The other day, I finally went back to a coffee shop that I had last visited sometime in March 2020.

I'd grabbed coffee and snacks there from time to time, but I hadn't brought my laptop to do work there since right before the pandemic.

Going there used to be a key part of my routine. I would convince myself that a change of scenery was necessary in the middle of my workday—that I could not possibly get more work done in the same spot I'd been sitting in for the past three hours.

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Around March of each year, there's a crop of eighth graders who think that they aren't learning anything.

They are bored and frustrated with their teachers, classmates, and schoolwork. In our tiny homeschool program, they have the luxury of believing that they would feel differently if they went to a traditional public school.

They say that they're ready for high school and just want to be there already. They don't know that they're exactly where they should be.

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When I left college, I thought I was going to be a performing songwriter.

I recorded an album of original songs that year.

I recorded another album of original songs eighteen months later.

And since then...nothing.

I've written songs, but I've never gotten back to the mindset I once had in which writing and recording songs meant everything.

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I never should have bought my first house.

It had an awkward floor plan and poor natural light. An ugly apartment building loomed over the backyard, and trains from the CSX rail yard would screech by at all hours of the day and night. Worse, I couldn't really afford it.

But I bought the house anyway because I focused on the upside and figured I could mitigate the downside. I have always tended to say yes to the new.

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It's been more than three years of intense work in The Marketing Seminar as both a student and a coach, and I'm still learning new things.

Part of it is because of the way the course is set up. With open-ended prompts, there are many directions in which the work can go and many ways for people to bring their own ideas to it. This creates infinite variation and endless opportunities for learning and going deeper, even if you are familiar with the material.

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