The car on Craigslist had a blown motor and a promising future, which I supplied. It was an ’80s Toyota MR2 on Whidbey Island. I wanted to get on a racetrack, an ambition that had come to me while a friend was doing his level best to stay on one. He’d added a supercharger and given his engine more power than the gearbox could take. When the first gearbox blew, he put in an upgraded six-speed with straight-cut, cryo-treated gears in second and third. It seemed a reasonable fix

This time last year, I started learning Spanish to improve my Portuguese. It sounds like an elaborate way to become confused in two languages. I wanted to deepen my Portuguese and spend less time translating in my head, so I studied Spanish through Portuguese. Portuguese would be doing the explaining. It worked. That decision is part of a much longer education. My larger goal has always been cultural fluency. It remains an aspiration, although it looks quite manageable writte

I was busy. My boss wanted to know what I had finished. One of my mentors called these last couple of months of the year a sacred time. He wanted my goals 100% complete before Christmas break. I asked him how the hell I was supposed to do that. He explained that we needed to define what complete meant now and work it out with the people involved. Get the work to a useful stopping point. My performance review was coming, and he needed me to show him what I'd actually got done.

I added a full-time MBA to a life that was already full. The math was ridiculous: fifty to sixty hours of work a week, another twenty to thirty for school, and the rest of life still waiting to be handled. I did what I usually do. I made room by taking it from the parts of the week that did not complain. Somehow, it all fit. My downtime proved remarkably accommodating. A surprising amount of work would take all the time I gave it. Once I had a result that did the job, I had t

Not everything that grew gets replanted. My garden is wild, but it still produces fruit and vegetables. Apparently something around here knows what it's doing. The year has been much the same. Some things needed tending. Others surprised me. Writing became fun. I scheduled sitting down once a week. Enjoyment showed up in its own time. What began as journaling became something I look forward to, with a few loyal readers joining me along the way. I can now say I'm a writer with

I was looking at a life that would have impressed me a year ago. Naturally, I was staring at the unfinished landscaping. A few evenings ago, I was sitting on the back porch with a coffee and steamed milk. Clouds were spilling over the hills on the other side of the valley. The birds I still cannot name were giving way to frogs and crickets. The full moon was coming up. Bento sat beside me with the grave expression of a dog considering the horizon. He was waiting for cafuné. F

At some point, you have to stop checking whether the garden is growing and go sit in it. I have been trying to learn this for about a decade. When the weather is good, enjoy your life. This sounds embarrassingly obvious. It has not been obvious to me. I have always been good at finding something useful to do. There is usually a problem nearby, and if there isn't, I can probably locate one before lunch. And if you are a pleaser, there is an almost infinite supply of people wil

Maybe the most important thing you can put in next year’s plan is a stopping point. A good plan should leave room for the life it is supposed to support. Know what enough is. Years ago, in a sociology class, a professor told us about Indigenous people of the North American plains. The detail I carried away, whether I remember every anthropological detail correctly or not, was this: when maintaining life began taking too much of the day, they moved. I don't remember what was o

You do not have to finish the hard thing before you are allowed to put it down. For almost two years, I had a lawsuit running in one corner of my life and a family dispute running in another. I would not recommend either. Having both at the same time seems especially inefficient, like deciding to carry two ladders through a doorway because one ladder apparently was not enough. They were very different situations, but they shared one feature. In both cases, I believed a line h

You can leave the tax booth in an afternoon. It may take years to stop keeping the books. I used to be a CPA. This probably explains more about me than I would prefer. Accounting trains you to notice certain things. Rules. Exceptions. Bright lines. The small but important difference between something being a bad idea and something being prohibited by generally accepted accounting principles. Later I went back into operations, where this became even more useful. Give me a proj

I have friends on five continents and obligations in almost every room. The roof needs attention. Work waits. The dogs have needs, several of which they invent shortly before dinner. There is always something to repair, answer, learn, pay, plan, or carry from one side of the house to the other. None of this is imaginary. I get busy. That is my excuse for falling out of contact with people I genuinely care about, and it is a reasonably good one. The trouble with a good excuse

One of my mentors told me years ago that when a meeting ended, I should get the notes out with the invitation for the next one. Do it right away if possible. Strike while the iron is hot. It was annoyingly good advice, so I followed it for most of my career. I started blocking thirty minutes after meetings and keeping the room a little longer. That gave me time to clean up my notes, send out the action items, and get the next meeting scheduled before everyone began rememberin

My house will be perfect someday. Unfortunately, I live here now. When I bought a chácara, a small farm in Brazil, I imagined a sensible sequence. Repair the roof. Fix the gate. Install the lights. Finish the landscaping. Invite people over. The chácara proposed a different sequence. Repair one thing. Discover two more things. Make coffee. Watch Bento and Chico inspect the work. Move a chair into the shade. Start living anyway. There is always another project. The roof is und

I finally got the life I wanted, and immediately put it on a project plan. The Dream Arrives with a Punch List Six months after buying my chácara in Brazil, I had a mountain view, two blue roan cocker puppies, and enough unfinished work to keep the foreman in my head permanently employed. The mountain was putting on a perfectly good sunset. Bento and Chico were conducting a detailed inspection of the grass. I was looking at the wiring. The dream had arrived. I handed it a cli

People were expecting us in Nova Friburgo. I was the only one worried that they were waiting. The meal that slowed me down Last week, I returned to the place where my journey toward Brazil began and spoke again with Dutra, one of the first Brazilians I really came to know here. About five years earlier, he picked me up from Santos Dumont Airport in the evening. I had spent most of the day in the air, and we still had a long drive into the mountains ahead of us. Somewhere alon

The SPOT link landed in my WhatsApp. I was no longer watching. The Moment I Entered the Experience A friend invited me to my first hike-and-fly competition in Pancas, Espírito Santo. I went to observe, and for the first couple of days, that is exactly what I did. I watched pilots study the sky and the mountains. I listened as they discussed wind, clouds, possible routes, and changing conditions. I watched wings spread across the ramp, fill with air, and carry people away from

As I write this, I'm in Petrópolis. It is the sort of place that slows your neck. You find yourself looking upward more than forward. Cornices. Stonework. Windows framed by another century. Roofs built by people who assumed someone, someday, would still be looking. I had every intention of learning the city. There were museums marked on the map. Historic houses. Imperial stories. Architects whose names I had already forgotten before I pronounced them correctly. It felt import

A reflection on staying playful, teachable, and free enough to begin again. At the end, this is not really about being bad at something. It is about staying free enough to be new. Why adults stop playing Most adults do not lose play because life gets too serious. They lose it because they become competent. They learn which rooms make them look useful, capable, respected, and in control. Then someone invites them into a dance class, a language exchange, a new game, a song, a k

The clipboard is useful until you begin carrying it through your whole life. On a walk, Chico and Bento can turn a perfectly straight path into a map only they can read. Their noses drop to the ground. Their bodies begin moving from side to side. A pile of leaves becomes important. Then a tree root. Then a patch of grass where, apparently, an international incident took place sometime before breakfast. Their tails wave behind them like two small flags announcing that the inve

I want to get there. And in my determination to get there, I sometimes miss that I am here. Last week, I wrote about how I keep recreating the same circumstances in my life. Apparently, I enjoy field-testing my own material. As I write this, I am six months into owning a chácara, a small farm in Brazil. I have just bulk-purchased nearly all the lighting fixtures. I am two weeks away from hosting my first Fourth of July Festa Julina, an event I hope will become a tradition. Th