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it’s worth deliberately and consciously *practicing* disappointing others, letting the associated feelings sink into your bones, and generally spending time hanging out in the space of ‘being a disappointment’.

Only a fool or an egomaniac would deny that chance shapes the vast majority of life. The time, place, culture, family, body, brain, and biochemistry we are born into, the people who cross our path, the accidents that befall us — these dwarf in consequence the sum total of our choices. Still, our choices are the points of light that flicker against the opaque immensity of chance to illuminate our lives with meaning, just as stars, all the billions of them, comprise a mere 0.4% percent of a universe made mostly of dark energy and dark matter, and yet those same sparse stars made everything we know and are.

Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

I believe that in this age, at a time when we get inundated with information from all directions, the ability to think is the most important skill we have.

I keep thinking about this line from poet Andrea Gibson in their book, “You Better Be Lightning”:

That was the future *I* grew up expecting — a neon-drenched, mostly earthbound world where humans would mingle with robots, escape into digital fantasies, and modify their bodies. Instead of bold space explorers firing ray guns at alien conquerors, the heroic figures of my fantasies were hackers and street samurai, battling the nefarious plots of shadowy corporations, insane billionaires, and dystopian surveillance states.

[A project] is about making a living, and it's about finding fulfillment, but it's also about having fun.

we've decided to call this prototype-building phase *Cosmic Maelstrom*. Patrick mentioned that what we're doing reminds him of how NASA's space exploration, which might seem outlandish, even pointless, can actually lead (and has led) to unexpected discoveries that benefit our lives on earth (such as the memory foam that's in my pillow––*thank you, NASA!*). Obviously we're not comparing what we're doing to NASA, but it's fun to imagine ourselves as space explorers! Besides, *Cosmic Maelstrom* just sounds cool.

We often conflate being exceptional with being lucky—born rich, connected, or privileged—but hey, did you know less than 7% of the variation in SAT scores can be explained by family income?