We’re heading back from the lake; walking through the woods in the dark.

It’s me, Isobel, and her dad, Tim.

Up ahead, he’s got a flashlight and he’s calling out roots and rocks as we make our way through the blackness. He planned this whole thing out like a total pro. We watched the fireworks lakeside, from this little cove, where we set up the camp chairs he thought to bring right there in the water. What’s more, we had the place to ourselves, just like he’d predicted. Tim joked that nobody else would be willing to walk this far for a view of the fireworks over the lake, and he was absolutely right. It wasn’t even that long of a walk, all things considered. Although, my headlamp keeps cutting out, so the journey back to the car is feeling just a tad longer than the trek in. It’s not the batteries... those are full. Must be one of the connection ports? I’ll have to check it later. Right now, I’m just trying not trip over a root or walk into a tree.

The fireworks actually ended somewhat abruptly. We’re not sure why, but they were advertised as this big, huge, spectacular event for the 250th 4th of July celebration, so we’re joking about the anti-climactic finale. The local radio station we checked mentioned something about “technical difficulties.” What we saw of them was pretty grand, though. Our view from the water sort of felt like watching everything in IMAX. You know, where it’s actually almost too close? Sizzling lights streaked skyward, necks craned, colors flashed. We’d recoil. Booms ricocheted off the water and then bounced back and forth around the surrounding mountains.

Twigs snap as I follow Tim and Isobel onto a new trail. Fireworks and I don’t always do so good. Some years have gone better than others. Thing is, I don’t like crowds. The logistics of it all seem like a huge hassle, too. Between parades, fireworks, cookouts and everything else that draws traffic for the 4th, I wonder if it’s really worth it. One year, I remember spending the 4th in Bar Harbor, ME with my family and it was so foggy we couldn’t even see the fireworks. Just the clouds, lit up faintly like stale cotton candy. Another year, I was leading a multi-week camping trip for a group of teens in Yellowstone for the 4th and we sat in the same place in traffic for so long, eventually I just pulled the van over and we watched the fireworks go off above town wayyyy in the distance right there by the roadside.

As we’re getting back to the car, Tim and Isobel are trading jokes about how “wowed” they are by the interrupted display we just watched. I’m just smiling to myself in the dark, grateful for those “meh” fireworks and the excuse they gave us to go romping through the woods together.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
307/365

What traditions do you jump through hoops for because they're an excuse for something better?

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I keep meaning to put some music on, but I’ve been wearing my headphones in silence for ages.

I’m sitting at my desk in my office, it’s mid afternoon, and I’m deep in a flow state. I’ve wanted to make the Monthly Dispatch available online for some time now, rather than just via email as it has been, and I sort of accidentally slid into doing something about that today.

I’m ok with it.

I think it serves as a solid entry point for folks to keep up with Unobstructed if they’re new to it, without getting too many emails. But if they don’t know it exists, or can’t picture what it would looked like, they may never take the plunge.

Since pretty much everything else from Unobstructed is narrative-focused long-form, the Monthly Dispatch is intentionally lighter as an update-style roundup.

Taking a deep breath, I lean back in my chair to review what I’ve been working on. Part of why I put this off until now is because I wanted to be able to list Monthly Dispatches among the rest of Unobstructed’s home feed but couldn’t. Creating and distributing the Monthly Dispatch as an email in HubSpot means it can’t easily be duplicated into a web page, which is stupid. So, I configured a new tag for the site, added it to the feed filter, and then spent a fair bit of time just now transposing previous email editions of the Monthly Dispatch into their own publishable posts. They look pretty good, all things considered. I even backdated them to show up in chronological order.

I’m sitting there updating the same stuff over on Substack and it feels... silly. I don’t have a better solution at the moment, so I’m still doing it. With a “good-enough-for-now” sigh, I begrudgingly admit that Substack is the marketplace. That’s where the people are. Eventually, though, I do want to revisit the connective tissue between theunobstructed.com and its Substack counterpart...

In the meantime, I add the direct RSS feed for the Monthly Dispatch to the “featured scroll” and side panels of derekmacdonald.com. That way, they autopopulate alongside the daily column, newsletter, podcast, and blog.

With a nod, I decide to call it there.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
306/365

How do you think about ongoing maintenance of things you know need adjusting or replacing?

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It’s going better than expected.

A little wobbly, sure, but I’m mountain biking for the first time in a few years and I’m having fun. Wow, has it really been that long...

I’m huffing and puffing on the side of the trail. My ankle’s on the mend, but I’m wary of making it mad by running on it too early so, spur of the moment, I decided to go mountain biking. I wrapped up at the cafe around the corner, closed my laptop, went home and changed, opened my laptop, then finally forced myself out the door. I pumped up my tires and threw my bike on the rack, swung by the gas station to grab a couple of Gatorades, and now I’m here. In the woods. And I’m grappling with just how quickly you slide out of shape when you’ve been recovering from an injury.

Not only am I gasping for breath between sips of Gatorade, I’m sweating profusely.

This humidity will be the death of me, I swear.

It’s probably worth noting that it’s 103°F.

Despite all that, I really am having fun.

And my ankle doesn’t hurt.

So I’m calling it a win!

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
305/365

What's something you love but haven't done in a while? Why not give it a go?

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Since I’ve been trying to be better about sharing the process instead of just the product, here’s my latest 3x3.

1. Monthly updates:

1. Sprained my ankle (boooo).

2. Got a new typewriter (yay)!

3. Up to 158,457 words so far for the MAP Year Project!

2. Primary focus areas:

1. Continuing to make space for life.

2. Rolling out the new release schedule for the podcast!

3. Looking for enablement roles.. Still working with folks on long-form content/strategy in the meantime!

3. What I’m currently reading:

1. Don’t Call It Art by Austin Kleon.

2. Buckeye by Patrick Ryan.

3. Chapter 11 of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (for the MAP Year Project).

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
304/365

What does your 3x3 look like?

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I’m watching Hidden Figures and I can’t shake the skin-crawly feeling on the back of my neck. There are some alarming parallels between the 1960s and the world we find ourselves in today. Many. One in particular, though, is needling me.

Of the three main characters, I’m struck by Dorothy Vaughan’s storyline. I’m watching as she’s told that her department—the one she supervises unofficially since her race and gender preclude her from getting the actual title—will be terminated after their current project. They’re a team of computers, aka human mathematicians. Dorothy’s just learned they’ve been deemed replaceable by NASA thanks to the advent of the International Business Machine (IBM) and its unprecedented computing power.

I blink incredulously, feeling my lips purse and eyebrows wrinkle. Dorothy’s taking it upon herself to learn how to program the IBM. I lean my elbow into the armrest and settle my chin in my hand, between my thumb and index finger. She’s got the mind for it. More than that, she’s immersing herself into the programming language so she can teach her team. When they ask her why they need to do the extra work of learning this stuff, she simply asks them in turn if they want still want to have a job next week.

While I’m digesting the weight of the scene, the movie cuts off almost mid-sentence and starts playing commercials. Of course it does. I hate that so much. I know it’s beyond my control and getting frustrated by it is a waste of my energy, but I still can’t get over how streaming services undercut the cable companies with a promise of being different, only to then become them (and then some).

Whatever.

My mind is spinning. I let out a long breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, and let myself sink back into the cushions. Tomorrow, I’ll return to job hunting—to searching for roles where I can help people learn to use the software and systems that made their previous roles obsolete. Maybe that’s just how the world works... maybe adaptation means letting go of stuff as much as it means being open to more of it. Maybe inevitability is cyclical.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
303/365

What's something you felt you had to let go of? Did you?

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Sometimes it feels like I’ve been living out of a suitcase for my entire life.

I just got home from traveling and I’m making one final trip out to my truck to grab the last of my stuff. Sweat’s beading off my neck and down my back, but my ankle’s holding up surprisingly well, given the stuff I’m lugging upstairs.

I like coming back to my own space.

When I was a kid, I was always on the move. I always seemed to have a rotating collection of extra stuff, too. Like, going to school wasn’t just going to school—it was going to school with my backpack full of books, my saxophone, a gym bag for football workouts before and after school. On the weekends it might also include a duffle to go to my dad’s house, or a boot-bag and my snowboard gear if we were going to my grandparent’s place. I never unpacked. My mom did. My cousins did, too. Not me.

Today, though, it’s just my work backpack and a carry-on sized suitcase. Maybe I should add “strategic packing/unpacking skills” to my resume...

As I close the door behind me, I immediately reach for the AC and come to a stop in my entryway. I suck in a huge breath and shake my head. I’m trying to drop my shoulders and grimace at how little they move. Until recently, I’d always thought of myself as someone who thrives in transition. Exhaling, I’m reminded that I’m just someone who’s learned how best to endure it.

And that’s not the same thing.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
302/365

Are you someone who thrives in transition or someone who just survives it?

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The mental gymnastics of modern self-help truly baffle me.

Like, ok—take today for example:

After what feels like decades of sitting on the couch, I tighten the brace on my still-sprained ankle and head for the door with Ava. It’s a sunny-ish weekend in Vermont and I am certifiably stir-crazy. I miss running. While I’m telling myself that a dog walk in the woods is better than nothing, I desperately wish I could be on a multi-hour trail run. Instead, I’m tenderly placing my feet between rocks and roots. It’s crazy how quickly habitual things can become foreign.

Ava’s loving this.

I’m listening to a podcast so, in my mind, it sort of feels like letting my thoughts wander on a long run. Joe Hudson is talking to Rich Roll about cultivating wonder instead of curiosity. I want to like this guy. Everything he’s said so far has felt like it came from a place of good intent. I can actually hear Rich tussling with helpful real-time realizations, and he hardly ever does that. But I’m stepping across a small stream when Joe says that curiosity can create a closed-off rumination loop, and I actually guffaw. He’s making the case for wonder. Apparently, that’s a more open-ended approach that can inspire growth without trying to overcome a deficit. I guess one comes down to searching for a solution, and the other asks whether or not the problem needs solving.

Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me that curiosity is a necessary ingredient for wonder. That probably won’t sell as many books, though. Or services. I’m shaking my head, and I’m alone in the woods, so I’m not hiding my judgement.

Everybody has to have a differentiator...

Whatever.

Light’s dripping through the trees. Ava and I are winding our way along the trail and my ankle’s feeling surprisingly good despite the incline. I’m sweating, and I smile at the realization that even that feels nice.

Joe’s coming from a good place. I’m inclined to think he’s actually going about this whole “healthy mindset” thing far better than most. As I’m picking my way across a muddy rock bed, I can’t help feel slightly exasperated. Look, I’m as guilty as anyone, but seriously—why must we make things so complicated for ourselves? Why do we do that? And why do people craft so many convoluted explanations for the same damn thing?

So I put my earbuds in my pocket.

And then I enjoyed the walk without having to solve it.

I’m ok with being baffled by the mental gymnastics of modern self-help.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
301/365

Are you someone who tries to solve it, soothe it, or leave it?

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I’m outside, tucked under a canopy of trees, sitting along the river by the bridge.

It’s quintessential Vermont, really.

There’s tons of kids lapping this section water in tubes like a lazy river—floating down in the current, then walking back up the sandbar. Well, it’s really more of a rockbar... I’m not sure if that’s even a thing, but the point is: the water’s full of enough stones that there’s an island in the middle of the river that you can walk on.

Anyway.

There are no kids coming downstream at the moment and I’m watching some folks on stand-up-paddleboards eyeing the lazy river section. I feel relaxed; but like, actually relaxed. For real. I know I’ve been stressed lately but, damn; I guess I hadn’t quite realized how much.

Today, I’m reading a bit of Austin Kleon’s Don’t Call It Art. From where I’m perched along the riverbank, I have a clear view of upstream as well as down. There’s plenty of folks congregated on the rocky shoreline of the riverbend up there. And it makes sense—this is a sunny day after a string of cloudy wet ones.

Me?

I’m sitting outside of a coffee shop with a book. I love this place. The way the patio spills into the river by the classic, covered wooden bridge is picturesque. I’m remembering all the times we drove past here when I was a kid and I’m smirking at how oblivious I was. I didn’t appreciate it in the way I do now. Then, all I’d wanted to do was go to the cliff-jumping spot much further up. My cousins and I would pester our grandfather to take us there until my mom, aunt, and grandmother would get so sick of it that they’d end up helping our cause and urge him to “just go already!”

Shaking my head, I return my attention to my book. I’m reading Austin’s thoughts on channeling your emotions for artistic fuel—rather than suppressing them—where he encourages “feeling them, examining them, and using them.” I took it a step further and penned in my thoughts.

“Don’t fight your feelings. [Find them] Feel them. Examine them. Use them. [We experience emotions but we metabolize feelings through the stories we tell].”

Setting down my pen, I let out a slow exhale and glance back up at the river. I linger there for a moment before turning and looking down it. And I let myself just sit there, both observing and participating in this moment right now, between the two.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
300/365

When you look back, do you also remember to look ahead? Do you remember to return to the present?

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It’s dark but not black.

I’m sitting at the dining room table, and I’ve been here for a fair bit, working. I hadn’t really even registered that the sun just set. Leaning back to stretch, I’m hoping my back cracks while arching over the top of the chair.

I used to be very particular about where and how I worked but I’m realizing that’s changed in the last couple of years. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, this year’s really where things shifted. Sometimes I’m at my desk with my monitors, but I’m finding more and more that I just use the laptop itself without the monitors so there’s only one screen to focus on at a time. That’s also why I like working from coffee shops; there’s only so much table-space so it really forces me to focus on one thing at a time. And I’ve come to love the social pressure of being around other people who are doing their own thing, but who won’t interrupt me.

Of all of the places I like to work, though, I never expected the couch to be one of them. Yet, in the last year, it’s become a regular feature. In fact, the number of times I’ve worked from the couch in the last 10 months is probably greater than every other time throughout my life, combined.

It’s because I hadn’t thought of writing as work.

I tricked myself without really meaning to.

Each night, I’d sit down to write this column after working on other stuff all day. Recently, I went through my writing from the past 10 months of The MAP Year Project to help organize things as I move toward manuscript editing. From my spot at the dining room table, I’m scrolling to the top of the doc I’ve been working in and I feel my eyebrows climbing up my forehead. My head’s shaking back and forth and, before I know it, I’m nodding with a smile cracking its way through my disbelief.

156,439 words so far, with two months left to go.

Not including my essays.

Holy shit... it’s real.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
299/365

Can you think of a time where seeing the result of your effort made it feel... real?

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I’m watching Noah Kahan’s new documentary, Out of Body, and it feels like I just got slapped in the face.

Um... wh—

What? Did he... did he just say...

Ava and I are sitting on the couch staring slack-jawed at the TV. Well, ok... I am. Ava wasn’t always allowed on the couch, but she’s five now and we’ve spent a TON of time training over the years so... she’s earned it. And, I’m glad she’s here because I kind of need some dog snugs or something after what just happened.

I’m about to hit pause and run to the bathroom when Noah starts talking about how his dad got in a bike accident when he and his siblings were kids, and how he was never really the same after that. So, with my elbows on my knees, I go from bracing to stand up to braced for impact. My jaw clenches and my eyes widen. In an instant, I’m connecting dots from throughout the doc with bits and pieces of my own life.

Noah Kahan is a singer/songwriter from Vermont who went from playing small venues to stadiums seemingly overnight. His lyrics have sparked a national (global?) conversation about mental health that’s somehow approachable from all sides. I couldn’t be happier about that.

I’ve been watching the doc nodding along as if we’re best friends. He talks about his family and close friends often in his music and not always in ways they might be comfortable with. But it’s honest. Hearing his mom say that made me smile, even if his brother looked like he couldn’t disagree more with his mom’s approval. The thing that was most jarring for me was seeing Noah interact with his dad. I don’t think he’s ever directly said it, but I’ve always sort of understood that maybe his dad struggles with mental health and that it was hard for the rest of their family.

Noah’s talking to the camera solo from his car and reveals that his dad was in an accident some years ago when training for an ironman and ended up in a coma with a traumatic brain injury. Noah gets visibly choked up talking about it, saying his dad’s never been the same since.

So, arms still on my knees, I’m still sitting on the couch as something clicks into place for me. Since I got sober 5 years ago, the story I’ve been telling myself is that my sobriety, and the changes I’ve made in my life to preserve it, caused a rift with some of the relationships in my life. I’m watching the camera cut from Noah to a shot of his dad nordic skiing and I realize those rifts started a couple of years before I stopped drinking. Same with the mood swings, social anxiety, and depression.

When I got a TBI in a snowboarding accident.

Damn.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
298/365

Have you ever had an ah-hah moment from someone else telling a story about them that unexpectedly applies to you?

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Figures, the parking lot’s full.

I’m sitting in my truck. In front of me, it looks like someone’s about to pull out so I stop and wait. With my foot on the brake, I glance ahead from my spot along the side of the gravel driveway. It leads into a wide panel of grass that seems like it gradually keeps getting longer the further back it goes. Eventually, it meets the treeline and then slopes uphill into the lush, green ridge and the sunlit afternoon sky. That’s farmland in Vermont, for you.

The car I’m waiting on does something like an eight point turn, which feels completely unnecessary, but I’m not in a rush or anything so I’m just watching with amusement.

Does that make me an asshole?

I wave as they pass for good measure, then roll left before sweeping right to back in. We’re all here for the same reason, anyway: to pickup this week’s CSA. The door to the building behind me opens and a woman with blond hair and a gray sun-hoody walks out. I wait while she strolls amiably between the cars, and then catch her shoot a very minor glance over her shoulder that looks like... hesitation?

What was that?

She disappears around the corner and I finish parking. Just as I’m turning to walk away from my truck, I see it; there’s a sign on the building that says “LOADING ZONE: DO NOT BLOCK.”

Son of a—

Immediately, I’m wondering if the last person who parked here saw the sign... and I’m trying to justify my parking there because there were no other spots. WAIT. That’s what that look was—that woman glanced back at the sign and was thinking of saying something to me.

Awww shit.

Just then, someone climbs into their car to leave. So, before there’s time to reconsider, I turn back to go move my truck into their newly vacated spot.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
297/365

Would you have gone back to move your car?

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Brakes! The brakes!! HIT THE BRAKES!

I’m sitting in a general store in small-town Vermont today, eating lunch and taking in the stillness. There’s a few other people in the log-cabin-like building, but everyone’s moving slow. Calm. The vibe here is “unhurried.”

When I’d first walked in, that was not my vibe.

It’d felt like slamming on the brakes. What surprised me, though, was that it didn’t feel jarring. Like, there was no jolt or discombobulation... there was a split-second of feeling scolded for going too fast but then it gave way to a much-needed sense of relief. Sure, this abrupt change of pace isn’t all that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it’s made me glaringly aware of how I’ve been boosting the throttle bit by bit for a little too long, now. Come to think of it, I’m fried.

Whoops.

I’m sitting at big square, wooden table in one of those hand-made chairs that have the spindles along the back and arm-rests that feel like you’re sitting on a throne. As I’m chewing my panini-pressed grilled cheese, with bacon, green apples and arugula, I’m trying to figure out where I learned to move from “oh fuck, not good!” to “ok, how’d that happen so we can try something different?”

What I’m picturing certainly isn’t the moment I mastered it, but it was an inciting incident. When I was a kid, my dad had this riding lawn-mower that he’d let me drive sometimes, without the blades engaged. I was probably too young to be cutting the grass, anyway. So, I’d just drive around the yard. It didn’t take all that long to get the hang of things like spacial awareness, shifting gears, or judging the turning radius. Every now and then, though, I’d get stuck and dad would have to take over.

There was this feature where, if you stood up, it acted like a kill-switch and the engine would shut off. That’s usually how we’d swap places when I needed help maneuvering; I’d hop down and dad would climb into the driver’s seat. Well, one day he asked if I wanted to try parking in the garage. That made me nervous, but I let myself get talked into it. Looking back, there was no real set-up, intro, or guidelines... he just kind of gestured from the lawn toward the spot in the garage where I knew he kept the lawn mower.

I lined it up perfectly.

Then, I inched my way forward until I could see the headlights shining across more and more of the wall. That’s when I stood up, and when the tractor kept moving. No kill-switch this time. I drove straight into the wall. CRACK. It was only then that dad started to yell “Brakes! The brakes!! HIT THE BRAKES!”

I’m finishing my sandwich and feel my chest tightening. My heart’s racing, too, so I remind myself that it’s just a flashback and that my dad is not, in fact, pissed off and running towards me. I exhale. Looking around the wooden interior of the general store, I feel myself start nodding. I’d come in here stressed out and jittery. As far as crashes go, this one’s mild.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
296/365

When you hit a wall, what helps you move from damage control to rest and recovery?

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I don’t want to talk about AI anymore.

I grew up as part of the last “go play outside” generation before digitized social lives even existed. I often practiced backyard sports by myself at home. I’d work through basketball drills in the driveway and throw baseballs and lacrosse balls at a taped strike-zone on the wooden retaining wall off to the side. I skateboarded in the street, biked to friends’ houses across town, and called land-lines to ask if they could sleep over. In fact, the first time I called to ask someone out, it was her house phone and I didn’t have to use an area code because we lived in the same town. Her brother was the one who answered, and then her dad took the phone from him and said “who is this??” while I tried to say my name without squeaking.

My first cell phone was a Motorola Razr, and I got it while we still had a land-line with a rotary-dial plugged into the wall at home. And yet, my generation were also the early adopters of every new piece of technology that our current slice of chaos is built upon. We were the original super-users of digital media platforms—the pilot group for Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and even Snapchat. We had “family computers” that always seemed to live in the kitchen for some reason, but we really didn’t need to use them for anything until middle school when we learned about the revolutionary technology known as ClipArt.

For all the antiquated stuff that school shoved down our throats, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel became the most relevant. I still use two of them daily. The first asynchronous, social-messaging tool I used was AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). It was the first time you could set a status in the form of an away message. Now, you can get chastised at work for not updating that on Slack.

That was also the first time we started using AI by talking to chatbots (SmarterChild anyone??), and that was circa ~2005.

Coincidentally, that was around the time when I first dipped my feet into the world of web development... I learned how to change the wallpaper of my Myspace page with custom, embedded html code so Chamillionaire’s 2005 song “Ridin’” would play on repeat, too.

Which, um... yeah.

Yikes.

Remember those Tamagotchi things? The little keychains with the thing you had to “keep alive” like some Home-Ec class project? Well, that’s what this non-stop AI conversation is starting to feel like: Tamagotchis all over again. We’re being pulled away from living our lives to take care of a digital responsibility we didn’t really even sign up for. Not willingly, anyway. It was thrust upon us.

What’s really crazy to me, is that the same people who told our generation not to trust everything we saw on TV when we were growing up, seem to the folks who will now readily accept hallucinations from ChatGPT or Claude as gospel.

Weird.

In 2024, I wrote about how AI will wreck the economy. It, um... well... I’ve never really been one to say “I told you so”, so this is me not saying it.

But also, I just really don’t want to talk about AI anymore.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
295/365

What nostalgic piece of tech are you glad to be rid of? Which would you bring back?

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Ducks in a row are not the same as ducks on the go.

Ok... sure, sometimes the work requires a level of organization that warrants extra setup, formatting, and admin stuff. I, personally, love getting organized like that. That’s also exactly why I have to remind myself so frequently that all of that *jazz* is, regrettably, not the kind of stuff that makes progress on the work itself.

I’m sitting at a table in the back corner of the cafe (shocker) and I feel my eyes straining while staring at my laptop screen. It was raining earlier but it stopped. And it got warmer, too, yet I’m still wearing my hoodie even though I keep telling myself I’ll take it off in a minute. That thought loop started a while ago, and I actually have no idea how long it’s been going now. Cracking my knuckles absentmindedly, I cannot for the life of me figure out why the conditional formatting rules I’ve set up in this spreadsheet won’t trigger like they’re supposed to.

I’ve been wanting to pitch my writing to more editors for a while now. Same with submitting to open pitch-calls from publications I admire, too. While I’ve sent some, I haven’t had any acceptances recently. If I’m honest, my overall effort there has been a little half-hearted because I’ve felt like... I don’t know, like I wasn’t good enough or something. Or, like I didn’t know how to go about properly pitching these dream publications I want to go after.

It’s been a fair bit since I’ve had something published at a brand I didn’t work for, or where my relationship with an editor didn’t come by way of introduction through a mutual connection or something. Not to mention, I’ve pretty much pivoted industries since then. Wanting to land a guest essay byline at The New Yorker, The Atlantic, or Granta is a bit different than writing about snowboarding... Which is exactly why I went full tilt into research mode on things like up-to-date format guidelines, cover letter standards, and mastheads. I pulled together a spreadsheet with links to submission portals and everything.

I’m squinting and chewing my lip when, out of the corner of my eye, I see an arm waving. No, wait... two arms. Looking up from my laptop, Isobel walks into view with a big smile on her face. I’m happy to see her, and I’m also appreciative of her timing. Because had she not intervened, it’s entirely possible I’d have spent the rest of the day troubleshooting that dumb conditional formatting rule in excel.

Instead, I actually took my ducks-in-a-row and started to go.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
294/365

Are you a procrastiplanner? What helps you get to the other side?

onward.

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There’s a dad with two young daughters at a table nearby and when he bends down to help retrieve a dropped item for someone passing by, I spot a look I recognize.

It’s coming from the older of the two girls and she looks momentarily confused before catching herself. By the time dad turns back to her, she’s wiped the expression clean from her face and doesn’t say a word.

I’m at a local cafe, sitting along the wall of windows sipping my coffee while the rain pokes and prods at the glass. It’s not all that busy; it seems to just be me and a revolving door of parents with kids age seven and under. I’m not sure if that’s a Saturday thing, but it occurs to me each group consists of kids with mostly one parent—a mix of moms or dads, but not both. So I’m wondering if this is a common meeting place for a custody swap.

When that girl looked at her dad like that, I’m reminded of someone I went to summer camp with. They were younger than me and had younger siblings that ended up going to camp, too. I’ll never forget the way they bristled when their dad came up in conversation. I remember the instant feeling of “oh... oh shit” when I’d seen the complete change in their demeanor. I didn’t ask any more questions after that, and we never talked about it explicitly but I could tell they appreciated me for it, in their own way. I’d always figured it was just me so, up until then, I hadn’t ever really avoided talking about other people’s families.

I do now.

A few years later, I wound up working the front desk at camp for parent drop-off and pick-up. You learn a lot about kids through the context of their parents. For example, how their parents treated me and how they interacted with other parents could be vastly different to the way those same parents presented themselves to their own kids. Sometimes it was a pretty glaring gap.

A couple of times per summer, we’d have “parent’s night” where families came to camp and where us counselors got to see entire family units, sometimes for the first time—moms, dads, siblings, step parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or other guardians. My front desk duties, combines with those parent’s nights, gave me a pretty comprehensive view of the gap between a parent’s outward facing persona and whichever one they used behind closed doors. Obviously, I didn’t have a line of sight into what that really looked like, I’d just know that it existed... that there was a difference between who that person was and the person they wanted to be seen as.

Kids notice.

So, sitting against the windows in this cafe, I’m watching as this girl goes back to coloring with a straight face and a racing mind. Her younger sister hadn’t reacted the same way, and I’m wondering who the girl’s performing for: her sister or her dad.

For me, it’d been both.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
293/365

Can you think of a time you swallowed a question instead of asking it? What'd the internal back-n-forth sound like before you decided to do it?

onward.

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I’m searching for something to watch and it’s making me more and more frustrated.

Nestled into one side of the loveseat, my ankle’s propped up on the armrest of the other with a couple of pillows. I’ve got more than one ice pack wrapped around it in a towel. It’s not perfect, but it’s helping to keep the swelling down.

I’m scowling.

I can just feel it.

With a sigh, I hit mute but keep scrolling. The previews that autoplay are just absolutely ridiculous and the “featured” section seems like it always has the same movie, but packaged 15 different ways. It’s like Hollywood collectively trashed the buddy comedy and replaced the entire genre with this dumb, templatized action-dramedy hybrid thing. You know what I mean? The type where some blockbuster movie star moves through a three act structure, with no cohesive transitions, as if it were duct-taped together at the last minute for a high school group project.

Unclenching my jaw, I let out a short exhale from my nose and keep scrolling. If I’m going to be laid up on the couch, I just want to watch something that’s going to pull me in. I don’t want to be tempted to reach for my phone, or wonder how much time is left. I want a story. Give me complex character development with actors that can own it and a director that’s going for resonance rather than spectacle.

This is when I hit the “Oscar winners” section... which, I didn’t even know was a thing.

One title in particular catches my attention.

Gladiator.

My eyes soften and my cheeks pull into a soft grin. In the early 2000s, I distinctly remember watching this movie for the first time in the TV room at my grandparents house with my cousins. We were undoubtedly too young. And, I mean, plenty of it went over our heads, but the movie does open with a decapitation and a retaliatory battle... which isn’t something you gloss over as a kid. So now I’m chuckling at the memory of my mom saying “You did WHAT??“ while trying not dislodge the ice packs from their loosely-swaddled perch atop my ankle.

As I’m pressing play, I’m trying to think of the last time I saw this movie, and I’m pretty sure it was on my NOLS semester in college. During the section where we got our Wilderness First Responder certification, we stayed on a ranch in the middle of nowhere Wyoming. There was no cell reception and no wifi, but they had this game room with a TV and a small selection of movies. Gladiator was one of them. After a few weeks of winter camping and backcountry skiing in sub-zero temps, that was pretty luxurious for us. Like, big time.

My thoughts drift to that cold-ass camping trip and the weird phases of social norms we went through as a group. It’s one of the first times I realized just how much pop-culture plays a role in peoples’ lives, because we’d be shoveling a snow shelter, or boiling snow for drinking water, and we’d be talking about movies... while surrounded by incredible vistas and wildlife in the Absoroka mountain range. I guess in the absence of technology, we sort of went through withdrawal. The first few days were bad—that stuff was all we talked about. By the third week, we’d acclimatized and were able to have conversations completely void of pop-culture references.

So, sitting there in my living room, Gladiator‘s about to start and I’m shaking my head. I’d seen that tech-withdrawal thing a bit on other trips before that one, but I saw it a TON after that semester when I started leading trips as a guide myself.

Today, though, I’m tucked into a loveseat in Vermont with my ankle propped-up. I’m not frustrated from searching for something to watch anymore, but I am thinking it’s probably time to take a camping trip.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
292/365

When you're looking for depth and can't find it, what do you do?

onward.

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The flustered flapping of feathers catches me off guard.

I walk out my door first thing this morning and then immediately feel bad. It’s pouring rain and I’ve startled the robins that live in the pergola. Usually, I peek through the glass. There’s often one very alert mama bird giving me the side eye from their nest in the top corner of the column out front. That’s when I linger. Begrudgingly, she’ll skedaddle down to the lawn by the bushes and reconvene with her partner who’s been diligently patrolling the perimeter.

Today, though, I didn’t linger.

So we both jumped.

We have to stop meeting like this.

UGH. I’m smirking at the thought, but I’m also disgusted with myself... if this were a movie, the writers would’ve totally had a character say something like that, and the fact that I thought of it out of reflex is just terrible. It’s raining and everything. Yeeesh.

Gotta be the main character of your own life, I guess...

So I’m rounding the corner of the driveway, and those two, very wet robins flutter up into the overhanging tree. I climb into my truck but wait before starting it. I’m watching, waiting to see if I’m right.

Nothing.

Hmm...

Ha!

There we go.

Just as I’m about to give up and start my truck, I see two robins swoop down from the tree, across the driveway, and back up under the pergola, out of sight.

Smiling to myself, I give them a second to settle in and then I drive off.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
291/365

When sorry doesn't cut it, how do you go about relational repair?

onward.

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I’m walking around the block this morning, testing my sprained ankle that I just freshly reaggravated playing soccer.

It’s kind of a bummer.

As I’m walking, I’m thinking of snowboarding. Not, like, “oh man I really want to go snowboarding right now” (though, it would be fun). What I’m thinking of is more like... trial and error?

There’s this rock feature at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort that people love to jump off of, myself included, called Mikey Likes It. It’s also great for benchmarking someone’s ability level. As a student, it lets them feel what it’s like to ride terrain like that in a relatively controlled environment without all that much consequence. And as an instructor, it tells me a lot about how the student actually operates. I watch their body language before it’s their turn to drop. I listen to what questions they ask and the way they ask them—to the words they choose, and the ones they don’t. And after coaching them where needed, I watch to see how much of it they implement.

As humans, fear pushes against us.

Biologically, it makes us hesitate, which is why scared snowboarders lean too far back and lose their balance when they land. But you can train yourself to respond to that fear differently over time. Mikey Likes It was always a helpful test in that regard.

Features like that are always how I measured my own readiness, too. Coming back from an injury? Lets hit Mikey’s and see how I do. So while I’m shuffling my feet across the cracked sidewalks of my neighborhood, I’m wondering how long this sprained ankle will keep me from doing all the active stuff I’ve worked back into my life: running, soccer, basketball, mountain biking... And I’m trying to plot out some small tests that will let me know when I’m ready to crank it up a notch.

As I’m walking back up the hill from my journey around the block, I know if I can at least do that, I’m going to heal up faster than I initially thought. But after opening the door and making my way up the stairs, the jolt of pain shooting along the outside of my calf lets I know I’m still a ways out.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
290/365

Do you benchmark your progress? How?

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Henrik Karlsson writes stuff that makes me start speculating wildly about “what if?”

Such was the case this morning when I read this essay of his. So I took to my typewriter, where I pondered the following, which has been transcribed here.

***

6.16.26
7:43am

What if??

You know what I mean? “What if” is both an expansive way to see the world and an incredibly limiting one. “What if?” It’s the kind of question that asks you to think of things you cannot see and accept them as possible. In doing so, however, you blind yourself to “what is” and can end up overlooking the most important details of your present situation.

What if?

It’s the place where imagination and limitation coexist.

What is?

Now, that -- that’s the place where observation and acceptance meet. Ideally, that’s where they converse, too. Because observations without acceptance become rumination, and rumination necessitates the assigning of intent. It’s then that you wind up still wondering... “what if?”

Ironically, “what if?” thinking can be a useful way to color in the details of “what is?” thinking. But only if accompanied both by acceptance and release.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
289/365

How do you think about the difference between a "what if?" type of thinking and a "what is?" approach?

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I was an avid reader when I was a kid, and I can pinpoint the exact moment when that stopped being true.

I’m at the local cafe today grabbing lunch when this realization strikes. My laptop’s open on the table in front of me, and I’m watching Ann Patchett’s new TED Talk while I eat. She’s describing her life-long love affair with reading, so naturally I’m reflecting on my own. I’m impressed with the way she’s weaving together her message. And I mean, she’s a writer, so that kind of makes sense.

My chewing slows when Ann starts talking about how books can plant seeds and grow readers. She’s so right. I became a life-long reader because of Harry Potter. It was my gateway drug, so to speak. I’ve even written about its impact before. Those books sparked a love of storytelling for me. They taught me to imagine what it would be like to immerse myself in the viewpoint of different characters. Doing that is how I would become completely engrossed in almost any story.

I’m sitting in this cafe and Ann’s talking about her experiences yet I’m picturing my own. I remember getting the 6th Harry Potter book the day it came out, on my way to go camping with my mom. She probably wishes we hadn’t made that stop, because all I did was read for the first couple of days during that trip. Morning, noon, and night, my face was buried in a thick copy of The Half-Blood Prince while camped along Maine’s coastal shoreline. “Want to go kayaking?” Nope. “Hey, how about we go for a hike?” Nuh uh. “We could walk down to the dock at least??” No thanks—almost done. I basically did the same thing when The Deathly Hallows came out, too. Except, that time I was sitting out of activities at summer camp and nobody could figure out why a I would voluntarily give up double free-swim on the hottest day of the summer to sit next to the pool and read instead.

When I was a freshman in high school, I had an english teacher that pretty much ruined reading for me overnight. She turned it into a chore. I didn’t really pick it up again until my twenties. Now, I read every single day; usually first thing in the morning, but always right before bed.

While Ann’s underscoring the importance of making reading accessible, especially to kids, this is what I’m thinking about. It goes beyond accessibility, though. Thinking back on my intro to reading through Harry Potter, I realize why.

Reading teaches us to immerse ourselves in the viewpoint of different characters.

Damn.

Well played, Ann.

Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
288/365

Are you a reader? Would you want your kid(s) to be?

onward.

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