Advice to 25 year old me

Advice and Open Journaling

This past year I have gone through periods of excitement, hope, happiness, frustration, and anger. I feel like I’m getting closer to the integrated life I want: one where my career, lifestyle, and sense of purpose align.

Much of my career involved solving other entities’ problems for the highest margin, maintaining a lifestyle where work remained separate from my personal life, and lacking a clear sense of purpose. I have grown enough to be able to decipher what I want at any given moment, enabling me to chart a path toward particular themes. I tried 5 year plans and failed miserably, I enjoy too many different things to put all my time one place. My advice: be open to experiencing things your own way and Gaia/God/the universe will give you enough nudges over time to figure things out. My self from 10 years ago would hate that advice.

To develop solutions and spot opportunities, I need to deeply experience the problem. For example, my power was shut off from 4 PM Wednesday, December 17, to 2 AM Thursday, December 18. This is due to shifts in the North American jet stream past generations have caused by releasing greenhouse gases, the unwillingness of voters in my municipality to adapt the built environment, and the unprofitability of updating electrical infrastructure. Spending time over the last few years in the problem environment allowed me to point out all these things; I’ve had fascinating conversations with people I would have initially considered my enemies. Others have figured this out, too: consumers will happily pay for svelte whole-home batteries to weather increasingly common grid-destabilizing storms. Natural disasters present a good business opportunity:

• https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/april-1994/the-economics-of-natural-disasters
• https://www.munichre.com/en/insights/natural-disaster-and-climate-change/weather-disasters-in-industrialized-countries.html

Engage with your “enemies”. How’s that for positive?

Every year, in past years, I would lie to myself that affecting change required exponentially greater wealth or notoriety than my current position. To that end the US dollar has lost half its purchasing power over the last 20 years. You need to make at least double what your parents were making! In my own life, this vast difference in income helps explain why my generation’s priorities differ from our parents’ generation. I understand the need to preserve the environment we live in, but why do the very people who preach this live in single-family mansions? I understand the need to have a thriving business environment, but why do the very people who preach these things make tax and zoning codes so difficult to navigate? I understand the need to socialize, but who is paying to go to the golf club? Eh that’s not a good one, but someone with the leisure time to reflect on this post probably is.

This is simultaneously a source of great frustration, but also great excitement for me. I’m not sure many people in earlier generations intuitively understand what it feels like to lose half the US dollar’s purchasing power in the last 20 years. Nor do they understand the feeling that I cannot depend on my electricity. Well, my grandparents did, as they grew up in rural Alberta, Iowa, Kansas, and Montana. There is no safety net for my peers who are laid off. The lack of investment in human capital hinders great feats of entrepreneurship. There will be no nationally sponsored retirement. It feels utterly impossible!

Yet, exciting opportunities exist. I know, because I pursued them this year. I’m now putting the time I previously spent looking at memes for a laugh back into my business. This is not an endorsement of grind culture, quite the opposite. I want a life where I can work hard when I choose, enjoy time with my family and friends when I choose, solve a wide variety of engaging problems, and help my global community while making a profit. Neither my wife nor I will sacrifice our personal growth for growing our family, which is incredibly creatively motivating. Working full-time for another employer probably won’t work in the next stage of my life. I believe tradeoffs usually exist because we have arbitrarily limited the time and creativity space; not that they are inherent. But how am I going to figure this next one out? I will keep trying things.

Going into 2026 I will wholly and holistically pursue my good life. I will dress myself in balance, emotional depth, options, and spiritual interest. Everyone’s definition of a good life looks different. What will yours be?