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Today while you're reading this, I'm driving a U-Haul and relocating my oldest son back to NYC. He was born there but didn't live there until he was 25. I did this trip in reverse 3 and a half years ago when I knew he was at a very low point. I flew into Newark, stayed in Brooklyn, and the night I arrived, a huge snowstorm hit the east coast and pretty much everything shut down. But, the next morning an Uber picked us up and took us back out to NJ to get our U-Haul truck. It took us 6 hours to get back to his apartment in Greenpoint, load up, and get back across the river and on the road. Today we do it in reverse. He's spent these past few years getting his bearings again in Cincinnati, working hard, doing fashion shoots both here and in New York, and is now returning. So we get the U-Haul, load him up, drive to Hell's Kitchen to his new apartment, then I fly back out of Newark to Ohio. While I will certainly miss having him close by, I know NYC is what he needs to get back to now. I lived there for 20 years, starting when I was 23 and in design school, so I understand why he must return. I should be back at the desk Saturday afternoon if I can get my flight out of Newark. What with the gov shutdowns, I know TSA is crippled, so we shal see. ---Jeff

AI isn’t replacing creativity — it’s amplifying how fast we can use it.The real advantage now isn’t knowing every tool — it’s knowing how to think with them. That’s AI literacy: the ability to ask better questions, frame better problems, and spot better patterns. You don’t need to be an engineer to stay ahead — you just need curiosity and practice. Here are three simple ways to start: 1. Play, don’t perform. Use AI to explore, not impress. Ask it to reframe your ideas, test assumptions, or find blind spots. 2. Compare perspectives. Give the same prompt three different ways — see how nuance changes the results. That’s where learning happens. 3. Reflect, don’t copy. Let AI spark insight, but make the output yours. Add experience, context, and voice. 4. AI literacy isn’t technical — it’s transformational. Today’s Action:Use AI for one creative or strategic task you’d normally do solo — then post what changed when you collaborated instead of controlled. — Jeff

We’re taught to see growth as a straight line — a climb, a sequence, a story that makes sense in order. But life rarely cooperates with that kind of symmetry. Progress doesn’t move neatly from one achievement to the next. It doubles back, loops sideways, and sometimes pauses entirely to remind us we’re not in control of the timeline. The Myth of the Line Linear progress is comforting because it looks measurable. You can plot it, track it, prove it. But when your path starts to zigzag — when success shows up as confusion, or when one chapter ends before the next begins — it feels like failure. It isn’t. It’s evidence that you’re still in motion. Growth curves, not climbs. The line was never straight. It only looked that way in hindsight. Learning from Detours Detours are how the mind gathers depth. You can’t develop perspective without distance, and you can’t build resilience without resistance. Every apparent setback — the client who backed out, the plan that stalled, the silence after you shared something important — is an inflection point in disguise. The most interesting people you’ll ever meet didn’t move from A to B. They moved from A to “What the hell just happened?” to B-and-a-half — and they built something better because of it. The Real Work The art of non-linear progress is learning to hold two truths at once: - You’re not where you thought you’d be. - You’re exactly where you need to be to learn what’s next. That tension — between expectation and evolution — is where wisdom forms. It’s the pause where you start listening instead of forcing. When you stop fighting the curve and start following it, the frustration fades. You begin to see the pattern inside the chaos — the lesson that couldn’t have emerged any other way. Today’s Action Look back over the last year and find one moment that didn’t go “according to plan.” Ask yourself: What did that detour teach me that success never could have? Write it down. That’s not lost time — it’s earned experience.

When everything around you speeds up, the real challenge isn’t keeping pace — it’s staying centered. This week’s reflection is about finding your rhythm again by remembering why you started. The world keeps trying to pull us outward — toward news, deadlines, updates, algorithms, and noise. It’s easy to confuse activity with progress when every screen is flashing some new metric of movement. But the real work of mastery doesn’t happen out there. It begins in the quiet space where we realign with what matters. The Drift Every creator, leader, or builder drifts from their center. You start a project with clear intent — to make something meaningful, to express something true — and somewhere along the way, the signal fades. The goal becomes visibility, growth, or efficiency instead of depth. It happens quietly, disguised as productivity. The good news is, the drift is reversible. You don’t need to abandon your projects. You just need to come home to your intention. The Return Returning to center isn’t a big event. It’s a practice. It’s the decision to pause before diving into another task and ask a simple question: Why am I doing this?If the answer feels thin or forced, stop. Step back. Let the noise settle until you can hear the real reason again. When you work from that place — the quiet conviction that what you’re building still matters — the quality of your attention changes. So does the quality of your output. The Creative Core Clarity fuels confidence. Confidence fuels flow. Flow fuels consistency.That’s the creative cycle — and it always begins with remembering what you stand for. Whether you’re writing, teaching, coaching, designing, or rebuilding your next chapter, the process is the same: go inward first. Let the external results take care of themselves. Today’s Action Before you plan this week, take ten minutes to reflect on three questions: 1. What am I building right now that still feels alive? 2. What have I outgrown but keep doing out of habit? 3. What would feel most aligned if I started fresh today?