There’s so much I have to share. So many Google Docs with half formed ideas that I haven’t found a place for.  

Transparency has been a tight line lately. I either share way too much or not hardly enough. I think that out of everyone who hears what I have to say, though, you guys should be on the receiving end of some of the most transparent stuff. 

I don’t want to mislead you into thinking that what I preach I always practice. Quite usually, I use the page as a medium to get out whatever pressing ideas or thoughts I may have, then abruptly leave them there. 

I’m not knocking that practice; it can be very helpful. But as for the purposes of this column, I want to take a pause and write about things I don’t intend on leaving as words on a page.

I want to share the things I have already enacted or am sure to soon. 

For starters, I’ve started walking my dog every day. A simple small change, but it has gone a long way in establishing a routine. Every day at 5:00 I grab the leash and about the time I get home I know it’s time to start dinner. I’ve started eating healthier. I (try to) meditate. I (sometimes) go to bed before midnight. As you can tell from my syntax, not all of these actions have been fully or perfectly realized, and I’m making no effort to hide that. 

None of these practices alone can be enough, and that’s a misconception I’d like to avoid better in the future. That’s the problem with columns. They’re not as free flowing as conversations on podcasts or lyrics in a song and are usually structured and concise. They’re a steam directed towards one central idea, and oftentimes I fear that in the process that one sometimes small idea gets more emphasis than it deserves. If I dedicated an entire column to the glory of meditating for five minutes each day (and I use this example because I’m sure I have in the past) then the minor changes I’d hope for you to implement would become so inflated that they would likely appear daunting. 

No one practice can be enough to pull you from a long endured rutt, no matter how enthusiastic it’s been presented. One idea, though, one shared mindset or mentality, might be enough to lend some momentum. Maybe that’s what I intend to stick with from now on. Whatever I do, I will be as transparent and free flowing as possible.

Speaking about free flowing, how about the universe? By no stretch of the imagination, the universe is free flowing, but it also likely has a definite end. On one of my YouTube escapades this week I stumbled across a video about the entire lifespan of the universe and, wow, it is long. So long that we, our race I mean, will never see its end. In fact, no lifeform likely will. 

In Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe documentary, he shares that life can only be possible for 0.000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,000, 000,000,0001% of the universe’s entire existence. Everything, the sun, stars, the white dwarves, everything, will eventually fizzle out and for hundreds of trillions of years everything will be darkness. Think about that for a second. Think about how lucky you are to be on this tiny rock floating in space in the mere fraction of the time when it’s possible to be surrounded by people and sunlight. It’s pretty amazing, and if there’s anything I want you to take from this, it’s that.