You grow up hard, and cold, in Nebraska. Expectation is high for any person born in the flatlands. Loyalty is demanded, and tested. Responsibility is pleasure. You learn the hard way how to behave, and how to live up to the opportunity around you. Here's a story about wisdom teeth extraction, a radio show, and the hard-won lessons of living up to the inescapable fact of becoming who you are before you know what you were meant to be.

Don't listen. Talk. Talking to yourself is more important than listening to your gut. Talk to soothe. Talk to win. Talk to conquer. Talk to vanquish all fears.

Shakespeare knew we were flawed in the dark. We think we know, we think we see the light -- but we are always, and already, burdened by now knowing, but with the full understanding of that in which we do not know.

Write it and forget it. That's the right advice to follow when you are an active writer. Danger lurks in the past. Know the present through being where you stand. Your writing will be better for the knowing.

We don't know what we do not know until we ask. We ask and answer about the mysterious health benefits of coconut water; the excellence of the Nike Training Club; the great work of sleep doctor Matt Walker, and more!

We are not our futures; we are only our past. How, then, do we test time, and efficiency, and the promise of productivity from the bliss of the abyss? Malcolm Gladwell does not accept the idea of using timed tests to determine success; but so many programs for the Gifted in public schools require an exam that values time management over the purely creative thought. Here's a True Crime story that nixes a future for the want of a single point -- to make the point.

Close your eyes. Jump a timeline. Live a new life inside the life you are already living. We appear in multiple realities of our own choosing. Which experience do you wish to make your main reason for being?

Why are the disabled used to shame the average-bodied into better behavior? Does the armless archer serve as a better cudgel of reckoning than exercising to preserve your health? Why are the accomplishments of the Disabled held up as an outlier inspiration to an empty nation?

Your life always belongs to you. There will always be others who try to bend your life into theirs -- but in the end -- you must defend your right to live your life with consequences you create, and not be burdened by the sins of the other.

We pay too much to play! The software subscription is out of whack. If you want to get any sort of interesting work done, you're going to need a never ending Adobe, Office, Google and Apple subscription! Where will the madness end? Will we ever again be allowed to own what we pay to create?