimistic visions in which heroes turn anger into hope and fight to build better futures.

Image Credit: "Sci Fi Space Airlock" by Shaun Davies

Backstory: Destroyer of Worlds

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I am starting a new "Backstory" series, in which I describe the background and process of writing my fiction. You should read the story first. Destroyer of Worlds is available for free at Inkstick media.

I find it easiest to write fiction when structure is imposed on me, so I always watch for themed contests and anthologies. I wrote The Wasp Keepers for an anthology about the human cost of war, Fitness Function for a CIMSEC contest about maritime security, and Celestial Object 143205 for an anthology about derelict ships.

I especially like themed anthologies and contests when they touch on military and foreign policy issues, so when I stumbled across Inkstick's contest about nuclear apathy, I knew I had to submit.

The reality of the nuclear threat

I studied nuclear policy and strategy extensively at SAASS. At Stanford, I was a Teacher's Assistant for Scott Sagan, one of the foremost scholars on nuclear weapons. As part of his class, we ran a simulation involving a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference. Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation also runs a project called Preventing Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism, which provides a wealth of expertise on nuclear issues.

One of the amazing things about nuclear weapons is that they have not proliferated further or been used more. The nuclear taboo is real. The NPT has worked better than any international treaty should, given that it has no real enforcement mechanism and institutionalizes an "unfair" gap between the nuclear haves and have-nots. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD)—which is often viewed as the ultimate expression of reckless military insanity—was actually an extraordinary achievement that successfully prevented nuclear war between the US and USSR, amid a conflict spiral that both sides felt helpless to control.

Yet we are also extremely lucky. The world approached the brink of nuclear annihilation multiple times. The Cuban Missile Crisis is the best-known example, but numerous mistakes, accidents, and false alarms could have triggered the apocalypse. The NPT is always under threat, rogue actors continue to seek and build nuclear weapons, and other international rivalries could escalate to include the use of nuclear weapons.

We now face a curious problem. Our international regime for preventing the proliferation and usage of nuclear weapons has worked so well that most people take it for granted. Yet nuclear weapons remain the most terrifying technology on the planet and pose a truly existential threat to humanity. The norms and institutions that keep the nuclear genie bottled are old, rickety, and fraying. Many of the technologies are ancient; up until a few years ago, the U.S. nuclear enterprise relied on 8" floppy disks. In a world of "normal accidents", we are always one mistake away from a catastrophe. The question is not if another nuclear weapon will ever be used, but when.

My experiences of nuclear apathy

Yet despite the the very real threat, nuclear apathy is real. I have two relevant stories from TA'ing that class.

On the first day of class the professor asked his undergraduates what security challenges they thought posed existential threats to the United States. Their answers reflected the spirit of our age: Global warming. Fake news. Political polarization. Environmental destruction. Donald Trump. I would actually agree with a couple of those, but the absence of military threats—and especially nuclear weapons—was striking.

My second relevant memory was of a guest speaker who had spent his life studying nuclear weapons and working on nuclear policy. He had dedicated his semi-retirement to fighting nuclear apathy every way he knew how and showed a nightmarish video he had helped produce. This wizened old policymaker held these young undergraduates spellbound as he sagely described the horrors of nuclear weapons. For that one brief class period, he made them care.

Writing the story

I only learned about Inkstick's nuclear apathy contest the day before the deadline.

When I have constraints but no clear story idea, I brainstorm on a clean sheet of paper. I jot down every idea, no matter how half-baked. Getting started is tough, but once I get in the flow, ideas bubble up. Each idea branches into others, especially if I deliberately try to apply twists.

The point of the contest was to shake people out of their nuclear apathy. The obvious answer would be to write a story about a nuclear detonation, or maybe a desperate race against nuclear-armed terrorists.

However, I tend to favor more subtle psychological stories. What if my story was actually about nuclear apathy itself, and an extreme effort to overcome it? How far might activists go to shake Americans out of their complacency?

Presumably they wouldn't actually detonate a nuclear weapon. What, then?

I have an abiding interest in virtual worlds so scribbled that down on my list. Maybe somebody sets off a nuclear weapon in a virtual world? Users would experience much of the horror of a nuclear attack without any real damage. That could work. But who would initiate such an attack? Maybe Russia or China. But what would they gain from that? Twist: maybe part of the U.S. government would launch an attack to whip up support for nuclear modernization or a new arms control initiative. But that seemed extreme and probably illegal for a democratic government.

It would have to be a radical non-government group. That led me back to the memory of the wizened policymaker and his video aimed at shaking students out of their complacency. What if he had access to a virtual world? What scenarios might he create to bring the threat to life?

I caught a glimpse of another character: a video game designer tasked with designing the virtual apocalypse. His daughter was an addict of the game. I saw him holding a drink, trembling, waiting for the attack to commence while his daughter played the game in the next room.

I normally spend considerable time fleshing out characters before I actually start writing, but since I had less than 24 hours to deliver the story, I couldn't spare the time. I dove in and wrote without a map, trusting my subconscious to guide me along.

Along the way, I thought back to those Stanford students who fretted over the existential threat of fake news but never even considered the threat of nuclear weapons. I realized that even the carnage of a virtual apocalypse might get overlooked, compared with more trivial concerns about the loss of a beloved source of entertainment and profit.

I wrote the story in two sittings on my back patio, interrupted only by coffee breaks and a run. I normally spend a couple weeks revising stories, but lacked the time in this case. The resulting story is less polished than some of my others, but I think it captures my initial idea and evokes the sentiment I hoped it would: a realization of how hard it is to make the general public care about a technology that can annihilate the human race.

Fiction: Destroyer of Worlds

Fri, 12 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I have a new short story out! Today Inkstick Media ran Destroyer of Worlds, which took third place in its contest soliciting stories designed to shock readers out of nuclear apathy. In a few days I'll share a bit more how this story came to be, but in the meantime, enjoy the story!

I'm especially thankful to Nadaskii for the gorgeous artwork, which perfectly captures how I envisioned this scene. The casual way Cassie holds the martini glass brilliantly captures the story's surreal vibe. I didn't realize Inkstick would commission artwork, so when they sent me the draft sketch, I was blown away. I'm still new enough at this that seeing another artist create an interpretation of my work is magical. Then again, maybe that will always be magical!

The first and second place entries were also great and worth a read: Paddlefish by Madison Hissom and Five Twenty Nine a.m. by Austin Mullen.

By the way, while I'm writing about Inkstick Media: I have always loved Dune. I read it for the third time in anticipation of Denis Villeneuve's new film_,_ which I loved. I thankfully saw it on IMAX, then went back with my boys so they could experience it. With that said, Dune has a complex relationship with Arab history and culture, and Arab commentators have raised some valid concerns about the lack of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) representation in the cast. My two years in Jordan sensitized me to these types of issues. I raise this now because Inkstick ran a great piece on the topic by Khaldoun Khelil titled Erasing Arabs from "Dune." Khelil love Dune and actually helped write the Dune roleplaying game (RPG), so he offers a critique that is respectful and even affectionate while addressing the salient concerns.

A Grand Experience

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I wrote this post for the Paradox Sports blog. Paradox "is dedicated to transforming lives and communities through adaptive climbing opportunities that defy convention." Check them out!

I learned about Paradox Sports’ Grand Teton climb as Kabul was falling.

The dramatic collapse of 20 years of U.S. foreign policy kept me glued to social media. I’d spent years flying C-17s, including more than 200 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now I had friends flying desperate evacuation flights out of Kabul. I watched Facebook for any new scrap of information.

That was how I stumbled across a post from Paradox co-founder and military veteran D.J. Skelton, recruiting for an upcoming veterans climb up the Grand Teton.

The mountains had always been my solace. Climbing the Grand Teton with a group of veterans sounded amazing, but I thought Paradox only worked with adaptive climbers.

“I’d love to go,” I told D.J. “But I don’t have a disability.”

D.J. informed me that this trip was different. Every September 11th week, Paradox hosted two climbing trips for veterans. They welcomed all veterans, wounded or not.

“I want you there,” D.J. told me. “Even if it’s just to drag my ass up the mountain.”

As I prepared, I wondered how hard the Grand Teton would be. I had lopsided abilities. I regularly climbed outdoors, but always on single-pitch walls in walk-in crags. I had no experience with mountaineering or the alpine environment.

When I stepped off the plane at Jackson Hole and caught my first glimpse of the Grand Teton, I felt a prickle of fear. The peak looked formidable.

That was good, I thought.

I liked to climb at the edge of my abilities, where challenge brought growth. A little fear meant I was on the right track.

The climbing excited me, of course, but what really brought me to the Grand Teton was the promise of community.

I have always been introverted. My day job as an Air Force professor kept me in my head most of the time. A cross-country Air Force move had uprooted me from my community, and in the COVID-19 era, I found it hard to put down new roots. I was approaching my 20-year military retirement, anxious about transitioning, and asking hard midlife questions.

Then came Kabul.

I commissioned as an officer just months after September 11th. I’d spent my entire career engaged in the United States’ wars against terrorism and now, in one disastrous month, everything we had built at such high cost seemed to unravel. The Afghan government’s collapse raised hard questions about the sacrifices our country and Armed Forces had made.

I felt a barrage of emotions like grief, guilt, and shame. Mostly, I processed these alone. Climbing had helped sustain my mental health for years but what I really yearned for now was community.

The idea of climbing the Grand Teton with a group of veterans sounded deeply appealing. Even so, I had no idea what to expect. More than anything, I felt curious. What would it feel like to join a team on a Paradox trip?

We based in the rustic American Alpine Club’s Climbers Ranch, nestled on the plain beneath the ominous mountain skyline. I met the other seven veterans and three Paradox staff as they arrived. Even with the busy schedule over the next four days, we had leisurely breakfasts and evening hours to continue these conversations. My colleagues embodied everything I’d come to expect and love in military veterans. They were team-focused, goal-oriented, adventurous, and funny. We bonded easily.

We spent two days with our amazing Exum Mountain Guides, learning the skills we’d need on the climb: gear, knots, movement over rock, belaying, rappelling, and communication. These skills were not particularly difficult for those who’d climbed before, but I marveled at my colleagues with zero experience who tackled multipitch climbs and overhanging rappels on their first day.

It surprised me how little we talked about our military service. Oh, it came up here and there. I got glimpses into my new friends’ life stories. Each person brought something to the mountain. A few had physical wounds. For most, the wounds were less visible. Some faced hardship in their personal lives. All of us, I think, felt the weight of twenty years of war.

But you would never have known that, spending time with our group. What defined my teammates was not their baggage but rather a deep commitment to growth, renewal, and continually expanding their limits—all within a team. We told stories. We laughed. We shared sunscreen and trail snacks and swapped gear and engaged in a thousand other small acts of mutual generosity and support.

We didn’t need to talk about the past, I realized. The mountains were enough.

On our third morning, we began our ascent up the Grand Teton. Three miles of forest switchbacks gave way to strenuous uphill hiking through scree and boulder fields. We helped and cheered and encouraged each other along. When our guides raised the possibility of dividing our team based on skill level, our response was swift and unanimous: we would summit this mountain as one group.

That night we camped at the Lower Saddle, at 11,700’ feet. We feasted on cold, foil-wrapped pizza, drank hot tea, and nibbled on chocolate for dessert. We repacked gear, laid out sleeping bags, and watched the evening shadows crawl up the steep, shattered granite still above us.

We rose at 0400, sipped instant coffee, and ate breakfast by headlamp.

At last, we started our ascent.

After trudging up a steep scree field, we each roped up with a partner and guide. My partner was Bruce, an Army veteran who had never seriously climbed before this week. After each harrowing move over exposed ledges, we fist-bumped. “Good job, brother,” became our mantra. When Bruce reached the “crawl”—a famous stretch of the Owen Spalding route that requires edging out over a vertical abyss—he didn’t hesitate. Finally, after seven short pitches of roped climbing, our guide stepped aside so Bruce and I could take the lead.

We scrambled up the final steps to the summit. There we grinned and embraced in the cold, clear air. Two by two, the rest of our team joined us. We all whooped and cheered and hugged and fist-bumped. One vet—severely wounded in Iraq many years ago—cried as he told us this was the hardest thing he had done since being wounded. His vulnerability opened the floodgates for the rest of us.

It was the summit experience every climber hopes for. Yes, the climbing was fantastic, but the trip was never really about the climbing. Climbing simply became a vehicle to confront ourselves—with all our hopes and fears—and emerge stronger. Our wonderful team provided mutual support and encouragement every step of the way.

I’m not sure exactly what I was looking for on this trip, but I’m satisfied that I found it. During our descent back to the waiting world, I had much to ponder. At a time when so much in our society seems broken, the trip reminded me of enduring core values: Brotherhood (and sisterhood!). Mutual caring. Encouraging each other—and sometimes hauling each other—onward. The healing power of nature.

As we prepared to descend, one of our guides swept his arm around, indicating both the shattered granite peaks and our own little tribe, standing in a circle in our puffy jackets and helmets and climbing harnesses. He said, “THIS is civilization.”

New Podcast: CFO Bookshelf

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

I have another podcast episode out, this time with the wonderful Mark Gandy at CFO Bookshelf. Mark has created a wonderful community to educate and mentor CFOs and other business leaders through discussions of good books. We have a great conversation about my book "Eating Glass" that covers grit, perfectionism, the aftershocks of failure, the critical role of family and friends, and why failure experiences are such a rich opportunity for taking our lives in new directions.

New Podcast: Always in Pursuit

Sat, 28 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

New podcast out today! I sat down with Mike Burke on the Always in Pursuit podcast to talk about failure, growth, and my book Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal. I loved doing this one! Mike is such a thoughtful and engaging conversation partner, and he has done such a valuable service by encouraging others to tell their authentic stories.

Here is Mike's introduction:

Failure!! How do we learn from it??

Mark D. Jacobsen is an expert on that question. In the latest episode of Always in Pursuit Mark answers this and talks about his struggles and own demons.

We also discuss his latest book “Eating Glass” which is 1 of 5 books Mike S Burke keeps on his desk. Order it! You won’t regret it.

This episode is brought to you by our awesome sponsor Adyton.io who is effeciency of systems for many organizations!

Why You Should Tell Your Hardest Story

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Later this week I am appearing on Mike Burke's podcast "Always in Pursuit." To accompany the podcast, I wrote this guest post for his blog. It is repeated here in its entirety, but be sure to check out Always in Pursuit for much more on these themes.

I'm going to venture a guess. Each day when you prepare for work, you strap on metaphorical armor. You've been at this a while and have developed a battle-hardened persona. You project confidence, ambition, and a relentless focus on success and mission accomplishment. You shrug off setbacks, roll with the punches, and laugh with your peers.

But underneath beneath that armor lies something you would never dare reveal: a self sometimes haunted by uncertainty and self-doubt. You carry wounds: scars from old failures, a lingering sense of shame, the trauma of broken relationships or abuse or catastrophe, the restless fear that you don't have what it takes. These feelings might dominate your daily inner life or just drop by occasionally like an unwelcome guest, but they're never entirely absent.

The details will vary, of course. We each walk our own journey. Some people seem immune to self-doubt. But we are all human, and for most people, that means we live with a shadow side that we fear revealing to the world.

Joseph Campbell taught us that every story is a variant on the same old myth: in our innocence we set out into a world that is strange and sometimes wonderful and often brutal. We face great peril, escape traps, and fight dragons, but our greatest battle is a confrontation with ourselves. At the heart of that journey lies what Campbell called "the innermost cave," the place we most dread to go. It is the place we must finally enter if we are to ever grow into our truest, noblest selves. Think Luke Skywalker coming face to face with himself in Darth Vader's mask in a vision on Dagobagh, or Frodo staring into the fires of Mt. Doom, facing his moment of ultimate temptation.

I want to issue you a challenge: you need to go there. You need to enter your innermost cave and then come back to tell the story.

My story

If that admonition evokes terror, I understand. Five years ago, I went through a scorching season of personal breakdown. I had walked away from a promising trajectory as an Air Force pilot to pursue a passionate dream that combined innovation and education. The nonprofit I founded crashed and burned after a year and a half of wholehearted, nonstop work. My PhD research agenda collapsed, and I found myself feeling alone, having lost the faith of nearly everyone whose support I needed. Health problems surfaced and my mental health frayed. I became badly burned out but couldn't get out from under the weight of my responsibilities. It took me a couple years to find a way through the ensuing dark night of the soul.

I eventually found my way into my innermost cave, where I began writing. I wrote dozens of pages of journal entries—raw, honest, vulnerable reflections on aspects of failure and its aftermath. I wrote about emotions like fear, anger, and disappointment. As time went by and I found my feet again, I wrote about the halting, uncertain journey back to health and renewed strength. Somewhere in there, I realized I had enough material for a book. I turned these reflections into Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal. I thought the book could help others who were struggling in the aftermath of a failure experience.

That was when the magnitude of my choice became apparent. Do I tell this story? Do I dare reveal my self-doubt and weakness to the world? How would I ever survive this? I felt visceral, white-knuckled, paralyzing fear.

Which brings us back to you and your story.

Why we fear vulnerability

Most of us are afraid to disclose our hardest life experiences. I believe we gain power over things by giving them names, so let's inventory some of these fears. These fears are understandable but they are largely bullshit. As we go, let's reframe each one properly.

I will be seen as weak. We imagine that others will never respect us again if we show the slightest crack in our facade of strength and confidence. REFRAME: It takes strength and self-confidence to show vulnerability. We respect authentic leaders who are brave enough to reveal themselves.
I will be seen as strange. Nobody else feels this way. We think maybe we are uniquely screwed up. Surely normal people do not struggle like we do. REFRAME: Everybody has aspects of themselves, and stories from their past, that they fear to reveal. When people speak in vulnerability, their words resonate because we see ourselves.
My story isn't nearly as bad as what (insert name) suffered. We should shrug off our hardships and failures because they pale beside what others suffer. REFRAME: There is no room for comparison. Nobody should gatekeep each other's deepest lived experiences. We all feel the whole range of human emotions, from soaring joy to deep despair. We each have our own story, and it's ours to tell.
I don't have enough talent to tell my story. We worry about our lack of artistic abilities. We fear we won't do the story justice. It will be dull, lifeless, and not worth anyone's time. REFRAME: When we share from a place of vulnerability, talent barely matters. What connects with an audience is authenticity. We feel in our guts when someone speaks from a place of vulnerability. That is what breathes life into your story.
Telling my story will damage my professional reputation. This might be the heart of our fear. If others see us as we really are, we will lose their love and respect. REFRAME: If somebody loses respect for you because you tell your authentic story, you probably don't want to work with them anyway. The best leaders have empathy and high emotional intelligence. By confidently embracing your story, you exhibit those traits. Good leaders will see and respect that.

The need to own your story

When you enter the innermost cave and come face-to-face with yourself, you realize that you have a story to tell. Maybe it's a journey through the dark night of combat and then swimming back up to the light. Wrestling in the dark with the demon of addiction. Childhood scars that still haunt you. A broken relationship and the disorienting years that followed. A professional failure that left you questioning your own leadership ability.

Many of us spend years hiding from our own stories. We run the opposite direction from our innermost cave, like Jonah fleeing God's imperative to go Ninevah. No matter how far or how fast we run, we can never outrun ourselves. That shadow eats at us from within. It affects our health. Our families. Our leadership. At some point, we will face a reckoning. Out of the depths some great whale will swallow us whole and drag us beneath the waters to that place we fear to go.

But here's the thing: when you find the courage to enter that innermost cave (whether by choice or because you no longer have a choice), that encounter can change your life. It can begin a transformation within you. And when you go back out into the world and tell your story, you can bring that restorative, transformational power to other people. You will shine with a dark and mysterious luminosity.

Telling my story was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Now I actively look for opportunities to share my story and help others tell theirs. That is why it was such a pleasure to join Mike Burke on the Always in Pursuit podcast this week (link forthcoming).

Here are just a few of the benefits that authentic storytelling brings:

You break the chains of fear. Only after I released my book did I realize the full extent to which fear had defined my life. I was terrified of my own story and how it might be perceived. Once I committed to owning that story, and the first supportive comments poured in, the relief was indescribable. Just as darkness cannot tolerate light, your fear of being revealed cannot survive openness and authenticity.
You become integrated and whole, enabling future growth. So many of us are "stuck" in a life situation we can't move past. Our souls are divided. When we own and tell our stories, we find wholeness. That split self becomes one, maybe for the first time in our lives. We grow deeper into our truest selves, and we now have the ability to keep growing and flourishing... to be always in pursuit.
You have a basis for healing relationships. The same "stuckness" in our own souls can also impair our relationships. As we own our stories and gain comfort sharing them, it enables to us to have hard but necessary conversations with others. It helps us take responsibility and, when necessary, say "I'm sorry." Not every relationship can be healed, but some can... or at least be put to rest.
You can help others navigate their own life experiences. When you share in authenticity, you discover that so many people around you harbor their own private stories. Your courage and authenticity opens space for them to share. You can become a source of encouragement and strength and inspiration, which is perhaps the richest form of leadership.
You develop empathy for others. As you grapple with your own journey, you gain empathy for others who are on their own journeys. That empathy can only make you a wiser and more thoughtful leader.
You develop new relationships. Real conversations are rare in today's world. Your willingness to go deep opens up a rare space in which real connection can happen and real relationships can be built.
You help build community in a world that sorely needs it. We live in an age of toxic individualism, loneliness, and despair. The world needs healing and repair, and that has to begin in community—with authentic connection between human beings. The relationships you form through telling your story provide a solid foundation on which to build.

The admonition

Owning and telling our stories is not easy. It often takes time, effort, and help from other people to untangle our own life experiences and find the essence of our stories. Entering our innermost cave might be the scariest experience of our lives, and telling that story to others might be even more frightening yet.

But it was for good reason that Joseph Campbell saw this mythic quest as the beating heart of human existence. This is the universal story, the story of what it means to be a human being.

Do the work. Enter the innermost cave. Discover your story, and when you do, take courage and tell your story to others. That is the first step towards the healing and building that we, our country, and our world so desperately need.

July 2021 Newsletter

Tue, 03 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Greetings, dear readers! It has been four months since my last newsletter. Partly that's because I wanted to have enough new developments to make it worth your while. Also, even after a year at this, I'm still trying to figure out how to build a platform and community around my writing. This is still an exploratory season for me, as I try a wide range of things across my many different interest areas. That is fun, rewarding, and challenging, but doesn't exactly contribute to a consistent brand or stable author platform!

With that said, let's dive in with the news!

Eating Glass Audiobook Now Available

My biggest news is that the audiobook version of Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal is now available through Amazon and Audible. This took me a few months longer than planned, as I had to climb a steep learning curve.

I spent a couple weeks perfecting an audio recording environment in my work office, only to have the AC permanently kick on for the summer—which entails a loud pipe in the ceiling continuously gurgling and chattering. So much for that! I started over at home, at odd times when my family was not around. My performance skills improved as I went along. By the time I reached the last chapter, I no longer liked my earlier performances, so I ended up recording nearly the entire book twice.

In the end, I'm quite happy with the result. I think reading my own story gives it a sense of intimacy and power, and hope listeners will agree.

Marketing Eating Glass has proven to be a considerable challenge, so if anyone knows influencers who might be interested in the book, I invite you to spread the word or let me know about opportunities.

Derelict is Now Available

My new short story "Celestial Object 143205" is now available in a new anthology titled Derelict. When I saw the announcement that a forthcoming SF/F anthology would be dedicated entirely to derelict ships—one of my favorite tropes—I knew I wanted to contribute a story. The challenge is that so many stories about derelict ships feel exactly the same. I sat down with a notebook and pen to brainstorm. I asked myself, "What's the most unique twist on derelict ships I can possibly provide?" I don't want to give away too much, but I'll just drop this picture here!

I love this story; it's probably the most technically perfect story I've written. Derelict is published by a small press, but I hope it gets noticed and read.

In addition to being a lot of fun, the story features the United States Space Force (USSF). As the new Service finds its feet, a debate has unfolded about the degree to which Science Fiction should shape its identity. SF has always inspired dreamers and played an outsized role in shaping our visions of space, but its relationship with the USSF has been awkward and sometimes cringeworthy. Its formation coincided with the launch of the Steve Carell comedy Space Force, its logo bears an uncanny resemblance to Star Trek, and its use of the name "Guardians" for members evokes crass talking raccoons and green-skinned aliens. Even more serious SF has set up a lot of false expectations about what the Space Force can do. At least with today's technology, the Space Force will not be operating starcruisers. My friend and SAASS professor Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb set off some fireworks when she argued in the Space Power Journal that USSF leaders should focus on "de-science fictionalizing."

I mostly agree with these critiques, but I also believe in the power of SF to help us think through how to approach the future. I love serious, thoughtful SF that begins with the real world and its challenges and constraints and explores outward from there, so I took Dr. Whitman Cobb's piece as a constructive challenge. Can we write serious SF to help USSF leaders think about the future? "Celestial Object 143205" features the Space Force's first interplanetary spacecraft. This is not the Starship Enterprise; it is a frail tin can, behind schedule and over budget, aimed at keeping just a few astronauts alive for long months as they cross vast gulfs of space. What does strategic competition look like in that kind of harsh, unforgiving environment? Check it out.

I have a Mind Tools YouTube Series

A new class of students began at SAASS last month. SAASS does not have room in its curriculum to teach study skills or tools, so as an experiment, I created an optional YouTube series I call Tools for the Life of the Mind. It covers frameworks and tools for organizing knowledge, and includes some discussion of my own personal workflows. If that catches your interest, I encourage you to take a look.

Wasp Keepers translated into Polish

The first foreign translation of my work is underway! A couple months ago, Fantastyka, the oldest Polish speculative fiction magazine reached out about translating and publishing my story "The Wasp Keepers" from the War Stories anthology, about a U.S. military occupation of Syria enforced by micro-drones that offer perfect sensing and perfect kill capability. It was such a wonderful surprise to see this interest in a story I published 7 years ago, and amazing to see the final result—especially the custom artwork.

Other Writing News

I'm still writing away. I just submitted a new story to a contest about "breaking through nuclear apathy", hosted by Inkstick Media, and am still looking for homes for several unpublished stories.

My big writing project the past few months has been a near-future, dystopian, literary SF novel set in Jordan. Thematically, it explores what happens when unfettered polarization, fear, and hatred are taken to their logical conclusion. It also explores the sense of homelessness and loneliness we can feel if we refuse to join the frenzy of escalating, reciprocal hatred. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays a prominent role, but more and more, I feel like the novel has become a parable for the polarization of American society.

I first conceived of the novel a decade ago while living in Jordan but felt overwhelmed by the novel's many challenges. I still feel overwhelmed, but I'm finally trying to write it. I'm about 70,000 words in and am at the stage where every single word I write feels irredeemably awful. I'm trying to trust the process, and hoping the story comes together in revisions. I think it will; that's the bewildering magic of the writing process.

I've also been writing extensive reflections that I'm hoping will become another "life" book like Eating Glass. They center on the tension many of us feel between our desire to escape the world and our need to engage with it. I have always felt an almost painful longing to escape modern life to some quiet cabin in the mountains, and I'm fascinated by the massive wave of #vanlife-style escapism currently underway in the United States. Yet I also recognize that what our country and our world need more than anything right now are committed, engaged individuals who plant themselves in communities and institutions to create and lead the change we all long for. What do we do with that tension? Can we structure our lives in a way that satisfies our thirst to retreat, while also keeping us constructively engaged? I don't necessarily have answers but these writings are a sort of chronicle of my exploration.

Blog Updates

I have neglected my blog the past few months, but here is a roundup of posts since my last newsletter (all from April or May):

The Challenge of Bad Days - I love climbing and writing about climbing, because it's so instructive about life. This is my second piece (the first is here) about trying to "send" Misty, my hardest lead climb to date. I finally sent it on July 4th.

When You Lose Your "Why" - Our modern world continually urges us to find our "why" and live accordingly, but we all have to navigate seasons when a grand "why" seems elusive.

Messages in Bottles - Creating things is like sending lonely bottles off into a vast ocean. It often feels like nobody is listening, but then every once in a while a bottle comes back, and that makes it all worth it. The creator's challenge is to trust the process and keep sending bottles.

Things I Love

I started this section in my last newsletter to help spread the word about other creators I love. I really ought to write these more frequently, because I've accumulated too many in the past four months to share!

Here are a few:

Circe by Madeline Miller - If you like Homer, Greek mythology, historical epics, or just beautifully written fiction, this book is amazing. The Audible narration is mesmerizing. I recently listened to it for the second time.

Sarah Blondin - I sometimes use Insight Timer for meditation. There I stumbled across Sarah Blondin, who quickly became one of my favorite teachers. "Exploring the wilderness of your discomfort" is one of my favorites and resonates with themes from Eating Glass.

Dr. Michael Freeman - Dr. Freeman specializes in the study of mental health among entrepreneurs. You'll find him widely quoted in almost anything written on the subject, thanks to his study "Are Entrepreneurs Touched by Fire?" He read Eating Glass (and had nice things to say about it!) and pointed me towards some helpful resources. If that's of interest to you, check out the "Resources" page on his website.

Always in Pursuit - Army NCO Mike Burke reached out to me after reading When You Lose Your "Why" and then reading Eating Glass. He recently started the Always in Pursuit podcast to help others live quality, purpose-fueled lives. Mike is one of several podcasters who has been encouraging vulnerability among men and bravely shared his own story. We hit it off right away, and I will be appearing on his podcast at the end of August.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - Okay, so Andy Weir doesn't need any help from me. But wow... I loved this novel. He took the formula that worked in The Martian, enriched it, polished it, and expanded it to a scale of tremendous proportions. I also found Weir's humor and optimism refreshing. At a time when so much about the future seems bleak, he tells a story that is heartwarming without being sappy, in which cooperation and ingenuity can make a difference for humanity. It feels like a throwback to an earlier era of science fiction, and maybe that's a good thing.

The Santa Fe Institute's New Book - Here is where my eclectic interests and inconsistent brand shine through! The Santa Fe Institute, the home of complexity studies, released an entire free book yesterday titled Agent-Based Modeling for Archaeology. Complexity and modeling are both passions of mine, so the release of this book and accompanying code repository is fantastic news. Anyone who wants to learn ABM should check it out.

Messages in Bottles

Wed, 12 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

One of the hardest things about being a creator or innovator is the sense of unrequited love.

I have created a lot of things in my life, but much of the time, I feel like I'm talking to myself. I spent ten years chipping away at my novel The Lords of Harambee but it sold fewer than 300 copies. It is demoralizing spending half a day writing a blog post, only to earn a mere handful of likes. In the past few weeks I received five rejection notices for short stories. I have been writing personal emails to influencers who I believe might have a particular interest in my new book Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal. For every twenty emails I send out, I might get three polite dismissals and one lead.

My experience is pretty typical for creators. Most nonfiction books sell fewer than 250 copies a year and fewer than 3000 over their lifetime; some estimates put total sales of most books below 500 copies. The anecdotal acceptance rate for the SF magazines I send my short stories to is around 1%. Many bloggers spend years talking to themselves or a small core audience before they hit an inflection point. We live in a noisy world where supply far exceeds demand, so getting noticed often feels impossible. All we can do is keep at it.

It is easy to take this personally. We want the universe to meet our creative energy with love, enthusiasm, and whole-hearted acceptance. Creative pursuits often entail putting our whole selves on the line, so the world's response (or lack of a response) feels like a referendum on our value as human beings. Entrepreneurs know the pain and sometimes humiliation of making a hundred pitches to win a single supporter. When our work goes unloved, our natural inclination can be an overwhelming feeling of rejection.

In his marvelous 2012 commencement address, Neil Gaiman presents the best reframe of this dynamic that I have ever encountered. He says:

“A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.”

His words ring so true. Most artists build followings over years of hard, dedicated work. Most bottles go unanswered. A professional learns to play the long game. She spends little time fretting over the fate of any particular bottle; each time she floats one off to sea, she gets right to work stuffing the next one.

The flip side of this is the sheer joy that comes when we finally glimpse those first bottles bobbing back on the tide. Who would have thought? The metaphor evokes so much more intimacy than abstract click rates and sales figures. Someone sent me a message in a bottle!

I still remember the phone call I received at age 19, informing me my short story took 1st runner-up in a contest and I was being invited to an exclusive writing conference with famous authors I loved. More recently, one of my students showed up at my door with a dog-eared copy of my book Eating Glass, shaken in the best possible way; she opened up how my book spoke to her. I recently had the opportunity to speak with an undergraduate class about entrepreneurship, thanks to an invitation from a professor who read an article I wrote five years ago. This week a Polish science fiction magazine requested to translate and publish a story I wrote seven years ago. These moments of authentic, personal connection validate my years of investment in the writing process.

It would be nice to see the metrics on my side. Someday I would love to see upticks in newsletter subscriptions and book sales. But it's the messages in bottles that I will always cherish, with their precious handwritten notes on rolled scrap paper, answering my humble call from across an ocean of improbability.

If your first contributions to the world go answered, do not lose heart. Keep placing your messages in bottles and sending them out to sea.

Photo by Scott Van Hoy on Unsplash

What I'm Reading: April 2021

Tue, 04 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

It's been a few months since my I last wrote a "What I'm Reading" post, mainly because engagement is low. Nonetheless, I realized that I miss writing them, because I enjoy the process of reflecting on and synthesizing my recent reading. So here goes!

A Religion of One's Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World by Thomas Moore

I think I first heard about this book through a Facebook group associated with The Liturgists Podcast, which was my most valuable resource while I was deconstructing. The title caught my eye because although I am no longer religious, I remain deeply spiritual and still find religion fascinating. Perhaps my most passionate interest right now is to how to find spiritual fulfillment and community without religious belief.

Thomas Moore knows a thing or two about this, because he spent 13 years as a Catholic monk but left his order on the eve of ordination. He pursued an academic career but was denied tenure, so began a third career as a psychotherapist and writer. I was surprised I had never heard of such a prolific writer, who pens titles like Care of the Soul, Dark Night of the Soul, and A Life at Work—themes close to my heart.

This book calls for the deliberate cultivation of a religious sense in one's life, even if one does not ascribe to any religion. Moore writes, "personal religion is both an awareness of the sacred and concrete action arising out of that awareness." He says "it's important to cultivate an eye for the numinous, a sacred light within things or an aura around them, the feeling that there is more to the world than what meets the eye" (4). This is a lifelong project, in which we each build—and help others build—our own personal cathedrals. Moore believes that hardcore secularists who deny our religious impulses live impoverished lives.

As a Christian, I was constantly taught the dangers of "cafeteria-style religion", in which we remake God in our image by picking and choosing those aspects of religious experience that resonate with our souls. Moore has a higher view of human intuition, and enthusiastically embraces the project of constructing a personal religion; drawing heavily on Jungian concepts, he urges his readers to listen to those intuitions, explore widely among the world's religions, and find authentic and personal ways of embracing the sacred. Chapters cover various related topics like mysticism, dreams, therapy, the erotic, art, and even magic. That last chapter was the most challenging for me, but makes sense within a Jungian framework in which tools like dreams or rituals can help us access our own unconscious. Speaking of Jung, I found the chapter on eroticism incredibly helpful, because Moore looks past superficial sexual desire to a deeper, less conscious thirst for life and connection.

The book is not perfect. For such a profound topic, from such a passionate writer, the prose often felt flat to me. The author's personal embrace of different aspects of so many different religious simply sounds exhausting to me—but then, that is his personal religion, not mine. Those critiques aside, this was an inspiring book and one of the most helpful I've read about secular spirituality.

The Sand Sea by Michael McClellan

I mentioned this novel in my April Newsletter. Michael McClellan's debut is a masterpiece, and the world thankfully seems to have recognized it. Boosted by strong support from Steven Pressfield, the book appears to be selling well.

This is an unconventional fantasy novel, set in a world loosely based on the late 19th century. It has rightfully been described as "Lord of the Rings meets Indiana Jones." I'd add that it's seasoned with a bit of "Dune." The heroes fight with scimitars and pistols. They ride intercontinental trains and venture deep into the desert on camel expeditions. Imperial armies tote their cannons into war against primitive desert tribes. I loved almost everything about this book. The world is richly imagined, the characters are three-dimensional and diverse, the action gripping, and the prose perfect. This novel is truly a labor of love; McClellan's master craftsmanship, applied over more than a decade, shines.

If I can critique anything—and I'm nitpicking here—it's expectation management. The book is huge, so I expected a full dramatic arc brought to a conclusion. I was surprised and a little disappointed to find that the book ends short of a full resolution, as it sets up for a sequel. A couple key characters developed early in the book almost completely disappear in the latter third, although I expect they will play a more central role in the next book. Readers should also be aware that the book contains multiple torture scenes, which are gruesome. They serve the story but made me queasy, and I'm left wondering if they were necessary.

On the whole, though, this is a fantastic novel that I'd recommend to anyone who loves sweeping fantasy, 19th century history, or just a great story in a richly imagined world.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I bought this Audible book based on an algorithm recommendation and its glowing reviews. I wanted to love this book, because so much about it is excellent, but a couple structural flaws rankled the entire way.

The easiest way to characterize this book is as a 21st-century update to It's a Wonderful Life, right down to the near-identically-named hometowns. That film has often been criticized for being too sentimental, but its unapologetic sentimentality has always been part of its enduring appeal for me. The Midnight Library also has a sentimental streak, but there are no childlike angels here; it's a grittier book with antidepressants, alcoholism, a sexual encounter or two (not graphic), and the occasional f-bomb.

The premise is that protagonist Nora Seed, upon hitting rock bottom in life, finds herself in a library where she can try out alternative lives in which she makes different choices at key moments. It is hard to say more than that without giving away the story, but your initial intuitions about the book's plot arc and themes are probably correct.

I loved a lot about this book. The characters are fantastic, especially given the multiple roles that each has to play across many different realities. Audible narrator Carey Mulligan brings Nora to life. I devoured the book quickly because, at every step of the way, I wanted to know what happened to Nora next. That is the most essential element of storytelling, which says something about Haig's talent as a writer. The prose is wonderful. Everything about the book is well-executed, from the rich cast of characters and crisp dialog to the vividly imagined alternative lives.

Unfortunately, two structural challenges consistently undermined the book for me. The entire premise is that Nora can try out any possible version of her life and choose the one that suits her best. However, each life she tries is marred by some fatal flaw that undercuts its appeal. This pattern drives both the plot and the theme, but if Nora can really enter any possible world, why can't she simply enter an improved version of life without that flaw? Every step of the way, I imagined better alternatives, and felt increasingly aggravated by the smoke-and-mirrors necessary to drive the story forward.

Nora also enters each life with no memory to that point, no sense of her identity, and no knowledge of the people around her. She is essentially a stranger playing a part, forced to improvise and avoid detection as an impostor. This left me with a constant sense of dread, and many interactions made me cringe—not a feeling I enjoy when reading. The author relies on constant sleights of hand to make this work, and it repeatedly violated my suspension of disbelief. One character after another asks, "Are you okay, Nora?" when she doesn't know the most basic facts about her life, and she waves them off with vague comments about alcohol or exhaustion. I can't even imagine how hard these scenes were to write. Apart from the awkwardness, this setup undermines the book's core plot and theme, because I can't imagine any possible way Nora would choose a life in which she was a complete stranger to herself.

One might argue that I am overthinking things, but given that the entire book is premised on this notion of alternative lives, these two flaws felt like cracks in the foundation. The book captivated me the entire way through, but I was relieved to reach the end.

Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free

Throughout my Christian deconstruction, I had to process through so many domains of my life. What did I really believe? Why? What are the grounds for morality and ethics? How should I live? Without Christian teaching and practice to lean on, I had to tear my beliefs down to the foundations and rebuild. Far from becoming a spiral into nihilism and immorality (as many Christian leaders warned me it would), this has been a rich, meaningful process that forced me to engage with moral and ethical issues in a far deeper way than I had before.

One of the hardest areas of life for any person to work through—Christian or not—is sexuality. Religion and sexuality are deeply interwoven; both are rooted in our deepest sense of identity, and both involve our relationship with extraordinary, transcendent power that can be highly empowering or deeply destructive. I continue to study and reflect on sexuality with the same curiosity that I bring to religion or psychology. That study has implications for how I live my own life, but also for how my wife and I raise our children—a topic that feels increasingly urgent as they approach adolescence.

Pure is a damning indictment of the Purity movement that swept through American Evangelism in the 80s and 90s, when I happened to be coming age. This was the age of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, True Love Waits pledges, promise rings, dating Jesus, and sometimes even waiting for the wedding day for the first kiss. All of this will sound bizarre and alien to those who didn't grow up in it—but for many of those who did, it shaped their lives in incredibly powerful ways. Author Linda Kay Klein is a former Evangelical, raised in the movement, who draws on over 80 interviews with other women raised in the Purity movement, and especially on her own group of teenage friends. They are grown now, with decades of life experience behind them. A pattern emerges from these interviews: the Purity movement scarred many of these women for life, and they want to tell their stories. Clearly, Klein has tapped into something.

I felt a little sheepish about reading a book about sexuality written for women, but it proved to be a powerful read. The stories these women share are devastating and sometimes excruciating. I alternated between empathy and righteous indignation. What I realized partway through—and what struck me harder than I expected—was that this is not a book about sexuality; it is a book about shame. At its best, religion shapes, upholds, and expands the human spirit; but at its worst, religion wields shame as a weapon to destroy a person's sense of self and imprison them in abuse. Story after story reveals the appalling frequency of the latter.

Klein (still a Christian) takes great pains to emphasize that she is not attacking Christianity, and she acknowledges that some women view the Purity movement with ambivalence or as a positive force in their lives. However, her attack on shame is unsparing and well-deserved. As I man, I found the book helpful for understanding the extent of both explicit and implicit misogyny and shaming in the church and the world at large. The book also heightened my empathy for the stories that the women—and possibly men—in my life might be carrying.

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

This literary memoir has been making waves lately. I picked it up because its themes of growth through fallow seasons seemed well-aligned with my own book. It's a beautiful little gem of a book, from its magical cover to its gorgeous prose. The core metaphor of wintering works well, and speaks perfectly to our time.

This is a quiet, slow-moving river, so it will not appeal to everybody. Nothing much happens—just a lot of _life—_but that is exactly the point. May could be any of us, languishing a year into COVID-19, wondering why we are struggling when we don't really have it that bad. What she brings to these experiences is a keen eye for observation, a rich capacity for a reflection, and a willingness to bring meaning to her experiences. Her memoir becomes a mirror in which we can see ourselves in a new light.

When You Lose Your "Why"

Mon, 03 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Today I published a guest post on my friend Joe Byerly's blog From the Green Notebook. Joe and his team write about leadership, Stoicism, books, writing, and other aspects of the well-lived life... generally within a military context.

In earlier episodes of the From the Green Notebook podcast, hosts Joe Byerly and Jacob Gawronski concluded each interview by asking their guests a question made famous by Simon Sinek: "What's your why?"

It's a great question because it reveals so much about an individual's character, values, and motivations. If Sinek is correct, why is the most important question a leader can ask, because everything else builds on that foundation. A clear why motivates strong leaders, creates and sustains powerful visions, inspires teams, and compels followers. We often spin our wheels trying to answer what or how questions, but why takes us a level deeper, to the source from which all other questions flow.

Recently, after catching up on the podcast—on a solitary drive through rural Alabama after a glorious day reconnecting with nature—I switched off the stereo and contemplated how I would answer the question. After some consideration, I had to admit an uncomfortable truth: I don’t know my why. Not right now, anyway.

I suspect I’m not the only one, so I’d like to share a few thoughts on how I got here—and how we navigate these seasons when our why is no longer clear.

Read the rest at From The Green Notebook.

The Challenge of Bad Days

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Every sport, artistic endeavor, or daring enterprise offers days when you feel unstoppable. You are on fire. Invisible assistance from the universe or your deepest unconscious propels you onward. You act intuitively and with perfection. We associate such days with flow but for all of our scientific probing, nobody really knows when, how, or why the magic comes. All we can do is joyfully accept the gift when it arrives.

Then there are the Bad Days. Days that feel exactly the opposite.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about lead climbing Misty, my hardest and most intimidating outdoor climb to date. I fought and struggled and fell multiple times along the way, but I made it to the top and went home glowing with satisfaction. I have been determined to go back and "send" Misty ever since (climber parlance for leading the entire route without falling).

I hoped Sunday would be the day, but I awoke groggy despite eight hours of sleep, never a good sign. Misty gets packed on weekends, so when I arrived at the crag, I went straight to the route to get in line, depriving both myself and my partner of a proper warmup. I convinced myself that some pullups and stretching would suffice.

I psyched myself up for a strong, confident lead. When I started up the rock, I moved smoothly and gracefully through the first crux (the hardest moves). So far, so good.

Then things went wrong. Almost immediately, my arms pumped out; they burned painfully while my finger strength dropped to zero, due to a flood of lactic acid. Far from sending the route, I fell early. Stupidly, I grabbed the rope as I fell—a habit I thought I had broken—and burned a finger.

Determined to make the most of the climb, I continued up to the second crux. Last time I fell repeatedly at this spot, but I knew the key move now and resolved to climb through on my first attempt. I made the key move but then pumped out again, a good six feet above and to the side of the last bolt. In a split second, I realized that I was about to fall nearly fifteen feet, and I would do so in a totally uncontrolled way. I also realized that I had committed a cardinal sin: my leg was behind the rope, which meant I would flip upside down.

Thankfully, I freed my leg just as my fingers gave out. I peeled off the wall, whooshing down for what felt like forever. The rope caught and I spun sideways and slammed my back against the wall so hard that I saw stars. Fortunately I hit a smooth section and wasn't hurt.

This was my first fall that really rattled me. I couldn't imagine attempting the crux again in this condition. Humiliated, I lowered to the ground. My headspace was shattered. I felt groggy. I was climbing weak. My forearms and fingers felt wasted. I was not in a mindset to try hard new climbs or confront new fears. I just wanted to slink off and climb something easy so I could feel a hollow sense of achievement.

Abstractly, I knew I was having a Bad Day—a day that does not merely involve a bad performance, but that actually feels malevolent. I was in the opposite of flow. I was stuck in a headspace of internally-generated resistance.

Dealing with Bad Days

I had enough sense to recognize that my dilemma represented a learning opportunity. My biggest challenge of the day was not to climb a particular rock, but to learn how to deal with a Bad Day.

I wish I could report that I arrived at some dazzling revelation, but I didn't.

While my two partners belayed each other, I closed my eyes and tried to mindfully process the malaise that had crept into me. I wondered if it was possible to somehow dissipate its force, to clear my mind, to become an empty vessel again into which flow might magically reappear. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get there.

I gradually realized that all I could do was keep climbing. Someday, I knew, I would be stuck high up on some multipitch route, exhausted beyond measure, rattled by a near-miss, wanting nothing more than to quit—and I would need to keep climbing in order to get home again.

Today was training for that moment. It's not the kind of training I enjoy, but it's vitally important.

I kept climbing. I tried another hard route, on top rope this time. When I couldn't solve the crux, I hoisted myself up on the rope (another humiliation) so I could try the rest of the route. When my partner suggested a trad route, involving a more perilous form of climbing that is still new to me, I wanted to say no; I didn't want to lead trad in this headspace. Instead, I nodded wearily, racked up my trad gear, and made the climb. It didn't feel good, but I climbed safely. We wrapped up the day with a new sport climb. I did it on top rope, but it was my tallest climb yet and physically exhausting. I struggled up it anyway, despite an embarrassing number of falls and rests.

When the day was done, I had done very little that I was proud of—except keep climbing.

Taking stock

Other than practicing raw perseverance, the only other technique that I've worked out for handling Bad Days is to take stock afterwards. We can reframe nearly anything in life as an opportunity.

Before I collapsed into bed, I pulled out a pen and notebook and tried to translate the day's badness into a series of lessons. I needed to develop a good warmup routine and honor it every climbing day. I needed to research flash pumps, which is apparently what I experienced by jumping right onto a hard route. I needed to practice falling and re-train myself not to grab the rope. Something about my at-home training regime was not developing finger strength in the way that I expected; I needed to do research and modify my training plan. Lastly, I needed to develop a mental framework for recognizing and responding to Bad Days—of which this post is an early result.

When I got home, Wendy asked me if I had fun. The honest answer was "no." But I was glad I went.

I collapsed into bed, relieved to reach the end of this particular Bad Day.

In the morning, I awoke to a new start.

Image courtesy of Derek Christensen, who shares his own falling story.

April Newsletter

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Greetings, readers! I have been meaning to start a periodic newsletter about my writing and other creative work. Here is my first attempt. It's an eclectic roundup about my new book, a forthcoming short story, academic work, and recommendations for other creatives I love.

Eating Glass

In March I finally launched Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal, which I've been chipping away at for five years. I'm pleased to say that embracing my story has been one of the most liberating experiences of my life. The outpouring of support from friends and colleagues has been amazing, and many early readers have shared stories about their own brushes with failure. I feel incredible relief at bringing everything I have internalized into the light. It's amazing how much power we can unleash when lean into fear.

I put together a book trailer, partly because I wanted to let readers see some of my favorite visuals from the nonprofit effort that inspired the book. I'm a little sheepish about the aesthetic quality, but it's authentic, from the heart, and gives a sense of the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vVM9PAXhE0

If you like the book and want to support it, here are a few ways you can help:

Leave honest reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. The review count is one of the fastest clues for busy shoppers about whether they should take a book seriously.
Share with family, friends, or colleagues who might appreciate it Connect me to any influencers you know who might be interested--such as authors, bloggers, speakers, or podcast hosts.
My next big project is recording an audiobook version. I will announce that here when it's ready.

Derelict Anthology

I have been getting back into writing fiction lately, and am delighted to announce that I have a short story appearing in the upcoming Derelict anthology, titled "Celestial Object 143205." You can preorder the ebook or the Kickstarter edition at this link. My contribution is a near-future SF story that features a competition between the United States Space Force and an eccentric Chinese billionaire. It will appeal to anyone fascinated by Elon Musk's ventures with SpaceX.

Blog Updates

My blog has been quiet lately, but I did add a couple new pieces in March. Leaning Into Fear is about two things: one of my hardest rock climbs to date, and the decision to publish Eating Glass. The Pursuit of Connection asks what our lives would look like, if we sought to maximize connection rather than wealth.

Teaching

In January I taught an Irregular Warfare course at the School of Advanced Air & Space Studies (SAASS), and in February I served as course director for the SAASS Technology & Innovation course. You can find both syllabi at the links. It was fantastic being back in a classroom and connecting with our amazing students.

Other Fiction

I finished writing three other short stories recently and am currently shopping them around. Two received rejections recently. Although I would have preferred acceptance letters, the rejections actually felt good; they were tangible indicators that I'm moving again. I also received the nicest rejection letter of my life, from an editor I know:

Dear Mark, It's great to finally see a new story from you. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to consider "Letter from Slowtime." The story is sweet, moving, and nicely done, but I’m afraid it's not quite right for me. I look forward to reading your next submission in the queue.

That story will go back out to a different publication later today. Fingers crossed.

Academic Writing

I have been slow getting back into academic writing since late 2017, given how painful my PhD experience was. I can't even look at my dissertation without crushing anxiety. However, releasing Eating Glass gave me a new measure of energy, and taught me what I think is a useful heuristic for life: tackle whatever creative work fills me with the most fear.

This week I dug out my Stanford research, as well as notes and research ideas that my department at Stanford deemed too unconventional. I have been pursuing one overriding academic interest for about 15 years: how to conceptually model complex wars with multiple sides, and how to think about strategy in those wars. Diving into this again is vertigo-inducing, but this is where I think my big academic contribution lies. My goal in April is to complete a journal article that bites off the first piece of this.

Things I Love

Launching my book has reinforced for me just how hard it is for creators to get noticed in a noisy world. So I want to use my own modest platform to introduce you to other creators I love. Here is this month's selection:

Army officer and blogger Joe Byerly is a hero of mine. We met at the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum around 2013-2014, after which he began writing From The Green Notebook, a blog dedicated to leadership, mentorship, reading, and writing. Over seven years Joe grew the blog into a thriving community. Joe and his growing team just launched the From The Green Notebook podcast. I loved their recent interview with Steven Pressfield; Pressfield is one of my favorite authors, and Joe and his cohost's enthusiasm for the author in this episode is contagious.

Speaking of Steven Pressfield, his new book A Man at Arms came out on March 2nd. I haven't read it yet, but I can't wait. His book The Gates of Fire, about Thermopylae, ranks among my favorites, and The War of Art is among the best books ever written for creatives.

While we're in this DEF-Pressfield nexus, DEF founder Ben Kohlmann started a podcast a few months ago called A Random Walk with Ben Kohlmann. He has lined up a really amazing set of interviews, but I especially loved his interview with Michael McClellan, author of The Sand Sea. Long story short, Michael put in many years of effort and wrote more than a million words in order to finally produce _The Sand Sea—_a sweeping historical fantasy set in a world based on the late 19th century. Michael devoted himself to his art, put in the long obedience required, and birthed a masterpiece. Oh, Steven Pressfield also mentored him and heartily recommends the book. I am halfway through The Sand Sea and am captivated; it's one of the best fantasy novels I have ever read. It is dark and gritty at times, but features everything I love in fiction: amazing prose, a rich cast of three-dimensional characters, and a beautifully imagined world.

On a different note, Audrey Assad is one of my favorite singers. Her voice is a conduit through which beauty pours into the world. She made her name as a Christian singer, but as she has become more agnostic, her music has turned towards themes of exploration, mystery, and searching. Her journey has shaken some of her fans, so I wanted to help connect her to new ones. Some of my favorite songs include Irrational Season, Evergreen, and her cover of Mumford and Sons' Sigh No More.

Lastly, I met Andrew Liptak when he co-edited War Stories, an anthology of military science fiction to which I contributed a story. Andrew is one of the smartest and most prolific observers of science fiction around. He offers both a free and inexpensive premium email newsletter called Transfer Orbit, which includes SF news and commentary. His premium newsletter is now my primary way of keeping up with the field.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The Pursuit of Connection

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Classical economic theory rests on a simple premise: individuals and firms are utility maximizers, which means they "seek to get the highest satisfaction from their economic decisions." Expected utility theory lets economists model decisionmaking processes with math; they can predict purchasing behavior, assess how proposed tax rates will affect voting behavior, anticipate the success or failure of negotiations, or predict when disaffected populations will rise against their governments.

This framework has problems, but it is also a powerful way to study the world. However, it raises a key question: what goes into the utility function? In other words, what measure of "satisfaction" do human beings actually maximize? Many economists treat utility and wealth as interchangeable, which has a subtle cascading effect. From these microfoundations we construct an entire economic world in which all human activity aims at wealth accumulation.

This abstract view of wealth-maximizing individuals often rings true. There is nothing inherently wrong with the ethical pursuit of wealth, and economic self-interest has played a huge role in innovation, economic growth, and rising standards of living throughout history. However, these forms of progress have come at great cost. Individuals in liberal-democratic societies are profoundly alienated from themselves, each other, nature, and meaning. The consequences are evident in our soaring levels of anxiety, depression, loneliness, substance abuse, and suicide.

As I seek to live a good life, I often wonder what it would look to maximize a different kind of utility.

Lost connections

One of the most powerful books I've read in the last few years—Johann Hari's _Lost Connections—_posits that the real locus of depression is found not primarily in brain chemistry but in our profound sense of disconnection. He identifies seven forms of disconnection prevalent in our world:

Disconnection from meaningful work
Disconnection from other people
Disconnection from meaningful values
Disconnection from childhood trauma
Disconnection from status and respect
Disconnection from the natural world
Disconnection from a hopeful or secure future

Healing ourselves and our societies will, in turn, require intentionally reconnecting across all these areas.

This book had a profound impact on my thinking. I continually encounter the same theme in my other reading. In Fragile Power, Paul Hokemeyer writes:

At the core of human pain is isolation from others and ourselves. We find relief from this pain in reparative human connections where we are seen and heard as vulnerable human beings.

In his book Tribe, Sebastian Junger notes the physical proximity of the industrializing 18th-19th century United States to traditional Native American societies. He writes:

It may say something about human nature that a surprising number of Americans—mostly men—wound up joining Indian society rather than staying in their own. They emulated Indians, married them, were adopted by them, and on some occasions even fought alongside them. And the opposite almost never happened: Indians almost never ran away to white society.

This phenomenon bewildered U.S. thought leaders at the time. French émigré Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote of Native Americans, "There must be in their social bonding something singularly captivating and far superior to anything to be boasted among us."

The point is not to romanticize Native American culture or denigrate liberal-democracy, but to illustrate that human-beings evolved over tens of thousands of years to live in tight-knit communities, embedded in nature, in which rich human relationships and interdependency were constant. Our atomized existence today is deeply alien to human nature. Consider a hundred people living alone and lonely in their finely-partitioned apartment building, a frazzled mother alone at home with her toddlers most of the week, or a tired worker who commutes to and from an office where he sits in front of a computer for sixty hours a week. These alienating situations are a far cry from the rich relational life that our genes still remember.

The currency of connection

Going back to expected utility theory, there is no reason why wealth necessarily needs to be the primary measure of utility. We all maximize utility, according to the theory, but utility is whatever brings us satisfaction.

I often wonder what it would look like if "connection" was my primary measure of utility. In other words, what if I made decisions based on what would maximize my sense of connection?

Below are just a few thoughts.

Seek individual integrity: Many of us are deeply disconnected from our own selves due to inattentiveness, trauma, social pressures, cognitive dissonance, or confusion. A divided life fuels a sense of alienation and disconnection, so we should always work to heal inner division and seek integration. This means discovering our real values and identity, shedding harmful projections and messages, finding healing from past traumas, and embracing an authentic identity. This is a lifetime project that requires deliberate investment.
Maximize rich relationships: We live in an age of shallow connection, so any attempt to create and sustain authentic, deep, human connection is precious, courageous, and rare. The quality of a life may very well be measured in its depth of human connection, so this is perhaps the currency we should maximize above everything. We should have a bias towards quality time with others, and should deliberately seek to create meaningful relationships, even when doing so feels countercultural. Prioritizing relationships often means rejecting our cultural obsession with productivity (an admitted challenge for me).
Pursue meaningful work: The key word here is "meaningful." If we have a choice (and I realize we often don't), we would not necessarily seek the highest-paying or most prestigious work, but rather work that rings true to our souls, aligns with our sense of self and purpose, and accords with our values. This principle could also apply to how we use our leisure time. We don't want to burden ourselves with unrealistic expectations and demands of our leisure time, but we should have a bias towards meaning. This could entail incorporating imagination, discovery, creativity, growth, and skill development into our leisure rather than merely consuming passive content.
Maximize time in nature: Nature has a quiet, healing power that gently unknots the tension of our frantic daily lives. For me personally, maximizing this currency means continual engagement with the natural world—which can often be done in conjunction with other people and with physical exercise. It can also include small, daily experiences; I enjoy sitting outside in the mornings, and work outdoors whenever an employer lets me.
Connect with our bodies: Many of us take our bodies for granted (at least until we get older) or even war against them. A life of connection would entail listening to the body's messages, caring for it, protecting it from harmful influences (to include those we ourselves often inflict on it), and nurturing it through activity and exercise. Mindfulness practices can also be helpful here, as we are embodied creatures and the body-mind-soul connection is powerful and real.
Commit to a hopeful and secure future: Today's world often looks bleak and the future appears ominous; current trends include the pandemic, global warming, the unraveling of institutions, cancel culture, soaring economic inequality, and staggering debt. Our natural impulse is to escape, but this is another form of disconnection. I worry about our present crisis, but I also see this upheaval as fertile soil in which reinvention can and must begin. The great project of our time is imagining and designing a better way of organizing society, but this will be a lifetime project involving everyone. Maximizing connection means resisting the impulse to flee; it means committing, engaging, and finding a humble role to play within this great project. It means the intentional cultivation of hope by paying close attention to the world, with an eye for goodness and opportunity.

The pursuit of financial security and success will always be a deep part of human life, but if the psychologists are right that connection is a key metric for a well-lived life, then it's worth considering how we might maximize connection in our own lives.

Photo by Marcus Woodbridge on Unsplash

Leaning into Fear

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

The first time I visited Sand Rock, I sat at the base of a climb called Misty (5.10b/c), staring up the vertical sun-baked face. Misty was considered the best sport climb at the crag, and it looked both exhilarating and terrifying. The first bolt was high off the ground. The climb then proceeded through thin, tricky, balancey moves, and a freestanding boulder stood precariously close to the fall zone. Above the crux the wall leaned back just enough to make resting elusive; if a climber didn't complete the route quickly enough, his arms would pump out and he would fall from exhaustion. I knew that I wanted to climb this route someday, and wondered when I might be good enough.

In the ensuing months, my climbing improved dramatically. I developed better strength, endurance, and technique. I was probably ready to try Misty, but fear held me back.

One day my partner and I finally tried. My partner led the route successfully, then asked me if I wanted to lead or top-rope. I hesitated. I knew I was capable of trying the route on lead, but leading a new route is terrifying. Each time you climb above a bolt, you venture into the unknown. You don't know where good holds might lie, where you can find rests, and where you will exhaust yourself and fall. Because you are on lead—climbing above the rope's last point of connection to the rock—almost every fall is significant. Every single move could mean a scary plunge into the void. Such falls are usually safe, but millions of years of evolution have conditioned the brain to believe otherwise.

I chickened out that day; instead of leading I opted to top-rope, which limited my falls to mere inches. I rationalized my decision every way possible. I was still developing my abilities as a leader; I liked taking slow, incremental steps; I could learn the moves on top-rope, then try leading the route once I found my confidence.

Top-roping Misty was a hollow victory; I knew I had missed an opportunity to grow. When I saw my fears reflected in that soaring rock wall, I declined a confrontation.

A principle for life

One of the things I love about rock climbing is that it forces you to confront fear every time you climb. This visceral confrontation with our innermost fears—and our triumph over them—is perhaps the very essence of the sport, which gives climbing its Zen-like quality. Sir Edmund Hillary famously said, "It's not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."

This makes climbing an extraordinary training ground for life.

Climbing has sensitized me to the sheer number of moments in my life when I face a choice: do I back away from fear, or do I lean into it? Those choices don't typically have the life-or-death quality that climbing does, but the accumulation of these small decisions can shape a life.

Beginning this blog entailed a significant battle with fear. I worried about merely being another noise in a noisy world. I worried about saying the wrong thing and triggering a backlash. I worried about oversharing. When I face such encounters with fear, it is so easy to catastrophize expected outcomes.

Eventually, I leaned into that fear long enough to publish my first piece. Needless to say, none of my worst-case outcomes materialized. Instead, friends and colleagues enthusiastically welcomed my writing. I received kind notes and emails. Friends urged me to keep at it. Once I broke the ice and leaned into that particular fear, the Unknown's tyrannical power was broken; posting new articles became much easier.

My biggest fear this year was publishing my new book Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal (forthcoming). I worried it wasn't good enough. It was too vulnerable. It would ruin my reputation and my life. My loud inner critic screamed one message over and over: "Shut the f*** up!!!"

Yet I knew that publishing this book was the necessary next step in my life. This was my Misty, the frightening wall I needed to climb. In a poem about getting unstuck in life, David Whyte writes:

Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.

Like most occasions when we lean into fear, the rewards have been immeasurable. The support from friends and family has been incredible. I have had rich conversations with some early readers who saw their own experiences reflected in the book. Fully owning my story has helped me realize how much I was hiding, and how much that fear was holding me back. Now that I have committed to the book, I feel an exhilarating sense of acceleration into a future filled with possibilities.

A life at the edge

This commitment to frontier exploration is now a core value for me. Although I never live this out perfectly, I try to spend as much time as possible at my personal edge. Any time I feel that first prickle of fear, I recognize that an opportunity stands before me to learn and grow.

That is how each individual life progresses. Each time we take a tentative step into the unknown, we chip away at the frozen boundary of our potential. Our world enlarges. We discover new, previously undiscovered capacities within ourselves. Life at the edge has a kind of ratchet effect; once you take a step beyond the safe and familiar, you never truly go back. Each new experience becomes a part of your story, equipping you for every future exploration and confrontation.

Leaning into fear can take many forms. It might mean accepting a promotion you feel unqualified for, or agreeing to lead a project that eclipses anything you have previously tried. It might mean initiating a hard or uncomfortable conversation, or reading a book espousing a perspective you find threatening. It might mean seeking out and spending time with a community different from your own. No matter the outcome of these courageous acts, you always gain useful knowledge about yourself and the world.

Misty, Again

Yesterday, it was time to finally confront my fear of Misty.

I felt nervous and sick the evening before. I watched every video of Misty that I could find on YouTube, studying the moves. I tossed and turned in bed, in a nightmarish delirium, thinking I was on the route. I spent my three-hour drive to the crag contemplating my fears.

My partner and I warmed up on several easier routes, which was necessary but also an evasion. As the hours wore by and the sun marched across the sky, I knew I was stalling. It would have been so easy to justify a day "getting back into leading" on these easier routes, but I had made a commitment to myself.

We finally hiked out to Misty. We tied in, checked each other over, and stick-clipped the first bolt to prevent a ground fall. I gazed up the sheer face. It was now or never.

I started up. Once I passed the first bolt, I was in the fearful unknown, above my rope, one misstep away from a frightening fall between the wall and a giant boulder. My breathing grew harsh and ragged as I leaned out into space, hanging tenuously on a bad sidepull as I transferred my weight to the opposite toe. The slightest imbalance would send me peeling off the rock. I made the move, clipped, and continued on.

Misty was an exhausting struggle after that. I was already worn out from the morning's climbing, and despite the presence of many good holds, Misty put me through the wringer. I needed to rest frequently by hanging on my rope. I struggled through a second, higher crux, trying again and again, my finger endurance diminishing with each subsequent attempt. The hard move was five feet diagonally above the last bolt, so every missed attempt sent me on a swinging ride. The harsh sun glared down. I poured sweat. I had never exerted myself so hard on a climb before.

Eventually, I clipped the anchors. It was not an elegant or beautiful performance, but I did it. I leaned into the fear, achieved my hardest lead to date, and pushed my frontier just a little further. Sometime soon I will return to climb it perfectly, without rests or falls.

New fears await me, as they always do, but that one will never trouble me again.

Standing at the base of Misty

The header image is not me, but a still from the best video of Misty I've found—shot with a drone. Kudos to the climber for a smooth, graceful performance.

Committing Moves

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

When I started seriously rock climbing, I used a safe and static climbing style. I always kept three points of contact, carefully reached for the next handhold or foothold, and gingerly shifted my weight to ensure my feet would hold. Only when I was certain would I commence my next move.

This worked—for a little while. It is a good way to climb the easiest routes at the gym. It gets you familiar with the basic movements of climbing, and helps you overcome your fear of heights without much risk of falling. However, once you move beyond beginner grades, that style of climbing no longer cuts it.

To get up most climbs, you have to make what climbers call committing moves. These are moves that you can't safely test before making them; once you initiate them, they are irreversible. Often times, you need to put weight on tiny nubs that you can't possibly believe will hold you. Other times you need to hoist your body up on a heel hook, which will give you a split second to grab the next handhold. Still other times you need to make dynamic moves that rely on momentum.

You either finish the move, or you don't. If you don't, you fall.

Committing moves can be terrifying. Even experienced climbers do not like to fall; falling is scary, and many fall situations involve at least some risk of injury. A skilled climber makes continual risk calculations as she moves over the rock. It is in committing moves where her mental game is honed and put to the test.

Committing moves in life

I love this concept of committing moves as a metaphor for entrepreneurship and life. It provides such a tangible and visceral image for the decision points we often face.

Many people never want to make committing moves; they fear irreversible decisions, particularly when they perceive risk. They fear marriage. They fear quitting their job or taking a loan to launch a small business. They hesitate to speak up with a contrary opinion, because once they do, there is no going back.

To live without making committing moves is to stay on the beginner walls. One can enjoy a safe and contented life that way, but growth opportunities are limited.

I am conservative with risk, but many of my biggest life gains came through committing moves. I married Wendy (although I had no doubt about that one). We had kids at a time when life seemed impossibly busy (I felt pretty good about that one too). On a couple occasions we bought houses instead of renting, which worked out well. I founded Uplift Aeronautics. Later, I founded Rogue Squadron and accepted a scary amount of funding to scale. My entrepreneurial experiences were hard and involved many falls, but were the most satisfying and enriching experiences in my professional life. I wrote pieces for publication. In most of these cases, I can thank friends and family for pushing me to take risks I was afraid of.

Running a business or organization is filled with committing moves, because you must often make irreversible resource commitments with long lead times before the results come in. Yes, you should make use of small bets and low-risk experiments whenever possible, but you often need to put all your chips in.

The psychology of commitment

There is an entire psychology around how we make committing moves. My favorite treatment comes from Arno Ilgner's wonderful book The Rock Warrior's Way, which is a great manual for life even if you do not climb. We can roughly divide the decision process into two parts: before we choose to commit, and after.

Before we commit, we need to observe ourselves. We must tame our own psychology; if we are riddled with negative self-talk like fear or doubt, we must identify and eliminate it, because it will do nothing to help us. We should approach a committing move relaxed and confident.

We must accept the situation as we find it, not waste precious energy wishing or pretending it were different. We must study the details closely, and focus our attention on every possible source of advantage. Our senses should be attuned to possibilities, not obstacles.

However, we must also understand the risks entailed. We should consider very carefully what happens if we successfully make the move, but also what happens if we fall. We do ourselves no favors if we lie to ourselves about the danger we face. Pretending away risks is a terrible strategy. We can use exercises like murder boards and pre-mortems to help illuminate the real risk.

Then comes the moment of decision: do we commit, or do we not?

Both are acceptable decisions. If a risk is not worth it, we can downclimb or get lowered. In life, we can back away from the venture or purchase or relationship. Nothing is lost. We have learned something about ourselves in the process, and will be better-equipped to face similar moves in the future.

But once we make the decision to commit, we must commit 100%. There is no longer any going back. You have made your decision, and now you must climb until you succeed or until you fall. You have already calculated the risks and have already accepted the consequences of falling. Thus, there is no value in second-guessing yourself or ruminating on your dilemma. In fact, you are most likely to succeed at this point if you climb boldly and confidently. Any hesitation will undermine your prospects.

After you make the committing move, you must close the feedback loop. Whether you made the move or fell, you have much to learn. You now have a new entry in your repertoire of life experience. How accurate were your judgments about the probability of success, or the consequences of failure? What was your mental state? How could you have improved? If you succeeded, are you honestly digesting any lessons or is your ego rushing you to overlook them? If you fell, what did you learn? How are you growing?

As you gain proficiency with committing moves, they become habitual. You will regularly encounter new kinds of moves, but internalize the psychological process for meeting them. You build up an experience base with falling, which will help tame your fears about future falls and help you distinguish safe falls from unsafe ones.

Like many things in life, learning to make committing moves is a lifelong journey. I am still learning. Each time I encounter one, I take a long pause, close my eyes, and focus on my breathing. I wait for the shakes to pass. Then I make my decision. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fall. Slowly, I am getting better.

What I Learned in 2020: Adding My Light

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Happy holidays, readers. I hope you have managed to find some measure of meaningful connection, joy, and peace during these last few weeks of 2020.

It is remarkable how many faith traditions have evolved similar December rituals and festivals. As the days grow shorter and colder, sunlight and warmth seem forgotten. In the heart of that darkness, many of us come together with friends and family in rituals that involve light. We adorn Christmas trees, decorate our houses, and light menorahs or candles. Whether we celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Yuletide, Kwanzaa, or something else, we gather to push back against the darkness and hold out hope. The New Year falls a short time later, and our December reflections help to guide our planning for what's to come.

That core message of the winter holidays seem more relevant than ever this year. I see a lot of jubilation that 2020 is ending its reign of terror, as if 2021 will somehow be different. I expect it will not be. We will wake up on January 1st to the same world we put to bed the night before.

But that does not mean we should despair. The winter holidays are not simply about hitting the reset button, but are a seasonal reminder that we must keep vigil and hold forth our lights. Cynicism and depression are always temptations, but that is the easy way out. The winter holidays present a harder challenge: they ask us to keep our candles lit.

Surveying the darkness

I won't rehash the issues we collectively faced in 2020, but will say a bit about my personal journey this year. I will acknowledge up front that I am extremely fortunate and grateful to have stability and security during the pandemic.

With that said, this was a difficult transition year for me. I have dedicated most of my professional life to military innovation, but much of my work came to an unexpected and unhappy end this year. I dusted myself off and moved to Montgomery, Alabama in July, where I am now enjoying my new role as an Air Force professor. The job is wonderful and I love my colleagues, but I still feel disoriented. As I consider the future beyond this assignment, I yearn for some noble purpose that I can commit all my energy and talents to.

More and more, I don't think I can go back to military innovation. My heart has been broken too many times. Over and over again, I have made considerable personal sacrifices to develop big, bold new ideas, and over and over again the System has been disinterested in what I have to offer. I initially thought I would use this new academic season to write about my lessons learned, but I have discovered that I can't do so without being swept away to a dark place of anxiety and depression. That is the primary reason I have not blogged consistently.

Although I remain a devoted U.S. military officer, I have also struggled to find that sense of purpose in my academic studies of war. My career has coincided with a particularly disastrous time of U.S. foreign policy, and our problems abroad pale beside our problems at home. More and more, my oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States has led me to look within our borders. However, I am not entirely sure what that means for me personally and for my academic research.

What this amounts to, for me, is a winter season of waiting. It is a time of faithfully serving my students and equipping them for their own leadership journeys, but also of sitting quietly with my uncertainty about the future, trusting that every winter gives way to spring.

Looking for the light

Despite the sense of winter darkness, I continue to search for the bright places. They are always there, if I look for them. Here are a few hopeful lessons I have learned this year.

The darkness itself is a source of rich life

I owe an immense debt to David Whyte, Parker Palmer, and Jerry Colonna, three men who experienced similar winter seasons, found new life, and then had the courage to write about their experiences. David Whyte's poem Sweet Darkness is now one of my favorites. I especially love these lines:

The dark will be your home tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

Life asks many things of us in its different seasons. In these winter seasons, life asks us to sit still, enjoy the quiet moments of each day, and let the journey unfold. Darkness has so much to teach us, if we let it. This has been a year of profound learning about myself and my journey through this world.

Letting go can be liberating

The opening stanza of Donald Justice's poem Men at Forty stunned me when I first read it:

Men at forty Learn to close softly Doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to.

The first half of life is a time of discovery, exploration, and openness. As we grow older and learn who we really are, life asks us to make commitments to the people and tasks we care most about. However, making whole-hearted commitments requires focus, which often means letting other things go. This year I have begun closing doors to things that no longer work for me. That is a little scary, because I am not entirely sure which new doors will open, but I am learning to trust my soul's intuitions about what is not good or true for me anymore. That is a kind of guidance, however imperfect.

I love to write

Writing has always been my deepest passion, but I somehow lost it under the weight of adult responsibilities. This year gave me the time, motivation, and opportunity to reconnect with that lost love. This partly meant more discipline and better organization, but also meant rekindling powers of creativity and imagination that I had let atrophy.

It is difficult and frustrating work sometimes. Building a readership is hard, and I am riddled with insecurities and self-doubt. My biggest writing project this year was a raw and vulnerable book about growing through failure. It is so vulnerable, in fact, that I remain tormented by the decision whether to publish it or bury it forever.

But I am at least producing. I am finishing things. This year I created my website, wrote blog posts, finished my book, wrote four short stories, and made good progress on two academic books. I am staying faithful to the writing, even though I don't know where it will lead. Some of my most cherished moments this year were rich conversations with individuals touched by my writing. This, if anything, is my candle in the winter dark.

I glimpsed the power of local community

I have worried for years that liberal democracy no longer works. Economic inequality is off the charts, Congressional deadlock has made effective governance almost impossible, and political polarization has been steadily worsening. The election of Donald Trump was not a cause but a consequence of these trends (although he certainly catalyzed them), and 2020 was only a continuation of existing trends. I have often wondered what might come after liberal democracy as we have known it, with its tattered institutions. Is there any alternative to resurgent authoritarianism?

My one intuition is that renewed local communities might hold the key. The individualism of Western countries, and the U.S. in particular, is toxic and a major driver of anxiety, depression, and dissatisfaction. Human beings evolved to live in bands and tribes, surrounded by constant supportive community, not to wall themselves off in isolated apartments and houses and interact primarily through economic transactions or the Internet. Yet very few of us have ever known anything different.

I had glimpses of a more communal life when I lived in Jordan, but I ironically experienced it firsthand during COVID19 lockdown. My family and our two neighboring families formed a quarantine "pod" (judge if you must, but it was a careful and effective way to quarantine while maintaining mental health and social support). Each evening we wrapped up our Zoom calls, rubbed our eyes, and stepped out into the sunlight. We drank beers and grilled burgers and talked late into the evening. We waved and greeted every passing neighbor, all of whom were out on walks in record numbers. These moments of contact were fleeting and tenuous, but this was the most communal life I have lived in decades, and it was rich and wonderful. The stories that cheered us this year were of brave and creative grassroots effort to patch society up and hold it together, amidst the grotesque failures of our broader political, economic, and public health systems. Many of us have lost sight of those experiences, under the weary months of the pandemic and its ugly politicization, but they were real and hold an important message.

I find great inspiration in NYT Columnist David Brooks and his Weave: The Social Fabric Project, "a cultural movement renewing America’s social fabric." Most of us cannot change the world, but we can change our local communities. I have little experience in this kind of work, so have much to learn, but my soul resonates with that message. I take that as a hopeful clue about my own future.

Leaving California was hard, but my family and I decided to commit to Montgomery. We bought a house, intending to stay a while. It is an unlikely place for a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to commit to—underdeveloped, relatively poor, still plagued with racism and structural injustice—but it is a place that I believe holds great promise, and needs investment and care from builders and activists. The long battle for justice and equality continues to play out here; one of my favorite experiences here was watching the John Lewis memorial at the state capitol, and I will write soon about the city's growing efforts to grapple with its legacy of slavery and racism. I also believe the city has great economic potential, with its large population and inexpensive real estate. For now I am largely imprisoned in my house and office, but I eagerly await the day I can watch Montgomery come back to life. Perhaps there is a role here for an entrepreneur who knows how to build things while battling entrenched bureaucracies.

Finding your own light

There is a wonderful scene in The Year of Living Dangerously when Guy Hamilton and Billy Kwan are discussing how to deal with misery that seems to far exceed our own capacities. Billy's answer is that "You do whatever you can about the misery that's in front of you. Add your light to the sum of light."

I often think about that quote, which provides a continual and living challenge. What does it mean for each of us to add our own unique light? How does that play out in our families, friend groups, workplaces, and local communities?

Tonight many people around the world will be raising their middle fingers to 2020 and their Champagne glasses to 2021. Amidst the revelry, whether bitter or hopeful, it is worth remembering that the darkness will be with us a while. But it is also worth asking how we can add our light.

The Promise and Peril of Orbiting the Giant Hairball (Part II)

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In my last post, I wrote about Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie, a sort of spiritual guide to creative individuals who want to survive and thrive in bureaucratic organizations.

In that post I provided a brief overview of the book and shared a few thoughts about the initial difficulty of entering orbit. Large organizations have structural incentives to fear launching their employees into the distant unknown, so aspiring innovators have to build up a reservoir of trust by demonstrating their loyalty and competency.

Once a creative individual finally achieves orbit, he or she discovers that new challenges await. How does one manage a career that roams so far from the heart of the institution? How does one stay credible and relevant? How does one ensure that his or her creative work finds its way back into the organization?

The short answer is that these questions have no easy answers. Part of the journey into orbit around the giant Hairball is learning to live daily with the questions themselves, and discovering your own personal answers through experimentation, experience, and a lot of luck.

A multitude of orbits

MacKenzie offers a metaphor, not a roadmap. There is no right or wrong way to orbit the giant hairball, and there is no "one size fits all" solution. Although I have forgotten most of what I learned as an Astronautical Engineering major, I can tell you that there are many different orbits for different purposes.

Suborbital Flight. If you want to rise in the Corporation, you probably need to spend the majority of your time in the Hairball. That needn't stop you from brief forays into the stars. When the space tourism industry kicks off, passengers will likely not reach orbit at all (at least at first) but may still taste brief periods of weightlessness above the stratosphere before sailing back to earth. Many Corporations offer this kind of experience to their all-stars. In the military, for example, top performers can still progress through the ranks while intermittently taking time to learn foreign languages, study in civilian academic institutions, or embed in the private sector. You can return to the Hairball with unconventional new perspectives, and work within the system to nudge change along.
Low Earth Orbit. Satellites in Low Earth Orbit circle close to the planet, where they can map every nook and cranny of the surface below. A career spent in LEO might mean staying close to the Hairball, but in slightly elevated places that allow both unconventional exploration and opportunities to drive change. Many leaders, for example, maintain personal staffs or brain trusts that help design and implement innovation efforts. In the military, this might mean working in a Commander's Action Group, internal think tanks, on a commander's innovation initiative. Such assignments are not necessarily a fast track to promotion, but they give you room to exercise your imagination while staying close to centers of Corporate power. You can move from role to role, developing broad knowledge of the organization and mastering the ability to work within it.
Geostationary Orbit. Geostationary orbits are cold, remote, and distant, allowing a satellite to hover over a single point of earth almost indefinitely, beaming services like communications links and satellite TV into particular communities. A career in GEO might mean developing extraordinary depth in a particular subject, until you become your Corporation's "go-to" person for that subject. These individuals likely spend a considerable amount of time far from the Hairball, in quiet places where they can think deeply, write, and create. Getting to GEO is hard work, and the connection to the Hairball can be tenuous. This can make advancement difficult, especially in an organization like the military that requires frequent job rotation. Individuals in GEO need to work hard to maintain relationships that will allow them to penetrate the Hairball and actually create change, but if they are passionate, talented, and have healthy relationships, they can often stay close to the work they love. Many eventually find and settle into long-term roles that protect their ability to stay with their subject.
Elliptical Orbit. A satellite in elliptical orbit spends leisurely periods far from the earth, then swoops in with ever-increasing speed for a quick whip past the earth before sailing back into deep space. This is almost the opposite of suborbital flight; a career spent in elliptical orbit means brief, periodic forays down into the Hairball, then long seasons of creativity and autonomy in deep space. My own career has followed this trajectory. On the positive side, you spend enough time in the Hairball to stay fresh, current, and credible; on the negative side, you confuse everybody. It would almost be easier if the Corporation could cut you loose, but you keep showing up and nobody knows what to do with you. This is not a recipe for promotion, but it is an adventurous lifestyle that offers rich, unconventional opportunities.
Stargazing. I have been very, very lucky in my career. I know many exemplary people who dream of the stars but never found a way to get there. If you are in this category, you should not stop looking up. In whatever role you find yourself, you are still the captain of a rich, imaginative, inner world. You still have dreams, still possess and can cultivate creativity, and are still free to reach out and explore the world, its people, and their ideas. Yes, you have organizational constraints, but your life is still your own, and nobody can stop from you slipping outside at night and looking up at the sky. With some initiative and an open mind and heart, you can reframe and redefine your role. The reality is that, as much as we might dream of a life in orbit, much of the hardest and most important creative work is done in the heart of the Hairball. That is where we need change the most, and you are in the heart of that knotted lair. You can fight your own battles there, and you can also serve as a kind of mission control or ground station, teaming with those in orbit to pull in their exploratory work. And who knows? Maybe, one day, your fortunes will change.

The reality is that, as much as we might dream about perfect jobs that allow us to fulfill our spacefaring ambitions, Orbiting the Giant Hairball is primarily a state of mind. Creative freedom comes through an inner journey of continuous reflection and vigilance. An employee can work to cultivate this freedom from deep within the belly of the beast; on the other hand, those rare, creative career opportunities might prove unfulfilling if we do not cultivate the right mindset to receive them. Some of my most grueling battles with Hairballs came when I was in creative, autonomous assignments—indeed, because I was in those in those assignments. Those were the times when I needed to work hardest to maintain a proper mental and emotional framing of my journey.

Remember: each of us is on our own path. Wherever you might are today—whether hurtling through deep space, or looking up from terra firm at the night sky, or somewhere in between—you have choices and opportunities, which can take you towards or away from creative freedom. There is no fixed answer. Part of your journey is learning to chart your own path, whatever that might look like.

Image courtesy of The Swedish Space Corporation

The Promise and Peril of Orbiting the Giant Hairball (Part I)

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Disruptive military officers like to pass around a quirky little book called Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie , who worked at Hallmark Cards for 30 years, carving out an identity as a renegade artist with the job title "Creative Paradox." Using an eccentric combination of text, doodles, and other art, MacKenzie lays out a philosophy of rediscovering and employing one's creative side within a stifling corporation.

I have made a career out of orbiting the giant Hairball of the U.S. Air Force. I have had the most unusual career of anyone I know in the military, mostly through deliberate decisions to avoid traditional career moves in favor of opportunities where I could breathe free air. Through all those assignments, my motivating purpose has been to develop novel ways to serve the Air Force and help it deal with the dynamic challenges posed by our national security environment.

Because I am such an oddball, I am often asked to mentor other oddballs. I am happy with the choices I have made, but orbiting the giant Hairball is not easy, and it is not for everybody.

Over the next few posts, I figured I would share a few of the lessons I have learned along the way. Although my lessons are specific to my Air Force experience, I think these lessons will broadly apply to anyone trying to achieve orbit in a corporate environment.

MacKenzie's Metaphor

The Hairball, in MacKenzie's view, represents the corporation. A Hairball has corporate gravity that draws all nearby mass into its tangled, impenetrable core. All that extra mass only increases its gravity, sucking everything into its "mass of Corporate Normalcy." The Hairball embodies process, routine, precedent, norms, office politics, boredom, standardization—all the characteristics of Dilbert world that we love to hate.

The way for Creatives to survive, MacKenzie writes, is to launch into orbit. He is worth quoting at length here:

Orbiting is responsible creativity; vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond 'accepted models, patterns, or standards'—all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.

To find Orbit around a corporate Hairball is to find a place of balance where you benefit from the physical, intellectual and philosophical resources of the organization without becoming entombed in the bureaucracy of the institution.

If you are interested (and it is not for everyone), you can achieve Orbit by finding the personal courage to be genuine and to take the best course of action to get the job done rather than following the pallid path of corporate appropriateness.

To be of optimum value to the corporate endeavor, you must invest enough individuality to counteract the pull of Corporate Gravity, but not so much that you escape that pull altogether. Just enough to stay out of the Hairball.

Through this measured assertion of your own uniqueness, it is possible to establish a dynamic relationship with the Hairball—to Orbit around the institutional mass. If you do this, you make an asset of the gravity in that it becomes a force that keeps you from flying out into the overwhelming nothingness of deep space.

This is a wonderful metaphor, because it gives equal importance to the creative impulse and the necessary pull of the organization's mission. Freedom is not found through escape, but through service. This makes it a helpful framework for those who, either willingly or unwillingly, must seek their freedom within a large organization.

The metaphor is also helpful because it does not present a single right answer, but rather a dynamic tension. Most true things in life exhibit that kind of tension. As much as we would love to have clear-cut answers to life's hardest dilemmas, life usually asks us--on an almost daily basis--to sit with our dilemmas, carefully consider the competing values involved, and find a situation-specific way forward.

The challenge of entering orbit

The first lesson I learned is that getting to orbit is not easy. It takes hard work and a great deal of luck, and not everybody finds a way to slip the surly bonds of earth.

Corporations do not like firing employees into orbit. Corporations are always resource-constrained, which means they want all hands on deck tackling urgent and important problems. Corporations also like their employees close at hand, where they can monitor them and ensure they are being productive. They only like to approve things with a high expected return on investment.

Permitting an employee to enter orbit runs against all of an organization's instincts. The individual is, to some degree, beyond the reach of accountability. He or she is still drawing on the organization's resources, still taking home a paycheck, but is not available for the organization's most pressing lines of effort. The individual is doing… she is doing… hell, the corporation has no idea what she is doing. Her ROI is undefined. She is earning strange degrees in obscure subjects that have no immediate relevance to the corporate mission, or networking with communities that seem totally unrelated to its work, writing a book that she herself can't explain after three years, trying to develop a product that nobody on the existing product teams quite understands. You can hardly blame the corporation for fretting over this.

When you are in orbit, you are detached and adrift. You spend a great deal of time exploring territory nobody has ever explored before, which means it takes a lot of time to even learn to ask the right questions. It involves many strange forays and serendipitous encounters before you can even hope to show your first results, let alone return to earth with a value-adding innovation. Worse, many of those pioneering astronauts will never really show ROI; every individual catapulted into orbit is a small bet, and we can only hope that enough bets pay off to justify the whole space program.

Entering orbit takes work

All of this means that the corporate overlords are right to be concerned. Letting any employee into corporate orbit takes tremendous trust. If you want to enter orbit, you have to earn that trust.

The U.S. military, for example, offers a wide range of off-the-beaten-path opportunities for extra education, cultural or corporate immersions, or other unusual assignments, but most of these programs are highly selective. To get in, you have to prove yourself a loyal and talented servant of the Hairball. In my case, I spent six years—ten, if you count the Academy—doing exactly what I was told, mastering my core profession of being an Air Force pilot, living at the heart of the Hairball, before I was accepted into an Olmsted scholarship to learn Arabic and move to Jordan.

Any time I have a mentoring conversation with a restless young professional who yearns for orbit, I start by telling them the same thing: before you even think about these unorthodox opportunities, focus on excelling in your primary career field. Cal Newport develops this idea in So Good They Can't Ignore You, one of my favorite career development books. He argues against the conventional "follow your passion" model for finding meaningful work; instead, he argues for deliberately growing career capital through excellent performance, which ultimately allows you to gain more autonomy.

Even after you make that first foray into orbit, you will likely need to return to the Hairball from time to time to maintain your credibility, stay connected to the organizational mission, and report on what you have discovered. Upon my return from Jordan, I spent two years back in the Hairball, reestablishing my credentials, experience, and reputation in a flying squadron before I launched out into orbit again as a SAASS student and being selected to earn a PhD.

There is no right answer to how you should balance your time in the Hairball and your time in orbit; it is highly dependent on your organization, your personal situation, and your values and goals. In my next post, I will review a few different orbital trajectories.

What I'm Reading: October 2020

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The cover images below are hyperlinks through Amazon's affiliate program. Purchasing through them will provide modest support to this site.

The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem by Brad Feld

Last month I read Startup Communities by venture capitalist Brad Feld. Only after I read the book did I realize that Feld and coauthor Ian Hathaway had just released this follow-up book. This is a better book, and in many ways a superset of the original. It builds on those earlier lessons, refines a few things, and goes into much more depth.

Like the earlier book, this is a book about creating entrepreneurial ecosystems in specific locations. It is the first book you should read if you are part of a community that wants to create an innovation community. Feld is honest about the challenges in building entrepreneurial ecosystems, but is also optimistic about the prospects of even a small group of committed entrepreneurs to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The book is loosely structured around the science of complex adaptive systems. As someone passionate about complexity science, I was eager to see how they developed this idea. I was a little disappointed that the book did not take the idea beyond loose metaphor, but nonetheless, this is a good book. I am going to incorporate it into the Technology & Innovation course I teach in February, largely because there is so much interest inside government about how to create entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Beyond the Summit by Todd Skinner

One of the things I love about rock climbing is that it's such a wonderful training ground for life. It forces you to the edge of your abilities, because progress constantly requires taking one step further into fear and the unknown. Climbing well requires mental focus and self-mastery. Progress is visible and measurable. More than anything, defying gravity to scale a rock wall or mountain is a sublime metaphor for achieving hard goals.

That is why I was intrigued to discover this book by Todd Skinner, a climber legendary for making grueling first ascents that many deemed impossible. The book is marketed to business leaders, with a subtitle about "setting and surpassing extraordinary business goals." I began reading with some trepidation, because a book framed this way could be either very bad or very good.

Fortunately, I found the book to be very good. Like most business or self-help books, the insights are mostly just conventional wisdom, but sometimes sitting with conventional wisdom is useful; the value comes not from novelty, but from reflecting deeply on that wisdom as one reads a book. The execution in this case is very good. I found myself continually reflecting on how Skinner's insights might apply to my own life. The book also succeeds as a climbing memoir; Skinner and his team's hard slog up Pakistan's Trango Tower makes for riveting reading.

The book should appeal to anyone who liked The Rock Warrior's Way by Arno Ilgner, one of my favorite books about climbing and life. My enjoyment of the book was marred only by the knowledge that Skinner's climbing career ended in tragedy, a reminder that a life lived on the edge is not without risk.

Endymion by Dan Simmons

Hyperion by Dan Simmons is hands-down my favorite science fiction novel. It is structured after the Canterbury Tales, with a group of pilgrims each narrating a different tale as they travel to the mysterious Time Tombs on the world of Hyperion. Each tale is masterfully written in a different style and genre, the various plots hinge on breathtaking feats of the author's imagination, and the characters are rich and detailed. The universe that serves as a backdrop for these stories is vast, complex, and imaginative. These stories all converge in the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion. I recently listened to both on Audible, after reading them twice in the past.

Endymion is set almost three centuries later, following a civilizational collapse triggered by the events in the first two novels. I will not introduce the plot here, because I don't want to spoil the first two books and you shouldn't read Endymion anyway if you haven't read Hyperion and its sequel. I'll just say that if you have read those two books, Endymion is a worthy sequel. It is longer, slower-moving, focused on a smaller cast of characters on a more intimate journey. Much of the novel follows the key characters as they travel along the River Tethys, a river that spans numerous worlds joined by farcaster gates. That narrative structure aptly summarizes the book; Endymion is a river float through the vast universe that Simmons imagined, with all its diverse worlds, characters, and organizations. If that sounds appealing, check out the series.

The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman

I love Neil Gaiman's stories, so was eager to listen to this collection of essays on Audible. Gaiman reads his own work, and his British-accented storyteller's voice is a delight to listen to. He is a thoughtful, eccentric, and fascinating person, so I looked forward to hearing his thoughts on wide-ranging topics.

I did not read the product description closely, so had to adjust my expectations when I realized that the book mostly consists of book introductions, with a few speeches, reviews, and essays in the mix. Introductions, after all, are the parts of books that many of us skip (okay, I read them, but I'm a nerd that way). Furthermore, most of these pieces were about books, comics, authors, illustrators, and music artists I was unfamiliar with. For that reason, much of the book's rich value went right past me.

With that said, many of the pieces did speak powerfully and directly to me. Gaiman's defenses of books and libraries are charming, funny, and important. I loved hearing about his formative years as a child and young man, haunting libraries all summer and being mugged en route to the comic store with his hard-earned cash. His 2012 commencement speech Make Good Art, one of my favorite speeches, makes an appearance. His commentary on books and authors I have read was wonderful. I loved his piece about the dramatic impact of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and G.K. Chesterton had on him; his reverence for Lewis is fascinating and countercultural, because he does not share Lewis' Christian worldview. The conversations he relates with Stephen King are rich and funny, made even funnier by his Stephen King impersonation. His pieces about classic science fiction, fantasy, and horror authors helped me put them into a broader context of how those genres developed.

Many of the other pieces did not speak quite as directly to me, but I still found much to appreciate about them. Gaiman's mastery of his craft shows through every essay. His language is simple, clear, and direct, which is a testament to his care and precision. He is good-natured, funny, and always able to see the goodness in a wide range of artists and their work, even their not-very-good work, which is part of their lifetime trajectory of becoming good artists. Most significantly, every piece in this collection demonstrates Gaiman's lifelong commitment to storytelling. The collection might seem narrowly focused on specific creators and their creations, but that is because artistic creation is Gaiman's entire world. That's what makes him so good.

Power to the People by Audrey Kurth Cronin

Audrey Kurth Cronin is a terrorism scholar who made a name for herself with her book How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns. I somehow stumbled across her new book Power to the People while looking for new books to round out the Technology & Innovation course I teach at SAASS.

I have only had time to skim the book at this point, but have already decided to include it in this year's course. My course is built around complexity theory and emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between new technologies and social structures; we see many examples historically of how seemingly small technology changes can radically shape how human beings organize themselves economically and politically. I wanted a book that carried this idea forward into the future, particularly as non-state actors gain access to cutting-edge new technologies.

Cronin's book looks like a great fit because she demonstrates how the proliferation of two technologies--dynamite and the AK-47--"inadvertently spurred terrorist and insurgent movements that killed millions and upended the international system." After examining these cases in depth, the book examines emerging technologies like small drones, which I believe can have strategic impacts.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

I wrestled with how to approach this review, because I feel a bit guilty. Solaris is a book that I should love. It is a science fiction classic. It is admired by some of my favorite science fiction authors. It is cerebral, intelligent, haunting, and philosophical, traits I generally like in books.

There were stretches of the book that captivated me. The story follows a scientist named Kelvin who travels to a research station on the strange, oceanic world of Solaris, and begins seeing haunting apparitions from his past. The suspense is subtle and psychological, as the mysteries of his fellow scientists--and their apparitions--unfold.

However, the suspense is intermittent, and I was mostly just bored. The book contains lengthy sections that are essentially literature reviews for imaginary scientific disciplines. I had to make myself finish this book--after putting it down several times. I generally do not finish books I don't like, but I made an exception in this case because it's short.

A Survival Guide for the Next Four Years

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

It is election day, and I am sitting in my parked car at 7pm EST while my daughter is at swim practice. Polls are just beginning to close but it is too early to guess at the outcome. Rather than compulsively check my phone every five minutes, I am reflecting on how I will approach the world when I wake up tomorrow morning.

I have strong political opinions, and often wonder whether the greatest threat to the United States is the side I disagree with or polarization itself. It's a close tie. As a military officer, I am bound to respect lawful civilian oversight of the military, which in some ways makes things easier. Publicly raging against elected political leaders is inappropriate, and God knows we don't need more of that anyway. The best thing I can do, as a military officer sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, is to be what an Air Force colleague of mine called a "radical moderate." That does not mean being passive or drawing moral equivalencies, but it does mean starting with the equal dignity of every American and recognizing that the greatest challenge Americans face today is finding a way to continue living together.

That challenge will be especially salient come morning.

In the best case, half of the United States will weep with joy and relief. The other half of America will weep with grief and fear, or else burn with incandescent rage. The only thing that made the past year tolerable was hope—hope that somehow an election would dispel the shadow of fear we each live under. Tonight, for half of America, that hope will vanish for the next four years.

And that is the best case. Failing that, our nation may find itself in a kind of purgatory, waiting agonizing weeks or months for a contested result. In the worst case, we may lurch into a constitutional crisis that ratchets up our country's stakes even higher.

Regardless of which outcome results, we will all wake up in the morning. We will pour our coffee and eat our breakfast. We will drag ourselves into work, and get the kids to school or in front of a Zoom session. We will somehow survive until the weekend. Thanksgiving will be around the corner, and then Christmas and other winter holidays. The world will keep turning.

The mess we're in will still be here. COVID19 will still be ruining our lives. Our economy will still be in shambles. We will continue to have a crisis of trust in our political institutions, exacerbated by half of America's rage at an election that failed to deliver. Innumerable crowds of peaceful protesters will continue to fill America's streets, but rioters and right-wing paramilitaries will collide somewhere in the country, dominate headlines, and justify our seething contempt for the radical other. Health care will still be an unholy mess for damn near everybody, and we will continue to be gridlocked on major issues like abortion, immigration policy, and climate change. African Americans will continue to stagger beneath the crushing weight of racial inequity, while police officers will continue to feel like Vietnam Vets being spat on after homecoming. Facebook will remain a toxic brew, and we will daily contemplate unfriending people we love--or once loved. None of this change will tomorrow; in fact, tomorrow will probably be worse.

The sooner we can be honest about the world we are collectively facing, the sooner we can make serious choices about how we will live in it.

If tonight proves to be a night of celebration, by all means, go celebrate. Pop the champagne, cry tears of joy, and embrace your friends. If tonight proves to be a night of grief, then shed your tears, grieve, and call in sick tomorrow if you must. Do what you need to do. But once you come through the emotional turbulence, you will face the same question that we all will: how do we live for the next four years?

Some thoughts for the day after

I wrote recently about educating my children in communities on both sides of America's partisan divide, which led a couple readers to comment on my optimism. I chuckled, because I am rarely taken for an optimist. If my writing is encouraging, it is because I write to encourage myself. I write to restore my faith, to find an intentional way to live for my values when so much about the world seems broken.

So with that as a preface, here are some half-baked thoughts to myself—and by extension, to my readers—about how to approach the next four years.

Remember that the American people look much better at the grassroots. If you read the news or spend any time on social media, our country looks like a dumpster fire. Those feeds are populated by combing the nation for the most egregious examples of outrageous behavior on either side, then fanning the flames of outrage. There is indeed much to be upset about, which we should not minimize. But if we actually go outside and spend time with Americans of all stripes, is is amazing how sensible and decent and similar everyone is, even those who are annoying or disagreeable or outrageous. We still have so much in common. If there is hope for this country, it is not to be found in one presidential candidate or the other but in ordinary American people.

Recognize that daily life goes on. One of my most striking observations in 2020, even amidst the chaos, is the degree to which ordinary life persists. This is partly due to the resilience of ordinary people, but also due to the strength of an open democratic society that has individual liberty, free markets, and so many interlocking institutions and organizations. National politics is gravely important, but it is only a piece of the story. We live most of our lives locally—except for the hours we spend dying inside while staring at glowing rectangles. I strongly believe that the future of America is in the local. Each of us must consider that means for ourselves.

Rediscover how to be magnanimous. The winning side will have every incentive to lord its victory over the other. Republicans could interpret their victory as a mandate to steamroll over their critics, while Democrats could use a victory to unleash vengeance for four years of hurt and rage. Contempt and vengeance have not served us well to date, and they will not serve us well going forward. I expect the national arena will remain a bloodbath, but every single one of us as citizens can choose to be magnanimous in our personal relations, whether online or in person. If our favored side wins, we will be in a privileged position to work towards reconciliation; we should be gracious in victory and extend a hand to our neighbor. If we are defeated, we also must be magnanimous, accepting that this messy, convoluted, infuriating democracy has spoken in ways we did not expect. Somewhere in that is a message we need to hear.

Take comfort in the knowledge that America includes a large exhausted majority. I worry deeply about polarization, but perhaps the country is not as divided as it seems. Despite our deeply felt political rivalries, most Americans are exhausted and want to overcome our toxic divisions. Despite the cloud hanging over our country this week, I have been heartened by an outpouring of calls among friends and family on social media to work together for the sake of our democracy. We will see if that goodwill can outlast the election results, but I am hopeful that it can. Bitter rivalries cannot last forever; even in the most terrible civil wars, exhaustion and devastation eventually overshadow fear and hatred.

Encourage both parties to tame their extreme wings. Our political system rewards extreme positions, and both mainstream media and social media ensure that extremism is broadcast loud and clear to the rival camp. It is human nature to minimize or explain away extremism on our side ("a few bad apples") while amplifying extreme behavior on a rival's side ("they're all rotten"). The fact is, both ends of America's political spectrum have exhibited dangerous and deplorable behavior. Even if we feel the extremism is skewed one way or the other, both sides need to address their extreme wings; otherwise, they will continue to fuel our fear and hatred and tear us apart.

Focus on repairing damaged political institutions. The most terrifying aspect of our present era is that our political institutions may no longer be adequate for negotiating our political differences. There are a number of reasons: our institutions have been under unprecedented assault from within the country, the civic culture that upheld those institutions no longer exists, and structural forces like social media and disinformation campaigns have strained those institutions to the breaking point. The infrastructure of democracy urgently needs an upgrade in the coming years.

Continue vigorously fighting out our very real differences in appropriate political channels. Our nation faces grave challenges. Our differences are real, important, and urgent. We absolutely must fight for what we believe is right. Certain positions, ideologies, and behaviors are deplorable and will face harsh judgment from history. I expect that my grandchildren will look at certain positions from our present day the way I look at Jim Crow-era laws and attitudes. We must keep up the fight, but that is precisely why we have political institutions: to structure our political bargaining in ways that ultimately strengthen our country instead of tearing it to pieces.

Fight with the same vitality for understanding, reconciliation, and healing. Entropy is the iron law of the universe. Left to themselves, human societies will tear themselves apart in animosity, fear, and hatred. Standing against these forces takes tremendous emotional and mental energy, expended through leadership, civic engagement, and ordinary dinner table conversations. This will not happen on its own; we must deliberately work for it. Even as we battle out our contentious political issues, we must keep human dignity front and center and hold each other's humanity. We must proactively fight to maintain personal relationships across party lines.

In Conclusion

It is almost 10:00pm Eastern right now, and I beat the polls; I am finishing this piece with no idea what tomorrow will look like.

I'm home now, sitting on the couch with my dog curled against my side. My wife and three children are huddled around another computer, trying to divine the future from the bread crumbs of data trickling in. In a few minutes, I will crack a beer and relax.

I paused from writing in order to have a substantial conversation with my children about their anxieties, about the conflicting hopes and fears of their friends in California and Alabama, about how they will handle the range of possible outcomes when they go to school tomorrow. I did my best to tell them what I wrote here.

I should be anxious, but I feel an unexpected sense of peace. Voting this morning was the most uplifting experience I have had in a long time; my wife and I stood in the cold morning sunlight, shuffling forward in a socially distanced line that wrapped all the way around the church. I had never seen so many people out voting. Cars were parked anywhere they could squeeze in. The voters were as diverse as America itself: black, white, poor, rich, urban and sophisticated, barely able to speak English, young and hurried, shuffling along bent over canes and walkers. This beautiful line held Republicans and Democrats, people whose hopes and fears were diametrically opposed and yet somehow were all out here in the bright sunlight, courteous, polite, patient.

It is a heavy night, and tomorrow will be a heavy day. The Founding Fathers never claimed democracy would be easy. If nothing else, for all our bitter divisions, we are united in one thing: we are all part of this hard, messy, contentious dance called democracy. We will not take "no" for an answer, and when the world knocks us down, we will organize and mobilize and keep fighting for what we think is right. Somehow, out of all that creative energy, the wheels of American history turn.

We are Americans, and we believe deep in our bones that we can determine our future. We will keep doing democracy. We will not stop. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever.

Life as Commitment: Remembering Steve Chiabotti

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This has been a week for thinking about legacy.

If you have followed my recent writings, you know that I have been reading, thinking, and writing extensively about the midlife passage. Far from being a crisis or a regression, this is a rich time of reflecting on one's life, settling restless questions of identity, and finding a north star for the rest of one's life.

I am mesmerized by men and women who find their way through this passage into a sense of joyful vocation in the second half of life. They settle into themselves, find that one thing they were meant to do with their lives, and give themselves wholeheartedly to it.

All the authors I have been savoring recently—David Whyte, Jerry Colonna, Parker Palmer, Richard Rohr, David Brooks—describe life in two acts. In the first act we are, as Brooks writes, "ambitious, strategic, and independent." We test our wings. We set out from home, try new things, build identities for ourselves. We work tirelessly and anxiously to acquire the elements of a well-lived life, which for most of us includes a spouse or partner, a career, a home, and children. This is a restless and exploratory season in which we remain "mobile and lightly attached," which is partly out of necessity, given both our uncertainty about our own selves and our place in a dynamic, mobile world. We finally reach a place where, successful or not in our striving, we begin to question everything that has brought us here.

Then comes the middle passage, and for the fortunate and reflective among us, an arrival into the second act. For Brooks, the essence of this second act is commitment, which might be made to a vocation, a spouse or family, a philosophy of faith, or a community—and likely all of the above. He writes:

A commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters.

Commitment entails making choices and living with them. Brooks writes that people who make such commitments "are not keeping their options open. They are planted." Paradoxically, it is the very act of foreclosing options that allows us to live deeply and wholeheartedly. If first act living is a frenzied pursuit, second act living begins with surrender--not in the sense of giving up, but in the rich sense of giving oneself over to something larger. When we meet these people, we find that their lives have a kind of serenity. They know who they are, what they stand for, and what they are meant to do in the world. Their lives become "relational, intimate, and relentless."

A life of commitment

On Friday, I attended a memorial event for Dr. Stephen "Chef" Chiabotti, a long-time professor at the school where I serve. Steve spent thirty years in the Air Force, culminating as Commandant and Dean of the School of Advanced Air & Space Studies (SAASS), which has a mission of educating strategists for the Air Force, Space Force, and nation. He spent sixteen more years at the school as a civilian.

Steve had a varied and successful career. In his first act, he was a pilot and found a deep sense of purpose as a flight instructor and then an academic instructor. During his years on Active Duty he also developed deep expertise in wrangling bureaucracy.

The midlife passage rarely means a decisive break with the past; for most, it means a ripening of capacities, relationships, skills and interests that we acquire in the first act. That was certainly true of Steve, who leveraged his expertise in teaching and navigating bureaucracy when he transitioned into his second act: committing to SAASS.

SAASS was where Steve made his home and hearth, and the memorial event was a testimony to his legacy. By planting himself in one small school for two decades, he shaped generations of Air Force leaders—providing them with a rich education, mentorship, critical thinking skills, wisdom, and intellectual humility at critical moments of their careers. More than 60 people joined via Zoom from across the world, a significant number of whom were general officers. Steve's mastery of bureaucracy paid dividends in many of their lives; attendees shared story after story of Steve's intervention in their careers to protect them and open up opportunities at decisive moments. Steve's life was a powerful example of how the strategic skills one develops in the first act of life can be harnessed to serve second act purposes.

I personally was a beneficiary of Steve's generosity and talent; after an eight-month gridlock in which multiple general officers could not break through an administrative logjam to get me into the assignment we knew was right, Steve cooked up a solution and made it happen. All the work I did at DIU flowed from that assistance.

I barely knew Steve outside of work, but it seems clear through others' stories that he made equally strong commitments to his family, friends, and community.

Montgomery, Alabama is, to be candid, not the first place where most Air Force officers would choose to commit themselves. Steve did. By planting himself at SAASS, Steve made Montgomery his home, and he made his home a place of community.

His cooking was legendary, and cooking was an excuse to bring people together. Shaylyn Romney Garrett writes, "There’s a unique sort of bonding that is initiated when we provide sustenance to others." She describes sharing meals as a universal human experience that joins people even across languages and cultures—an experience we have largely lost in our individualized Western culture. Steve pushed back on this relentless individualism, providing meals for innumerable SAASS events and frequently opening his home for good food and fellowship. I enjoyed his hospitality at his home more than once.

Steve was taken far too soon, just a few years into retirement at 69. I am sure I am not the only one who felt compelled to consider the passage of time, the uncertainty of our span on this earth, and the legacy we each will leave.

A well-lived life is a life of commitments, and Steve lived well. By committing himself to SAASS, to his family and friends, and to Montgomery, Steve left a powerful legacy—not merely a career, not merely a list of achievements, but generations of men and women who are better leaders and human beings for having known him.

Raising Citizens in The Two Americas

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

My three children have received quite the education over the past year—and I don't just mean school.

Like children across the world in the COVID19 era, they have received a practical education in adaptability, resilience, disaster management, self-directed play and learning, and managing their own emotions. During lockdown my ten year-old daughter wrote a poem and story that showed an astonishing depth of insight into the emotional roller coaster she was riding. Cloaked as it was in fiction, she herself did not fully recognize the powerful cry of her unconscious.

Some of their greatest learning, however, has been about political polarization. They spent the past six years in a public school in Silicon Valley, which is about as politically liberal as America gets. Their friends came from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, spoke numerous languages, and held passionate and deeply personal views about immigration. My children studied global warming in school and performed school plays about environmental stewardship. Instead of Columbus Day, they celebrated Indigenous Peoples' Day. If anyone in their school or neighborhood voted for Donald Trump, it was a closely-guarded secret. Their school valued creativity, experiential learning, and the individual expression of each child.

In July we moved to Montgomery, Alabama, which is as politically conservative as Silicon Valley is liberal. Our children resumed their education in a small private, Christian school, which values classical education, tight haircuts, and grammar drills. Now it is the Biden supporters who are in the closet, while Trump-Pence signs adorn many lawns—usually alongside JESUS 2020 signs. On Columbus Day, my children brought home a book hailing Christopher Columbus as a hero. Their school celebrates patriotism, pledges allegiance to the flag, and advocates for individual responsibility and strong families.

Before our move, my wife and I wondered how such an abrupt transition would go, particularly during this time of toxic political polarization. We endlessly discussed how to educate our children, in what kind of school.

A few months into this new adventure, however, I have to say that I am incredibly grateful that my children are growing up with firsthand experience in both halves of the United States. At a time when our country has so thoroughly sorted itself into opposing camps, this is a rare and valuable opportunity that many Americans will never know. Our "foreign immersion" in different parts of our own country has been every bit as exotic as the two years we spent living in the Middle East.

The first and most striking reality my children encountered is that kind, loving, generous, and good people can be found anywhere, even when they hold radically different political perspectives from each other. After six years in Silicon Valley, my children had internalized a thoroughly dehumanized stereotype of "the other"; they only set foot in their new school with trepidation. They were delighted to discover a cadre of teachers who—just like their teachers in Silicon Valley—were warm, generous people who loved them, cared about their academic success, and more importantly wanted them to grow up to be thoughtful, compassionate people and good citizens. Now the "othering" process is playing out in reverse; my children frequently return home shocked at the latest dehumanizing stereotypes they hear about liberals and Democrats.

My delight in having a foot in two worlds does not mean that I draw moral equivalencies. My wife and I still have strong views on many issues, and we are utterly baffled and saddened by some viewpoints we encounter. Like most Americans, we are exhausted and demoralized by the erosion of our democracy, gridlocked political institutions, political toxicity, the collapse of civil discourse, and the celebration of corrosive extremism. We believe that democracy demands not the papering over of differences, but vigorous engagement with them. We believe that some political viewpoints are worth tirelessly fighting for, and others are worth tirelessly fighting against.

Yet we also believe that the messy, hard, contentious work of democracy must play out with civility and with a basic respect for individual human beings. Hard though it might be, we have to keep our common humanity in sight. Much of the outrage on both sides springs from a deep sense of fear and woundedness, as we all feel that the "other" is on a ruthless crusade to deny our basic humanity.

My children are carrying a lot right now. They feel personally invested in many political issues. My twelve year-old son, a passionate environmentalist, is baffled and almost hurt by the widespread skepticism of global warming here. My daughter comes home several days a week, processing her teacher's prayers for political outcomes that would mortify her teachers at her previous school. I worry, sometimes, that they are carrying too much. So much easier, I think, if they lived ensconced in a single community of like-minded family, friends, and neighbors who affirmed each other's beliefs in every conversation.

Easier, undoubtedly. But our family has never chosen to live easy.

My children are learning how to be citizens, with all the uncomfortable complexity that demands. They are learning about the great debates of our time, but they are learning about these debates from within communities of real, living, breathing people. Unlike the raucous invective that passes for discourse on social media, they are participating in human discussions. They can never take the easy way out--despising the other--because the other is a friend, teacher, or relative, in one world or the other.

Our dinner table has become a place of rich conversation. This week we have had sophisticated conversations about Amy Coney Barrett, about the fierce battles for the Supreme Court, about Republican and Democratic perspectives and tactics, about election year nomination blocking and court stacking. We have talked about abortion, about the meanings of "pro-life" to different political and religious communities, about the relative prioritization of issues, about single-issue voting and more comprehensive platforms. In the weeks before that our children watched Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, and in the days that followed we talked about different narratives they heard assessing the performance of each candidate. Racial equity issues are front and center here, and we discuss them almost every day.

I have no idea if we are doing it right. Perhaps our children, under the cognitive and emotional strain of so much dissonance, will later be easy prey for fundamentalists or ideologues, who promise easy answers. Maybe, exhausted, they will simply turn a blind eye to contentious political issues and withdraw into private, safe worlds.

Then again, maybe, just maybe, our children will learn to be American citizens.

Maybe they will grow up comfortable with complexity and uncertainty. Maybe they will learn to embrace the creative tension of holding another person's humanity, and hearing others out without feeling personally threatened. Maybe they will learn to listen to the best possible arguments on an issue from multiple perspectives, then still have the courage and strength to stand by what they believe to be right. Maybe they can learn to do so with civility and respect. Maybe they can still be good friends and neighbors, even amidst profound disagreements about consequential, high-stakes issues.

I have to believe that about my children, because I have to believe it about the rest of us. Each day, as I navigate these thorny questions about how to educate my children, I am forced to look in a mirror. I must be alert to hypocrisy, ensure I am living out what I hope for my children. Striving to be a better parent is, I hope, making me a better citizen.

All of us in the United States are under tremendous strain. So many of us feel powerless, in the face of structural forces that seem to be tearing our country apart. But a democracy ultimately depends on its citizens, and the responsibility to be good citizens starts within each one of us.

As I am learning from my children, becoming a good citizen is an ongoing process that we can and must live out each day.

P.S. For my wife Wendy Luce Jacobsen's rich perspective on finding hope in these times, you can read her writing at Healing Division.

Personal Branding vs. Our Whole Selves

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Like most writers, I struggle with powerful internal demons that together constitute what Steven Pressfield calls Resistance—a malevolent, almost tangible force that resists our most noble and heroic efforts to rise to our fullest potential. Resistance paralyzes us with senses of fear and inability. Every good piece I have ever written only emerged after a difficult inner battle.

One source of struggle is the overwhelming pressure to brand oneself. One definition of personal branding reads:

The conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, increase their circle of influence, and have a larger impact.

In other words, branding is how we communicate and present our value to the world. One of the first questions we encounter at cocktail parties is, "What do you do?" Each of us is obligated to have a ready answer. We usually encounter this concept in a professional context, but the world constantly asks to name our identity in a wide variety of other contexts.

I have always struggled to name my identity, and I grow less certain with each passing year. I have been extremely fortunate to have had a rich variety of experiences in my life. Officially, I am an Air Force officer and cargo pilot who no longer flies. I know Arabic and am a Middle East Foreign Area Officer, but have never worked a FAO job. I am an entrepreneur who founded two drone-related startups. I am a Political Scientist currently working as a professor. I am also, less officially, a writer of science fiction, fantasy, memoir, defense innovation pieces, and blog posts loosely aimed at helping leaders find a place of wholeheartedness from which to lead. I enjoy this rich complexity but also feel spread thin.

The pressure to name my identity is a constant source of anxiety. As I put together this website, questions of identity felt increasingly urgent. Do I use my own name as a web domain, or pick a catchy topic-specific name that is likely to drive more traffic? Do I create separate websites for each aspect of my life, or somehow integrate them into a single website? How do I write about diverse interests without alienating the majority of readers drawn by just one topic? Do I throw everyone on one mailing list or maintain multiple topical mailing lists? How do I present myself on a CV?

Lost in all this anxious thrash is the joyful magic of creation. Following my heart, writing what sings to me on any given day, never feels like enough. It must fit a strategy, fit a brand, avoid confusing my readers by straying too far from their expectations. Why the hell is a military officer quoting poetry and writing about inner journeys? And if he wants to write about inner journeys, why he is suddenly writing about social science or coding? I sit before the blank page, wheels spinning, stressing about identity management and market position rather than doing the thing I truly love: creating.

I share all this not to navel-gaze, but because I suspect I am not the only person who feels this way. Not everyone is a writer. Not everyone has the diversity of professional identities I have cycled through. However, each of us is a complex and multi-dimensional person with wide-ranging interests and a sense of self that bristles at being put in a box.

The pressure to name our identity

Why do we feel so much pressure to name our identities?

One class of incentives is economic. Strong economies are built on specialization and exchange, and we live in a time when the sheer range of possible specializations boggles the mind. Our distant ancestors might have specialized in hunting mammoths or picking fruit, but today a front-end web developer frets over which technology stack to specialize in. Most academics build successful careers by specializing in tiny slivers of human knowledge.

Freelancers might not be constrained by organizations, but they arguably face an even tougher problem: economic incentives to brand their own personal identity. It is not enough in today's world to be a wise, emotionally intelligent, multi-dimensional thinker with a range of skills and experiences. The winners in the modern economy can state the value proposition of their professional lives in a sentence. Specialization sells. A blog entirely devoted to YouTube search engine optimization will probably outcompete a personal blog maintained by a polymath with diverse interests.

Social incentives also drive us to name identities. The human mind will do almost anything to avoid complexity, which is cognitively demanding and emotionally draining. Identities bundle complexity into digestible nuggets. They become shorthands for entire worldviews, which allows us to bin people into a comprehensible framework with almost no contextual knowledge. Social identities become in-group and out-group markers that allow rapid sorting of communities and relations.

Perhaps the deepest incentives to name identities lie within. We desperately want to know who we are. Most of us don't. In our formative years we live out identities handed down from authority figures or culture. As we grow older, we experiment with alternative identities and begin to learn who we really are. Around midlife, we shed worn-out identities and grow into new ones. The ambiguity of these seasons can be disorienting and even painful. We are uncertain how to live in the world when we cannot even live comfortably within our own skin. Identity markers--even someone else's identity markers--anchor us and promise to settle our uncertainty.

Crises of identity

Although these pressures to name our identities are inevitable and perhaps even necessary, they can lead to a number of stresses that challenge our full humanity.

First, the human soul yearns for spaciousness and freedom. Each of us is a multidimensional being, far too complex to pin down with mere labels. Identities reduce us, constrain us, hammer us into containers too small for the welling abundance within. Each choice we make about presentation seems to foreclose other opportunities. Establishing our presence in the world becomes a zero-sum game, in which we constantly worry over identity decisions and the opportunity cost of paths not taken.

Second, naming identities works against the magic of synthesis. Each of us wears multiple identities, and these identities can interact in challenging and sometimes profound ways. In the corporate world, Americans long drew a boundary between professional and personal identities. The collapse of that boundary has opened up a creative, engaging, and important space in which we can discuss emotional intelligence, empathy, wholeheartedness, and meaning in the context of work. Many scientific breakthroughs occur when scholars make lonely, uncertain expeditions into other disciplines to discover connections. One reason I love fiction is that it encourages an expansive way of understanding the world, drawing liberally from the human experience, history, knowledge, and imagination.

The pressure to name a narrow identity works against this ongoing process of creative synthesis. It pressures us into conformity—into cultural norms, genre tropes, the conventions of particular scientific disciplines, established ways of living and being. Living across identities requires intentionality, energy, and courage. It often means being misunderstood and alienated. Scientists, artists, and other creatives who work across identities often struggle to find the acceptance that they so earnestly seek.

Third, identities are malleable and highly uncertain to change. We marry and divorce. We undergo religious conversions and transformations. We experience job changes, sometimes radical ones. Old interests fade and new interests arise. A well-lived life involves a constant process of growth. Fixed identities curtail that freedom, creating drag on our ability to grow and change.

Identity transformations can thus become lonely and dangerous experiences. Religious transformations, although sometimes sorely needed, can feel like relational suicide. Scholars who want to change disciplines do so at the risk of their careers. Authors trying to cross genre lines sometimes write under pen names, deliberately fragmenting their identities in order to sell their work.

Fourth, shorthand identity markers are simplifications at best and outright lies at the worst. Consider how much baggage is packaged in a label like Democrat or Republican or Christian or Atheist, a slogan like "Black Lives Matter" or "science is real", a genre like Science Fiction or Romance. When we tag ourselves—or others—with such a shorthand, we invoke a long and encumbered history, which might only loosely represent a unique individual. To the degree that our private beliefs differ from that prefabricated identity, we can feel great personal stress, pressuring us to drive our private beliefs into conformity, suppress them, or shed the identity entirely.

Holding identity in tension

Although I do not have easy answers for managing complex identities, here are a few principles. They all involve a creative tension between personal wholeness and the practical needs to mark identity.

Become conscious of the forces constraining identity. Understanding these forces is half the battle. It allows us to engage intentionally and deliberately with identity management, rather than being swept along by unconscious forces that constrain us.

Recognize there is no perfect answer to identity management. There are only tradeoffs. One website or three? Pen names or not? Different CVs for different communities? Religious label or not? All we can do is bring our best judgment to bear, make decisions, and move ahead. Stalling rarely helps.

Remember that you are more than your presentation to the world. Wholeheartedness demands fluidity, integration, expansiveness. Even if the world requires us to brand ourselves in particular ways, we must retain that wholehearted sense of integration within. We must not confuse our tactical presentation with the full breadth of who we are as individuals. We need spaces in our lives where we can unfurl our whole selves across the canvas, whether that is in our relationships, journals, arts, or somewhere else.

Know that resisting identity pinning requires a countercultural commitment. Not everyone will make this choice, but those who do should be clear-eyed about the implications. It will likely mean difficulties with all the things that branding is designed to solve, such as sales, quick connections with existing communities, or even understanding. It will mean a higher expenditure of energy. On the positive side, it will likely bring a sense of constructive chaos, of serendipitous collisions, of humming energy from unexpected directions. Every once in a while, it will bring a convention-shattering breakthrough.

Create space for others to live beyond their identities. Once we understand these dynamics within ourselves, it helps us create space for other people. For example, I felt severely constrained by the norms of my academic discipline when I was a PhD student. Now that I am a professor, I try to be more expansive in what I consider a valid research project. I am honest with my students about the opportunities and pitfalls of going in certain directions, but I want to err on the side of letting them follow their deepest instincts and pursue their deepest passions.

Remember that branding is malleable. These decisions seem so consequential in the moment. Yes, altering these decisions later can require time and energy, but people—like companies—rebrand all the time. Nothing is forever. You will always be yourself, and you can always find ways to alter how you present yourself to the world.

Look for points of intersection between identities. Magic happens when brave individuals dare to cross stovepiped identities. I have previously written about Jerry Colonna and David Whyte, who have carved out a unique genre to guide corporate executives on their inner journeys. I love eclectic novels like Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai, which draws on the author's far-ranging interests and defies any kind of genre norms. I love the scientific community around complexity theory, built by renegade biologists, physicists, economists, and other scholars who saw something profoundly wrong with the prevailing methodologies and theories in their disciplines. Each of us has our own unique intersection of identities, which creates rich opportunities to give something new to the world.

Keep showing up. This last point is a personal reminder to myself. Anxiety about identity management can become an excuse to stall, to hide, to wait until we have everything figured out. In these moments, we need to continue participating with the world, learning, sharing, and giving. We will figure it out, and even if we don't, it will be a wonderful ride.

Our rich, multi-dimensional lives will always stand in tension with the demands of society and the market to brand ourselves with specific identities. Managing these identities can be difficult and even painful, but the creative tension can also be a source of creativity and generosity to the world.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

What I'm Reading: September 2020

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

All of us enter seasons, from time to time, when we feel we have lost our way. I have been in one of those seasons lately. My involvement in my last startup came to a turbulent, unexpected, and deeply disorienting end a few months ago. Add in a cross-country move, the alienation imposed by COVID19, and the unraveling of American democracy, and the result is an existential sense of dislocation.

Fortunately, my personal journey is hardly unique. This midlife disorientation is an almost universal part of the human experience, and some wise and good writers have done us the great service of acting as guides. Most of my reading list this month reflects time I have spent sitting at their feet.

Crossing the Unknown Sea, David Whyte

I first encountered David Whyte in Jerry Colonna's book Reboot, which I read last month. The notion of a poet who wrote about work caught my attention. I am so glad it did; this is one of the most beautiful and powerful books I have read in a long time. The prose is consistently gorgeous. This is one of those rare books I will return to again and again, just to savor the majestic beauty of individual sentences.

This was exactly the right book for me at this time in my life. Whyte writes of his own sense of dislocation, which led him to follow an inner call away from organizational leadership to pursue his dream of becoming a poet.

Whyte cuts right to the heart of the midlife passage, with all its profound questions about identity and purpose. For example, he writes,

To have even the least notion of what we want to do in life is an enormous step in and of itself, and it is silver, gold, the moon, and the stars to those who struggle for the merest glimmer of what they want or what they are suited to.

He also captures our deepest yearnings for a life half-glimpsed beyond the horizon:

Some have experienced fulfillment for only a few brief hours early on in their work lives and then measured everything, secretly, against it since.

I underlined dozens of such passages as I went, each of which sang to me.

Whyte recogizes that the pursuits of good work and good lives are inseparable. He emphasizes the nobility and glory in good work, validating our yearning for it. Yet he also recognizes the immensity of the challenge to find good work; it is a journey and a pilgrimage, not a destination, and "there is almost no life a human being can construct for themselves where they are not wrestling with something difficult."

Perhaps the best we can do is learn to dwell in the deepest parts of ourselves, to listen to the quiet voice within that pleads to be heard but is so often drowned out by our ceaseless activity. To be truly alive, we must learn to live at what he calls our cliff edge, that dangerous but beckoning horizon we often fear to approach.

Whyte ultimately views the pursuit of good work as a living conversation between ourselves and the world. It is always a negotiation, always a mutual search and accomodation. You cannot find a better book to guide you into that conversation.

Essentials, David Whyte

I was so enraptured by the first chapters of Crossing the Unknown Sea that I immediately ordered several more of Whyte's books. The first was Essentials, a slim, pocket-sized volume of his best poems. The economy of his poetry stands in contrast to his rich prose, but it is perhaps even more powerful—a concentrated dose of all his heart and insight. Nearly every poem hit me with tremendous force.

Many of these poems articulate every step of the midlife passage, every hidden thought I have struggled to find my own words for. "Sweet Darkness" beautifully captures both the heartbreak and the hope of this passage. I hesitate to do violence to the poem by only quoting part of it, but you can read the entire thing here:

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

My throat also caught at Mameen, which crystallized my experiences of failure into something I can treasure:

Recall the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not.

Admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clear air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim,
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back from the mountain
who helped to make it.

So many other poems touch on other related aspects of this journey through lostness and renewal. Equally powerful are the handful of love poems, which evoked a bright and deep appreciation for my wife as I read them. There is little more I can say, as the poems need to speak for themselves.

If I was stranded on a deserted island, Essentials is now among the books I would want with me. I have begun memorizing my favorite poems so I can always have them at hand.

P.S. Whyte is also a wonderful speaker. I enjoyed this webinar, which speaks to the pain and alienation of our COVID19 era.

Given, Wendell Berry

I do not read poetry very often, but I picked up this volume years ago after a friend recommended I try Berry. I rediscovered it on my bookshelf one evening recently when I was feeling restless. Although it did not hit me with the force of Whyte's poems, I did enjoy it.

In addition to being a poet, novelist, and essayist, Berry is a farmer and environmental activist. His writing has an earthy, simple goodness to it, evoking my memories of visiting my grandparents as a child on their small family farm. These are poems about birds and flowers, hills and streams, the changing of the seasons. They are intimately tied not just to landscape in general, but to specific places. Berry celebrated the local, which is perhaps countercultural in our transient, mobile world; as his Wikipedia entry puts it, "His writing is grounded in the notion that one's work ought to be rooted in and responsive to one's place."

I read the book over several evenings, and found the poems a refreshing alternative to the stresses and pressures of our crazy times. They are a call to not forget who we are:

What I fear most is despair
for the world and us: forever less
of beauty, silence, open air,
gratitude, unbidden happiness,
affection, unegotistical desire.

More than an escape, these poems are a challenge to see and experience daily life at a much deeper level. Nearly every poem is a meditation on everday miracles that most of us, in our frantic desperation, would never take the time to see.

Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur, Brad Feld

I discovered entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and writer Brad Feld while researching mental health among entrepreneurs—a subject near and dear to my heart, after my scorching experiences over the past few years. Brad has built a remarkable career in the Boulder, Colorado startup ecosystem, but he is especially remarkable for working to dismantle the taboo around discussing mental health in the startup world. He has written numerous articles, appeared in a TechStars mental health series, and spoken candidly in venues like the Tim Ferriss podcast.

Startup Life, coauthored with his wife Amy Batchelor, is a relationship manual for entrepreneurs and their significant others. I had no idea such a book existed, and think it could be helpful for many founders. Much of the book mirrors general relationship and marriage advice available in other books, but it shows a unique sensitivity to the pressures of startup life; there are limits to how much founders can slow down in this arena and still survive, which in turn imposes unique strains on relationships.

I have been married long enough, and read enough relationship books, that I can't say I gleaned too much new information. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the read. Brad and Amy are what make the book strong; they have such authentic voices, and seem comfortable with themselves and each other, and their humble example gives them unique credibility. Probably the most interesting aspects of the book to me were practical strategies and practices they have developed to keep their own marriage strong.

Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, Brad Feld

Very different from Startup Life, Startup Communities is about building an innovation ecosystem in a particular locale. The style is again casual. Brad seems comfortable in his own skin; coming straight from my reading of Startup Life, I was impressed with his ability to shift between varied subjects to weigh in with informed perspective.

I was evaluating this book for possibly inclusion in the innovation course I teach. It caught my eye because so many government innovators right now want to create their own innovation ecosystems. I am usually skeptical of these efforts; government efforts to build innovation ecosystems often consist of creating a dazzling new building, then passively waiting for innovation to happen. I once saw Marc Andreessen give a talk in which he laid out the ingredients of an innovation hub like Silicon Valley: abundant capital, a critical mass of talent, a risk-taking culture, a nexus of companies and universities, and so forth. He said that when he describes these elements to government ecosystem-builders, they usually look at him blankly afterwards and say, "Okay, let's say we can't have any of those things… THEN how do we build an innovation ecosystem?" That story still makes me laugh because it rings so true.

This book reminds me of that talk. Brad focuses the book on his own home innovation hub in Boulder, Colorado. He pays special attention to the different kinds of stakeholders and their roles. He unapologetically believes that entrepreneurs need to be the driving force for innovation, and that everyone else—like government, investors, and universities—can only ever be in supporting roles, although these roles are important.

Some might find the focus on Boulder too narrow, but Brad's goal is to use this specific example to show how innovation ecosystems might grow elsewhere. In his introduction he says:

I have a deeply held belief that you can create a long-term, vibrant, sustainable startup community in any city in the world, but it's hard and takes the right kind of philosophy, approach, leadership, and dedication over a long period of time.

If that whets your appetite, the book is worth a read.

Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, Sharon Salzburg

This is another book I discovered through Jerry Colonna. In 2002 he was, in his own words, at the lowest point in his life. He was "at a point where, as St. Augustine wrote, my soul was a burden, tired of the man who carried it." Three books helped him reboot his life: Let our Life Speak by Parker Palmer (which I reviewed in July), When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, and Faith by Sharon Salzberg.

Salzberg aims to rescue the concept of faith from the necessity of believing specific religious claims. She writes, "whether faith is connected to a deity or not, its essence lies in trusting ourselves to discover the deepest truths on which we can rely." The book is part memoir, part spiritual reflection, and part introduction to Buddhism, as Salzberg recounts her own story; a story "of knowing, even in the midst of great suffering, that we can still belong to life, that we're not cast out and alone."

This is a fine book, and well-crafted, although it did not resonate with me in the way that other books have. Perhaps I went in with too high of expectations, or perhaps I was spoiled by books like Whyte's that spoke so precisely to my current journey. Most of the territory felt well-trodden. If I took one thing away from the book, it was a sense of validation about my own feelings of disconnection and encouragement to lean into the pain--not to deny it or run from it. One passage reads:

All of us go through times in our lives when we feel as if we are lost in a wilderness, caught in a violent storm. Exposed and vulnerable, we look for something or someone to help us through the upheaval. We look for a place of safety that won't break apart no matter what we are experiencing. As many of us have discovered, the refuge we may have sought--in relationships, in ideals, in points of view--ultimately lets us down. We begin to wonder, Is there any refuge that is real and enduring?

That is exactly it. The pain of that question leads some people to "walk away", in Salzburg's words, which breeds cynicism. Salzburg sees cyncism as "a self-protective mechanism. A cynical stance allows us to feel smart and unthreatened without really being involved."

A persistent willingness to engage those deep doubts is how we surpass cynicism to find new life. This is hardly easy. At one point in the book, Salzburg blurts out to a teacher, "Isn't there an easier way?" That is the universal question, and the answer is invariably no.

The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to be Effective in Any Unruly Organization, Richard Haass

A reader of my blog recommended this book to me. I was amazed that I had never heard of it before. The book is about getting things done in government, and it was written by a man who can speak from experience; Haass was a special assistant to President George Bush Sr. and a senior director on the National Security Council.

I'll admit that reading a book about government bureaucracy felt a bit dreary, after reading the invigorating, soulful books by Whyte and Salzberg. However, if we want to have an impact in this world, we cannot isolate ourselves from the messy, hard, and frustrating work of engaging with people, organizations, and the complex problems we all face together. Our soul work should lead us to a place where we are equipped to re-enter the world. This might be the best book you will find on how to meaningfully do that in government.

Haass begins with an honest recognition of how hard it is to work inside government. He notes that bureaucracy was once "championed by advocates of good government. It was a welcome inovation, one designed to add professional standards and checks and balances to institutions and processes all too commonly characterized by corruption, spoils, and patronage."

Now, he writes, bureaucracy is viewed as part of the problem they were meant to solve:

No democracy can thrive for long amid the perceived failure of its governing institutions, for such failure breeds cyncism, alienation, and in, the end, desperation."

He wrote those words in 1993; I can only imagine what he would think of government in 2020.

Rather than despair, Hass says that all of us in government have a responsibility to help close this gap. He develops the metaphor of a compass to guide policy entrepreneurs in their efforts to be more effective in getting things "done"—which means not just approved but implemented.

At the center of the compass is you. You must know your values, your strengths, your weaknesses, and your personal agenda. Effectively managing yourself is the foundation of your public service, competence, and ability to influence. Doing anything in government requires working together with diverse stakeholders, so the rest of the compass points to others; north is those for whom you work, south is those who work for you, east are those with whom you work, and west are those external stakeholders with whom you should work. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a different compass point, and packed with strategies for effectively working in this human territory. The book is enriched by dozens of interviews with other policymakers.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the only book of its kind; Haass wrote it precisely because such a book did not already exist. Every part of the book rang true to my experience leading innovation at DIU, which often entailed messy entanglements in policy. The book is practical and wise, honest about the difficulties of government while still being optimistic. My only critique is that the book is beginning to show its age; the first edition was published in 1993, and the second in 1999. Haass's examples will be old history for a rising generation, and it would be helpful to see Haass weigh in on the rapidly worsening dysfunction in government today. Nonetheless, I'd still recommend the book for anyone working in government policy.

When Innovation Bites You in the Ass

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Last year I gave a talk about innovation to an Air Force audience. I have done this many times before and knew the minefield I was stepping into. The Department of Defense has achieved the stunning feat of turning Innovation! into a hated buzzword, so every talk starts with a chasm between my audience and me. They sit with folded arms, peering suspiciously at me, almost daring me to try to impress them with technical jargon and Silicon Valley references and heroic admonitions to go ideate and think differently and disrupt, so they can quickly write me off as another expert practitioner of innovation theater.

Instead, I usually leap onto their side of the chasm. I ask them what the word "innovation" evokes, and we immediately begin a vibrant conversation about hypocrisy, hollowness, and the desire to vomit. Then I tell my own stories about trying to innovate within government, dwelling perhaps a little too long on the anger and hurt and frustration. I narrate my victories and defeats and show them my scars. It is my unique style; candid, curmudgeonly, too grim for the tastes of some of my colleagues.

Yet something magical usually happens; as we dive into the gritty reality of how hard it is to actually innovate within government, my audience comes alive. We finally name the frustrations and roadblocks each of them faces. And out of that conversation, at least some of the audience walks away inspired. Deep beneath all the accreted layers, we find that kernel of innovation that is still worth fighting for, that keeps us all going even when it is hard.

This time, though, I met my match. At the end of my talk one officer still had his arms folded over his chest, one boot propped up on a knee.

"I have a question," he said, with a decisive tone that said this was not a question but a telling. His voice was that of a man who had stared into the innovation abyss. He began to tell his story.

The Maintenance Officer's Tale

He was a maintenance officer who had once been stationed at an Air Force base in the Pacific. Nothing is so corrosive to airplanes as saltwater, and approaches and landings over the ocean subject airplanes to sea spray. For this reason, some bases in the Pacific regularly rinse airplanes after landing. As you might imagine, washing a four-engine jet aircraft is no small undertaking.

When this officer first arrived at the base, washing planes was an intensively manual process. Multiple maintenance troops had to operate the equipment and spray down the planes. An innovation naturally suggested itself. The group worked hard, fighting many battles, to have an automated aircraft washing system installed. It worked marvelously. A plane could land, taxi to a washing station, and be quickly rinsed back to health—all with little burden on the maintenance troops.

This new innovation worked so well, in fact, that higher headquarters decided the base no longer needed so many maintenance troops. It whittled down the force until those who were left found their time just as encumbered as before.

Then, because the Air Force had not invested appropriately in maintenance for the aircraft washing system, it broke. Funds were not available to repair it. Now the slashed, undermanned maintenance unit found itself working overtime, manually washing airplanes again.

A Perfect Anecdote

The officer had finished his story. A hush fell on the room.

The gauntlet had been thrown down.

"What," he asked me, "do you make of that?""

I love and hate this anecdote, the way I might a particularly unsettling horror story. It is pitch-perfect, Kafkaesque, capturing so much in a few brushstrokes. Like a timeless myth, it contains a kernel of truth that I see replayed in so many other stories.

I thought of this story when a friend, who had just wrapped up his tour as a Battalion S3 (in charge of Operations and Training), described a failed effort to automate inventory management with RFID tags. The technology sucked, and he found it much easier to revert to making soldiers burrow through the warehouse with a clipboard, pencil, and inventory hardcopies.

I recall all the software tools that my colleagues and I built to automate manual processes in our flying Squadrons—which broke as soon as we left.

The implicit moral in this cautionary tale is that innovating is like opening Pandora's box. In our efforts to improve things, we unleash terrible second-order effects that can undermine our best intentions. Don't tamper with something that works, however imperfect. Automation is never to be trusted. Innovators are dangerous charlatans, and it will fall on the old guard to clean up their messes.

A Few Thoughts

The officer's question was fair. What do we make of this?

I have thought long and hard on this question, and I can't do much better than the tentative answer I suggested that day.

First, the anecdote does contain a valuable lesson. We need to pay attention. Change is hard, and many nascent innovations fail to live up to their promise or even cause damage. Good leaders must orchestrate the change process to mitigate risks even as they experiment with new ways forward.

With that said, we must not stop innovating.

Martin Luther King Jr., paraphrasing Theodore Parker, famously said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." It was a call to stick with a fight for the long term, through all the ups and downs. The moral universe has its own peculiar logic; no matter how far human efforts might stray, they always steer back to moral right.

At the risk of trivializing the powerful sentiment in that quote, we might generalize it to any kind of change-making endeavor: The arc of innovation is long, but it bends towards improvement. Bad ideas go extinct, or else evolve into good ones. No organization, with its hundreds or thousands of independent, creative, aspiring members, will tolerate badness for long; it will always strive for the best solution according to some internal metric. And yes, organizations sometimes chase bad metrics, but that condition cannot last either. In the long-term, organizations must evolve towards The Right Answer or die.

I told this officer that if he stepped back to look at the problem he faced, automating a repetitive, labor-intensive process like washing airplanes was unquestionably the Right Answer. That is precisely the kind of task that machines exist for, and we have seen in other parts of society the tremendous benefits of freeing up human capital to focus on more interesting, demanding, value-adding tasks.

It was unfortunate that this officer and his colleagues found themselves working overtime, rinsing planes after their machine broke… just as it is unfortunate that my Army friend had such a negative experience with automating inventory management, and that hundreds of tangled PowerPoint and Excel-macro workflows across the DoD break every time their creators move to new jobs.

However, it was also unfortunate that early automobiles were notoriously unreliable, leaving their owners fuming as passerbys mocked them from horseback. In retrospect, that didn't stop the long progression toward a world of safe, reliable vehicular transportation.

We have frequent glimpses of where the future is headed, because segments of human society are already several steps ahead of the rest of us. As Science Fiction author William Gibson said, "The future is already here--it's just not evenly distributed." We should not chase every fashionable new trend, but we should also pay attention when new trends show enduring value and catch on at scale.

Driving a positive innovation through might take years, decades, or generations. You might absorb pain now so that your successors might benefit. You will take your licks. However, if you are on the path towards the Right Answer, your efforts are not in vain. Rather, you are discovering firsthand that you are part of a story much larger than yourself.

Harnessing Your Discontent

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Below is a guest post I wrote for my friend LTC Joe Byerly's blog, From The Green Notebook. Joe and I got to know each other during the earliest days of the Defense Entrepreneur's Forum, and since 2013 his blog has emerged as one of the best sources for mentorship in the profession of arms. I am honored to contribute something. Although the piece is specifically aimed at military service, the themes are relevant to anyone.

When I arrived at my first C-17A unit, I was chomping at the bit. Finally, after years of education and training, I was ready to join the fight. The September 11th attacks had occurred during my senior year at USAFA, and I had felt like I was missing out by not serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

C-17 life could indeed be fantastic. The jet was amazing. I loved my coworkers, who were intelligent, mission-focused, dependable, and a lot of fun. My first C-17 trip was exhilarating: drinking German beer one day, and the next slipping on body armor, a helmet, and night vision goggles before descending into Iraq.

Yet I was also in for a rude awakening. The operations tempo came as a brutal onslaught. My office duties seemed designed purely to satisfy “the system’s” insatiable appetite for new PowerPoint products. Decisions from our C2 organization often seemed nonsensical. I saw colossal amounts of waste due to bureaucratic inefficiencies. As Iraq began its slow spiral into insurgency and then civil war, my naive idealism eroded. I felt confused, disoriented, and unhappy.

Discontent is a normal part of a military career. I have seen many, many servicemembers undergo a similar process of disenchantment. Some never recover; they descend into cynicism and bitterness, then escape at their first opportunity. Others, however, undergo a transformation. They still feel restless dissatisfaction with the status quo, but they find a kind of inner peace, reframe their journey as a positive quest, and channel their frustrations into a career-long effort to improve the institution.

I eventually realized that discontent is a two-edged blade. It is one of your most important assets, but you have to wield it well.

Read the entire piece at From the Green Notebook.

It's OK to Love Your Family and Yearn For Meaningful Work

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I recently caught up with a friend who, after several years of successful business leadership, quit her job in corporate America. She is young, energetic, and has much to offer the world. Her prime working years still lie ahead. But something about her life was no longer working for her; the heart had gone out from her work, and she needed a season of quiet and refreshing to find her way again.

These times of personal lostness are a universal part of the human experience. This is the essence of the midlife passage: the discovery that, like Dante's protagonist, we have found ourselves in a forest dark, with the straightforward path lost to us. Most of us endure these seasons more than once.

The life we have been building suddenly, unexpectedly, looks very different from what we thought it would be. We realize that we have been living by scripts handed down to us by others, often in childhood. Perhaps we deeply internalized those scripts, believing that they embodied our truest desires for ourselves. However, in our ambitious efforts to faithfully live them out please authority figures, and achieve our goals, we lost something. The realization dawns only gradually, over many years, as we feel a restless, unnamable dissatisfaction growing.

"The opposite of exhaustion is not necessarily rest," a monk tells David Whyte in Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. "It is wholeheartedness."

My friend was restless and exhausted. Wholeheartedness was elusive. She expected a quick recovery before bouncing back into the arena, but months later she feels no closer to knowing what work she is meant to do.

Shrugging off her struggles, she told me, "I guess I just need to find my meaning and my purpose in my family."

Those words grabbed my attention, because they reflect a common view of our relationship with work—a view we need to set right.

Against Workaholism

Too many of us are workaholics, especially in the United States, with our rampant individualism, long work hours, and conspicious lack of annual vacation days, maternity/parentity leave, and siesta.

I have known many people—usually men, but sometimes women—who medicate themselves with work like heroin. I know one young entrepreneur who flitted from one startup idea to another, indebting himself on patents and t-shirts for imagined companies, venting his anxieties and anger at his family, and then neglecting and finally abandoning them in his unsparing pursuit of startup success. I have met military officers and corporate leaders who compete to work the longest work hours, who sleep in the office, who heap project after project on their plates to avoid facing inner wounds. I met one sad woman at a party who tried to wow us with her professional accomplishments, the multiple startups she was juggling, and then made an almost embarrassed apology for becoming a mother and for the awkward complication of this child in her desperate professional life.

Workaholism of this sort is a danger, a corruption, and a destroyer of lives. It is rooted in lies about the nature of work, the nature of human need, and the nature of success. In the end it ruins both work and worker, and whatever productivity gains we find in the short term are gradually eroded by its corrosive effects.

Toxic workaholism has led to a strong and necessary pushback, often from religious leaders, mental health professionals, wellness coaches, and others who specialize in the nurturing of souls.

An essential element of the counternarrative is the need to prioritize human relationships, particular with family and friends. Nobody on their death beds, we hear, wishes they worked harder; instead they reflect on the people they loved, savoring their most wholesome relationships and regretting those they allowed to sink into ruin or neglect. The task before the workaholic is radical: to tear down the foundations of his or her life and rebuild on an entirely different one. Reorienting our lives around relationships rather than the pursuit of material comforts or professional success is not easy, but is one of the great projects of a well-lived life.

I wholeheartedly agree with this counternarrative. However, despite its importance and goodness, it can carry an insidious message: that work is a tangential concern, orthogonal to a well-lived life. This message, I believe, is wrong, and it eats at men and women who have strong values and prioritize relationships, and yet still find themselves yearning for meaningful work. It suggests that we must amputate a vital part of ourselves as an act of self-sacrifice.

Enlarging Our Idea of Work

The modern world generally asks us to compartmentalize our lives into non-intersecting domains, of which work is one. Work is the place we commute to after dropping off the kids at school. It is a job, the tasks we perform each day, a place other than home, a set of professional relationships that has little intersection with our friends and family, the place from which we return each evening.

Because work and family are exclusive domains, we can bound each of them and weigh them on a scale. Life is a continual balancing, as we shift resources back and forth. We move a meeting to attend a soccer game, or reschedule date night to accomodate a work deadline. Allocating the harried hours of our lives is a zero-sum game.

To some degree, this balancing act will always be a reality—confused in our present era by the imperative to work from home. But the subtle message that work is only a competitor to relationships can erode something important and necessary in our lives.

Good work is more than a job or a place we go outside the home; it is what we bring to the world. Good work is generous, enlivening, fulfilling to both ourselves and others. Work, at its best, is the expression of our purpose here on this earth and a vital source of meaning and wholeheartedness. Whyte writes:

Good work, done well for the right reasons and with an end in mind, has always been a sign, in most human traditions, of an inner and outer maturity. Its achievement is celebrated as an individual triumph and a gift to our societies.

Good work heals, rejuvenates, and bestows energy, which we then reflect back into the world. Good work meets our deep needs for purpose and generativity, which allows us to enter back into our relationships as our best selves. On the days I do my best work in the mornings, I can meet my colleagues and family with energy and enthusiasm in the afternoons. I am replenished and ready to give. In seasons when work has been unfulfilling, when busy work or pointless meetings colonize all the white space in my calendar, I sag; energy depleted, I never feel fully myself, even in the presence of my family or friends.

In Search of Good Work

Skillfully balancing the scales of family and work is only half the story.

The deeper question is how we find good work, work that fulfills our sense of purpose and elevates us to our best both at home and at work. When we are fortunate enough to find this kind of work, and approach it with maturity and a deep knowledge of our values, it can infuse our families with life.

The leaders I respect most are principled and family-oriented, but are still exceptionally busy because they do good work. Their lives show a pattern of integration rather than disintegration. Family and work align in a way that, on the best days, brings wholeness and gives a sense of mission. These families bear much, make sacrifices, and are often under strain, but they are also aglow with the light that good, purposeful work brings.

The challenge is that much of our work is not good work. A mentor tells David Whyte:

You are so tired through and through because a good half of what you do here in this organization has nothing to do with your true powers, or the place you have reached in your life. You are only half here, and half here will kill you after a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers.

Unfortunately, many jobs—maybe most jobs—do not have this life-giving quality. Since the agricultural revolution, most human beings have lived like beasts of burden. The industrial revolution brought many quality-of-life improvements but also working environments in which many humans live like machines. A modern movement seeks to rehumanize work, but the world still requires many tedious, repetitive, dirty, or otherwise unpleasant jobs to keep on turning. Even the best jobs often entail long stretches of unpleasant, unsatisfying work. We often need to take whatever work we can get, just to earn a basic income and put bread on the table. Doing so is good and noble, even if unsatisfying. "Work is called work for a reason", as the saying goes. I sometimes worry that the pursuit of meaningful work is a rare luxury and feel guilty for pursuing it.

Still, no matter how elusive good work may be, we cannot and should not end its pursuit. The quest is in our nature; the pursuit itself is part of what brings wholeness to our lives.

When good work proves elusive, we do need to prioritize our relationships. That is always the bedrock. In addition, however, we need to find some way to reconnect with purposeful work. We have a few options.

First, we sometimes just need to wait it out. Every type of work has its cold, hard winters, when the life-giving elements seem gone. The final stretch of a project might be hell. We may spend months cleaning up paperwork to prepare for a compliance inspection. During these seasons we lean on other parts of our lives to carry us, while we await the return of spring. We might need to organize our lives around a seasonal cadence, alternating between hard sprints and times of refreshing.

Second, we can seek good work outside of our jobs. This presents challenges, as it encumbers us with more responsibilities and fills more hours—but if those hours energize and refresh us, the addition can be worthwhile. Many people find their good work in hobbies, continuing education, volunteer work, acts of service to friends and neighbors, or creative arts. Each step taken towards our sources of vital energy can open up new horizons, and perhaps someday even result in job opportunities.

Third, we can change jobs. Many people harbor this dream, although it is out of reach for many of us much of the time. However, such changes are possible. We all know individuals who felt increasingly alienated from their work, embarked on a career change, and found new life. Such changes are difficult and must be approached with care, but we also need to be honest with ourselves about when a change is called for. Fear can keep us trapped in situations that are slowly killing us.

Finally, if life-giving elements are absent from our workplaces, we can seek to introduce them. This is one of the joys of being an intrapreneur or change agent. Working for a positive change in our organizations can be its own source of meaning, providing a purpose that the organization itself does not. It can also unexpectedly connect us to wonderful people who share our ideals and aspirations.

In summary, meaningful work and meaningful relationships are not in stark opposition. Both are pillars of a well-lived life. When we feel lost in our working identities, we must absolutely enjoy, savor, and prioritize the relationships that give our lives meaning. But that does not mean abandoning work; it means continuing our lifelong quest for the work we are called to do.

Living Near the Cliff Edge

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

— I —

I have been reading David Whyte's beautiful book Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. He summons his readers to a life of "spaciousness and freedom", which requires living at what he calls the cliff edge of life.

This cliff edge is a frontier where passion, belonging, and need call for our presence, our powers, and our absolute commitment.

My soul aches at those words. I have spent both my youth and my adult life in dutiful service to responsibilities. Voices murmur in my mind, voices of parents and bosses and colleagues, voices that David Whyte so eloquently articulates. They say:

Life is precarious; you young cannot know how precarious. Don't add to the sum total of difficulty that waits you: Stay off the moors: Stay off the ocean, stay away from the edge, don't follow the intensity of your more passionate dreams, find safe work, and adventure not into your own nature lest it lead you directly into nature itself.

I have spent so much of my life doing what those voices ask of me, and life has rewarded me for my obedience. I have an extraordinary wife, who I love. Three beautiful children. A litany of professional accomplishments. Strong values, and a sense of duty that has served me, my colleagues, and my organizations well. But I am often dying inside. Something vital has been left behind. I have filed away the edges of my life, padded the sharp corners. I sometimes crave a rebellious phase I never had and never will.

That groundswell of longing is breaking. I think of the final lines of Donald Justice's poem Men at Forty:

They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

Those lines capture so much. The responsibility, the faithfulness, but also the thirst for an enlivening—a need to satisfy the unnamed something rising up within me.

At forty, I am searching my past for clues for who I am and who I am meant to me. So many of my discoveries turn out to be acts of remembering. I am returning to a person I used to be, a person who was wiser than I gave him credit for amidst his naïveté and immaturity.

My memory ranges over my senior year at the U.S. Air Force Academy, a time when I briefly rose to my best self. Too many of my weekends had been spent in the safe confines of USAFA, in familiar routines with familiar people. But that last year I had set out almost every weekend for the unknown frontier. Trudging up 14,000' mountains in winter with snow shoes and ice ax; lighting camp stoves with numb fingers, watching my breath curling and rising in the tight beam of a headlamp; plunging into the cold depths of New Mexico's Blue Hole in pursuit of another diving credential.

My soul stirs and hungers at these memories. I need to know that these adventures, this ongoing immersion in the wild, is still within my reach. The clock is running, and something deep within me cries to be reawakened.

— II —

For Labor Day weekend I plan something unusual: a one-night solo camping and climbing trip at Cherokee Rock Village in Northern Alabama.

In the days leading up to the trip, it is all I can think about. A wave of vital energy swells in me, building, ready to break.

The night before I leave, I wallow in guilt and wonder if I should cancel. I tell my wife Wendy that I am having second thoughts. What kind of husband and father slips away to be alone? I concoct unrealistic schemes for her and the children to join me after the first night, involving complex logistics and pet sitting arrangements, to assuage my guilt.

And of course there is the danger. I will tackle some of my tallest climbs yet. I will push my limits lead climbing. Each risk, however carefully calculated and weighed, is a risk to my family.

My wife encourages me to go. A loving gesture of grace. A recognition that wholeness requires more than weary compliance with the imperatives for safety and responsibility. She understands; she thirsts to be on a bike the way I thirst for the mountains, even after her frightening crash earlier this summer.

I pack quickly on Friday morning as my children are getting ready for school. I rarely travel so light; that alone gives me a sense of buoyancy, of endless possibility.

I hug and kiss my children. It is a normal goodbye, our daily ritual, but behind it this time is the piercing knowledge that I will shortly encounter the cliff edge of my life—the wild unknown of an interior journey, but also the ninety foot rock faces piled mysteriously and unexpectedly in the rural grasslands of northern Alabama.

This time tomorrow I will be straining against that rock, searching for the next hold, held to life by a tenuous thread of rope and the competency of a belayer eight stories below. With each hug and kiss, the proximity of death and the incandescent beauty of life are immediate and visceral. After Wendy returns from dropping off the children at school, we drink coffee together and talk. A quiet interlude in the relentless torrent of life.

As I leave behind Montgomery and then Birmingham and then the Interstate, the landscape turns pastoral, almost impossibly green, bright and sun-lit. My heart swells, sensing echoes of my favorite landscapes in California, which I miss dearly. One of my goals in this solo excursion is to prove to myself that beauty is still within reach, that it hides in pockets here for those who seek it. I feel validated in that quest now, hopeful, tingling with expectant energy for future excursions and discoveries.

My climbing partners will not arrive until tomorrow. I drove up a day early because I do not want to plunge right into the rough-and-tumble of grappling with rock. I want, as Whyte says, a sense of freedom and spaciousness. I need unfilled hours.

I arrive at Cherokee Rock Village early enough to nab a prime campsite, not fifty feet from a sandstone ridgeline where a group is climbing. I do not bother to unload the car. I set off on foot down towards the rock, then follow the path around a bend and find myself in a labrynth of towering rock formations. It is a climber's paradise, a staggering array of styles and difficulties compressed into this hidden little oasis. The air tastes freer here; my chest seems to open, as I inhale the expansive wonder of this place.

I spend hours systematically encircling every crag in Cherokee Rock Village, studying every route, comparing every meandering crack and bolt line to the maps and route descriptions in a mobile app. Tomorrow, when I climb, this familiarity will fuel confidence.

Roaming among boulders near Grotto

A group of beginners, loud and perhaps a little drunk, is hooting and cheering a friend up an easy climb on the aptly named Boy Scout Wall. The noise is obnoxious, but it is impossible to resent a group of ordinary middle-aged people who are daring to confront their fears, test their limits, and stretch their potential at a cliff edge.

I wander down to the Holiday Block, where a woman is grappling with the final stretch of a classic 5.10a called Oyster. She is seventy feet off the deck, shaking out pumped arms, looking grimly up at a small roof that is the crux of the route. She is on lead, taking the rope up with her, clipping into bolts drilled into the rock. If she falls, she will fall twice the distance to the last bolt she clipped. Lead climbing is a head game as much as a physical sport. Each move past the last bolt is an escalating encounter with fear. A fall is always one slip away. The paradox is that hesitation undermines good climbing and all but guarantees a fall. Topping out a route requires boldness and confidence despite taut nerves. It requires daring commitment to each move.

Looking up at Oyster (5.10a)

The woman summons all her energies to advance from the small ledge where she is resting. She is above the bolt now, in the zone where a slip will mean a nerve-rattling fall. The terrain is sloping backwards, forcing her to rely on limited forearm endurance.

She moves deftly through the first moves. Climbers are beautiful to watch, like dancers or gymnasts. The best climbers rely not on strength but on graceful movement. They flow over the rock like water, a graceful bubbling upward, a lighthearted and buoyant challenge to gravity.

High above the last bolt (having skipped an awkwardly placed one), she struggles. Her arms quiver at the crux move. She holds on, trying to work out the movement. Then, with all the cool nerves of a fighter pilot declaring an emergency, she says, "Falling." She plunges almost twenty feet, black pony tail flying, before the rope catches her.

My stomach knots itself. That was bigger than any fall I have taken. I am staring at the edge of my own abilities, at the fear of what lies beyond. At the same time, her emotional and mental power is breathtaking. Her fall is almost sublime.

After a long rest, she gets back on the rock and tries again.

— III —

My canned soup does not sound particularly appealing, so I drive into town. I briefly wonder if I am selling out somehow, but I am not here for hardship; I am here to explore, to wander, to taste freedom. I eat a delicious pulled pork sandwich, text with Wendy, then drive back to camp.

Alabama is hot and muggy in the summer, and the mosquitos were out in force when I left for town. But when I return, I find Cherokee Rock Village transformed. A breeze has picked up. The mosquitos are gone. All that muggy discomfort has turned to delicious cool. This, this, my soul cries. This is what I long for.

Sunset at Cherokee Rock Village

This is the place we all long for, the place so often left unsatisfied in our encumbered lives. This is where we make fleeting contact with the most vital center of our being.

That place looks different for each of us. It might be oil paints, a dance studio, or the stage in an Irish pub. It might be fishing from a kayak or building a cabinet in a garage. For my wife, it is the wind rushing past her on a road or gravel bike. For me, it is this. This is what I found that senior year at USAFA, roaming Colorado's backcountry, before somehow losing it to the responsibilities of adulthood.

I walk the campground before night settles. The trees are silhouetted against a deepening blue. Campfires come to life around me, some of them atop hundred-foot cliff edges overlooking a lake. Guitar chords and youthful laughter accompany the wafting woodsmoke.

I retreat into my tent and text more with Wendy. In these quiet hours my thoughts are returning to my family, but it is from a place of inner wholeness, of deep satisfaction. I am reaching out to them enriched by this healing solitude.

The view from campsites overlooking the Sun Wall.

— IV —

I sleep without the rain fly. A cool breeze blows through the tent all night. I wake in the morning to refreshing cool and a canopy of tree branches. I make oatmeal and coffee and scramble up the back of a cliff to look out over the lake.

The view from my tent immediately upon waking.

My climbing partner will not arrive until lunchtime, but a gregarious gentleman named John invites me to climb with his group. He might be the only person besides me in the crag who is older than 30. John is a professor, climbing with a group of undergraduates from his university. His ease with these young people, and their full-hearted acceptance of him, renews my hope for myself. It confirms that we are only ever as old as we feel. I melt right into the easy camaraderie of the group.

It is soon my turn. I have not climbed outdoors in months, thanks to COVID19 and my move to Alabama. I have been training on a small home wall in my garage, but have no idea how that will translate out here, on sustained routes. I start up what should be an easy 5.9 called My Dog Has Fleas, but after a short ways I am pumped. I struggle through it and complete the route without falling, but I am embarrassed and flustered by my weak performance.

Fighting an embarrassingly early pump on My Dog has Fleas (5.9-)

This is life at the cliff edge; a pushing up against one's limits, a constant dance between success and failure. It is a place of constant humbling and sometimes of humiliation. But I am here, grappling, topping out routes that would have paralyzed me with fear not that long ago.

We move to the New Wall, a short cliff with a wide array of routes of varying difficulty. I top rope a 5.8 that looks featureless but has surprisingly easy holds. Then I try again on lead. I am terrified of climbing to first bolts, which always seem too high to be safe; even if the climbing is easy, an accidental slip could mean a broken ankle, or worse. This is part of my frontier, my dance with the edge, the place where I confront my fear of the dangerous and unknown. Perhaps I will fight that battle another day, but today I clip the rope through the first bolt with a stick clip, protecting me during that precarious short stretch from the ground. I climb the route easily.

Top roping The Thing (5.8-) on the New Wall before repeating it on lead.

I lead it again. This time, I tell my partner, I want to practice lead falls. This is another part of my frontier, another source of fear. I climb until the third bolt is at my waist, then let go. I plunge three feet down and bounce gently against the rock. I repeat this maneuver again and again, climbing higher each time, until I am five feet above the bolt. My nerves are chattering now. Falling is always scary, even on a safe flat wall like this. I think of the woman yesterday, plunging from the top of Oyster. I take a deep breath and let go. Ten feet below, the rope catches me. This time, though, the rope swings me a little too hard into the rock, my foot compresses, and I feel a jolt of pain. It isn't bad, but I know I will be limping the rest of the day.

I am annoyed. Practice falls are supposed to be safe. That is the entire point. An injury, however mild, was not part of the plan. I complete the route, descend, and process the sudden swell of negative emotion. Part of living at the edge is accepting the lessons, seeing the opportunities to grow, expanding that frontier just a little farther. Perhaps my falling technique was wrong. Perhaps I pushed out too hard from the rock, worsening the swing. Perhaps I unconsciously extended my legs. I will research this later. This is learning and growth in action. Maybe, someday, I will avoid a broken ankle in the middle of some epic multipitch climb because of a lesson I learned today.

Even as I limp away from the rock, I feel warmly satisfied. I have achieved a goal. My comfort level falling has expanded, however slightly. I am on a path of vitality, of creativity. My world has contracted to this crag, and thoughts of work and mortgages and responsibility have receded entirely from my consciousness.

I reflect on the cliff edge of life, on David Whyte's book, on his argument that the pursuit of meaningful work is a pilgrimage of identity. The working world imposes so many pressures that constrain our freedom, seek our conformity, ask us to sacrifice the most vital parts of ourselves out of duty and responsibility. Whyte's summons is to reconnect with the wildness at our center, the raw primeval force from which our strength and purpose flows. That force is our most precious resource in our working lives. Whyte writes,

In order to stand up against a force of nature, we often have to find that same elemental nature inside ourselves.

That is what I am out here to rediscover. Here in the crag, amidst the soaring spires of rock, the voices cautioning me away from the cliff edge have fallen silent.

— V —

My partners arrive, and I switch to their group. They want to climb a 5.11b called Never Believe that is too hard for me. I give it a go anyway, top-roped, and wrestle for a while with a brutal move that has to be executed perfectly. I try variation after variation but cannot find the right body position to enable the move. I descend, satisfied that I at least learned something in the struggle.

Next we climb Oyster, where I watched the woman fall yesterday. I do not feel ready to lead it, so my friend leads and anchors the rope. I go next, safely under a top rope, meaning falls will be limited to inches. I expect to struggle with the moves, given the weakness I felt on the 5.9 earlier, but everything comes together this time. I climb strong and well. I find and take the rests. When I reach the crux, I climb through without trouble. At the top, I briefly look down at the ground eighty feet below. This might be my tallest climb yet. I do not feel afraid, which tells me I am no longer the person I was a year ago.

As my partner lowers me, sitting and twisting in space, I think about my performance. I felt good. Perhaps I will lead this climb next time. That is my new cliff edge, my new frontier where, some other weekend, I can continue my ongoing journey of self-discovery.

I lead a 5.8- called Kennel Club after that. Once again, the first bolt is terrifyingly high, so my partner clips it for me. I start up, coddled by that initial bit of aid. The route should be easy compared to Oyster, but I am suddenly in an entirely different headspace. I am tired. My nerves are fraying. I have grim thoughts about pushing my luck too far, of falling and dying on my last climb of the day. Halfway up, I pause to check my harness and tie-in knot, an unnecessary quadruple check that has the ironic effect of wasting energy and making a successful climb less likely. I stop and rest twice, hanging from the rope after clipping bolts. I think of my family.

Another climber on Kennel Club (5.8), which I led later in the day

I have only one shining moment: near the top, arms shaking, totally pumped, I know I am about to fall. The move before me is scary, given how tired I suddenly am. I need to get my right foot high up near my knee, then propel myself up to a further handhold. Committing to that move is the only way forward, but if I miss it, I will take a lead fall. It is one of those many dilemmas climbers face, when committing fearlessly to a hard move is ironically the safest course of action. I go for it. I make it. With a swell of pride, I pull myself up to the anchors.

Overall it is a marginal performance, with only that last act of commitment to redeem it. As my partner lowers me, I realize that all the vital energy that has propelled me through the last two days has whooshed out of me. My partners plan to climb for several more hours, but I am tired, and if I leave now, I can complete the three-hour drive in time to see my wife and kids before bed. That, I realize, is what I want more than anything.

Back home, I am enfolded in embraces and cries of "Dada!" We sit together and cuddle and talk. I recount my adventures, and they recount theirs—baking bread, swimming, playing with our cat and dog. There is a wholeness in our reunion. By going out solo for a night, I have returned a better and truer version of myself. A better husband. A better father. I still have two days of this long weekend to savor my family, to rejuvenate in other vital ways, before I return to the domain of work.

On Monday, I take the kids for a hike while my wife—always living at her own edge—is on a 45 mile gravel ride up north. The park is ten minutes from our house, nestled between major roads and a golf course. A sign warns of alligators. My kids are captivated, and spend the hike vainly searching for a predator that might snap its jaws on their precious young lives. They dare at their own cliff edge of life, and return home enlarged by their victory.

Scanning for alligators while hiking Montgomery's Lagoon Park Trail.

After the kids are in bed, I flip back through Whyte's book.

For Whyte, this inner journey also equips us for our working lives. He writes, "All good work should have an edge of life and death to it, if not immediately apparent, then to be found by ardently exploring its greater context. Absent the edge, we drown in numbness."

I never want to be numb.

Now, preparing for the week, I think of all the ways I might dare at the edge of my professional life. A deeper level of mentorship. My writing. Academic projects. Work I am passionate about, forays into the deep unknown, projects that raise skeptical eyebrows, projects I have been told will never work.

I think of that woman plunging through space, hanging precariously from her rope, and chalking her hands to try again. And I know what I will do.

Thank you to Cherokee Rock Village and the Southeastern Climbers Coalition for preserving such a beautiful piece of land, and for keeping it accessible to climbers and campers.

What I'm Reading: August 2020

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The book cover images are hyperlinks through Amazon.com's affiliate program. Purchasing through these links provides modest support for this blog.

The Good Neighbor by Maxwell King

I have happy but indistinct memories of watching Mr. Rogers when I was a toddler. I did not give Mr. Rogers much thought in the 30+ years that followed. In the past few years, however, Fred Rogers has surfaced again and again in my reading--not in books about childhood education, or even books targeted at adult nostalgia, but in serious books about character. These treatments revealed an aspect of Mr. Rogers that I had never recognized, or at least had taken for granted: he was a man of deep and authentic character and power, traits which emerged through a lifetime of disciplined spiritual formation.

Mr. Rogers has drawn widespread attention in recent years, with the documentary Won't you Be My Neighbor? (which I have not yet seen) and the Tom Hanks film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (which I have). Arriving between these films was The Good Neighbor, the first and only book-length biography of Rogers. The ever-humble Rogers had long resisted a biography, but towards the end of his life recognized that it was an important part of sustaining his lifelong mission and ministry among children.

You pretty much know what you are getting, plunging into a biography of Fred Rogers: 320 pages about a good and decent man, faithfully married to one woman, who spent more than 30 years carrying out a vocation that he arrived at early in life. It is a biography conspicuously free of vice, conflict, or explosive revelations. For that reason, it sometimes felt like the author needed to stretch for material--recounting numerous summaries of particular TV episodes, touching conversations, or Fred singing It's You I Like to some guest or another. Yet the book is never boring, and I found plunging into the cool waters of Fred Roger's life deeply refreshing. Even when repetitive, the book felt like a meditation on decency; it was a welcome alternative to almost every other source of media I consume.

As a writer and entrepreneur, I enjoyed learning more about Fred's creative process and discovering that, in addition to being a natural TV presence, he was an extremely prolific and talented artist, musician, and entrepreneur. He was deeply rooted in strong values, to include vehement opposition to marketing to children, which meant the viability and success of his shows was never guaranteed. Because of his values Fred Rogers and to work twice as hard to realize and sustain his dream of nurturing young children through television, but that same commitment to values is what allowed him to pull it off.

Fred Rogers has drawn so much interest in recent years largely because his decency, goodness, and faithfulness to a sense of calling are so sorely absent in modern times. Civility has become the foremost casualty of our political climate, while hatred, division, and mockery are now celebrated as virtues. In his Afterword, King touches on critics who believe that Fred Rogers ruined a generation of children through excessive coddling. Yet for those who are not quite ready to surrender kindness and compassion as vices, Fred Rogers' life still gives us hope that a better way is possible. As David Books writes in an op-ed about Rogers, "moral elevation gains strength when it is scarce."

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Speaking of kindness and compassion being vices...

I have had Ayn Rand's 1,088-page magnum opus on my shelf for years but finally summoned the energy to read it, helped along by a friend who agreed to read it simultaneously.

Atlas Shrugged is one of the most complex, profound, powerful, and disturbing books I have ever read. I have seldom read a book that required me to think so deeply, or one that evoked such a broad range of emotions. For those reasons, its standing as a classic is well-deserved. With that said, it is a work of mad genius--literally. Rand's genius flashes through repeatedly, but she strikes me as a deeply disturbed person whose self-righteous hate, by book's end, reaches a fevered pitch of insane obsession. The book's shortcomings are severe, and I find it frightening the degree to which policymakers reach for the book as a basis for policy.

The novel focuses on a small, heroic band of industrialists who are responsible for most of the economic process in the United States. Heroine Dagny Taggart runs operations for the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad; she must repeatedly outmaneuver her inept brother Jim Taggard, who consistently makes disastrous decisions that sacrifice the railroad on the altar of social good. Hank Rearden is a steel magnate who underpins nearly the entirely industrial economy, but who is widely despised for his windfall profits. As the novel unfolds, these productive capitalists who sustain so much of the United States find themselves under relentless attack by "looters" who regulate, steal, undermine, sabotage, condemn, and otherwise seek to destroy them--all in the name of social progressivism, brotherly love, altruism, and other perverse vices. In response, the enigmatic "destroyer" John Galt vows to stop the motor of the world. The book is an extended reflection on what would happen if the world's most productive capitalists essentially went on strike. It flows directly out of Rand's underlying philosophy: reason is supreme, self-interest is the highest virtue, and altruism is an evil that diminishes human dignity.

The book has extraordinary power, and Rand's imagination and prose can be breathtaking. A family member recommended the book to me after my painful experiences founding and leading an innovation team within government, which put me in constant conflict with entrenched defense bureaucracy. Parts of the book spoke to my soul; as I watched Dagny Taggart pull off one miracle after another to outmaneuver ignorant bureaucrats and drive progress, my heart soared with recognition. One of the most spectacular moments in the book comes when Dagny rides a new rail line for the first time, a line she has struggled against all odds to build.

The character drama can also be rich, complex, and nuanced. Early on, Hank Rearden gives his wife Lilian a precious gift--a bracelet, the first object he made with a new kind of steel he has developed. The value of this gift is predictably lost on Lilian, but a profound turning point arrives early in the novel when Dagny spots the bracelet on Lilian's wrist at a party. The three-way interaction between these characters is extraordinary, with insinuation and subtlety making for a far more powerful story than raw action or melodrama ever could.

Rand's critique of misguided social values is poignant and insightful. She rightfully defends the dignity of the human individual and the centrality of reason. She powerfully demonstrates the risk that charity or altruism can actually undermine human dignity. She offers a devastating critique of political, social, and economic groups who seek to tear down the very builders of the prosperity they enjoy. There is a kernel of truth to Rand's savage distaste for "looters." And in fiction, it is a valid technique to use hyperbole--to push a point to imaginative excess, to make the point stark and clear, to burn an impression into the reader's mind. 1984 did this masterfully.

The problem is that I'm not so sure Rand intended to be hyperbolic. Atlas Shrugged is a 1,100 page obsessive diatribe against a straw man. By book's end it has been pitchforked, dismembered, beheaded, burned, urinated on, and kicked a few times for good measure.

A straw man is "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument." It is hard to see Atlas Shrugged's argument as anything but that.

Over and over again, foolish business executives make disastrous decisions to sacrifice profit in the name of the public welfare. I have encountered many inept bureaucrats in my life, as well as many purveyors of leftist ideologies I consider dangerous. However, I have never met this species of corporate executive who is hellbent on doling out his company's profits to others. These characters are so commonplace in the book that it is hard to take the critique seriously.

Atlas Shrugged presents a false dichotomy between two types of characters: a tiny productive caste of industrial barons, and vast hordes of soulless looters who would tear them down. Most of us, when we are young, love good vs. evil stories. As we mature, we have to learn that the world does not simply consist of good guys and bad guys; the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. That is difficult to grasp because it makes the world a far more complex and difficult place, which demands much more careful moral reasoning. However, Atlas Shrugged leaves no room for this subtlety; Rand's small cadre of noble industrialists are the only characters exhibiting any virtue, while the unwashed masses have no redeeming qualities. Rand's critique smacks of profound hubris and a deep hatred for most of humanity.

When I look at the world, I do not primarily see noble monopolies driving human progress while parasitic startups try to loot their wealth. That certainly happens sometimes, but the conventional wisdom about monopolies is that they risk becoming looters; monopolies tend to underperform and use political connections, cash reserves, or other forms of market power to block the rise of promising competitors.

The behaviors Rand detests are observable in almost any company or individual. Even the most productive companies leverage government to their benefit. When COVID19 hit, every business was trying to get tax breaks or subsidies, big or small. The savviest business operators are also the first in line to apply for government relief after natural disasters. We are all self-interested. Even those of us who value hard work and like earning our keep usually take advantage of every legitimate opportunity to come our way; that is part of what it means to work hard.

If the vices Rand detests are found at every strata of modern society, so are the virtues she cherishes. In the real world around 600,000 Americans start new small businesses each year, while millions more are educating themselves and trying to build their futures. Yes, a small percentage will be among society's most productive, but the rest are not simply looting; many are trying in their own way.

As for the tension between self-interest and altruism, many scientific disciplines--to include evolutionary biology and game theory--have converged on the notion that instincts for both self-interest and cooperation are deeply encoded into our DNA, that both can align, and that both are necessary for human happiness and flourishing. Rand's moral universe is far too black-and-white to tolerate this level of complexity.

Finally, Rand's moral universe leaves no room for inequality of opportunity and the way this rigs the game. Heroes like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, as well as villains like Jim Taggart, appear as fully-formed adults from the vague primordial soup of the author's imagination. In this world, there are only self-made men and looters. It does not matter to Rand--does not appear to occur to her, in fact--whether the deck was stacked in favor of her heroes from the beginning. This is the fundamental issue at the heart of right-left debates about white privilege, structural racism, government redistribution, and social welfare programs. Rand's critique cannot serve as the basis for real-world policy when the chief argument of her ideological rivals is missing entirely.

There is room for vigorous debate about all these issues, but we cannot simply wave them away. Towards the end of the book, one of Rand's characters rails against "some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia" and the "mystic muck of India", contrasting them with entrepreneurial individuals--presumably white Americans--who use reason to build advanced technology. That diatribe made no allowance for overt oppression that keeps some people subjugated to the benefit of others. If we allow evils like plantation slavery or King Leopold II's Congo Free State into the universe, Rand's critique looks more brittle.

As a work of fiction, the book's value sags and then collapses around two thirds of the way through. It would have been stronger at half the length. The last few hundred pages are painfully tedious. The first rule of storytelling is "show, don't tell", but Rand can't help herself. By book's end, a character makes a 60+ page speech that reads like a rambling university essay, telling the reader exactly what she meant to express through fiction in the previous 1,000 pages. Rand comes across as a woman possessed.

Overall, Atlas Shrugged is a powerful and engaging book. It contains forceful, important critiques. Rand is right about a lot. But at the end of the day, Atlas Shrugged is an adolescent fantasy. High fantasy novels give shy teenagers access to entire worlds in which they wield swords or bows, slay monsters, woo princes or princesses, possess magic abilities, and discover forgotten birthrights. Atlas Shrugged does much the same thing for savvy entrepreneurs who feel maligned by the world, abused by incumbent powers, or made to feel ashamed of their gifts and aspirations. It is a fantasy in which the geniuses are finally recognized for who they are, and their despised enemies finally get their due. I love a good fantasy as much as the next person, but at the end of the day, fantasy is fantasy. The real world demands more of us.

Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up by Jerry Colonna

Jerry Colonna has carved out a fascinating niche for himself as one of the most beloved CEO coaches of our time. The founder of Reboot, Jerry does not teach strategy, tactics, or organizational design; he is more like a spiritual guru and therapist who guides leaders on journeys of radical self-enquiry. Jerry is a voice in the wilderness for lonely executives who silently carry the burden of leadership and do not know where else to look to nourish their souls.

Jerry is a delightful anomaly. In a business world where concerns of the soul are carefully kept out of sight and relegated to other domains of life, he feels perfectly comfortable asking CEOs to bare their souls. He writes frequently of "brokenhearted warriors", language that might make us shift uncomfortably in our seats but also appeals to something deep within us. He references poetry, Buddhist philosophy, and vision quests. In his podcast he cuts right through the protective bubble wrap of social etiquette, asking his guests deeply personal questions.

All of those peculiarities make Jerry a treasure for the modern business world. We need more of what he brings. In addition to being an experienced founder and investor, Jerry is a kind, thoughtful soul who overflows with gratitude for both his own journey and the opportunity he has to help other CEOs on their own journey.

Reboot is an extended reflection on Jerry's own journey and lessons he has learned from coaching other CEOs. It is well-written, engaging, sometimes unfocused, and frequently beautiful. The book is a gentle introduction to Jerry's style of coaching, and is sure to provoke thoughts and reflections about one's own journey. It also points a hopeful way forward for how we can address soul-deep needs in the challenging domains of business and leadership.

Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite authors--not just because he writes insightful books about Stoicism relevant to modern life, but because he is a serious craftsman. Holiday takes the art and craft of writing seriously.

That is why I loved his book on creating and selling work that lasts. Like many creative types, I have always felt an instinctive tension between craftsmanship and marketing. I have bruised feelings from living in a world in which artless or dishonest hacks strike it rich, get funded, or find wide readerships, while the honest, dedicated craftsmen go unrecognized. As I have grappled with my own writing career (more specifically, my failure over 20 years to get one going), I knew this was a self-limiting belief that I needed to overcome if I was ever going to make it. Some cursory Googling led me right back to Ryan Holiday, to this book which I hadn't known existed.

Although probably lesser known than his other books_, Perennial Seller_ is the best book I have read on marketing for creatives. The book begins with a passionate appeal for craftsmanship. Holiday starts with the premise that there is no substitute for doing the hard work of writing the best books we are capable of writing. Yes, we can probably make a living by churning out a lot of average material, but the books that endure are masterpieces that serious writers carefully labored over. Craftsmanship is the foundation on which everything else is built. From there, Holiday goes on to write about positioning, marketing, and platforms. If you are a creative who struggles with marketing, you won't find a better book to help you find your way.

The Hard Truth: S__imple Ways to Become a Better Climber by Kris Hampton

Kris Hampton is the voice behind The Power Company podcast, which I enjoy listening to while training for climbing. He has distilled 26 blog posts and essays into a new book aimed to kick the reader's ass into overcoming self-limiting thoughts and behaviors.

This is a book specifically for climbers (mainly plateaued intermediate climbers)--but for those who climb, it also speaks to life. This was a fun book that any climber will enjoy. I appreciated the frank tone. It could have used better editing, but was otherwise a solid read.

7 Models of Bureaucratic Innovation

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Over the last ten years, government has at least theoretically embraced the idea of "innovation." New innovation organizations are popping up like mushrooms. Poor private sector; every time they think they have figured out how to work with government, some new organization appears on the scene to shake things up.

This widespread culture shift toward innovation is generally a good thing. However, time and again, I have seen innovation organizations appear that do not have a clear purpose, business model, or theory of innovation. Despite good intentions and strong support, many of these organizations struggle to create enduring value. Some hold a plethora of glitzy events without ever moving money, developing prototypes, or running experiments. Others write proposals and build prototypes but never scale these early concepts into wide-scale adoption. So much innovation activity dissipates like water into sand, while government rumbles on as it always has. I suspect similar dynamics occur in many large companies attempting to become more innovative.

Over many years pondering these challenges, I have developed some basic models of common innovation approaches. These models can:

Help you intentionally develop a theory and strategy of innovation for your organization
Suggest reasons your strategy might not be working
Help you understand where your organization fits in a broader landscape

The models are simple by design and hardly comprehensive, but they offer a basic scaffolding for deeper thought about your own unique situation. No one model is right or wrong.

The Core: Innovation Pipelines

Innovation is a process of discovering and implementing value-adding changes for customers. These might include physical technologies--like new hardware or software--or social technologies like strategies, processes, workflows, or ways of organizing.

Customers could refer to literal paying customers of a product, but they could also be stakeholders within an organization or community who stand to benefit. In my defense work, my customers were usually warfighters who needed every tactical advantage on the battlefield.

Systematic innovation efforts involve an innovation pipeline. Above is just one example I plucked off of Google, largely because of its simplicity. You can divide out the stages many different ways, but a pipeline generally includes the following:

Idea generation: Gather as many ideas as possible, good or bad; we deliberately keep a wide aperture.
Prioritization and filtering: Prioritize ideas in accordance with our organizational needs, resources, and values. Identify the ideas worth pursuing.
Refinement: Explore both problems and solutions, widening the aperture again to consider both from every possible angle. Turn the idea into a viable concept, which represents an educated hypothesis about a potentially valuable innovation.
Experimentation: Commit progressively more resources to experimentation, learning, and iteration. Test and refine the hypothesis to see if this idea is worth scaling.
Scaling: Scale the most promising ideas into wide-scale execution. This might mean releasing a new product, changing a policy, etc.

Software introduces some modifications, since you can take early ideas into production immediately and then iterate in place, but you get the general idea; if your goal is actually implementing change at scale, then you need a start-to-finish pipeline.

The goal

The ideal innovation pipeline would look something like this:

Assuming your organization is in a competition with adaptive adversaries, you need to act quickly. Whatever your pipeline looks like it should run fast. You need a faster OODA loop than your opponents, which includes observing your environment, educating your judgment, making decisions, and then acting swiftly and decisively.

You want to identify and implement value-adding changes for your customers with the greatest speed and efficiency possible.

Model 1: The Status Quo

If you are in a large organization like the Department of Defense, your innovation pipeline looks more like this:

The chart in the middle is an actual diagram of the DoD's acquisition process, which I chose mainly because it is so easy to pick on. The details aren't important. This box, whatever it contains, represents all the convoluted bureaucracy that stands between a promising idea and scaled implementation. This is how we get to $10,000 toilet seat covers and $800,000 ammo rounds that are too expensive to fire.

Innovation does actually occur in this model. In fact, it occurs all the time.

That box includes a vast network of research labs, prototyping initiatives, and means of production. It includes systematic processes for every step of the innovation pipeline to include soliciting ideas, developing requirements, assessing feasibility, conducting experiments, doing limited-run production, testing, evaluating, and incorporating feedback. The system has delivered F-22s, aircraft carriers, and nuclear submarines. All those little boxes on the chart exist for a reason: in theory (!!!), they illuminate and/or reduce risk.

Every organization has its own version of this chart, which expresses how value-adding changes are realized and executed.

Before you found a new innovation organization, you need to know why this incumbent innovation process is not meeting your needs.

Many defense innovators would probably struggle with that question.

I will save my full answers for another day. For now, it's enough to say that this pipeline works very well for certain kinds of problems but very poorly for others. It is intolerably slow when dealing with fast-evolving technologies like software, computation, or machine learning.

The impetus for more speed and agility largely drives government's search for for alternative innovation models.

Model 2: The Idea Factory

This model rests on a hypothesis about what is wrong with the current innovation pipeline: senior management need help finding the right ideas.

When I assisted with founding the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, this was our basic belief. We knew our senior leaders were sharp, dedicated, and talented professionals. We also knew they were swamped with hard problems and did not necessarily have the time or energy to solve all those problems themselves.

We believed that an organization of dedicated young military professionals could apply their collective brainpower to some of these problems and help generate solutions. The first DEF conference included two-day long "ideation" sessions, in which teams went to work on a curated set of problems. This culminated in pitches to a panel of general officers and investors.

With years of hindsight, I believe we misdiagnosed the problem. Our innovation model looked something like this:

Can you see the problem? Our model mostly addressed the earliest stage of the pipeline: injecting the right ideas into the funnel. While it's true that an outsider can generate a truly novel idea, this stage is rarely where innovation gets jammed up. Ideas are cheap; the hard part is the other 99%, which is the execution that follows. Several of our presentations on the last day of DEF were cringeworthy, because in two days of ideation, teams simply couldn't delve into the practical details necessary to walk an idea down the pipeline into execution. The most successful pitches came from innovators who had been working on a pet idea for years.

There is nothing wrong with brainstorming ideas, but these ideas will most likely be dead on arrival unless the innovation pipeline includes onramps that can get promising ideas to the next stage. Here are some ways to improve on the model:

Connect promising innovators with senior leader champions. The hard part is identifying the right senior leader up front. Placing a senior leader or two on a judging panel is unlikely to bear fruit, because the odds that a particular idea falls within that leader's scope is minimal. Ideas need the right champion to move forward.
Award prize money. The intent here is to give innovators resources to carry their idea forward. Cash prizes give innovators the most agility, but by themselves, they provide little to no connective tissue with the rest of the innovation pipeline; the idea will only make it a little further before it dies.
Protect innovators to keep them with their projects. On a few occasions, I have seen general officers reach down to hand-select an innovator to keep him or her with a project; this is every innovator's dream, but it is ad hoc and not scalable. The fact that GOs must reach down from on high to protect an innovator is not a solution; it is evidence of systematic brokenness.
Have established processes to connect promising innovators with organizational resources. This is the best solution, but the hardest for an entrenched bureaucracy like DoD to implement. Ideally, organizations would have built-in infrastructure to advance good ideas (and the innovators standing behind them) to the next stage of the pipeline. That would include budgeted funds, labs, tools, access to structured venues to meet with senior leaders, and--most importantly--talent. The best example I have seen of DoD building onramps was MGMWERX giving pitch competition winners access to Air Force-funded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funds in order to put a private sector company on contract.

Despite the shortcomings, this model can be an inexpensive way to cast a wide net, solicit ideas, and give unconventional innovators a voice. It is often the best that grassroots innovators can do.

Model 3: The Brain Trust

This model usually seeks to improve on Model 2. It begins with the recognition that grassroots innovators need senior leader champions to get very far. For that reason, a senior leader who wants innovation might create a "brain trust" of savvy employees who report directly to him or her. In the chart below, all this brainpower is nestled within that leader's cell on the org chart.

This model improves on Model 2 by committing organizational resources to innovation. In theory, these innovators are given adequate top cover to focus on driving progress. Leading innovation is no longer a volunteer role slapped on top of their day jobs, but the thing they are paid to do day in and day out. The sustained commitment to innovation gives these individuals opportunities to actually tackle execution, and to do so with the boss's support. The Chief of Naval Operations' Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC) comes to mind as a good example; the CNO was able to pull highly qualified talent from the Navy, including key members of DEF.

However, this model also has several challenges. First, for all the intellectual firepower these individuals have, they still comprise just one cell on the org chart. Their ability to work across the entire pipeline might be limited. Brain trusts can be very good at setting experiments or prototypes into motion, but DoD is absolutely terrible at crossing the valley of death between prototypes and production. Second, the survivability of the brain trust is highly dependent on the specific boss; the odds of getting two highly supportive, hard-charging bosses in a row are low. Third, a pool of brilliant employees with tremendous initiative will not go unnoticed, especially when they work in a higher headquarters; the temptation to poach these individuals for various initiatives and projects is high. Innovators may be torn in different directions and may not have adequate white space to focus on core innovation efforts. Finally, it is a key tenet of the literature on innovation in large organizations that innovative teams often need to be distanced from the core enterprise; it is the only way to avoid an incentive system overwhelmingly skewed against experimentation. Brain trusts that work directly for a mainstream headquarters may not be adequately insulated, and may find themselves outmaneuvered at every turn by entrenched interests.

Model 4: The Dedicated Innovation Organization

This model takes organizational resourcing to another level. Instead of relying on volunteers or placing a few key individuals under the protection of a supportive leader, this model involves creating specialized organizations to execute innovation. These organizations receive mandates, budgets, and other resources to own as much of the innovation pipeline as possible.

This model arguably encompasses much of DoD's new innovation ecosystem. These organizations attract individuals who are passionate about innovation and who are eager to break out of old ways of doing business. They have enormous potential, but are also the most likely to struggle with a lack of clarity about their purpose. The best example I can give is my own DIUx; it struggled during its first year, which led Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to replace the leadership and reboot the entire organization. DIUx (later renamed DIU) later found a better operating model, but that took time. More on that in a moment.

As these shiny new innovation organizations seek to go "innovate", they tend to land on similar activities, like industry days, collider events, design thinking sessions, ideation days, problem curation, road shows, tech scouting, hackathons, and pitch competitions. These activities can be valuable in their own right. They are fun. They make for great publicity. They feel like innovation.

The problem is that they are nearly all early-stage activities in the innovation pipeline. They are largely aimed at scooping up ideas, assessing feasibility, demonstrating technology, or--for the most mature organizations--advancing a prototype.

This is all good, but it brings a few problems. First, these organizations face deep structural challenges in crossing the valley of death between prototyping and production. Most ideas will die before they are fielded. Second, DoD's vast number of organizations doing early-stage scouting can create real problems for industry. On the one hand, it is good that private companies have an unprecedented number of opportunities to do business with the government. On the other hand, a company executive could spend every week of the year going to tech demonstration events that never result in contracts being awarded. That gets old very, very fast.

Dedicated innovation organizations need to realize from the outset that crossing the valley of death will be their biggest challenge. Yes, they can have a lot of fun before they fall off the cliff. But if their goal is to create value-adding change for customers, they must solve transition. That means going beyond fun ideation sessions. It means doing the nasty, hard, thankless work of cleaning out the plumbing on the right side of the chart.

Model 5: VFR Direct

One way of dealing with the system is navigating around the system entirely. I call this VFR Direct, the aviation term for navigating straight to a location using your own eyeballs, without relying on instruments or air traffic control.

VFR Direct is where I have spent most of my time in my career. In this model, innovation teams essentially bypass the bureaucracy and use every tactic, technique, and hack at their disposal to get a capability directly to the end user. In my case, as a software developer, this has often meant writing and distributing my own software. As a solo developer I wrote useful programs, shared them with my peers, and created my own website to distribute them. Word spread, and my capabilities found their way into widespread use.

Later, we built Rogue Squadron on this model. Our team benefited from a central funding source, high trust from DoD leadership, and little day-to-day interference, which allowed us--as we said--"to skate where the puck was going." Our expert team was so attuned to new developments in the drone market that we could leverage new capabilities within weeks or even days of their release, or even plan new capabilities based on expectations of where the drone sector was going. We built relationships directly with warfighter units, built capabilities at their request, and delivered capability the instant it was ready. We built our own web infrastructure for managing and deploying software updates, so we could push code changes in moments to our users across the globe. We crossed the valley of death--for a time--by playing by an entirely different set of rules.

I love this model and always will. This is where I personally thrive, and I believe government needs more teams like this given the accelerating pace of technological change in today's world. The philosophy of Mission Command is premised on setting intent but allowing for decentralized execution by trusted units. In today's world, that should apply just as much to capability developers as to infantry. But I digress...

This model does have obvious shortcomings. The bureaucracy theoretically exists to illuminate risk, whereas VFR Direct runs the risk of hiding it (although I believe this distinction is often false in practice--the subject for another article). This model can also obfuscate the ownership of risk because it is sometimes less clear who is signing off on risks.

Furthermore, it is the team's ability to operate outside of the parent organization that allows it to move so quickly and with so much agility. The downside is that the team has little institutional support when needed. DoD is not structurally capable of providing sustained resources to teams that operate outside its close supervision. These teams must continually take calculated risks by operating outside of normal conventions. They run the risk of antagonizing the establishment and face serious sustainment challenges.

Teams operating on this model also have a complexity ceiling, because more complex projects require more engagement with broad stakeholder groups.

The sweet spot for VFR Direct innovation is probably fielding urgent, niche, time-sensitive capabilities while waiting for the establishment to catch up.

Model 6: Fast Track Innovation

The most mature innovation organizations take ownership of the entire innovation pipeline, from early-stage idea collection to long-run fielding and sustainment. This is very, very hard to do.

One approach is to build an innovation organization around legitimate fast-track authorities that allow for quickly maneuvering through the bureaucratic maze.

After its reboot, [DIU](http://Teams operating on this model also have a complexity ceiling, because more complex projects require more engagement with broad stakeholder groups.) focused its business model around Other Transactional Authorities--an acquisition authority originally created to help NASA move quickly in the Space Race. OTA contracts can be fast and lightweight, bypassing much of the red tape that constrains more traditional acquisition processes. This introduces risk in some areas but reduces risk in others--especially if, like me, you believe that speed is its own source of advantage and that moving slowly introduces tremendous, often unrecognized risks. DIU built its own process called the Commercial Solutions Opening, which packages OTAs in an easy package that the private sector can understand and work with.

AFWERX built its own fast-track model around Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants, which allow government to put small businesses on contract and then progressively add resources as an idea proves its value. AFWERX's innovation was not so much its use of the SBIR, but the sheer number of them it doled out. In one day in 2019, the Air Force awarded 51 proposals in 15 minutes or less. The SBIR initiative showed a new commitment to placing small bets, which is generally considered good practice when planning for uncertain futures.

This general approach strikes me as the most promising for accelerating government innovation, but it is not a panacea. I will explore this in future articles, but even fast track authorities are not usually enough to cross the valley of death. DoD has an ever-increasing number of contracting vehicles and funding mechanisms for prototyping, but at the end of the day, programs can only be implemented and sustained if they are programmed into the defense budget. That Byzantine process has a five-year lead time, and funding flows through the very program offices that these rapid innovation organizations are often trying to work around--and often compete with. This puts rapid innovation organizations in a difficult dilemma: if they have an antagonistic relationship with program offices, their experiments will never see the light of the day. However, if they coordinate with program offices from the beginning, they will have to make numerous compromises that will gradually funnel them into the same mindset and behaviors that they were originally founded to escape.

This Faustian bargain is the dirty secret at the heart of defense innovation: to scale beyond prototypes, you have to become just like the thing you sought to avoid. This is where reform efforts must be targeted; nothing will ever really change otherwise.

Model 7: The Coalition Model

For years, I only had the above six models in my repertoire. Over time, I gradually realized that I needed another. This capstone model encapsulates most of my day-to-day experience as an innovator.

The Coalition model acknowledges that there are wonderful people to be found everywhere in that vast, bleak Borg cube of defense acquisition, with its incomprehensible acronyms, endless arrays of office symbols, and soul-sucking processes.

We are all in this mess together, and getting any damned thing from one end of the pipeline to the other is a pick-up game that requires a coalition of hardened fighters.

There are brilliant inventors churning out ideas at the grassroots. There are savvy, insightful commanders trying to move chess pieces around the board to get the best ideas into execution. There are passionate staff officers working in headquarters who want to see change. There are brilliant people working in the program offices who hate the constraints they are under but will use the full envelope of their authority to do the right thing. There are dedicated and loyal civil servants deep within the notorious "frozen middle" who are absolutely essential to getting ideas resourced, approved, and into the field.

When you really delve into a specific problem or solution space, you quickly figure out who the power players are. You find each other on the sidelines of conferences. You meet at dive bars on business trips to plan strategy. You text each other during 75-person telecons, because at the end of the day, you know the five of you will be the ones actually driving change.

My most successful experiences with large-scale innovation came through these kinds of coalitions. A few examples:

Rogue Squadron began when high-level officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense saw our value, supplied us with resources, and then trusted us to do the right thing; they provided the rails within which we operated, ensuring we stayed compliant and approved.
Later, we built an extraordinary partnership with a major Combatant Command headquarters. We built effective alliances with a rock star team of staff officers, civilians, and contractors at the headquarters, who shouldered the brunt of the "bureaucratic warfighting" and left Rogue Squadron free to keep developing and delivering capability at blistering speed.
DoD recently announced five new trusted quadcopters built for the Army, which will soon be available to the entire government. This extraordinary program emerged from a novel partnership between a forward-leaning Army program office and DIU. The Army program office brought institutional support and requirements, while DIU brought its contracting authorities, private sector relationships, and domain expertise.

Conclusion

Any model is a simplification of a more complex reality. These models are no different. Undoubtedly there are many ways to divide up the complex landscape of innovation activities across an enterprise as vast as DoD, but these models make sense to me and emerged through years of practice and reflection.

If you are a leader of innovation, think about your own conceptual models. Consider where you might fit. Any conceptual framework will not fit reality perfectly, but it can at least give you a scaffolding to build on as you find your own way forward in your own unique context.

The World Does Not Rest On Your Shoulders

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In my last two posts, I shared two hard truths about taking responsibility: The World Owes You Nothing and The Cavalry Ain't Coming. I emphasized that there is no substitute for the hard, grinding work of creating change, and innovators should not look to the horizon for a miraculous rescue.

Today's hard truth is almost an inversion of the last two: the world does not rest on your shoulders.

I squirm, writing that.

Of all these hard truths, that one might be the hardest for me. I cannot say I have fully internalized it. I am preaching to myself as much as to you.

My expectation of disaster

I was once Aircraft Commander for a C-17 mission supporting a Secretary of Defense visit to three South American countries. We were to shadow his business jet from airport to airport in case it had maintenance issues, and personally carry him and his entourage to an austere airfield the business jet could not reach. This was what military officers call a "no-fail" mission. The logistics were complex. We spent weeks coordinating details like passports, visas, landing fees, instrument approaches and departure procedures, and fuel services.

The individual who processed passports and visa requests at our base was one of the most difficult government employees I have ever met. He made so many mission-impacting mistakes and lost so much paperwork that we started a spreadsheet to track incidents. He was always acerbic and always denied responsibility. He could not be fired and we could not work around him.

Days before this no-fail mission--during my daily, paranoid checkups on his work--I learned he had mailed the entire crew's passports to the wrong office, which meant we would have none of the visas needed to enter the three countries where SECDEF was traveling. I spent the next three days on the phone with embassies and agencies across Washington D.C. We worked out a convoluted plan that involved a forward-leaning bureaucrat (the hero we all need!) driving all over Washington D.C. to obtain visas, then hand-carrying passports to a base where we would be making a fuel stop en route to South America. We pulled it off--barely. Had it not been for our paranoid attention to detail and concerted effort to create a solution, we would have fumbled one of our most important missions of the year.

This is an especially egregious example, but I have had experiences like these over and over in my career. So many times when I have trusted the system to work, it let me down. Support agencies have lost my paperwork, forgotten to write my annual performance reports, nearly ruined my promotion boards, and screwed up geographic moves for me and my family.

The problems compounded when I started leading aircrews and teams. Every C-17 pilot can relate; the flight crew is the last line of defense in an incredibly complex orchestration of agencies that have a role in mission success. Aircraft Commanders spend a disproportionate amount of their energy monitoring this symphony and then swooping in to fix impending disasters: the passengers are late, the wrong cargo shows up to the jet, diplomatic clearances aren't properly coordinated, headquarters planned your flight to a closed airfield. You quickly learn to expect disaster. You learn to trust no one but yourself and (usually) your crew.

This expectation occurs in a context where the vast Air Force mission enterprise is doing exactly what it was trained and built to do.

When you lead change, things gets even harder.

Now you are stretching the organization out of its familiar patterns and rituals. You are introducing new workflows and tools, trying new tasks and behaviors, attempting to use support functions in novel ways. Nobody is fully trained for this. Everyone is learning together--including you. Oversights, mistakes, and inadequate work are endemic. You are juggling a thousand details, and because you as the change-maker are carrying so much risk, one dropped ball could sink your entire effort.

Over the years, these experiences have left an indelible imprint on me.

There are very few people I trust completely.

Everything rests on my shoulders, I think.

And that belief is dangerous.

Life in the paradox

At first, this might seem to contradict my last two posts. Haven't I been writing that leading innovation requires taking ultimate responsibility?

Yes. But.

It would be handy if a single set of principles could offer sure guidance through all the messy ambiguity of life. However, real life generally embodies paradoxes: two apparently irrreconcilable propositions that are both absolutely true. You must work hard but not overvalue work. You must strive for success but anticipate and make your peace with failure. You must be generous in relationships but also set boundaries. You must give your children sound instruction but also let them learn from their mistakes. A well-lived life entails constantly navigating these paradoxical tensions.

This is no different.

When you lead innovation, you must take ultimate responsibility for the outcomes you wish to achieve. You must learn to rely on your own resources, creativity, ingenuity, and hard work. You should not expect others to carry your burdens or swoop in to rescue you.

At the same time, however, you cannot carry this burden alone.

If you try, you will not last long.

Resolving the paradox

Creating change in entrenched systems is hard. Incredibly hard.

Hundreds or even thousands of people have labored for years to make the system what it is. The system is the emergent outcome of financial investments, sales histories, defeats, victories, legal battles, and untold expenditures of time and energy. Previous generations built this cathedral brick by brick, with all its majesty and all its imperfections. Intrapreneurs just as passionate as you put their blood, sweat, and tears into shaping, sanding, and polishing it to perfection.

And here you are. One person. Standing in defiance.

There is nobility in that. That is how any great change or creative work begins--in moments when, as Steinbeck wrote, "a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man." An inspired leader has a fleeting glimpse of a different future, with no idea how to make it real in the face of such overwhelming odds, but takes the first step in faith anyway.

Now you are in the arena, and your adversary is so much stronger. The combined might of that vast system will be brought to bear on you.

This will not be a quick or easy battle. You will quickly realize that you must settle in for the long haul, that you need allies, that this one battle will likely unfold into a campaign lasting years--perhaps even generations.

You will need to fight tirelessly, but you will also need to manage your energy and your health. You cannot possibly comprehend all the million details that will be need to be resolved, nor the alignment of forces that will need to occur to make lasting change. You will also discover that althrough your basic intuitions might be right, your grasp of the details is incomplete or even profoundly wrong. Your ideas must evolve, often through rigorous testing and profound challenge.

To lead change, then, you need other people. You need a team. You need allies. You need to synchronize your efforts with many others who are fighting similar battles in other places. You might even need enemies.

You also need to recognize that by stepping forward in opposition, you are opening yourself to forces beyond your control. Think about Martin Luther nailing 95 theses to a church door, Rosa Parks refusing to give up a bus seat, or Billy Mitchell using an airplane to sink a Navy ship. The contexts were extremely different, but in each case, an individual picked a fight that would reverberate through the halls of power and ripple across vast swaths of society. These acts challenged institutions, cultures, ideologies, and norms. The reformers had no way of knowing precisely how incumbent forces would respond, but one thing was certain: the response would be big, and it would be beyond their ability to control.

Reform often requires surrender, then--not giving up, but yielding ultimate control to forces and processes far bigger than ourselves.

If we persist in believing that this burden falls entirely on our shoulders, we place impossible expectations on ourselves. We will be broken--either in one fatal blow, or through the accumulated weight of unmanageable challenges.

The hard challenge

Living with this tension is hard--and one of my biggest personal challenges.

The paradox plays out every day. In my various innovation projects, I have been the chief "vision owner" and have spent thousands of hours mastering complex implementation details. I believe my personal ownership of wide-ranging details is what makes me effective and allowed my previous initiatives to make it as far as they did.

At the same time, I place impossible expectations on myself. My time leading Uplift Aeronautics shattered my mental health, which set me on a long journey of soul-searching and healing. I approached Rogue Squadron with more wisdom and balance, and we built a stellar team and coalition, but I still repeatedly found myself stumbling under the burden. Especially as our team grew, I struggled every day with where to maintain personal control and where to surrender that control to forces outside myself. There was rarely a clear answer; it was all tradeoffs. I have entrusted control to others and watched disaster ensue; I have also entrusted control and watched colleagues achieve feats I never could have imagined.

Navigating the paradox is a deeply personal journey that every innovator must make. You are ultimately responsible, and yet the weight is not on your shoulders alone. It is your determination and hard work that will create change, but forces beyond your control are in play. You must be detail-minded and self-reliant but also trust and lean on a broader community.

Image taken from Apple's classic 1984 ad--which, incidentally, was recently subject to a brilliant recreation by Epic Games as part of its legal battle with Apple.

Dogfights, AI, and Bureaucracy

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The big Air Force news this morning is that an Artificial Intelligence algorithm easily defeated a human F-16 pilot in simulated aerial dogfighting in a 5-0 sweep. The three-day AlphaDogfight trials were hosted by DARPA.

I am not particularly surprised. I have never been a fighter pilot, but dogfighting--like many aspects of flying--strikes me as an exercise in precise energy management and control systems theory; the precise and timely application of proper control inputs will conserve energy and maximize the probability of ending up at the right time place at the right time. That is the kind of bounded task at which machine learning should excel (managing the complex, ambiguous, and open-ended environment in which dogfighting might occur is another story).

However, I have always worried about the ability of the DoD bureaucracy to manage AI algorithms. Our acquisition processes were designed for hardware; we spend years building, testing, certifying, and fielding a widget. Then we spend years sustaining it while we build the next version.

Software completely upended this paradigm, because in the modern world, software is released into production in the earliest stages of the lifecycle and new changes are released into production continuously--sometimes hundreds of times per day. Software obliterates the distinction between Research and Development (R&D) and Operations & Maintenance (O&M). It compresses requirements generation, design, building, testing, evaluation, and fielding, and sustainment into a tight circle rather than a linear process.

DoD has had severe struggles adapting to the world of software. A tireless assault by insurgent software factories--like Kessel Run, Space CAMP, the Defense Digital Service, Kobayashi Maru, Tron, BESPIN, and my own Rogue Squadron--has begun transforming the system. These organizations are making progress but it's a bit like trying to steer the Titanic, and we all have scars. We certainly aren't there yet; a lot of "agile" is still just agile BS. DoD rarely practices Continuous Integration and Delivery, and many DoD systems are still updated only intermittently--after new approvals processes--by handy-carrying memory sticks or even 1970s floppy disks.

AI algorithms strike me as an even harder challenge, because algorithms that continuously learn could literally change hundreds of time per second. If large parts of DoD still require lengthy approvals processes for new software versions, how on earth will we manage constantly evolving algorithms? Especially given how opaque and mysterious many algorithms are? One of the fundamental challenges with evaluating machine learning algorithms is that they are rarely explicable; results are achieved by manipulating parameter weights in models. They rarely rely on logic, heuristics, or features that can be articulated to mere mortals. They also have bizarre failure modes: they can be brittle, overfit to particular training sets, or trained on data that does not accurately represent the real world. This means that algorithms require human oversight, but DoD lacks the knowledge, skills, tools, and processes to manage AI effectively.

I am so concerned about this that I wrote a short story a few years ago, specifically to help DoD leaders understand the issues in play. In Fitness Function, bureaucratic inefficiencies throttle the vast potential of AI--and ensure overmatch by a near-peer competitor. If you are interested, you can read it online at CIMSEC or download a free copy.

Image courtesy of Breaking Defense

The Cavalry Ain't Coming

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In my last post, I shared a hard truth: the world owes you nothing. Today I continue the series with another, related hard truth that innovators must learn.

As a young Air Force officer, I constantly raged against the machine. So much felt broken. Over the years I learned to manage my anger (somewhat) and tried to focus on creating solutions, but that introduced a new problem: I did not have the requisite authority. All I could do was pin my hopes on senior ranks, and perhaps someday join those ranks myself. Maybe I could acquire the influence to make a difference.

When I was a Major, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force visited my SAASS class for a group discussion. This was a man I had followed throughout my career, admired, and even revered. Over and over again, he deflected our questions about the entrenched problems the Air Force faced. He insisted he was powerless to change them. At one point, in a misguided effort to offer encouragement, he said, "This is why we need you to study and learn, so you can tackle these problems."

The bottom fell out of my universe.

I had been laboring up through the ranks so I could finally have enough influence to make a difference. Now I saw the lie behind the game: I had been living in a hamster wheel. Our most senior leaders felt just as trapped as I did. If the highest-ranking Air Force officer was looking to a new generation of Majors to solve problems beyond his control, we were doomed. The whole thing was a vicious circle.

That was a critical moment in my career when I embraced a hard truth: the cavalry wasn't coming. No savior-general would step in and reverse our fortunes. Magical decrees would not deliver sweeping reform. We were all in this together, regardless of our rank. We had to find our own way out of this mess, with whatever resources were at our disposal.

It is the same in any organization, any government, any social institution, any athletic pursuit, or artistic endeavor. Whenever we face a monumental challenge, we desperately want rescue. We want to find the senior leader champion, the investor, the journalist, or the key influencer who will change everything.

But this is the hard reality: the cavalry ain't coming.

It is on us.

Life is not a Deus Ex Machina

A deux ex machina is a plot device typically attributed to Greek theater. The playwright would ensnare his or her characters in ever-worse complications until all hope of resolution seemed lost. Then, at a critical moment, divine intervention would occur; human actors playing gods would be elevated or lowered onto the stage. The Latin phrase deux ex machina literally means "god from the machine."

The device continues to drive many works of fiction. When all hope seems lost, the Cavalry rides into the rescue.

I think of Gandalf promising Aragorn, "Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth day." The Battle of Helm's Deep rages throughout the night, hope fades, and then in a moment of a desperate, final defiance Aragorn and Theoden ride out to meet the enemy. We expect a death worthy of legends, but at that very moment, Gandalf appears at the head of an army--which turns the tide of the battle.

If only life worked like that.

Occasionally it does, but only rarely.

The deus ex machina is a dangerous plot device that, if not carefully handled, leaves readers feeling cheated.* The best stories are those in which heroes take full responsibility for their actions and must find their own way out of their dilemmas. Think about Mark Watney and his colleagues in The Martian. Their every action introduces unforeseen consequences that ratchet up the stakes, but in the end, it is their ingenuity and teamwork that brings the story to a successful resolution. Stories like this satisfy us as readers but they also resonate with our own life experiences.

Chris Gardner--the man whose story was dramatized in The Pursuit of Happyness--described watching a Western with his mother when he was a child. As the film approached its climax the hero was alone, with no horse or sidekick, running low on ammunition. His eyes searched the horizon. He saw nothing but tumbleweed and cactus.

"See that," Gardner's mother told him. "The cavalry ain't coming."

She wanted Gardner to understand that the hero would have to save himself. Gardner says that the hero did indeed save himself, but:

his resolve and ingenuity did not kick in until he accepted that no cavalry had been sent to bail him out. He had to become his own cavalry.

He goes onto say that "the cavalry ain't coming" is a state of mind and an attitude. It requires "taking stock of where you are, understanding how you got there, and then figuring out the steps necessary to get to where you want to be."

(hat tip to Marelisa Fabrega, whose post on the same theme introduced me to this wonderful anecdote)

My own search for the cavalry

If you are leading change, founding a startup, or trying to create a great work of art, you must be attuned to this longing for rescue. Your alarm bells should sound any time you find yourself, as Gardner says, "gazing hopefully out to the horizon."

When I founded and led the Syria Airlift Project, I was constantly hoping for rescue. I hoped to get on the radar of Jimmy Carter and Richard Branson. I pitched to the CEO of one of the biggest drone companies in North America. A team member spoke with Staffan de Mistura, the UN Special Envoy for Syria. We got our work in front of Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. A colleague briefed the project to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. In each case, I desperately hoped that the support of a high-level patron would change our fortunes. Speaking with these leaders was an important line of effort, but in retrospect, it was amazing how little tangible benefit any of these engagements brought us.

Nearly all of our growth came from modest, incremental steps forward. We would attend one conference and successfully recruit one volunteer. Our engagement with a CEO would yield a few thousand dollars worth of sponsored equipment and an ongoing relationship. A meeting with a politician would bring five new introductions, one of which brought up a remote opportunity of connecting with an aid organization in Jordan. Much of our time was spent relentlessly fighting for every single source of advantage. One advisor wisely told me that we needed to treat every single ally, partner, or donor--no matter how modest--as a million-dollar investor. Our hope of success rested with the accumulation of these small advantages.

My experience leading Rogue Squadron, an agile software development team in the Department of Defense, was similar. We had one deus ex machina when an early champion secured a large amount of funding, but even that introduced a ton of new complications to be solved. For the three years that followed, we worked tirelessly for every ounce of support. We interviewed up to 40 candidates for every open position. We spent months or even years courting other DoD organizations before they offered support. We spent a year tirelessly undoing a contracting mistake and writing our own replacement contract. Our battles were never-ending.

We are all in the same boat

My experience is not unique. If you are an entrepreneur founding a startup, your key currencies are funding and talent. Among your chief responsibilities are building and capitalizing a winning team, so you are constantly on the lookout for the individual people and the deals that will secure your future. It is all too easy to pin your hopes on a particular investor, a key customer, or a media event.

If you are an intrapreneur working inside a large organization, your key currency is influence. To succeed, you need to build a coalition of stakeholders who will help approve and execute your idea. It is tempting to pin all your hopes on a particular briefing to a particular leader. If I can just pitch to her, you think, everything will change. That can be true to an extent, but is sobering when you realize that your senior champion is just as entangled in red tape as you are. In most cases, your pitches will only yield incremental advantages. The responsibility still rests on your shoulders to stitch those little victories into a campaign plan that will yield success.

If you are an artist, nobody but you can do the hard work of creating a masterpiece--and then helping it succeed in a busy, distracted world. No publisher or publicist can substitute for your own relentless effort to create and promote excellent work that finds a loyal audience.

Even if you do receive a windfall of support in the form of a cavalry rescue, this will likely introduce as many new complications as it solves. Just ask any founder who lost control of their company to aggressive investors, or any government intrapreneur whose sleek idea was transformed into an unwieldy behemoth by institutional support.

The good news

Abandoning the hope of a cavalry rescue does not mean relinquishing the hope of success.

On the contrary, it means taking responsibility, using your creativity and imagination, and applying unceasing energy to the task before you. This mindset is really an extension of what I previously wrote, about getting over the idea that anyone owes you anything. Just as you should not plan on extensive support from within, you should not plan on rescue from without.

As you take responsibility, you find a few things:

You have more authority than you think. There is usually something you can do at your level--whether that's writing a paper, planning an event, creating a mockup, or meeting with stakeholders to learn more about a need. Once you start, magic can happen.
Leaders are hungry for competent problem-solvers. Senior leaders are too busy to own execution of new ideas. They have even bigger problems than you do, and less time. So when an employee shows up with both vision and an ability to execute, leaders take notice. Finally an employee who can help solve their problems! This lays a foundation for a strong partnership that can multiply your chances of success.
Relentless execution becomes a habit. As you internalize the mindset of executing at your level, it gets easier. You intuitively take stock of the resources available and the opportunities at hand. Your default posture becomes one of preparedness and action, rather than passive acceptance.
Like-minded allies will find you. There are others like you. As you show responsibility and a commitment to action, you will find each other. You will help each other. Collaborations will emerge, ideas will be tested, and new opportunities will take shape.
You will enter a continuous learning loop. You don't learn much when the cavalry rides in to save you, or a champion gives you everything you dreamed of. However, when you have to draw on your own resources, you struggle. You learn. You fight for every ounce of support, and if it's not forthcoming, you ask you yourself why. Your ideas are ruthlessly tested. If they aren't good enough, you feel pain. That learning might be more valuable than your wished-for rescue.

Take responsibility. Execute at your level. Learn to be your own cavalry. That is how hard things get done, whether you are a CEO or a day-one employee.

P.S. I actually loved this scene in The Two Towers. It is high fantasy, and sometimes a skilled writer can make the device work. Still, the point stands.

The World Owes You Nothing

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

One of the hardest lessons to learn as an innovator is that the world doesn't owe you anything--even if you feel like it should.

This is more complex than "don't act entitled."

In most large organizations, a significant number of employees are happy to carry out business as usual. They file its reports, comply with its requirements, operate through its processes, and attend its scheduled meetings. They are, in other words, doing exactly what the organization has asked them to do. These people fulfill vital functions. However, carrying out routine instructions does not necessarily require a lot of imagination, creativity, or strenuous uphill boulder-pushing.

A smaller number of employees regularly identify inefficiencies in the organization's programming or see opportunities to do better. Of those, only a subset can envision and articulate positive, actionable ways to improve. Only a fraction of those have the determination and stamina to actually execute. Those are the true intrapreneurs.

If you are in this subset--a rare leader of change--then you have embraced a sacred and difficult responsibility. You will spend far more energy than many of your peers, will fight the bureaucracy at every turn, will take personal and professional risk, and will go above and beyond your formal job responsibilities without compensation. You will do all this not for yourself, but to create positive change in an organization you believe in.

The organization absolutely should owe you something. It should owe you support, respect, resources, and help clearing blockers.

Your desire for support isn't necessarily about self-interest or ego satisfaction; it is about your legitimate and rightful need for assistance on your dangerous, difficult quest to improve the organization. The ideal organization would identify its most promising intrapreneurs, promote them, and equip them with the tools needed to create positive change.

The hard truth

Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world.

The minute we expect our organizations to give us the assistance we think we deserve, we will be disappointed.

There are several reasons why organizations do not give intrapreneurs what they hope for:

Organizations are programmed for stability, not change. This tension is built into the universe; to grow, organizations need to standardize processes. That is true even of the most innovative organizations, which is why scaling innovation organizations is so hard. As a changemaker, you will always be cutting against the grain. By definition, you are operating outside (or trying to change) the processes that you wish were helping you.
Resources are always scarce. Even if your ideas are brilliant, your organization is juggling numerous priorities with limited resources. One of the frustrations of being a leader is that you know you are underresourcing critical needs, but you have so many critical needs that you have no choice.
It is difficult to identify the best innovators (and innovations) a priori. Even if you have a proven track record, it is hard for your bosses to know whether your idea deserves more resourcing. Many "innovators" offer more heat than light, and even the best innovators have mixed track records. I have suggested or implemented dozens of improvements in my career. Some were knockout successes, some failed, some proved to be lousy ideas, and many had mixed results. It is often a good leadership tactic to place small bets at first, then scale resourcing as an idea proves its value.
Many organizations are broken. It is sad but true. Many organizations are so dysfunctional that it is simply foolish to expect them to do the right thing. One clear sign of brokenness is when all stakeholders want to execute an idea but cannot find a way. At that point, the "bureaucracy" has taken on a life of its own, beyond anyone's control.

The mindset shift

Regardless of why your organization isn't supporting you, don't dwell on it.

Reframe. Start with the idea that your organization is a blank slate where nobody owes anyone anything. You are nobody special; you are just one voice in a sea of voices. Your ideas exist in a cloud of other ideas. The responsibility for differentiating yourself, building support for your ideas, and executing change rests primarily on your shoulders. Any help you receive is a generous and unexpected gift for which you can express gratitude.

Adopting this kind of thinking has a few benefits.

It keeps you humble. All of struggle to tame our egos, and our legitimate need for support can quickly bleed into an egocentric sense of entitlement. The premise that the world owes us nothing continually nudges us back.
It emphasizes your agency, directing your attention to things under your control. Any mental or emotional energy spent wishing things were different is unproductive. Wishful thinking does not create change, generate resources, or advance your goals. Far better to allocate your precious attention to factors under your control.
It replaces negative emotions with positive ones. Disappointment, frustration, outrage, bitterness, and hurt will erode your health and happiness. These feelings inevitably arise, but if you can develop a habit of capturing and reframing them, you will be happier and have more productive energy. If the world owes you nothing, then any good that comes your way--no matter how feeble--is something to be grateful for. A default posture of gratitude will also help you identify opportunities in any situation.
It positions you for healthier relationships. The emotions you cultivate will spill over into your working relationships. If you are stressed or angry, those emotions will tinge everything (don't ask me how I know). On the other hand if you are consistently positive, grateful, and optimistic, you will bring vital energy into relationships. Those same emotions will also spill over into your relationships outside of work. Incidentally, if you bring positive energy into working relationships, you are actually more likely to generate the support you need.

The case of entrepreneurs

The same principle holds true for entrepreneurs working outside the constraints of an existing organization. You founded your startup, wrote your novel, or created a social action campaign because you believe you have a winning idea--and maybe you do. However, for your idea to take flight, you will need a tremendous amount of support from other stakeholders. These might be customers, investors, regulators, volunteers, supporters, or other allies. Entrepreneurs only rarely find the tidal wave of support they are hoping for. Most have to relentlessly fight for every last bit of support.

This brings you to the same inner crossroads. On the one hand, you can harbor resentment or frustration that more support has not materialized. On the other hand, you can start with the premise that the world owes you and your idea nothing. You can build on that foundation, take responsibility, and act to grow the support you need.

Conclusion

Mental reframing does not change your material situation. You still want support, and are still getting less than you hoped for.

However, your attitude makes all the difference in the world.

If you believe the world owes you something, you will ruminate over your hurt and anger. These negative emotions will sap your energy without doing anything to improve your situation, all while potentially damaging key relationships.

On the other hand, starting with the premise that the world owes you nothing lays a foundation for action and growth. You quickly push past negative emotions into the realm of action. You take responsibility for your situation, search out ways to improve it, and take steps to grow the support you need. You direct your energy into productive steps, and along the way, you find abundant opportunities to be grateful.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Finding Your Temple

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

“Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.” - Sun Tzu

Effective leaders must spend time in the temple.

Too many leaders live moment-to-moment in the battlefield grind: leading employees, triple-checking positions, monitoring logistics, compulsively checking the news or consuming a dizzying feed of blogs, podcasts, and reports. New taskers bombard them hourly. Subordinates line up at the door with problems or questions. The Urgent swamps the Important. We expend 100% of our energy just holding things together. Maybe more. We burn out without moving the needle.

Not Sun Tzu.

Sun Tzu tells us that an effective leader retreats into silence and solitude. He hides himself among the walls of smooth, cool stone. Tree-dappled sunlight pours through high arched windows, into an empty vaulted space that draws his eyes and heart up into the heavens. The general drinks deep draughts of this rich silence in order to replenish his soul.

Sun Tzu’s general knows that he can do more for his army or nation by withdrawing from the relentless daily grind in order to think. In that white space of interior silence, he can assess patterns, consider whether all that expended energy will amount to a victory or something else, plan major course changes that nobody in the ranks has time to even imagine. It is in that quiet sanctum that a general can look up from the tactical and imagine entirely different futures.

In his temple a general also finds the space to heal her own soul, thoughtfully consider the fundamentals that matter most, and lay plans for the future. She emerges revitalized, strong, clear-minded, at peace with herself and the world.

Why you need a temple

If you are an intrapreneur who seeks to lead change you must learn to spend time in the temple, or you will be destroyed. That is because your driving purpose is to work against a machine vastly larger and more powerful than yourself.

Your breakdown not happen immediately.

When things are going swimmingly, you will feel electrified and alive and ready to take on the world. The MVP is coming together nicely. Your leaders and stakeholders are delighted. You are failing fast, failing forward, failing often. You are learning. You are like Captain Kirk in his captain’s chair, passing cool orders to your team, watching them execute, feeling the thrill of leadership and intoxicated with the potential of what your new initiative might become.

But at some point, your fortunes will change. Even if you are succeeding, the sheer number of details demanding your attention will overwhelm you. Your unread email will hit the hundreds or even the thousands. During every phone call you will receive two new voicemails. You will need to make time-critical decisions about hiring, budget, product design, hiring, firing, security policies, external engagement, messaging, growth, strategy. One of these waves will knock you off your feet, and then another will hit while you’re down, and then another.

And that’s just when you are succeeding.

Every bold new initiative sees a constant oscillation between success and failure. When you have setbacks, the stress will skyrocket. You will take heavy blows that send you reeling. Your project will be terminated. Your budget will be halved. You will learn the contract wasn’t written properly and none of your IP protections are in place. A competitor will steal your idea and secure 10x the funding. Your senior champion will unexpectedly move to a new job, and her replacement won't care less about your project.

Any innovative effort will face what Scott Weiss calls WFIO moments (“we’re fucked, it’s over”)—usually several of them.

Leading a retreat is one of the hardest challenges a battlefield commander can face; a well-executed retreat is the most effective way to save the lives of soldiers but requires iron discipline in the face of terror and collapsing morale. Absent strong leadership, a retreat turns into a rout—with catastrophic consequences.

To survive such moments, a leader must develop the inner poise to respond effectively. You will need to make hard choices, sometimes between terrible alternatives. You must continue leading, inspiring, and pushing your team. You must become the calm at the center of the storm.

That requires spending time in the temple.

Finding your temple

Every leader's temple looks different. We most commonly associate the word temple with a place to worship deities, but the word ultimately derives from the Latin templum, which simply means “open or consecrated space.” Consecration, in turn, means “dedicated to a sacred purpose.” A temple further connotes transcendence of the mundane, a peaceful harbor from life’s storms, and a place of inner healing and restoration.

That is the key.

Some modern leaders might retreat into a literal house of worship to find solitude, silence, and healing. Others will not. In either case, a leader must have an inner sanctum—devoted to the sacred purpose of her calling—into which she can retreat.

That begins with one’s own soul. The best leaders carry their temple within; they can close their eyes and, in a few moments, find themselves in this consecrated, mindful, healing place.

Meditation.

Prayer.

Even just putting the feet up on the desk behind a closed door.

This requires a level of comfort being alone with ourselves, which is frightening and unfamiliar to many of us. Just remember: if you cannot find your own center, your ability to lead will always be fragile.

Physical artifacts can help transport us into this consecrated space. Churches use lofty architecture, sunlight and shadow, religious imagery, music, incense, and other artifacts to draw the soul into contact with the divine. For you it might be the same, or maybe just a journal, a comfortable chair in the office, or a coffee shop down the street from the office.

The outdoors is a majestic temple, and it is almost always there for the taking. During my most stressful days as a grad student, I found crucial solace in even brief walks around campus. While running my two startups I made frequent weekend getaways into the mountains with my wife and kids. I also spent many mornings outside in my yard with a cup of coffee and journal. On one of my worst days as a leader--when I discovered that my organization had accidentally spent my entire annual budget--I called in sick and spent a full day alone in the mountains with no connectivity. In that silence I was able to process my anger, despair, and the practical decisions ahead.

History is filled with private temples belonging to great men and women. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius communed with himself through writing his Meditations. Abraham Lincoln frequently retreated from the White House into a quiet cottage. Each year, Bill Gates spend two "Think Weeks" alone in the forest. Throughout his life Teddy Roosevelt retreated for months at a time to the Dakota Territory to hunt, write, and ranch. He dreamed of living as a rancher, but in this temple his strength was replenished, and he repeatedly found his way back into politics. As one profile put it, "the Badlands had lit a fire in a darkened soul."

Find your own temple. If the concept is unfamiliar to you, begin by deliberately cultivating white space in your life, learning to sit still, and learning about reflective solitude. All faith traditions have rich teaching and practices available. If you are not religious (and even if you are), Stoicism is also a great place to start. Meditation is a powerful tool to help, and resources are widespread.

As you get more comfortable in your own mind, experiment with the environment, processes, and tools that can elevate you out of the grind into a thoughtful, reflective place. Construct your temple with the same deliberate intentionality you would approach building a product or team.

I will share more about my own experiences in future posts but recognize that this is a deeply personal journey. You are on a lifelong quest to find your own center, to create a reflective place that nourishes and heals and sustains you. You are also looking for the space to perform the deep thinking--what Sun Tzu calls calculations--needed to survive and thrive in the arena. Your temple should equip you to return into the world to do battle each day. It should be a place where you grow into the truest and best version of yourself.

Good resources:

The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday - an excellent primer on stoicism
Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday - a call to slow down
The Art of War: Spirituality for Conflict - a translation of Sun Tzu with commentary about its relevance to today's world
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport - a call to free up whitespace in our lives
Deep Work by Cal Newport - More about productivity than reflection, but still a rich book about structuring our lives and workspaces to live rich, full lives
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - a Stoic classic
The War of Art and Do the Work by Steven Pressfield - classics about overcoming your inner Resistance

The Fear of Showing Up

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

One of the hardest parts about driving change in large systems is summoning the courage to "show up" and be seen. This might mean raising your voice in a meeting, publishing an opinion piece, releasing a creative work, planning an event, or proposing a new project.

When you start working in a large organization, you are a cog in a machine. Your first priority is to learn your job. The organization hired you for a purpose, and your top responsibility is to deliver on that purpose with excellence. Everything in your intrapreneurial career rests on that foundation.

This foundational training and performance phase might last years. As you grow up in your organization, you begin to form educated opinions about a variety of topics. Some will be at your pay grade, such as details of how to perform your job. Others will be well above, such as how the organization should recruit, hire and fire; how to allocate and spend budgets; what is right and wrong about your organization's priorities; and how to improve organizational processes. At some point, you feel strongly enough to raise your voice.

Here is where your challenge as an intrapreneur really begins. You must decide if, when, and how to step outside your defined role to pursue change. That means showing up--stepping into an arena where you are not necessarily expected.

My Experience

When I entered the U.S. Air Force, I had one job: be the best student pilot that I could. Nobody was interested in my thoughts on foreign policy, DoD talent management, or software development; in fact, I didn't know enough to have informed opinions. Later, I spent years learning to be the best C-17A copilot I could--then an Aircraft Commander. Simultaneously, I took on increasing office responsibilities in my squadron.

This early stage of my career lasted about six years. By the end of that period, I had proven my competence as a pilot and an Air Force officer. I knew how to perform my job and had begun training, leading, and mentoring others. My aperture widened; I began studying International Relations, paid close attention to the wars underway in Afghanistan and Iraq, and formed my own opinions about what was right and what was wrong with the Air Force and our country's foreign policy. Many of these opinions touched on issues way above my rank and responsibilities.

In 2008 I was accepted into the Olmsted Scholar program. I learned Arabic, earned a master's degree at the University of Jordan, studied the Arab-Israeli conflict from both sides, studied in an Islamic school, and watched the Arab Spring unfold first-hand, went to meetings with pro-democracy activists, and watched the Syrian civil war beginning across the border.

By the time I returned from Jordan, my world had enlarged considerably. I wanted to write a book about the experience. Friends and family urged me to, but I was ultimately afraid to show up. I was still just a low-ranking Captain in the Air Force. Jordan quickly faded like a dream, as my formal responsibilities returned to flying and managing flying operations. Who was I to weigh in on lofty issues of national policy? I didn't feel qualified to write a book.

In retrospect, I was eminently qualified to write a book--and that was the right moment to do it. Unfortunately, my impostor syndrome held me back.

As years went back, this pattern continued. I have been privileged to have some amazing opportunities in the Air Force, which has given me an uncommon breadth of personal experience. I love to write and have much to share.

However, I have consistently held back. I lacked the confidence to try publishing my academic work. When I previously maintained a blog, I never advertised it; I was trapped in a nonsensical tension of wanting my work to be read while fearing what would happen if it was. I showed up in other ways--particularly founding and running my two startups--but I avoided marketing or publicity, which ultimately hurt both efforts.

Even as I held back from showing up--never feeling quite ready--I watched peers and even juniors speed past me. Individuals with considerably less experience were writing and publishing about topics I still did not feel qualified to write about.

Starting this blog was intimidating for me, but I have reached a now-or-never period of my life.

I needed to finally trust that sharing my own journey might help others on theirs.

Why we fear showing up

We fear showing up to lead change for a number of reasons.

We feel like impostors. We fear being exposed as frauds and worry that we only ended up in our current position by accident or luck. This is strikingly common among high-achieving people.
We don't feel ready. We may feel obligated to build up a certain amount of knowledge and experience before raising our voices. This is a valid concern, but there is never a moment where someone tells us that we are ready.
We fear entanglement. As we inject our voices into the world, we spend more and more time defending existing positions rather than articulating new ones. For wildly creative people, the obligation to sit with existing work can feel like a straitjacket.
We wish to protect creative time. Many of us enjoy the creative process more than we enjoy execution. Showing up to execute can be intimidating. However, ideas are cheap; if we want to make an impact, execution is 95% of the battle.
We dislike sleazy or annoying marketing. Many artists, engineers, and other creatives loathe marketing, publicity, or anything that draws attention to us. We don't want to be as sleazy or annoying as (your favorite example).
We fear saying the wrong thing. We may fear stepping on landmines, even by accident. This is especially true if we touch on sensitive political or cultural issues.
We fall short of perfection. If we are perfectionists, we have a very hard time living up to our own standards. Our work never feels good enough.
We worry about backlash. Any strong position will have detractors, especially in our bitterly polarized political climate. When we show up to stake out positions, these detractors will likely consume some of our emotional and mental energy.

Why we must show up anyway

Despite these concerns, showing up is critical. It is the only way that anything ever changes.

Nobody ever presents you with a badge that says, "you are qualified to lead change." Rare is the organization that gives you the job title of Innovator and hands you all the tools you need (and if it does, it is probably very messy). Change in government organizations, companies, and society is typically driven by passionate individuals who step well beyond their expected role to envision and implement new ways forward.

Here are some insights that have helped me in my effort to show up:

Focus on generosity. If you struggle with making yourself visible, focus on what you can give rather than what you can get. This is how you avoid sleazy or annoying marketing. This was the breakthrough insight I needed to open this blog.
Creating valuable contributions is your bedrock. Showing up for the sake of showing up is never a good idea. However, if you show up in ways that create value for others, everything else will take care of itself.
Recognize the short memory of the Internet. This sounds paradoxical because anything posted to the Internet lasts forever. However, the national attention span only lasts for days or weeks. As long as you act with good faith and integrity, the Internet is likely to quickly forget about your mistakes or ill-considered positions and move on. Most of the Internet won't remember that cringe-worthy piece you wrote six years ago, or even two weeks ago.
Own your expertise and your story. This is one antidote to impostor syndrome. You are absolutely the world's authority on your own life experiences.
You don't need all the answers. Your audience knows that we are all works in progress. You can show up as you are, acknowledge your doubts and limitations, and still forcefully articulate your ideas. You can even change your mind later and share your journey.
Recognize you are entering a conversation. Showing up--especially in writing--often seems so final. Putting work into the world feels like an irreversible commitment. It is helpful to remember that any contribution is only part of a much bigger exchange through which we all (hopefully) learn, grow, and converge on the best possible ideas and solutions. You do not need to offer the last word.
Stay in your lane... but recognize your lane is bigger than you think. As a young intrapreneur I was advised to "stay in my lane", which I still think is good advice; you are most likely to be effective if you can speak with authority and credible experience on a topic, even if you do not know all the answers. However, all of us have rich experiences and can speak with at least some authority on a wide range of topics.

Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen on Unsplash

Guardians and Disruptors: Finding Common Ground

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This blog post is adapted from my 2013 article Finding Common Ground: Harnessing Disruption for the Good of the Service, which is specifically about the U.S. military. This version generalizes to a broader audience.

In any large organization, it is common to find tension between Guardians and Disruptors.

Guardians have been around for a while and grew up with the organization. They may be in positions of leadership, serve in middle management, or work in the organization's support infrastrucure. They helped create and now maintain the culture and processes on which the organization runs. Because they have been around for a long time, the organization's promotion system has repeatedly selected them for continued employment or service. These are the folks who, by and large, are content with the system as it exists today.

The Disruptors come to the organization with fresh eyes. They are typically more junior, though not always. They might have diverse experiences in different kinds of organizations. Almost immediately upon their entry into an organization, they identify inefficiencies and points of frustration. This is especially true if they have experience in smaller, more nimble teams.

These two camps are only generalizations and do not necessarily correlate to age. Any organization will also have dynamic, innovative senior leaders and juniors who are happy with the status quo. Every organization is different, but every organization has groups that embody the forces of conservatism and change. You can ask yourself who embodies these forces in your organization.

The tension between Guardians and Disruptors is especially strong in heavy bureaucracies like government. The U.S. military, for example, is one of the largest and most ossified bureaucracies in the world. Because it does not usually permit lateral transfers and uses an up-or-out promotion system, the promotion system consistently rewards compliant, conservative behavior over the course of a career. Most innovative junior leaders find the bureaucracy stifling, and many leave the service at their first opportunity. Getting good data on this is difficult, and debates about talent management quickly get emotional.

Relations between Guardians and Disruptors can quickly become adversarial. Guardians see these uppity newcomers as naive, reckless, and experienced. They often feel like the Disruptors do not appreciate their experience or hard-won wisdom, or the reasons the system is built this way.

Disruptors, on the other hand, feel brushed aside. They seethe at a stagnant culture that refuses to reform.

Despite the latent tension between these two groups, both bring something valuable to an organization, and it is essential that they learn to work together. This article offers some principles for how they can do so.

Finding Common Ground

The most passionate members of both groups care about the organization's success. They want to achieve its goals, create value for customers and stakeholders, properly manage risk, and ensure the organizaton's continued health and longevity. That is the common ground on which the two camps can build.

Guardians and Disruptors approach these goals from different perspectives, each of which has its strengths and weaknesses. Disruptors are acutely aware of the organization’s shortcomings, and they have the passion and idealism to strive for positive change. They bring fresh, outside perspective that can renew the organization and help it adapt to new challenges. At the same time, their idealism, inexperience, and limited perspective can lead them to push change too quickly or in ways that are ultimately unproductive.

Guardians are no less committed to the mission and to organizational excellence, but they have a greater sense of the constraints that make change difficult. They have a realistic sense of what is possible and what is not, and have learned through experience how to effectively translate ideas into action. They also are likely to foresee second and third-order effects of change that Disruptors might be blind to. These traits naturally make Guardians more conservative and skeptical of change. This can mitigate risk, but it can also needlessly obstruct necessary reform. The Guardians naturally have a bias for the traditional and familiar, and can be out of touch with the changing dynamics of the world around them.

Employees of all ranks should strive to build organizations that embrace the positive characteristics of each group. This requires identifying the common ground on which they stand: equipping their organizations to succeed and thrive in a dynamic world. Adaptive organizations must intentionally cultivate dialog between Guardians and Disruptors. Both groups must take the others’ concerns seriously, and both must be prepared to listen and learn.

Advice for Disruptors

Disruptors who want to create change have a huge learning curve ahead of them. Leading change is hard. New employees who want to create positive results—and not just be squeaky wheels—must learn how to translate ideas into action for the good of their organization. That means understanding themselves, their organization and its mission, and how to effectively communicate and implement new ideas. Below are a few pointers.

The goal is persuasion. Are you just making a statement, or are you trying to create positive change? If you’re making a statement, rant all you want. You’ll feel better (maybe) and that will be the end of it (and of your credibility). But if you’re actually trying to create real change, you must learn how to persuade. You probably aren’t important enough to create change by yourself, so you must persuade those who are. That principle should guide your efforts.
Understand the problem. Before you spend your precious capital tackling a problem, research why that problem exists. Is there a rationale behind the status quo? Why hasn’t this been addressed already? There is a good chance your bosses are aware of the problem but are constrained, perhaps by their own bosses, by regulation, or by stakeholder politics. Some problems you might be powerless to change; it’s probably a good idea to move on. In other cases, you can identify who is responsible for the constraints—and who you need to persuade.
Don’t whine. Nothing will destroy your credibility faster. Busy leaders want employees who can propose solutions and do what it takes to implement them; all whiners do is sap energy and poison attitudes while leaving the hard work to others.
Take yourself out of it. Stick to facts. Strip away emotion. Learn from others so you can reach beyond your own experience. You can sparingly use personal vignettes, but show Guardians that this is about the organization and not about you.
Be respectful. You won’t go far in persuading Guardians if you insult them.
Build a reputation for commitment and competence. As much as you’d like to think that your ideas stand on their own merit, the messenger matters. Guardians will listen to you if you have a proven track record. If your reputation is poor, your ideas probably don’t stand a chance.
Learn to communicate. To persuade Guardians, you must package your idea well. Learn to write. Learn to speak. Arrange demonstrations. If you must, use PowerPoint. Do whatever it takes to communicate your ideas to those who can implement them.
Edit down. Your superiors are busy, and your proposal is one of twenty things that will cross their desk that morning. Be succinct. Present your ideas clearly, up front. Your boss will not read twenty rambling, unfocused pages; there are no exceptions.
Use official channels--at first. Official channels sometimes don’t work; they can be clogged and unresponsive. However, sometimes they do work, and they are in place for a reason. You owe it to your organization to try them. If the system works, excellent. If not, then you can consider other avenues to advance your idea.
Enlist allies. Somebody out there--in your own team or elsewhere--shares your passion and stands to benefit from your proposed changes. Find those people. Build on your shared interests. Hash out ideas together. Pool resources and attack the problem from every possible direction.
Don’t worry about credit. It might be your idea, but it will probably pass through countless hands and layers of supervision before it sees the light of day. Be okay with that. Be generous in sharing credit, and be prepared for the possibility that you won’t get credit at all.

Advice for Guardians

Guardians have responsibilities of their own, particularly if they are in leadership roles. First they must recognize the depth and breadth of frustration that can exist in a large bureaucracy. Dissatisfaction may be rampant and cannot be shrugged off. If Guardians genuinely care about organizational excellence, they should not casually accept the exodus of any talent. If processes can be improved, they should be improved. If they can’t, leaders must explain why. Either way, leaders must lead and communicate.

Guardians must also recognize that creative, innovative employees are an asset. Opinionated employees do not usually voice their opinions because they want to be troublesome; they speak up because they care. Their frustration is a motivating force that, properly harnessed, will lead them to make positive contributions to improving the organization. If not properly channeled, that same frustration will simply embitter them. Leaders must understand that they have a significant role in determining which outcome will occur. The following principles can help leaders bring out the best in their bright junior employees.

Recognize the value of Disruptors. They might take your time and energy, but they are among your most precious resources. They want to do good for you and for the organization. Find ways to help them do it. Everybody will win.
Get involved in the conversation. Your organization probably has forums where your Disruptors gather to talk, brainstorm, and plan. These might be online chat tools, in-person meetings, or simply water cooler conversations. If you are not already, get involved! Your employees will gladly help you find an inroad.
Take the initiative. Disruptors often take the lead when they see the need for reform. Do not settle for that. Lead! Think, write, and speak about how your motivated employees can constructively channel their energy. Show them that you value what they can offer.
Bear with inexperience. Your Disruptors are still learning the difficult art of creating change in a vast bureaucracy. Their communication skills will vary, and they are drawing on limited experience. They will make mistakes. They will propose bad ideas, and their tone will sometimes offend you. Hold them accountable, but be patient. Remember, there is talent and passion latent beneath that inexperience. You want to draw it out and put it to work for you.
Mentor Disruptors. You are a leader; one of your most important duties is to help subordinates learn and grow. Teach them how to communicate and how to create change. Show them how they can channel all their frustrations into something positive. Counsel them when they make mistakes.
Ensure your formal channels are open. When ideas languish and die in formal channels, it reinforces the message that leaders don’t care. Disruptors will be tempted to seek alternative means of advocating ideas, which can be dangerous for everybody. If you want your Disruptors to work within the system, ensure your system works.
Give feedback on every idea. Your Disruptors will often bring forward ideas that are impractical, unworkable, or just plain lousy. They won’t understand the problem or constraints; they will be blind to second or third order effects; you will anticipate problems that they don’t. Instead of killing the idea without explanation, take the time to discuss your reasoning. Affirm their commitment to work for positive change. If the idea can be improved or altered, give them direction.
Reward innovation at your level. Organizations vary in their ability to reward creativity, innovation, and unique skill sets. If your organization undervalues innovation, do not let that stop you from rewarding innovation at your own level. Be generous with verbal praise. Highlight unique accomplishments. Create awards within your own team, if appropriate. Do whatever is within your power to show that you value creativity and innovation.
Take a chance. Many of the ideas your Disruptors bring forward really will be good ones. Don’t reflexively shoot them down. If an idea might work, try it. Your organization will be better if it works. If it doesn’t, you and your employee will learn something and you will have demonstrated trust in your people. It is also possible that the experiment will lead to a better, revised idea.

Conclusion

Healthy organizations draw on diverse workforces to understand all sides of important issues. They provide healthy processes for idea generation, discussion, debate, and decision-making. One of the most important sources of diversity in an organization is the spectrum of conservative forces (favoring stability and precedent) and change-making forces (favoring experimentation and reform). Any organization will have camps that embody both ends of this spectrum.

Representatives of both groups should be concerned with organizational excellence and the ability to execute the mission, which requires continual improvement and innovation. Both groups bring unique perspectives to this process, and both groups must be in continual dialog. Both groups must listen, communicate, and focus on their shared commitment to creating and leading superior organizations.

DIU-Ex Podcast: Going Rogue

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SWbqvMbqJ4

A huge thanks to my Defense Innovation Unit colleague Zach Walker for inviting me onto his DIU-Ex podcast to talk about my experience founding and leading Rogue Squadron, an agile software development team that specialized in small drones and counter-drone technology. The best part is Zach's amazing intro video!

Below I summarize the topics we discussed.

(1:00) Introduction and Rogue Squadron Overview. I discuss the rapid evolution of ISIS's drone air force in Mosul, from 0 drones to 12-aircraft coordinated attacks in a few months. We saw the need to create an insurgent red team within DoD to help anticipate emerging drone threats. Over time, we were drawn more and more into sUAS and C-UAS capability development rather than red teaming.

(3:30) How Rogue Squadron fit into DIU's Autonomy Portfolio. Once we started developing capability, we were able to fill critical niches that industry hasn't responded to yet. However, we had to strike a careful balance about not competing directly with commercial companies. At the time we started, DIUx supported a variety of experiments with different business models, and Rogue Squadron fit comfortably within the organization.

(5:45) Rogue's challenges as DIU consolidated its business model. As DIU matured, the Department of Defense Research & Engineering (OSD/R&E) leadership and DIU leadership sharpened DIU to focus on a specific business model: using the Commercial Solutions Opening process to award contracts to industry. Internal capability development was outside that model, which put Rogue in a challenging position.

(6:30) How Rogue managed its human capital. Getting the right talent was the key to success but an extraordinary challenge within DoD's bureaucracy. I discuss the pros and cons of different options, poaching military members using TDYs, getting in trouble for advertising contractor positions, and fighting to get the right people.

(11:00) How we avoided bad apples and built a winning culture. I discuss the importance of a high-trust culture (I was heavily inspired by Simon Sinek's Leaders Eat Last) and our key hiring criteria (mission focus and aptitude to learn).

(12:40) What Rogue accomplished. We discuss Rogue's reputation as an expert sUAS team in the U.S. federal government and allied governments. I touch on specific projects like a forensic tool, security analyses of foreign-made drones, and advising the Army and DIU Autonomy portfolio on Short Range Reconnaissance and trusted supply chains.

(15:20) Is there room for more teams like Rogue Squadrons in DIU? Rogue's magic was that we--as government employees--could build or modify things internally and then field them immediately. That often included making in-house tweaks to commercial tech. I believe uniformed military officers have to play this role in today's fast-changing world. However, the idea of military officers creating or modifying capability did not sit well with some leaders. Also, despite our early success building the right team, DoD makes it very difficult to sustain a team like this over time.

(18:50) Rogue's legacy as it transitions into the Defense Digital Service. I hope that our business model can serve as a case study to help other teams in the future. DoD is collectively learning how to write software. Rogue is one of a number of teams that have a role in that. I also discuss some specific initiatives like trusted supply chains and Rogue's counter-UAS capabilities, which used software development practices a generation ahead of many DoD programs.

(21:00) What I wish I'd known when I first started. I wish I had had more training in practical skills and knowledge about how to innovate inside large organizations. In the DoD that would include topics like handling money, contracting, and manipulating the personnel system.

(22:15) The need for speed. DoD is optimized for consensus and stability over speed, but if Rogue was optimized for one thing, it was speed. We believed speed was its own source of advantage in today's world. That brought certain risks, but mitigated other kinds of risks.

(23:20) Conclusion. I hope our story inspires others, and look forward to seeing what other innovators and their teams do.

John Lewis and Good Trouble

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Changing large systems is so hard that it often feels impossible. Many people wear out and eventually hang up their spurs. This can be an honorable choice; you do your service, and then you move on. Others, unfortunately, become hardened and embittered by their experiences. However, there is a rare group of individuals who achieve a kind of serenity in their endless fight to create change.

I am embarrassed to say that I knew little about John Lewis prior to his death on July 17th, but he is one of these extraordinary souls who falls into the latter camp. The nonviolent activist came from humble origins, born into a sharecropping family in small-town Alabama. He found his calling under Martin Luther King Jr.'s mentorship, was among the 13 original Freedom Riders, was a founder and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, helped organize the March on Washington in 1963 (where MLK Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech), and led the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge betwen Selma and Montgomery--which was the key to passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was arrested, beaten, and injured more than 40 times (most recently in 2013, while a serving Congressman). His body carried scars, and there were times when he expected to die. Later, among many other accomplishments, he served for 17 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Despite a lifetime of facing injustice and oppression, he maintained a sense of dignity, serenity, and magnanimity until his death. One of his final acts was to pen a hopeful op-ed that the New York Times published yesterday, titled Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation.

On Sunday a military honor guard carried the late John Lewis across the Edmund Pettus bridge, where he and his fellow protestors were beaten by police 55 years ago (and which, incidentally, is named after a Confederate general and leader of the Ku Klux Klan; you can sign a petition to rename it after John Lewis here). From there he was carried with honors to the state capitol in Montgomery.

Thanks to my recent move to Montgomery, my family and I were able to join this historic day. We joined the viewing line in the afternoon, and then returned in the evening for a vigil. The speakers included Steven Reed (Montgomery's current, and first African-American, mayor), Bernice King (Martin Luther King Jr.'s youngest daughter, minister, activist, and CEO of the King Center), Fred Gray (a civil rights attorney who, among other things, defended Rosa Parks), and rising voices of the younger generation.

It was a beautiful and powerful event. As a white attendee at an event hosted and mostly attended by African-Americans who have been living out this struggle for decades, I felt like a witness to their shared story. It is a powerful story--emotional, triumphant, patient, and hopeful. I felt humbled by their strength and commitment. I have much to learn from them.

Many of us are experiencing the United States in 2020 as an unprecedented disaster; a country that once worked has now broken. African-Americans have generally lived a very different experience; this country never worked. From its beginning, the United States was only a partial incarnation of its ideals of freedom and democracy. The grievous wound of slavery defined the American experience, and the efforts to heal that wound continue to this day.

Many Americans, myself included, often feel despondent about the state of our democracy. We struggle to find hope in the dark.

My most striking impression of the John Lewis vigil was the complete absence of this despair; every speaker carried a message of optimism, patience, and courage. None of this is new for them. They have quite literally been fighting for the redemption of broken institutions since their childhoods. Their culture, religion, and music evolved to carry a message of hope that would sustain multiple generations through a campaign of change that often felt hopeless. Multiple speakers at the vigil broke out in hymns. Sitting there, reflecting on both their long march through the past and the ongoing battles of 2020, I heard those hymns in an entirely new light.

The event planners also went out of their way to feature bright young voices. This was not merely a memorial service; it was the passing of a torch that had touched many hands before John Lewis.

Good trouble

As both an entrepreneur and a political scientist, I am endlessly fascinated by how human beings successfully challenge entrenched systems.

Sometimes, the best way to create change is by working through existing processes. Politics exist for the express purpose of allocating "who gets what, when, and how"--to use my favorite definition, from Harold Lasswell. Any political system, whether in a country or a company, has processes for reconciling differences and allocating power and resources.

John Lewis believed in working through processes. He repeatedly emphasized the importance of voting, and the backdrop for his Montgomery vigil was a massive, colorfully adorned VOTE sign. Nearly every speaker emphasized the need to vote, and Bernice King's call to action--echoed in former President Obama's eulogy--was for a new voting rights act.

However, in dysfunctional countries or organizations, political processes are often not enough. They can be inadequate, blocked, or rigged. They often serve the status quo and reigning powers, so mounting successful challenges can be difficult.

In these cases, operating outside the lines might be necessary. A wide spectrum of options exist, ranging from peaceful demonstrations to civil war, each of which could consume a lifetime of study.

John Lewis deeply believed in nonviolence, but he also believed that coloring outside the lines was necessary to drive change. As his 40+ arrests attest, this was not always looked kindly on by those in power.

Lewis advised Americans to get in "good trouble, necessary trouble." For him this was never about destruction or vengeance, but about living out hope for a better future. As he put it in one 2018 tweet:

Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.

"Getting in trouble" is never an easy or light decision. Political scientists call these methods "contentious politics" for a reason. We are living through a time of unusually contentious politics right now, and each of us feels the ramifications every time we watch the news. However, contentious politics is not necessarily a sign of things coming apart; it can be a sign of something giving way, and something new being born.

John Lewis showed that a propensity for getting in "good trouble" can coexist with strong character, hope, and charity--qualities our country desperately needs right now. Although I have only recently begun learning about his life, I am looking forward to reading his books and learning from his rich experience.

A Call to Intrapreneurship

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We live in a world that celebrates entrepreneurs. We love renegade innovators like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk who buck the system, envision and create entirely new industries, and take down established giants. We wish we had the courage and opportunity to follow in their footsteps.

Many of us feel stifled in our own roles. We grow weary of the boring sameness of our day-to-day jobs. Our lives look less like startup culture and more like Dilbert. Deloitte's 2019 Global Millennial Survey found that 49% of millennials would quit their job in the next two years if they could.

Entrepreneurship offers a tantalizing promise of something better: the opportunity to control our own destiny while doing exciting, meaningful, impactful work. Entrepreneurial mythology becomes a kind of fantasy escape for us, in the same way that Science Fiction or Romance novels might be for others.

Some of us will indeed take the leap, quit our jobs, and become founders and entrepreneurs. But the honest reality is that many of us won't.

The vast majority of us will go on working in larger organizations. We will have bosses, colleagues, and subordinates. We will be accountable to stakeholders and clients. Funding, project approvals, and human resources will come from others. Office politics will drive us crazy. Many of us will have families and financial commitments that require stable employment. Our lives will consist of numerous interdependencies with other people. In short, many of us will not have the freedom to embark on our own solo adventure.

I would like to suggest that hope is not lost. We can view both our day-to-day frustrations and our entrepreneurial yearnings as summons to a better way of living. Rather than seeing our interdependencies and commitments as shackles, we can learn to view ourselves as change agents in organizations and communities that are in constant need of renewal.

That is the essence of intrapreneurship.

My Story

I have dreamed about working for myself since I was a child. I started writing fiction when I was six; to this day, I still long to "make it" as a writer. In elementary school, I designed and sold desk intrusion alarms to my classmates. I started writing software in seventh grade and never stopped. In the years since I have picked up many programming languages, designed computer games, written software to facilitate language learning, sketched out business plans for multiple companies, and spent untold hours studying entrepreneurship and imagining how I might make the leap.

Yet at 40 years old, I am still part of the organization I joined at 18: the United States Air Force. The Department of Defense is the biggest bureaucracy in the country, something I am painfully reminded of almost every day. Although flying cargo planes was exciting, I spent much of my early years doing mindless, soul-crushing office chores that are causing Air Force pilots to quit in droves. I spent numerous years in higher education, studying political science and international relations, hoping to someday make a positive impact--only to feel ever-deeper despondency as the world seemed to unravel. My career coincided with two disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a wide range of other foreign policy debacles. I constantly dreamed of leaving the military. My heart's deepest desire was to cut all ties, move into the mountains with my family, and never look back.

Yet along the way, I have carved out a unique role for myself: I am an intrapreneur. I have spent these long, frustrating years trying to change my institution for the better. I have overhauled low-level processes, created new tools, automated labor-intensive processes, written new software, built knowledge-sharing systems, and fought for policy changes. I have done my best to teach, mentor, and build communities around innovation. As I got older and more experienced, I tried to create a new paradigm for swarming humanitarian aid through military sieges. We incorporated as a nonprofit, but that was largely an organizational hack; ultimately, I was trying to create a new capability the United States could use to help cope with humanitarian crises in places like Syria. I also founded a successful "startup" inside the Defense Innovation Unit to deal with the rapidly emerging threat from small drones. That catapulted our team into high-level Pentagon politics, as DoD's lumbering bureaucracy struggled to keep up with the exponential acceleration of new technology.

Intrapreneurship has been a grueling personal journey. I have had rare and incredible opportunities for both education and impact, for which I am deeply grateful. However, I have also spent the prime years of my life breaking myself against a bureaucracy that crushes everything in its way. Much of what I have built has been destroyed. I have taken significant pay cuts and hurt my chances at promotions. I am frequently misunderstood. I have had to fight the system every step of the way to keep doing successful work that is ultimately aimed at bettering that system. Many of my intrapreneurial friends have left in frustration. My mental health has frayed at times, as the stress and anxiety have been overwhelming.

Yet I would not trade that journey for the world. Grappling with my own personal journey has given me deep insights into the nature of intrapreneurship. It is a special and important calling, especially at a time when so many of our organizations, institutions, and communities seem to be coming apart.

A commitment to intrapreneurship empowers you to rise above boredom and mediocrity, but it also pushes you constantly against your own limits. You must learn and grow, or you will be crushed. You must learn to manage your own psychology, and to find your own sources of peace and happiness outside of the work itself. Ironically, that struggle can be enriching by driving you to invest across all domains of your life.

What are we after?

We might start by asking why entrepreneurship sounds so appealing. Let me begin by discarding three lousy reasons to be an entrepreneur: fame, wealth, and ease. Fame is transient, and society loves nothing more than to tear down success. Just ask Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. As for wealth, yes, entrepreneurship can make you rich, but 95% of startups fail. And anyone who actually does entrepreneurship will tell you it entails a ton of work.

Let's move on to some higher motivations for entrepreneurship:

**Autonomy:** One of our highest needs as human beings is to control our own destiny. We hate being fettered; we yearn for the freedom to go where our desires take us.

**Creativity:** Imaginative people cannot tolerate being bored. We want to exercise our full range of talents and gifts.

**Meaning:** We want our work to count for something. Menial, repetitive tasks or jobs aimed only at wealth generation can leave us yearning for more.

**Mastery:** High performers thrive on challenge, continual improvement, and the pursuit of mastery. We yearn for roles that demand our highest level of performance.

**Efficiency:** We want our organizations, processes, and tools to work well. Continual improvement is in our nature. Wasting time on the inefficiencies endemic to large organizations can be infuriating.

Entrepreneurship appeals to all these motivations. It extends the promise of creative, self-directed, fulfilling work that exercises our full range of talents and abilities. Entrepreneurial teams are generally small, agile, and fast-moving.

The question, then, is whether we can satisfy any of these motivations without quitting our jobs to become entrepreneurs.

The promise of intrapreneurship

Let's start with a dictionary definition of intrapreneur:

an employee of a large corporation who is given freedom and financial support to create new products, services, systems, etc., and does not have to follow the corporation's usual routines or protocols.

This definition is okay but largely aspirational. If only we were given freedom, financial support, and permission to work outside usual routines and protocols!

Let's define an intrapreneur more casually as someone who works to create positive change in his or her organization, regardless of the degree of institutional support. An intrapreneur works tirelessly to institutionalize new products, services, or systems and often assumes personal responsibility for bootstrapping resources and garnering support.

Organizations need intrapreneurs in order to survive and thrive. That is because the essential nature of organizations is to standardize behavior and minimize deviations. They do this for good reason: the entire purpose of an organization is to coordinate the efforts of large groups of people. However, that same process of standardization also means that organizations become stale over time and struggle to adapt when needed. A healthy organization must strike a careful balance between stability and change; these two forces interact in an ongoing dance.

Organizations have numerous built-in processes to facilitate change but these can move slowly, and often a willful personality is required to use them properly.

Intrapreneurs are an organization's secret weapon; they are special agents who are loyal to an organization's values and goals but also deliberately work for reform and renewal. They envision and work to realize entirely new possibilities. It is the patient, persistent work of intrapreneurs that allows organizations to adapt in a fast-changing world.

In theory, intrapreneurship can satisfy all the same motivations that drives entrepreneurs. Intrapreneurs should have greater autonomy in the organization than most people. Their entire job is to be creative. Many of their efforts will result in efficiency gains, keeping an organization agile and effective. Because intrapreneurs are entrusted to be self-starters, they must be exceptionally competent. They will have abundant opportunities to grow through challenges. The task of helping a large organization improve and adapt can also be deeply meaningful, particularly if the organization embodies a purpose an intrapreneur believes in.

This all assumes that an organization manages its intrapreneurs properly, which is not always the case. That puts a large burden on intrapreneurs to manage their own psychology and carve out their own destiny.

What makes intrapreneurship different

Intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship are not the same thing, even if they do share many similarities. Intrapreneurs play by different rules. They operate within the terrain of a particular organization, with its own values, mission, culture, processes, and people.

Successful intrapreneurs must learn how to:

Maximize their freedom of maneuver within that organization
Access resources like people, funding, or IT support
Obtain support from executives or senior leaders
Prove the value of experiments and turn experiments into enduring capabilities
Overcome obstacles posed by existing processes
Build coalitions of supporters and manage blockers
Maintain their own legitimacy while challenging established ways of doing business
Stay healthy despite struggling against a juggernaut bureaucracy every day
Find ways of satisfying deep needs that are often not met in a stifling work environment

Managing intrapreneurs also presents unique challenges. Most organizations do not utilize intrapreneurs to their full potential; many even drive them out. Effective leaders or executives must learn how to:

Identify who is adding value versus who is merely being disruptive
Protect and empower successful intrapreneurs
Create organizational processes for identifying, resourcing, and scaling promising innovations
Train, mentor, and guide aspiring intrapreneurs

Because intrapreneurship has not received the same level of attention as entrepreneurship, finding resources to learn these skills can be a challenge. Many intrapreneurs, especially early in their careers, feel alone. We must do better at equipping intrapreneurs and their leaders for this journey.

The call

Being an intrapreneur and leading intrapreneurs are both important and rewarding challenges. Both can elevate us above the day-to-grind of doing business as usual.

We live in an era when it seems that all our institutions and organizations are failing us. Every one of us is a part of companies, schools, government institutions, or local communities that desperately need renewal. We need intrapreneurs who will do the exhausting but rewarding work of creating positive change. We need leaders and executives who understand and protect these intrapreneurs. We also need to train both intrapreneurs and leaders in the unique skills and mindset required to lead change.

In the coming weeks and months I plan to share some of what I have learned in my own journey. I hope this proves useful.

What I'm Reading: July 2020

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

A monthly roundup of some of what I've been reading. If you purchase by clicking on the cover images, you can provide modest support to this site.

Sandman (Audible) by Neil Gaiman

Way back in 2000, I placed in the Asimov/Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. As a prize, I was invited to attend a small convention where some famous Science Fiction and Fantasy writers met up each year. I spent three days hanging out by the pool with amazing authors like Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress, and Charles Sheffield. I also had sushi one evening with a guy I'd never heard of named Neil Gaiman (okay, so I mostly sat quietly at the end of the table while he talked with the other grownups).

I tell this amusing anecdote because I had no ability at the time to appreciate an opportunity that many of my friends would have died for. Neil Gaiman is one of the most talented storytellers of our time. His book Stardust became a great movie, American Gods became a TV miniseries, and he delivered one of my favorite commencement addresses. I love every one of his books, and his Audible narrations are amazing; he reads his own work in a magical, British voice that was made for storytelling.

During a recent transition begin jobs, I decided to go back to Gaiman's roots by reading his Sandman series--widely hailed to be the most literary comics ever written, which demonstrated the potential for comics as a serious art form. I had put them off because I have little appetite for horror. Sandman is indeed horrific at times (among other things, the third volume features a terrifying serial killer convention), but they are also brilliant, insightful, compassionate, and endlessly imaginative. I devoured each volume, eager to continue the story but dreading its eventual end.

So just as I was finishing the series, I was delighted to discover that Audible was releasing an epic audio dramatization of the Sandman, produced by Gaiman himself. The first episode is phenomenal. James McAvoy is perfect as the Sandman, and he is supported by a talented cast. Gaiman himself narrates. The production quality is exceptional. I have been seizing every opportunity to go for long drives or mow my lawn, but once again, I am sad at contemplating the drama's inevitable end.

Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer

I read this book a few years ago, but picked it up again while feeling discouraged. I had just given up leadership of my second startup, and was feeling adrift, aimless, and unsure of my future. This book chronicles Parker Palmer's own journey, of achieving tremendous academic success only to find himself disillusioned, unhappy, and deeply depressed. That crisis led him on a journey of self-discovery that culminated in his finding a new vocation in teaching. It is, in other words, another wonderful book about the middle passage.

The book reads well alongside Falling Upward. They deal with similar themes, but the autiobiographical journey in Let Your Life Speak is raw and personal. I found that helpful because it gave voice to my own experience--and also offered hope that my journey will lead somewhere if I am patient.

Falling Upward by Richard Rohr

I discovered Richard Rohr through The Liturgists podcast, which is the closest thing I have to a spiritual home. The Franciscan friar is one of my favorite Christian thinkers, with a generous and inclusive vision of faith. His book Falling Upward falls into a genre I have spent a lot of time with in the past couple years: books about life's middle passage. It is similar in spirit to James Hollis' Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, David Brook's The Second Mountain, or Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak.

The premise of the book is that life divides into two journeys: the first half of life and the second half of life. The first half of life is primarily about survival, acquisition, and figuring out who we are; the second half of life is more about what we will use our lives for. The first half of life entails many failings and fallings, but these are what draw us into the deeper journey.

The book is rich in insight and wisdom. The themes were familiar to me from other works, but Rohr treats them with his characteristic joy, gentleness, and humor.

The 48 Laws of Power

It is a little jarring shifting from a monk's spiritual reflections to a modern Machiavellian work that can be read as a psychopath's bible. Robert Greene's manual presents 48 "laws" for how to gain and hold power over other people. It is, according to its Amazon blurb, "amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive." The book is polarizing. It feels ruthless. I would be terrified to interact with anyone who built his or her life solely on its principles. However, it also rings with truth; like Machiavelli, Greene rips away all pretenses to portray the world as he actually finds it. He argues that you cannot escape these power games even if you want to, so you had better learn to play well--and understand how you are being played.

On balance, I liked the book. Greene presents the hardest-edged case possible, which has pedagogical value; it is disturbing and feels over-the-top, but also challenged me as a reader to grapple with his claims. If I think he is being too extreme, the burden is on me to articulate why. The book fundamentally challenged me to consider how to reconcile the realities of power dynamics with living a moral life.

Whatever your degree of comfort with the book, I will say that it is an excellent tactical manual for innovators. Creating change, especially in large organizations, requires gathering power (or influence, if you prefer). Successful innovators must deftly wield power to achieve the outcomes they seek. Greene repeatedly articulated dynamics that I had seen, experienced, and practiced in my work.

Photo by Jason Wong on Unsplash

Hello world

Sat, 30 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I have kept blogs twice in my life.

In 2003 a remarkable young woman named Wendy Luce stumbled across the first. The Internet was strange and mysterious then, but against her better judgment she emailed me. We got married a year later.

I began my second blog during the worst years of the Iraq War, at a time when junior military officers were testing out the Internet as a medium for writing, thinking, learning, and building community. I made online friends. LTC John Nagl, a warrior scholar who helped the United States rediscover counterinsurgency theory, reached out and connected me to a broader national security community. I also met Navy Lieutenant Ben Kohlmann, who invited me to help stand up the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum.

All that to say, I have found that good things come from writing.

In 2014 I took a long hiatus from public writing. The last six years have been demanding: attending the Air Force's School of Advanced Air & Space Studies (SAASS), earning my PhD at Stanford, and founding and leading two startups: one a nonprofit and the other inside government.

Now I am coming up for air. I am beginning a new assignment as a full-time professor at SAASS, where I can devote myself to teaching, researching, reading, thinking, and writing.

Starting a new blog was not an easy decision. I am an Enneagram 5, which means I am most content in my own mind. My happy place is under headphones at my desk writing, coding, imagining, and inventing. Sharing takes precious energy and I constantly fear being overdrawn. Many of the topics I'm most passionate about--the challenges of leadership, managing one's own psychology, dealing with failure, etc.--are deeply personal and require vulnerability, which cuts against the grain of business and military cultures in which shining success is carefully curated and presented on LinkedIn.

With that said, I'm not getting any younger. It is high time I give back. I'm passionate about helping other intrapreneurs succeed in driving change.

Here is what you can expect:

A personal blog. After careful consideration I have resisted the near-universal advice among marketing experts to target a narrow niche. This blog will reflect all my interests.
Eclectic posts. I have varied interests including but not limited to leadership, strategy, innovation, data science, coding, writing, fiction, life, and the outdoors.
A theme of intrapreneurship. If my life--and thus this blog--has an overarching theme, it is finding purpose and meaning in working for positive change in ourselves and the organizations, communities, and world we belong to.
Emphasis on national security and government. I am a career Air Force officer. National security is where I have made my commitments.
Evolution. We'll see where this goes. As the Agile Manifesto says, responding to change is more important than following a plan.

Photo by Guillermo Ferla on Unsplash