But here I am, I just completed the manuscript. I’ve always enjoyed writing stories. I grew up watching cartoons like X-Men and Animaniacs, and my favorite movies are Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Merlin and other fantasy books adapted for the big screen. So it makes total sense that writing in this genre is a perfect fit.

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And it’s truly been exciting. When I started on this adventure about two years ago, I was staring at a blank page and thinking about a trout’s world underneath the water and what his life was like. Now you might be thinking that this is confirmation that I spend way too much time fly fishing and you're probably right. But as the protagonist in my story began to take shape I realized that I was writing more than just a cute book about a fish.

In essence, I've really been writing about life. Platte enters a chaotic river system, is thrown into reality and has to work his way through figuring out how to survive. He suffers the loss of his best friend to an enemy called Gash that haunts him his entire life. He is later adopted by his friend’s trout family—but a lacking sense of belonging always hangs over his identity.

So he grows up racing around the river and becomes very popular as a star athlete. But he also finds himself getting into trouble with his best friends—Joe and Mac. But one of his teachers notices that he has skills at writing and encourages him. Eventually, he graduates high school and enters the Cheesman Academy on a racing scholarship. While he's at the Academy, he meets a professor that teaches him about global river systems and he becomes fascinated by the Tiger River.

After he graduates from the Academy, he has given a chance to move to the Tiger River. When he moves to this new foreign river, he begins the adventure of a lifetime. He is in introduced to a group of other foreign trout that gather together weekly, and they become the loving family that he never had.

And he meets his future wife MeiYu, and they begin their life together after getting married. But many challenges surface and ultimately move back to Cheesman Canyon together. But this is when the real tests and adversity start to face them.

Platte’s entire family of origin has either died or become cold and distant. So they navigate their way around and find the ‘promised land’, which is way upriver. But before Platte is able to enter into this promised land, he has to fight through many enemies that surround and try to kill them.

And the loving couple eventually fight through together and make it to the promised land, Platte has a difficult time settling down because he is disturbed within himself. The wounds from his early years are beginning to surface again. And this is where he needs to find the greatest amount of courage in his entire life, and that is to take the journey inward and fight those inner demons.

I will leave it there. I don't want to spoil the entire book just in case you do pick it up after it's published, but I thought I would at least provide a preview of what's ahead.

As I mentioned, I just finished the manuscript which is 45,000 words, and I'm really excited about publishing this one. I’m likely going to publish it directly through Amazon KDP like I did with my last book.

I wrote this book to give inspiration and encouragement to the many people in the world that are born into tough beginnings, and then are forced to navigate their way through life without much guidance. In other words, I wrote this book for ‘the fatherless’. It’s for kids, teens, young adults, and yes, for you adults that need a fresh take on life at a later stage.

Many of us run around so fast that we seldom take a minute to reflect on our life story and figure out what’s going on inside. And more often than not, it’s what’s inside that’s really driving us. This book (and I hope future animated series) allows you permission to take a look within and for that process of ‘soul-work’ to take place in a safe and constructive way through the life of a courageous trout.

Anyway, I hope that if you're reading this that you will consider also reading the upcoming book—currently titled Courage in the Current. My goal is to have it published this summer. Stay tuned!

AI Disclaimer: The video and photo were created using Grok Imagine. No AI was used to write this.

His main point was that we don’t have a millionth of the wisdom required to make perfect choices yet we are still responsible for our choices. I bring this up as it relates to how a recent experience in my own life was part of a causal chain of events that deepened my faith. Hear me out.

Last week I gave a presentation at an industry event in Denver to an audience of others in my profession of Product Marketing. I’m a remote worker chained to a set of monitors, pivoting between six screens and as many LLMs so most evenings I look numb after work. So the chance to get outside and meet others in person was a welcome diversion.

I knew my audience—stressed out and overworked with the threat of an ‘AI takeover’ looming on a daily basis. Comedian Jim Gaffigan has a great skit where he talks about how he welcomes the AI takeover. If you want a quick laugh, here it is:

That comedic tangent was necessary as it relates to the story. I was presenting to a room full of people in this existential crisis, doing more than ever, yet feeling farther behind than ever. The new saying is, “I used to work 12 hours a day. Thanks to AI, I now work 16.” (My prior essay The AI Gnaw Effect dives into this dynamic if you’re curious.)

Knowing my audience was on the verge of AI-driven burnout, I used fun stories and slides that brought in some memes/humor. My final call to action wasn’t for them to ‘do more’ (see Rejecting More’s Law). Instead, I invited them out for a day of fly fishing in the Colorado wilderness. It really clicked.

Anyone that knows me understands that fly fishing is my way of restoring mental and physical balance. And it’s become more than a pandemic-inspired hobby—it’s now necessary. I went to guide school at a local fly shop to prepare for a future where I can ‘do fly fishing’. That was already two years ago. I hung my plaque on the wall and look at it often, thinking ‘I’ll get to that one day’.

And that’s where my event from last week gets so interesting.

So I drove up to Denver and part of me was regretting signing up for the event. It was at 1PM on a Thursday afternoon, and hey, I’m busy. Between work threads, phone texts, meetings, emails, and everything else, I drove north wondering if I made a mistake, thinking ‘Is this a waste of time and energy?”

Yet something told me to keep committed to it. And I’m glad I did. I handed out eight signed copies of Through the Cyber Maze, and made new connections; some have sent me encouraging messages about how my talk inspired them. Not to brag, but one even said that it was the best presentation across the entire event. Wow, I definitely did not expect that. I think the reason was that I spoke to their problems because I’m living them daily.

The most amazing part about this experience was that Orvis was also hosting a partner event on the same day and in the same hotel corridor. Orvis is a (the?) top fly fishing brand in the world. They represent fly fishing more than any other brand on earth (Simms is up there too). They are in every fly shop in the West. In other words, the environment was screaming, ‘fly fishing’ when I walked in.

Naturally I was very curious about the Orvis event. The event producer who invited me to speak said, “Hey Dane, I noticed that you had slides about fly fishing in your presentation. Did you know that there’s a fly fishing event here today too?” And I replied, “Yes I saw that! That’s pretty cool. I’ll have to check them out later.”

I did not plan any of this. My presentation was loaded with fly fishing analogies, and as I mentioned, my call to action QR code on my closing slide was to reach out if anyone was ever interested in taking a fly fishing trip. I also joked before my talk that I was ‘in the wrong room’. It all felt surreal and fateful.

This is where the story gets most interesting. I was walking out of the hotel to go to my car and head back home. But first I thought I would slow down and peek into the Orvis event. I looked into the room at all the fly shop and lodge owners, looking in from the outside, none of them knowing they were being watched by a secret admirer.

That’s when I noticed an older gentleman standing outside. As an introvert, I very rarely approach anyone, but he seemed approachable, so I approached him. Here’s how it went down:

Me: “Excuse me, can I ask what this event is about?”

Gentleman: “This is for Orvis partners. For lodge owners and fly shop owners in the entire Mountain West region.”

Me: “Oh very cool. I’m an avid fly fisherman, and I’m actually here for a different event happening. I was joking in my talk that I wish I was in here with you guys. How about you, are you a lodge owner too?”

Gentleman: “No, actually I’m the owner.”

Me: “Owner of…?”

Gentleman: “The company.”

Me: “Really? Which company?”

Gentleman: “Orvis.”

Me: “What?! Are you kidding? You own Orvis?”

That started a ten minute conversation about his career in fly fishing and his journey. We spoke about Colorado fly fishing spots that I have been to, and about his favorites in Montana and Idaho. It was magical. There I was, conversing with the owner of the leading fly fishing brand in the world. I couldn’t have made that up if I tried.

Now, to be fair, he is technically a part-owner as a member of the Perkins family. He is Dave Perkins, but I still think he can make the claim to ‘own Orvis’ and he was the Chairman of the company for many years. Orvis has been family-owned since 1856.

I tell this story because I don’t believe it was a chance encounter. I believe that this was a signal for me to ‘go in the direction of my dreams’. While I didn’t return home and quit my day job, and this could really just be a coincidence, I found this entire experience to be awe-inspiring.

I learned that I need to be in tune with how seemingly random events intersect. Like the butterfly effect, the decision to speak at this event was triggered by a distant chance encounter when an event coordinator found me ‘somehow’ over six months ago. I also could have canceled and decided to focus on ‘busyness’ and ‘business’.

But sometimes we are called by these random signals in life and we have to make a choice to walk toward them in faith. That sounds like a contradiction (is it a choice or predestined?) but maybe it’s both. Our choices can’t always be dictated by AI or analyzed to perfection. Like a flap of a butterfly’s wings, we don’t always know how one event connects to our future. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t flap our wings anyway.

AI Disclaimer: AI was only used to create the butterfly video and image in this article. Everything else is 100% human-originated.

This is my way to reflect and pause in appreciation for God’s creation, and the rest that it gives my soul. I hope it can briefly do the same for you as you review these images. Enjoy.

1. Patience Pays Off: An amazing brown trout took a black midge dry fly while I was fishing at 9,000 feet up in a location known for large trout yet challenging fly fishing. Going here over the years started with catching zero fish and thinking I would never be able to—to figuring out the reality of these trout, their food choices, and my casting techniques. It took me three hours to figure out the trout were focused on black midge flies, so once I changed rigs, it was a ton of fun in the sun.

2. Love Birds: I moved locations downriver later in the day, and thought I saw something moving in this nest on a boulder, and out emerged a pair of Gray Catbirds. Looks like they are building up a cozy home for the spring and summer ahead.

3. Mixture of Elements: This scene made me pause in appreciation because I enjoy scenery that contains a mixture of elements. Here we have a flowing river, a towering canyon wall, evergreen trees, ancient boulders, a bluebird sky, an approaching sunset, and melting snow. Oh, and don’t forget my fly rod.

4. Secret Habitat: On a different river the following day, I came across this split point where the river was divided by an island. It created a nice trout habitat where branches and a few pools were created. It’s places like this where you can find monster trout and also spot other animals like beavers or otters.

5. Idyllic Spot: Later that day, I ventured upriver to discover a beautiful scene which held a canyon face, blue skies, melting snow, evergreen trees, perfect water conditions, and a handful of trout that I caught with a streamer.

6. Cross in the Sky: This point of my trip was amazing. I was walking along the river in solitude; the scenery and slowed down pace allowed me to ‘catch my breath’ for the first time in a while. Then, I began praying out loud and thanking God. Suddenly, I looked up to the sky and saw a cross (it is slightly more faded in the photo than in the moment). It was and still is moving and powerful. Experiences like these are good reminders that I’m not on my own.

7. Time in Tomichi: Before heading home, I took one last stop to appreciate a beautiful morning. This shot was taken at sunrise near Tomichi Creek State Wildlife Area in Gunnison. While there is an airport nearby, when the planes aren’t overhead all you hear is the sound of nature around you. It was so peaceful that I didn’t even fish!

8. Blackbird Song: On the two day excursion I saw a lot of wildlife: a fox, elk, deer, geese, ducks, and hawks. This red-winged Blackbird greeted me with a song when I was looking off into the mountains of Gunnison while in Tomichi Creek.

9. Sparrow Chat: This male House Sparrow was hanging out when I returned to my AirBnb, so I started chatting with it. Looks like I’m turning into quite the ‘bird whisperer’ after spending so much time in nature.

10. Gunnison Country: Finally, this photo is an ode to the city of Gunnison. I learned that Gunnison has a population of about 6,500 people. Of which, nearly 4,000 are students. It’s very much a college town. I usually get my coffee and a breakfast burrito locally at Tributary and buy my flies and gear at Gene Taylor’s. If I need a sandwhich for the road, it’s City Market or Safeway.

Needless to say, I do not regret taking this trip. It was a great reset. I’ll be back Gunnison Country!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s essay. This newsletter will share more photo entries like this from my adventures, and I hope you stay tuned in.

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Dane

P.S. If you are looking for guidance for your adventure, especially with fly fishing tips, I highly recommend a book called Fly Fishing the Gunnison Country by Doug Dillingham.

I call this vicious lie More’s Law as a play on words with the technology concept of Moore’s Law (which says that the number of transistors on a microchip roughly doubles every ~2 years). Let’s define More’s Law as the false equation of Doing More = More Fulfillment.

I’m proving that this law isn’t true by my own experience. I started 2026 with LESS goals, and it’s been an amazing win across work, health, and soul. I’ve stripped down my unrealistic to-do list and now use a much simpler system where a dashboard matrix shows my top priorities that I check every weekday.

The key elements of this intentional life design are having a single Life Vision + a single Life Mission + 3 Objective + Sub-Objectives. That’s it. In years past, I’ve piled on so many goals onto my plan that I always felt under water. The self-induced pressure created a sense of anxiety that I wasn’t meeting my own unrealistic goals.

It’s like going on a vacation—let’s say Yellowstone National Park. There are way too many sights to see to bake everything into one trip. You can’t do every trail and landmark, so you have to prioritize your plan down to a few priorities and add in margin for relaxation. I learned this lesson by doing the opposite on many occasions!

I want to address what I think is the root cause of this type of behavior—it’s shame. There are two kinds of people struggling with shame. The first person walks around and says, “I’m LESS than human.” You can tell when they walk into a room with their head hanging low, never smiling, and looking beat up.

Then there’s the second kind of shame—which is where I was for most of my life and still battle—and that’s the person that walks around and says, “I’m MORE than human.” We should add this to the definition of More’s Law. This might be you if you’re overdoing it. Indicators are things like squeezing in too many meetings during the day or having a massive task list. It’s very common among ‘successful’ people to fit into this camp. But does all this doing lead to fulfillment?

I’m just grateful that I caught it in time. Through a lot of self-discovery into my core motivators, I realized that my life was built on an unstable foundation of achievement. Every extra activity was an attempt to shore up that foundation. But it was like building a house on quicksand.

I’m not saying I don’t try to achieve anything anymore or that goals don’t matter. In fact, I find them to be even more important—there’s just fewer of them to manage. A reduced set of Objectives refines my focus and keeps me from wasting time and energy. My goals are now reminders to do less, not the opposite. Again, it’s not about doing nothing, it’s about doing LESS. The less I focus on, the more meaningful things I get done.

This isn’t just a theory. I used a simpler planning framework this year and for the first time, I don’t feel under water. I’m shipping more important outcomes and doing so in a calmer manner, with stronger relationships and more fulfillment. A big reason for this was deciding to live intentionally.

There is an Italian cultural saying called “La Calma.” It’s a cultural belief in Italy that racing around like a maniac is useless. What’s the point of making billions if you have no quality of life? They enjoy the little things. The slow down. They are always calm.

But I still believe that planning is wise. Worrying and frantically trying to control all outcomes is a death sentence. So if you want a practical takeaway from this essay—here’s the way I structure my annual plan.

Before viewing this matrix, know that this isn’t about gaining control. I recently wrote about my attempts in to control all outcomes, how I began trusting God instead, and what that’s taught me. That’s still true and setting goals doesn’t mean I’m trying to ‘run the universe’. It just means I’m using my time and resources wisely and giving myself grace in the process.

The Intentional Life Matrix

Yes, it’s this simple. And yes, it’s flexible (except for the Vision, try not to change that too much). I try to keep the Objectives mostly in place, even if I change the wording. Note: if you’re into vibe-coding, you can create this matrix in an app and view it in your browser to track this. If not, this can be simply written on paper.

The key is to check in on yourself daily or weekly at most. Every weekday I try to scan my dashboard to remind myself of what’s most important. This way I can better enter my year/month/week/day clear on what I should commit to (and not commit to). It’s all about managing my attention, time and energy.

I also highly encourage time tracking. For example, each week I take 5 minutes to look at the activities I worked on the prior week, and calculate the rough number of hours I spent on them. Those hours then ladder up to the 3 Objectives (again, my app does this). It’s very rare for any of my activities to be outside of my Top 3 Objectives. So everything I spend time on is integrated.

Here’s an example. One of my sub-objectives is to publish a book this year. Writing a book takes lot of time and effort—and I still have a full time job. So I can only realistically allocate 15-30 minutes per day toward this goal. But that time adds up if I’m consistent! So far, each week this year, I’ve been able to spend 50 hours toward the book, or 5 hours per week (after 11 weeks). That’s not bad. A small amount of energy over a long period of time is the surest way to success with larger goals.

Similarly, the essays I write here at Dane’s Narratives are a sub-objective. These essays are being written intentionally. I thought about who I want to be, and decided that authenticity was important. I wanted to think more deeply about topics and post less often. My social media use has gone down substantially this year as a result. My objective is to post one essay every week this year. And I haven’t missed a week yet. Why? Because it’s a sub-objective that I review every day!

And listen—there are always sacrifices involved. For example, writing these essays meant I decided to give up on a different newsletter. The other newsletter was becoming more ‘commercial’ and I wasn’t enjoying it. It was also too closely related to my day job for it to feel like I was writing authentically. So I paused it after 2.5 years of effort. Now I write for the world, not just for my industry.

This is why a Life Vision and Life Mission are so important. Who do you want to be? What do you want? It’s not easy to answer these questions. Most people are blindly going through their day without thinking about them; I know I was.

There is a classic scene from an old TV series called the West Wing (one of my favorites). In a final episode, a successful women (CJ Cregg) was wondering what to do as her White House job was ending. She had no idea so her spouse asked her, “What do you want to do?” But she never actually thought about it. She was performing, achieving, and powering her way through life without thinking, “Is this what I want?” By the way, it’s also like that meme from the Notebook movie when Ryan Gosling shouts, “What do you want?!”

Every year my planning process gets simpler. It requires carving out time to imagine the life I want to live, not the life that somebody else imagined for me. This process is painful, especially when I was so used to living a certain way and mostly for other’s approval. But staying authentic and true to who you are is the ultimate goal.

And since my faith is integral to this process, I’ve started to use Pastor John Mark Comer’s techniques in his book Practicing the Way. He inspired me to think more deeply about the way I structure my life, and it’s been a valuable tool in creating my life vision and mission.

In the end, no two lives will be designed the same. But everyone should seek integration. The word integrity comes from the Latin root ‘integer’ meaning whole or complete. To be a person of integrity simply means to live in an integrated way.

This way of thinking helped me discover parts of myself that I’ve left on the sidelines. For example, I never used the word ‘love’ before in my Objectives, yet today it’s front and center. And your plan should include fun items as well. I have a Sub-Objective to visit several National Parks with my wife this year. And this time, I plan to leave in more margin and practice the art of La Calma more.

The main goal is designing life with intentional integration—a deeply authentic sense of awareness instead of busyness and blindness. I’m choosing to live a life of less and I’m finding more life as a result.

AI Disclaimer: ChatGPT was used to help me define Moore’s Law and to define the Latin root of ‘integer’. Everything else is 100% human.

My essay last week was all about configuring NemoClaw on my DGX Spark. This is really just a combination of Nvidia’s LLM called Nemotron and OpenClaw as the agentic AI system that connects tools and actions. I thought it would be easy to set up, I was wrong. It’s been pretty painful but I made it through.

As I write this, my first AI agent is running (sort of) in the background. It’s called Brokaw. I named it after the no-nonsense news reporter Tom Brokaw, because that’s all I want this agent to do—ship me a daily report of events around the world on topics I care about. It’s like a personalized President’s Daily Brief. I will continue to tailor it over time with all my favorite podcasts and sources. For now, it’s basic.

But the cool thing is that I get to customize the UI and it’s all done locally, except for the part where it scans news sources for the latest updates. And as a next step I will create a Slack integration so that I can interact with items of interest and have it appear on my phone.

I know that this agent isn’t groundbreaking, but I needed prove how this works before I expand into my ultimate vision of creating a workforce of digital employees.

Here’s how it works:

1. Inference: This is all done locally on my DGX Spark which has a Blackwell chip on it and can provide the GPUs necessary to power an LLM provided by Nvidia called Nemotron. It’s a 49B parameter Llama-based model customized by Nvidia, that isn’t as good as OpenAI or Claude, but it gets the job done locally, so I like it. The less data I feed to OpenAI or Anthropic, the better.

2. Agentic AI OS: I use OpenClaw on my DGX which like an agentic AI operating system that has a set of tools baked in to allow for agentic actions. When combining OpenClaw with Nemotron, this is called NemoClaw. It was pushed heavily at the Nvidia GTC Conference this week for enterprises as the “Agentic OS”. I am using it to build my personal agentic OS on my DGX.

3. User Interface: I used Cursor on my Mac Studio to code a personal assistant app accessed through a browser, which will contain all of my future agents. Brokaw is basically a module in my personal assistant app that I can design and configure through Cursor. I simply don’t have the time to use the DGX Terminals to manually edit .js files. Too painful. So Cursor is a natural language way to build at rapid speed.

4. Prompts: I mainly used Claude Opus 4.6 to create my Cursor prompts. Then I copy errors I get in Cursor or in my UI, tell Claude, then Claude helps me fix them. This is how I keep Cursor honest. I then paste Claude’s guidance back into Cursor, which is a powerful combination. You might be wondering why I don’t just use Claude Code directly, and mainly it’s because of their usage limits and I don’t want to pay $200 p/m! Cursor has handled everything I can throw at it over the past year, so if it’s not broke, I’m not fixing it.

After I generated a briefing successfully, I began celebrating, thinking I had an AI agent configured. But then I asked Claude, “Is this really an AI agent?” Claude had the audacity to tell me it wasn’t—it was just a ‘pipeline’. So I continued to prompt and build, and then I added agentic functionality to Brokaw.

Here’s the “agentic” process:

1. [Brokaw] Pass 1 — draft complete

2. [Brokaw] Pass 2 — evaluate & improve: calling LLM…

3. [Brokaw] Pass 2 — done. Parsed quality: N/5

4. [Brokaw] Run: saving final briefing (quality N/5)

I asked Claude why Brokaw is now considered an agent, and to explain it to me like I was dumb, and here’s the response:

Brokaw is an agent because it does the whole job on its own. It wakes up at 7am, goes and grabs the news, decides what’s stale and throws it out, writes a briefing, reviews its own work, fixes mistakes, and saves the final version — all while you’re still asleep. Nobody tells it what to do step by step. It figures it out, handles problems when things break, and delivers a finished product. That’s what makes it an agent instead of just a chatbot waiting for you to type something.

I do think this will be worth it. But given how complex it’s proven to be, there’s definitely a lot of hype around “agentic AI” these days. It certainly isn’t something you can just pick up and run with. Brokaw broke so many times this past week, that I was thinking of calling it BrokeClaw.

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Anyway, more to come as I think through and build my next agent on this quest to build an agentic AI workforce that works for me in the background. It’s still to be determined if this is real or hype, we shall see. If nothing else, it allowed me to create this fancy video with Grok Imagine, enjoy:

Keeping up with AI has felt like a fool’s errand, so I’ve stopped following or tuning into the amassing number of AI news reporters out there. You know what I mean; they get paid to post nothing but, “Forget Opus…GPT 5.4 is INSANE.” or, “I just canceled my OpenAI subscription,” with a shocked face on their YouTube titles.

It all feels like hype. But once in a while, I find a technology to be potentially useful. At first, I rejected OpenClaw as something like DeepSeek was last year—too hard for anyone to understand, but seemed monumental. Right now, OpenClaw is all the rage. Everyone is talking about it. So I figured I’d give it a shot after I watched a podcast earlier this week from . He had a guest on that was showing his agentic army of employees, and I thought, ‘this could be cool’.

Then I was excited to hear that I can run it locally on my DGX Spark. So now I’m determined to create an organization of digital employees (and start to give less personal data to OpenAI and Anthropic). I simply don’t want to continue feeding them my prompt logs for life so local AI seems like the right solution. It’s just super creepy that OpenAI is dabbling in ads, and likely already has some weird profile on my preferences to sell to companies around the world.

So creating a localized, private agent workforce using OpenClaw, that I can run on my DGX and that is powered by the Nvidia Nemotron model was the objective. That’s why it’s called NemoClaw (Nemotron + OpenClaw). But the process was not easy as opening terminal tabs still feels like learning a foreign language to me. And as much as I say I don’t want to use OpenAI for life, without GPT-5.4 I would not have been able to install OpenClaw on my DGX.

I’m happy to report that I have NemoClaw up and running on my DGX. After about 4 hours of set up, it’s now operating as my agentic infrastructure. I signed up for the Brave browser API so that I can ensure it’s able to find information on the web. And my next step is connecting it to either Telegram, Slack or other tools so that I can communicate with it outside of the terminal on my main workstation.

So to recap, the vision is to build an organization of digital agentic employees that I can task with objectives that add value to my life and to the projects I’m working on. One starting use case for me is going to be with growing my side startup project that I don’t have enough time for. Also I want to figure out content creation and perhaps building a social media manager to save me time.

Everyone is talking about how agents are going to become a force multiplier; I’m here to put that theory to the test for people like me that aren’t software engineers, and don’t have enough hours in the day.

Now that the infrastructure is in place, the process of building agents and running them locally will be Part II of this essay series. Let’s see how it goes.

That narrative arc was showing up in every area of my life. It seems silly now as I write this. But for those going through it, it’s highly deceptive, especially for a tech worker like me. I spend all day rotating through a series of controllable programs, so it’s no wonder why a need for predictability rubs off on the rest of my life.

Yet the sweetest aromas in life are random. And sadly, randomness torments the minds of those seeking control over outcomes.

An example from my own life happened just this week. I had an event I was hosting at my house planned for a month. And over the past month I’ve been quietly checking in with guests, planning food, and communicating those plans. Everything was all lined up. Weather was amazing all week, literally perfect March weather for Colorado. 60’s and sunny with a light breeze. Then boom, the weather report showed snow preparing to pound the area exactly at the time of the event. I canceled the event I had lost sleep over. This is just one of many examples I go through in life where randomness wins.

You might be saying, “Dude, snow in Colorado isn’t random. You should have had a plan B.” That’s the point, Plan B is how it starts. That’s what triggers the spiral into controlling more and more potential outcomes.

I know it’s not just me. Recently I was speaking with a friend who is a software engineer. He seemed stressed out, so I pried a bit, and he admitted, “Dane, I didn’t fall asleep until 5:30AM last night. I have so much going on in my head.”

The student became the teacher, and like my mentor told me once I relayed the same advice I once received to my friend’s bloodshot eyes, “Dude, you gotta stop trying to control all outcomes. I’ve been there.” I know that’s hypocritical, but I’ll take my small wins where I can get them.

His eyes lit up a bit, sensing that I truly did understand the struggle. It plays like a strategy game in our heads with a series of If/Then exercises, gaming out all kinds of scenarios. It’s a useful skill in many respects, and sure we become good at chess, but life isn’t a chessboard with a set of clear boundaries and rules.

Our modern economy is built around the need for control. From advanced tech like AI giving us more information and answers to control events; to the basic stuff like your car controlling the ability to arrive somewhere safely and on time. Nearly every object around me serves my need for control in some way.

It makes sense. Control is safer. I avoid uncertainty in order to stay safe. That’s just human nature. This is why money is worshipped the way it is in our society, because money buys us a sense of control. But the irony is that the most adventurous, loving, amazing moments in my life have happened outside of my ability to control outcomes.

Trying to control outcomes keeps me from true experiences that force growth. This is like the wisdom of the trendy saying, ‘do hard things’; or another catchy phrase, ‘the obstacle is the way’; or, as another mentor of mine used to tell me, ‘the only way out is through.’

The older I get, the more I appreciate this. Just recently, I was at work, and heard a noise outside and turned around to see that it began hailing. I had zero expectation of seeing hail. Yet it enchanted me. I paused my work to stand at the window, peering outside at the thousands of little pieces of ice slamming to the ground, making a naturally calming melody. None of it was controllable or planned.

I returned to my tasks better off for having those five random minutes of observation. It changed the course of my day and helped me think ‘outside the box’ when I went back to the grind. When I woke up the next morning, the nearby mountains were covered in a layer of white from base to top, while the trees glistened under a misty aura as the sun began warming the overnight freeze.

As I sat at my desk, I looked at a bare tree branch outside and saw a melting piece of ice being lit up by the morning rays. It was in a transformative phase of ice melting into water, so when the sunlight hit it, it flickered like it was sending me morse code, telling me to open my eyes to the randomness around me instead of fixating on what is, or more importantly what is not, in my control.

What does all this mean practically?

This means taking less unnecessary ‘control detours’ investigating things that have nothing to do with me. This can show up as turning off the news, unfollowing people that cause me anxiety on social media, or giving up on toxic relationships. This takes courage to find the solitude to contemplate what you really want, and how your actions and the people around you contradict those wants.

It also means living by one of my favorite Proverbs:

“The heart of man plans his way,

but the Lord establishes his steps.”

— Proverbs 16:9 (ESV)

Not qualified for the job of controlling the universe.

I’m not sure why I ever tried, but try I did. I think it had to do with trust. There’s a book called Childhood and Society by Erik Erikson. His research establishes that the first task of human life is learning trust. Our first question in life is basically, “Is the world safe and reliable?”

I’m guessing that if you’re still reading, this idea of trust resonates with you. And it’s probably because that first task of life was somewhat complicated. In other words, the answer to that first question of life was a hard no. There are a number of reasons why that can happen; dysfunction, abandonment, chaos, neglect, and so forth.

Whatever the reason is, awareness that you are trying to control all outcomes is step one. Step two is realizing that when you attempt the impossible task of trying to control the universe, it’s based on an inability to trust. The final step is to go back and begin pouring a foundation with a material more trustworthy than family of origin, money, status, or performance.

For me, that material is my trust in God, because I believe it’s eternal and unshakeable. If I think that I don’t have any faith, I quickly realize that I have to stand on something. Timothy Keller often talked about how even if I say, “I have faith in nothing.” That’s faith in something!

Thinking through what we have faith in will reveal what we trust, and that will reveal why we’re trying to control all outcomes.

I’m learning that this metaphor is often used in modern movies as well. One clear example was in the garbage compactor scene in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Or in the Lion King, when Simba collapses in the desert after exile. Or one of my top choices is in The Lord of the Rings when Gandalf falls into the abyss with the Balrog or Frodo when he’s trapped in Shelob’s lair.

Before I continue talking about the belly of the whale, let me take a related detour really quick. I happen to love blue whales and have whale objects all over my house. I feel drawn to them for some reason. Blue whales are part of my personal call to adventure. Writing this essay is part of that call; I hope to not only inspire your own call to adventure, but selfishly it’s also helpful to contemplate my own.

With that out of the way, let’s begin by exploring the story of Jonah, shall we?

This book is about a man named Jonah from Gath-hepher, a small town near Nazareth in the northern kingdom in ancient Israel (8th century BC). This means Jonah lived on the doorstep of a city not too far away called Nineveh, the capital of the rising Assyrian Empire.

If ever there was a threat to Jonah’s village and greater Israel, it would have been from Nineveh. During that time, an invasion could have happened at any point and I’m sure the locals often sent scouts out to report on regional movements. Jonah must have been praying to God for protection from this potential enemy daily.

Instead of destroying Nineveh, God calls Jonah on the adventure to do the opposite, to save them. We often think that a call to adventure is a good thing. But in most tales, the call rocks the protagonist’s world and shakes things up. This is why the call is often followed by a refusal. It’s like when Bilbo tells Gandalf something like, ‘I’m sorry Gandalf, I can’t join you on your quest.’

So it comes as no surprise that when God asks Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh to save them, Jonah refuses the call. How can he save his enemy? He would be a traitor to his nation and people! He probably thinks that Nineveh is a city of total chaos and disorder, deserving of God’s wrath. He will also likely be killed if he goes there as a foreigner shouting warnings in the streets, disrupting commerce, and calling upon masses of people to change their sinful lives.

It’s also a prophetic parallel to what occurs eight centuries later, as Jesus enters the world to save humanity. But unlike Jesus, who obeys God’s call, Jonah refuses the call in dramatic fashion. This brings up the most well known part of the story.

He runs away to a port city called Joppa (or modern day Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv). He catches the next boat ride out of town. The problem was that God happened to control the weather, and caused a storm and waves to nearly tip over the boat. Jonah had nowhere to escape to. The captain of the boat and his crew realized Jonah was to blame for the calamity, and at Jonah’s suggestion, they tossed him overboard.

To Jonah, dying was clearly preferable to saving the people of Nineveh. That’s how much he detested them. Yet God sent a whale to swallow Jonah, where he then sat(?) and wrestled with God for three days. Talk about a private place! I sometimes wonder how he sat down or if the whale also swallowed a nice piece of furniture that was tossed overboard from the boat, but I digress.

In the belly of the whale, Jonah faces the darkness. But he stops running away and instead he spends most of his time praying. His prayer reveals a significant point of surrender within this ‘womb’ before being reborn.

“From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’ ”

And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.”

‭‭Jonah‬ ‭2‬:‭1‬-‭10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/111/jon.2.1-10.NIV

After this prayer, he is then spit out by the whale onto a beach, and (after taking a bath I suppose) goes to Nineveh, where he preaches God’s warning of imminent destruction. They surprising part is that they actually listen to him and repent so God shows them mercy.

But Jonah thought God was wrong. He shouts at God, complaining about why he saved them. God replies, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’

Then after Jonah says he was so angry that he’d rather be dead, God says, “And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

‭‭Jonah‬ ‭4‬:‭11‬ ‭NIV‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/111/jon.4.11.NIV

In this reply, the heart of God is revealed. He cares about people, and people are in cities, so he watches our world’s cities with interest.

But let’s dissect the belly of the whale moment for Jonah. What does this the narrative principle and archetype mean? What is the modern day equivalent of our ‘belly in the whale’ moment?

Joseph Campbell writes on how this is a necessary step in every Hero’s Journey. I’ve asked for some help from ChatGPT to synthesize this journey stage for us:

In the “Belly of the Whale” stage, the hero has crossed into the unknown and is fully consumed by it. This marks total commitment and the point of no return, where the old identity ends. Being swallowed symbolizes initiation, not destruction—a symbolic death necessary for transformation. Across myths, the dark, enclosed space represents a womb rather than a grave: what appears to be annihilation is actually preparation for rebirth. Cut off from society, the hero enters isolation without validation or support. In that solitude, confrontation with the unconscious begins, and the groundwork for a new self is formed.

This is very revealing. The story of Jonah is much deeper than I ever imagined. Jonah in the belly of the whale represents a womb that symbolizes rebirth and transformation.

I think most of us have had these Jonah moments in life. We 'reach the end of our rope’ and get to a point where there is ‘no more hope’. Maybe we lose a loved one. Or we lose a career (think of all the AI-related job replacement happening today). Many of life’s turning points are part of our own Hero’s Journey, and we must enter the belly of the whale to confront the unconscious and emerge stronger.

Since there is such a deep psychoanalytic perspective here relating to the depths of our inner consciousness, I also asked ChatGPT to summarize this perspective for us:

From a psychoanalytic, especially Jungian, perspective, the “Belly of the Whale” represents a descent into the unconscious. The hero confronts shadow elements—fears, repressed desires, unresolved conflicts—and undergoes ego dissolution as the rational identity loses control. The womb imagery signals a symbolic return to origins: a breakdown of the old ego and a temporary regression before rebirth. This is a psychic reset. In Jungian terms, individuation begins here through isolation, surrender, and confrontation with the Self. What feels like collapse—loss, upheaval, inner chaos—is actually the hidden construction of a more integrated and transformed identity.

So this metaphor has multiple deep meanings. There is the Hero’s Journey mythical archetype dimension, the psychoanalytic dimension, and the spiritual dimension. Isn’t this fascinating?

This story captivates me on many levels. As a storyteller and writer, the narrative and mythical dimension has me rethinking my stories. As someone drawn to whales, the metaphor intrigues me. As a student of history, the historical dynamics are fun to learn about.

And as a Christian, the spiritual dimension adds to my fascination, because Jesus brought up Jonah in the book of Matthew when he points to Jonah as the ‘evidence’ that the Pharisees are looking for.

In Matthew 12:40, Jesus explains:

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭12‬:‭40‬-‭41‬ ‭NIV‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/111/mat.12.40-41.NIV

I wonder what he means by ‘heart of the earth’ here. It must be about his death, burial and entrance into the realm of the dead. It’s like in Jonah’s prayer when he says, ‘You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me’. Jonah’s prayer was foretelling the death and resurrection of Jesus eight centuries later.

If we draw upon the belly of the whale archetype to think about our own lives, it becomes instructive. For example, maybe you’re going through a ‘midlife crisis’, or an ‘identity crisis’. This might be your belly of the whale moment. This is where your rebirth can occur if you trust the process, find solitude, and move forward on your heroic journey.

But trust and solitude aren’t easy to find. If you’re wondering what is your Nineveh, Balrog, Scar, or Shelob, perhaps it’s more obvious than you might think. I would argue that constant social media, entertainment, and other mind-dumbing activities, are today’s modern enemies, helping us more easily avoid the solitude required to contemplate our call.

But that’s the fight. It’s not to learn more, to do more, to post more, or to experience more. We have more stimulation and knowledge than any generation in history, and it’s not working out for many.

So like Jonah, we may often run away when we’re called to adventure. But no matter how far we run, we can’t escape the belly of the whale. It’s in this dark womb where we must die to our false selves and can then answer the call with faith and courage.

I can’t blame anyone for asking that. It’s a simple way to follow up to such a bold claim. But it’s a difficult question to answer.

First, every park is a special snowflake. But yes, there are parks that we did not enjoy too much. I could create a ranking system based on criteria like Scenery, Sunset Views, Explorability, Reachability, Tourist Overload, and others. Maybe one day after I visit all 63, I’ll undertake that exercise.

But what’s the point? As cliche as it sounds, it really is ‘about the journey and not the destination’. Or, as I like to say it, ‘it’s about the story behind it’.

Exploring has an 80/20 rule. 80% of the time that we’ve spent on these adventures we were driving/flying to the park, finding/cooking food, setting up tents or checking into hotels/AirBnb’s. It’s a lot of logistics. Only 20% is the actual ‘modern John Muir’ style exploration within the parks.

And usually that 20% is worth the 80%.

But that 80% not easy. I’ve questioned why I’ve set out on this quest but for whatever reason it never felt optional. Once I set the goal of visiting all 63 parks, it had to be done! And I can definitely say that overall the 20% was worth the 80%.

Yet as we approach the final two parks in this adventure I still struggle to answer the question ‘What’s your favorite park?’

The main problem with answering this question is twofold: 1) it’s human nature to compare; and 2) you can’t control adventure.

Let’s use our visit to Hot Springs National Park to illustrate point one. If we had visited Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas as our first park, we probably would have had a higher opinion of it. But after having seen the wonders of the western National Parks, we were asking each other, ‘How can this possibly be a National Park?’

To be fair, the origin story of the park is somewhat interesting—it was originally a bathhouse meant to heal ailments—but we didn’t visit in the 1800’s to cure a disease.

So the parks you visit will impact those you visit afterwards. We are always comparing experiences—that’s human nature.

And to illustrate point two (you can’t control adventure) let’s use our visit to Utah’s National Parks which was a one-week, three-park road trip as I was in between jobs during the pandemic. I left zero room for margin and I tried to control every little detail. In the process, I became too stressed, and didn’t have as much fun. Like a mission-crazed maniac, I was speeding from park to park, checking the schedule trying to squeeze in as many trails and sights as possible.

Everything we saw was amazing but I only had a few minutes to spare for every sight. I couldn’t pause to reflect, to drink in as much as possible. At one point, I even got pulled over for speeding when driving from Zion to Bryce. I’ve since begun leaving in more margin and planning less. You live, you learn.

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For these two reasons, it’s very hard to claim ‘my favorite park’. Because it’s really all about the intangibles like your mindset and the random acts of adventure that occur along the way. I have a magnet at home that says, ‘adventure begins when plans end.’ Exactly.

Nearly a decade ago, we weren’t yet on the ‘all 63 parks’ mission, and we visited our first-ever National Park—Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, our home state. This was our first National Park experience together, and I’ll never forget that August sunset drive (picture below from that trip). It was the first time we saw something that made us think, ‘Wow. I wonder what else is out here?’

After that sunset drive, we pulled into the park and found our reserved campground waiting for us just after sunset.

Arriving at the campsite, our white Hyundai Tuscon was full of fresh, unopened gear—from a much too large 8-person tent to a classic dark green Coleman grill. It was an exciting feeling, but also daunting. I turned on my new headlamp and started opening the tent. I spent about an hour and a half setting it up in the dark.

Just as I was setting up the tent, rain started dropping. I raced to finish, hammering in the final tent pole, and we ran back-and-forth from the car grabbing all of the sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets. We were like two kids giggling and having fun together. This is the spirit of camping. But the fun didn’t last long.

I barely slept a wink. A few hours into the night, I was tossing and turning as I heard what I thought was a ferocious bear ready to chew our heads off. So I did what any husband would do and stayed on alert, listening to every little noise that made its way through the thin tent walls, which was everything outdoors. When I dared to zip open the window on the tent in the morning, I looked outside to see a few harmless deer walking around eating leaves around our tent. Oops, might have overreacted.

That’s just one of many sub-adventures we had together on the longer adventure. It’s about the story within each one of them that makes them all my favorite. Each person’s adventures are yours alone, but anyone that’s been on an adventure can relate to the shared experience of entering the unknown, discovering your courage, and moving forward into the dark black canyon.

Just a few weeks after that starting point, we drove north toward another canyon, to Canyon Campground in Yellowstone National Park. We departed our small apartment in Golden, Colorado and stopped for a few nights at Grand Teton National Park, then made our way to camp for a full week in Yellowstone in early September.

I was so disappointed when arriving at Grand Teton. It was a foggy day, and I hadn’t seen a single mountain yet. What a let-down. Little did I know the Grand Teton mountains were only a few minutes from appearing before our eyes. As I drove closer, some clouds moved, and I parked to see this amazing mountain range. I shouted to my wife, ‘Look, there they are honey!’ (the picture below is what we saw, yet doesn’t do the experience justice).

Then we spent a week in Yellowstone, which has so many stories and experiences that it would take me another essay to write about them all. Because that experience was so special I want to say, ‘Yellowstone is my favorite park.’ But it’s the easy way out. Everyone knows it’s a top global park and the first National Park created in the world. It’s on top of everyone’s list.

But I still look at Black Canyon a ‘favorite park’ in its own way. As a Coloradan these past 10+ years I’ve gone back to Black Canyon at least five more times. I’m also an avid fly fisherman, and I’ve since fished the Gunnison river that flows through that canyon. There are also never any tour buses or crowds of tourists there. So the combination of fishing in the park and the fact that it was our first park has made it one of my favorites.

Yet I still feel the pressure to actually answer everyone’s question. I mean, how can I not have a favorite park right? Just decide man! In rapid fire social situations, I usually default to the most climactic experience that I can remember in the entire 63 National Parks journey. That would be our trip to American Samoa National Park.

Yes, there’s a National Park in the US territory of American Samoa. And it is not easy to get to. There are only a few flights a week that leave from Honolulu and head south to the Pago Pago airport each week so the trip needed to be precisely planned. We rented a car, had an AirBnb, and my birthday was that same week.

It was incredibly rewarding when we found ourselves sitting on our own beach (picture below) in a National Park while snorkeling and soaking in the South Pacific sunlight. It was the ultimate National Parks adventure. I couldn’t have designed any of it, and it ranks as my personal ‘top overall park experience’. So I usually just say that this is ‘my favorite park’.

What made it my favorite? I could list specifics like the uniqueness of the landscapes, the tropical fish, the distance from where we live, and the climate. But then I would be subtracting the intangibles like the painful effort it took to get there, celebrating my birthday, randomly meeting a local guide that took us snorkeling, and the romantic beach time with my wife. A lot of energy went into making that adventure happen, and that made it special to me personally.

My wife has her own ‘favorite park’ though. So we agree to disagree on this. If you’re curious, I think she’s set on Olympic National Park in Washington. It’s definitely up there and an amazing park, but to me it doesn’t beat American Samoa or a few others on my list 🙂. Though I will credit Olympic fans: being able to traverse from a mountain peak to a rainforest to a beach in one day is really amazing.

The fact that she and I disagree on our favorite park makes my point. Everyone’s favorite park depends on your own personal story behind it. There are times when I say ‘my favorite’ park is Black Canyon, because I still remember the special stories behind that first trip out there.

So maybe one day I’ll generate a proper list with analytics that uses criteria like visitor center quality, tourist overload, things to see, and other factors that might contribute to an overall score. But even when I do that, the main factor will always be the story behind your adventure at the park.

So what’s your favorite park? What is the story behind it? How did it change you?

It was about football. I played the sport for fourteen years (or, seasons), from when I was in first grade until I played Division II football at Pace University in New York.

Football was an outlet for me growing up and I took out my pent up emotions on the field. The fear and confusion I had from home and school would be released when I played. From an early age, I took football seriously. I won a Pop Warner award for ‘heart’ and one of my coaches said I was ‘tough as nails’.

Tragically, my 8th grade season, one that was filled with anticipation as the last stop before high school, was cut short by a knee injury. I was sidelined and I can remember weeping in the doctor’s office. The doctor said I broke my femur bone and that I’d need to wear a cast for the next 3 months.

Even worse, a different doctor cut the cast off several months later and said, ‘You never broke a bone and you didn’t need a cast.’ That hurt.

Onward I went. I entered my freshman year at Passaic Valley High School (PV) and there were giants everywhere. The head coach was Chet Parlavecchio, an ex-NFL linebacker that drove a Cadillac and was a legend who commanded instant respect.

During my first weight training session, he got right in my face while I was doing leg curls. He shouted, ‘Common, two more!’ The next morning, I couldn’t even walk to school because my legs were so sore.

On another occasion, we were doing bodyweight dips and I was only able to do two reps. He said to me, ‘Dane, I’m impressed.’ I thought he was going to laugh at me, because the older players were doing up to 20 reps with weights on. Instead, he remembered my name, encouraged me, and I worked all the harder.

The Seniors that were around us were my heroes, like Lenny Cusumano. He was a total monster to my freshman eyes. I would observe him lifting weights while I would wonder how it was possible to lift that much. He was the epitome of a leader.

That Varsity team went on to go far in the NJ state playoffs that season, and were by far the best PV team of that era. I was honored to be even remotely connected to that group. Lenny went to play DI football for Syracuse University.

I went on to play for the Junior Varsity (JV) team the following season. I remember playing against the best team in the league—Delbarton. They were a private school with ‘the rich kids’ that were well trained, well coached, and well funded. On the opening kickoff I ran toward their kick returner and I woke up on the field seeing stars. These days I probably would have gone through concussion protocol but I went back in the game soon after that.

That was the hardest I was ever hit in my life. Even the Varsity coaches that weren’t there even came up to me the following Monday saying, ‘I heard you took a big shot on Saturday. Hang in there.’ That’s how visibly I was knocked out. It became news.

Determined to not be tossed around like that again, I was constantly in the gym. The summer from my Sophomore year to my Junior year was a major turning point. I hit my growth spurt and earned a position on the Varsity team my Junior year.

I played Cornerback, grabbing 4 interceptions and many tackles that season. That offseason, my focus got even more intense, and I became Captain of the team. That team became my brothers on and off the field. We lifted weights and trained together. We were the life of the party wherever we went and played our hearts out on Saturdays or under Friday night lights.

Before every game, I gathered 40+ teammates around me and shouted, ‘What time is it?!’

They roared back, ‘Game time!’

I yelled again, ‘What time is it?!’

Louder this time: ‘Game time!!’

Then I’d add, ‘All my dogs in the house!’

They’d all bark back. Then we’d charge onto the field together, ready for battle.

Our team was full of characters. One day, we received a transfer student named Andre Anderson. He was 365 pounds and 6 feet 6 inches tall. Once he joined our team, we felt invincible. But Andre didn’t seem be inspired by football. That was unfortunate, because he was a top national DI recruit. It was rumored that Joe Paterno (the famed head coach of Penn State) was paying attention to him. He could have been in the NFL easily.

Not that our coaches didn’t try. They were always helping us learn how to be men. I distinctly remember Coach Willie Brusso, a soulful man with a booming voice on the field. He had this line that I will never forget, ‘Do it right, do it light. Do it wrong, do it long.’ His point was, don’t cut corners. Talk about a life lesson.

I poured my heart into my final season, but it was gone so fast. Our team was like a raptor pack equipped with driver’s licenses and sometimes we partied too much. As long as we were united there was no force that could stand against us. United we stood.

The beginning of that season took a dramatic turn when we suddenly found ourselves 20 miles away from the 9/11 attacks. We could see the smoke rising from Ground Zero during our first games. There were musical tributes, teammates with families impacted, and a deep confusion about how to focus on football at all. As I write this, I get chills. It’s hard to put into words what that time felt like, living so close to something that changed the world.

But the season went on. The weekly games came and went way too fast. We played our final game together on Thanksgiving. It was the end of an era and time to think about what came next for the first time in four years. Before that, everything was simple. Whenever we finished a grade, we knew what came next and that we’d see everyone again. But after Senior year in high school, it felt like a final goodbye.

One day after the season was over the Head Coach—Bill Johnson, found me in Center Hall, and said, ‘Hey Moose, I have good news. Pace University is interested in you.’ I had no idea he was working on my behalf in the background. As I look back I see God’s hand in directing my steps in so many ways like this.

That news changed every step after that. It meant that I could continue playing football. I was ecstatic, yet sad to leave my brothers and the high school era. But on to the next chapter of life I headed.

At that time I was selected to play in the Robeson Classic game in Newark, NJ that Spring. It was a collection of the top players from across the conference so I had a chance to meet some amazing athletes, some of which were also headed to Pace. Soon after that game, during the summer of 2002, I found myself driving across the New York state line, crossing over the Tappan Zee Bridge.

I arrived in Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, New York, because the football team’s practice facilities were located on Pace’s campus there. This is among the richest areas in the world. A lot of NYC wealth is parked in estates there.

I met my roomates, and began the life of a college football player. The weight training and the competition skyrocketed in intensity. We were up before dawn in the gym every day and we had triple sessions (three practices a day) in the summer heat. And film sessions at night.

Speaking of film sessions, the tradition at Pace was for the Freshman to perform Rookie Skits. My skit was about the biggest, baddest Senior on the team—a Captain named John McFadden. Every time someone fell asleep in the night film sessions, he would turn around and yell, ‘Wake up! Common guys!’ But I saw him also fall asleep on a few occasions. So my Rookie Skit was an imitation of him sleeping, while I wore shoulder pads under a 3XL size t-shirt. Everyone had a big laugh.

Entering Pace felt like my Freshman year at PV all over again. Except this time, the Seniors were twice as strong and fast. The strongest players were bench-pressing 225 pounds (a standard for testing strength) nearly 40 times. And the fastest players were running 4.4 second 40-yard dashes. We were all in the best shape of our lives, pushing each other to our limits.

It was also a mental battle, not just physical. My style of playing sports was always in playing ‘street ball’. This was learned from my early days playing football and basketball with my Dad and brother on the street. I would have to defend against my taller brother in any way possible. There were no playbooks.

But professional coaches spend enormous energy and time building playbooks. During warm ups in a hotel before a game, I knew I wasn’t starting, so I took the playbook and tossed it straight into the garbage, without giving it a second thought.

About ten minutes later, I heard a terrifying sound, ‘Everyone line the f*ck up!’ I nervously got in line. Suddenly, Coach I started screaming at the top of his lungs while he held a playbook in his hands: ‘Who threw this in the trash?!’

I had to step forward: ‘I did, I’m sorry Coach,’ I said apologetically.

Everyone knew that it was the best case scenario, because I was a Freshman and wasn’t starting or even a backup yet. I honestly didn’t need the playbook. Coach I gave me a look of disdain and we went on with the season.

I never worked harder than I did in that offseason, determined to play my Sophomore year. My role on the team began to take shape as a hard-hitting Strong Safety, as I was blitzing like mad in practice and tackling running backs for losses. So the Defensive Coordinator, who was Coach I, gave me the start in the first few games that year.

Then came the Iona game on September 20th, 2003. The game prior, my first time playing in a college game, I had a handful of tackles and two forced fumbles. So I earned the start against Iona. It was a close battle, and I was playing well. But then came ‘the play’ that ended the honeymoon.

I lined up opposite to a fast wide receiver. Heart pounding, he sprinted forward as I defended him man to man. He faked like he was going toward the sideline, and then pivoted hard back toward the middle of the field. I bit hard on the pivot, and I got burnt. That mistake lost us the game, 29-22.

Coach I may have forgiven me for the playbook incident, but never forgave me for that mistake. Not only did I lose the starting spot in the next game, he benched me for the next handful of games. During a subsequent practice session, I watched my replacement get screamed at by Coach I, and he used me as an example, ‘Don’t you remember Iona? That’s why he’s over there!’ As he pointed at me, the pitiful second string player on the practice squad.

It didn’t matter though. Later that season, doctors discovered I was bleeding internally and needed a major surgery. I was advised to stop playing football, so I hung up the cleats for good. I was crushed.

Losing football was a major turning point for me, and for the better. Stepping away freed up my time and energy, and I moved on with the same grit that got me through triple sessions. I redirected my energy to learning and leading. I turned my average GPA around from a 2.1 to a 3.1 and became president of Student Government, receiving a full scholarship.

A year after I graduated from Pace, I returned to the Briarcliff campus and I saw Coach I. He was storming away from the practice field red-faced, and cursing under his breath. I saw him and said, ‘What’s up, Coach?’ He kept racing forward in a rage and bitterly muttered, ‘Yeah…what’s up. Arghh.’ That was a full 4 years since ‘the play’.

My studies led to classes on Chinese language and history, and eventually to a decision that would have been unthinkable to the kid doing leg curls for Coach Parlavecchio: I moved to China, where I’d live for most of the next six years. I met my future wife there and was baptized, finding my faith along the way.

Football didn’t take me where I thought it would. It took me somewhere better.

Last week I woke up from a dream with my heart still pounding. For a moment I was back on that field, fifteen years old, surrounded by my brothers and coaches. Then the room came into focus and I was here in Colorado Springs, a long way from the Passaic Valley foothills, but still carrying everything those fields gave me. I thanked God for all of it. Even the doors that closed.

Disclaimer: This essay was fully written by me. However, I asked Claude for structural and grammatical suggestions and generated the images with ChatGPT.

Are We Con Artists?

One day I was invited to a friend’s house for lunch, and one of their kids asked me, “What do you do?” Before I could answer my friend cut in with an somewhat playful yet authoritative, “Dane is a con man.” He was kidding, but sounded certain.

Ouch, that made me think. After all, we should listen to our critics. He touched on a deeper truth—Marketing is an easy target for everything wrong with the corporate world, and we’re associated with lies and deceit.

I wasn’t offended because I’m used to it. For the past 13 years, I’ve been a Marketer in one of the most “anti-Marketing” industries on earth: Cybersecurity. I’ve literally seen emails where executives said, “Everyone hates Marketing.”

I talk about my experience in my book Through the Cyber Maze if you’re curious on what it’s really like. So I’m used to hearing easy digs like, “that’s just Marketing hype,” or “this isn’t just Marketing, this is real.”

Are We Mad?

The hit TV series Mad Men is an excellent series about the world of Marketing, lived out by a protagonist called Don Draper that works in 1960’s Madison Avenue in New York City, the epicenter of advertising.

Draper is a mysterious character who enters every scene with a deeper awareness of the truths around him. His big company clients are drawn to his truth-telling vibes about their products and markets. When he comes up with an ad idea, they sell more products. He had a classic line, “All advertising is about one thing, happiness.”

Yet happiness is what seems to elude him. Avoiding his perfect wife, kids, and white-picket home in the suburbs, Draper’s personal life falls apart in marriage after marriage. The theme is that he is great at describing happiness, but can’t find the courage to keep it for himself. He seeks attention from women around him. He can’t help himself.

The point is that Marketers are often attention seekers. Putting on my Carl Jung hat, Draper manifests his inner need for attention by helping others get attention.

I’ll save that rabbit hole for another essay. I think it’s also relevant that the show’s tagline is, “Where the truth lies”. That’s pretty telling.

Marketing. A History.

Marketing isn’t new. Across history, trade has always existed: sellers, buyers, markets, and a medium of exchange. If you went back 2,000 years, you would find products in stalls on the roads of ancient Rome, with merchants selling spices, sandals, and jars.

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These merchants were probably doing their own Marketing work, displaying their products on shelves, setting prices, checking into competitors down the road, and learning how to speak the language of value.

“These sandals were built from a rare wood imported from India,” a seller might have said to a wealthy Roman senator. That’s Marketing.

Fast forward 2,000 years to the reality today. If you ask the American Marketing Association, Marketing is defined as:

The activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

The Messenger within Marketing

The keyword in that AMA definition is “offerings”. Some offerings are more complex than others. For example, Technology offerings (products) have become highly complex, so Messengers are required to translate them into why customers should care.

This is my job. I’m a Messenger, and no, I’m not a ‘con man’, thank you very much.

Messaging has been my contribution to society for the past 13 years, with a focus on Cybersecurity markets. I’m a storyteller that gets paid by Fortune 500’s and startups to explain what they offer.

A Messenger’s job is to answer the, “What do we say?” question, and this function is wrapped under the title Product Marketing Manager (PMM). Fancy titles aside, we are “Messengers,” period. When I say that I’m a “Product Marketer”, I’m really just saying, “I’m a Messenger”.

Marketing Doesn’t Admit It

But nobody ever told me I was a Messenger. I had to figure that out through experience. My first gig in Cybersecurity was in Inside Sales at a company called Comodo, where I had the job of cold calling 120 prospects a day. I had a desire to move into Marketing, so I asked the CEO for a transfer, and he agreed.

My nickname soon became, “DDI” which was short for “Dane Does It”. I was doing everything I was asked to do, except Messaging. I didn’t even understand that it mattered at that time.

Then I entered greener pastures to work for a company called Optiv and I decided to lean into the Product Marketing craft, still not realizing what Messaging was. I attended a training class called “Pragmatic Marketing” to try and learn the ropes. They barely talked about Messaging. The instructor even handed out this chart with 30+ functional boxes on it, and the terms Messaging or Narrative aren’t even included on it.

So I went back to the office, and took each box as “my responsibility” and tried to implement them. I burned out because I overengineered my role. Not very pragmatic.

Messaging Pain

After Optiv, I’ve since learned that in larger companies, Messaging is in fact a Marketing superpower. There’s a place for storytellers. I’ve seen multi-billion dollar portfolios with messages layered on top of messages. I call this the Messaging Pain Hierarchy.

I often joke that messaging is spelled MESS-AGING, because it’s a total MESS, and then you start AGING.

Messaging is a very difficult role to play in Marketing. The first problem is that we usually deliver what’s called a Messaging Brief. This is meant to be the source of truth document.

But ‘nobody reads it’ and it gets outdated the second its published, because markets change every day. It’s like buying a new car and watching the value drop right when you drive off the lot.

And I’ve done these briefs to perfection.

In one case, I built a messaging brief that was 16 pages, tested with 300 users, and presented to 4 analyst firms over the course of 4 months. It was probably the most intense messaging exercise I’ve ever gone through.

But in the end, all I ended up doing was listing a ton of facts about a portfolio of products. I overdid it. I forgot the old saying, “keep it simple stupid” or KISS.

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The Hero’s Journey

So I began studying the principles of messaging. I researched every book I could find on the the craft. That’s when I began learning about Joseph Campbell and his epic work, “A Hero With a Thousand Faces”, where he introduces the Hero’s Journey.

The concept is simple. To explain it, I’ll use an example from one of my favorite movies—The Hobbit.

A hero (Bilbo) faces a Call to Adventure (Gandalf knocking), which they decline (Bilbo says no). Then they eventually accept the challenge (Bilbo runs to catch up with the dwarves), and a Mentor (Gandalf) guides them as they battle Tests (Smeagol’s riddles) and Enemies (Dragon, Spiders, Goblins, Orcs) and eventually return home as a hero (returns to Shire with treasure chest).

Every great story follows this same pattern.

Building a StoryBrand’s author Donald Miller also uses these principles and applies them to the current world of Marketing. Between these two books, I realized that the goal isn’t to list a ton of facts about my products. It’s about constructing a story that conveys a message—a narrative.

This was a major turning point in my career as a Messenger, and it made me want to get better at it. And this is where I also decided I wanted to teach this to others and help others deploy narrative more scientifically.

Narrative Generation for Product Marketers

All I’ve learned can be simplified into a five step narrative generation process for marketing technology products:

1. Call to Adventure (WHY CHANGE): Customer’s world shifts.

2. The Quest (TODAY’S REALITY): Customer encounters challenges and limits.

3. The Guide (THE NEW WAY): Your product guides them to action.

4. The Transformation (NEW CAPABILITIES): The customer succeeds.

5. The Outcome (NEW REALITY): Customer finds lasting value.

Anytime I’m asked for messaging, I use this process. Whether it’s a major conference keynote, or a major launch, I think about my company’s products in terms of a narrative, instead of listing facts.

The hard part is sharing the narrative to enable a ‘team of teams’. A Team of Teams is a concept from General Stanley McChrystal, where he talks about his experience in war fighting scenarios. He had to provide a shared mission, that many different teams could use to drive actions. Today, your AI agents are on your “team”, and it’s critical to give them this this guidance.

A Shared Narrative is vital. It’s the lifeblood of effective Marketing.

The NTA Fish

I distill this into a framework called Narrative to Audience (NTA). NTA has always existed, this is just my spin on it. I’m putting a definition and simpler system behind it, to help Messengers simplify life and focus on creating a Shared Narrative. (I’m using a fish because I love fly fishing of course.)

All the experts use this. Tony Robbins recently sat on the world’s major podcasts (search YouTube for his name and look at the time frame of late 2025). It was a masterclass in Shared Narrative. He told the same story, just in different formats, styles, and with different interviewers. And each podcast invited the audience to participate in Tony’s free event in late January, which was the beginning of his sales funnel.

Messengers that work in Marketing need to focus on creating a powerful narrative, and work as a team to distribute that narrative to your audience. That’s it. That’s the job. It always has been that way, always will be.

Share Dane's Narratives

Creating Narrly.AI

I built Narrly.AI to help others apply this too. Narrly is a narrative-to-audience platform that takes everything I just described and codifies it into an app that you can use for free.

It uses the storytelling techniques from Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and connects the Cyber PMM app to distribute the narrative to your audience.

Free Narrative to Audience Presentation

I also recorded a presentation to describe how I think about this. I walk through Narrative to Audience (NTA) — a narrative-first system for bringing products to market with clarity instead of chaos. Here it is:

This presentation covers:
• Why product marketing became fragmented and exhausting
• Why messaging collapses at scale
• How narrative (not frameworks) reconnects products to real audiences
• A one-page storytelling model to replace 16-page messaging briefs
• Where AI helps — and where it absolutely doesn’t

📌 Chapters (optional):
00:00 Introduction to Narrative to Audience (NTA)
01:01 The Messy State of Product Marketing
01:16 Challenges Faced by Product Marketers
02:33 Personal Anecdotes and Lessons Learned
05:26 The Importance of Messaging
07:33 Building Effective Narratives
11:04 The Reality of Messaging Briefs
23:56 Introducing the NTA Framework
28:25 Steps to Create a Compelling Narrative
31:08 Implementing the NTA Framework
37:40 Conclusion and Call to Action

Try Narrly for Free

In closing, I invite you to try Narrly.AI, tear it apart and send me your honest feedback. If you do provide feedback on your experience, I’m offering a year of Pro access (a $250 value).

Conclusion

So no, Marketers aren’t con artists or mad. Many of us are messengers that tell the audience the truth about our products. We enable the teams around us with a shared narrative. When the narrative is clear, everything else follows. That’s the job. Always has been.

The AI revolution reminds me of an ancient Biblical story — the Tower of Babel.

If you’re unaware of this story, I asked ChatGPT for a summary (see what I did there):

According to the Book of Genesis, humanity once spoke one language. United and ambitious, they decided to build a city with a massive tower reaching the heavens—to make a name for themselves and prevent being scattered.

God saw this as dangerous pride and centralized power. To stop it, He confused their language, so they could no longer understand one another. The project collapsed. People scattered across the earth, forming different nations and languages.

Babel comes from a word meaning confusion.

As the saying goes, “history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.”

After all, AI is a concerted effort by humanity to remove language barriers to create an integrated intelligence system (a proverbial tower).

Throughout this essay, I’ll refer to this moment as a ‘Tower of Bubbles’ — a system built on shared narrative and capital ahead of proven returns.

1929

is a financial journalist and co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box and a bestselling author. And he just published a book. It’s called 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History​​.

It’s about the lead-up to the 1929 crash and its aftermath in the era that helped trigger the Great Depression.

The reason this book is flying off shelves is because the 2020’s look eerily similar to where we were a century ago in the 1920’s, when capitalism hit a peak. It feels like we’re living through the Roaring 20’s all over again.

If you’re unfamiliar with that period of time, here’s a ChatGPT provided summary for you:

The Roaring 20s marked a high-water moment for peak capitalism: mass production met mass consumption, credit expanded, and optimism turned into leverage. Stock speculation, consumer debt, and financial engineering surged faster than real productivity, creating the illusion of endless growth. Wealth concentrated, warning signals were ignored, and markets began pricing perfection—until the system’s fragility was exposed at the decade’s end.

Sound familiar? It’s nearly a carbon copy of where we are today when it comes to the AI boom.

Are We in a Bubble Today?

Sorkin says, “It’s hard to say we’re not in a bubble of some sort, the question is always, when is the bubble going to pop?”.

Take a look at his interview with 60 Minutes recently (start at 2:32). He says the economy is being artificially (pun intended) “propped up” by the AI boom and that “it’s either a Gold Rush or a Sugar Rush and we won’t know for a couple of years which one it is.”

His in depth study of the Roaring 20’s found the following required elements prior to the Great Depression: increasing market speculation + increasing debt + investment democratization - consumer guardrails = the situation just before 1929.

We have those same elements in place today. Larry Fink, Chairman of the world’s largest investment manager, Blackrock, wrote a letter to investors titled “the democratization of investing”. In it, he begins with this admission: everyone he talks to is “more anxious about the economy than any time in recent memory.”

Enter Michael Burry and the ROIC Pin

Enter .

He has shorted Nvidia and Palantir, clearly indicating where he stands on the matter. In his Substack he writes about how the bubble popping will depend on whether AI delivers what he calls the “measure of all measures” — ROIC (Return on Invested Capital).

In other words, the trillions of dollars being spent on capital expenditures (chips, GPUs, data centers) has to show ROI at some point.

Are Sorkin and Burry both wrong? I mean, how much are we spending on AI anyway? How bad could this be? Well, Goldman Sachs estimates global AI-related infrastructure spending could reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030.

And it’s continuing in 2026. Meta’s projected total 2026 AI infrastructure spending (CapEx) amount is between $115 billion and $135 billion.

Okay, so what? I mean, CapEx investment is a good thing. Especially since it should lead to more ROI right? This is where the story starts to take a dark turn. It turns out that sales-to-capex keeps shrinking.

I thought it necessary to amplify this point with a Star Wars meme.

Is AI CapEx Propping Up Markets?

Two key areas are receiving the AI CapEx investments, which are propping up overall economic growth.

First, is startups. This funding surged to roughly $192.7 billion in 2025, marking a new global high and representing more than half of all VC dollars deployed (PitchBook and Bloomberg).

Next is AI-related data centers. Sorkin points out a recent report from Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard, which says if spending on AI-related data centers went away, US growth would have been flat in 1H 2025 (0.1% as of Oct. 2025).

Rising tides lift all boats but some boats are rising higher than others. AI-linked stocks as a group have outperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin (over 136 % relative gain) over the past five years.

It’s been a great run for “Mag 7” shares (AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, AMZN, GOOGL, META, TSLA), and for indexes as a whole (e.g. in VTI, QQQ, SPY). In 2025 the S&P 500 set ~38 record highs across the full year (2024 saw 57).

The Lift Hill

VTI is an aggregate view of nearly every publicly traded U.S. company. An investor would have doubled their money since 2020 simply by parking it in VTI.

The linear trend line from 2002 to today has been a “lift hill”. A lift hill is that slow click-click-click climb that pulls the coaster up to its highest point. Before the big drop.

Why does spending continue?

This is a result of an “AI Innovator’s Dilemma”. Existing industries must spend on AI, or risk being disrupted by it. That’s the dilemma, “Do we spend on CapEx when the market is showing revenue, or do we spend now before it’s too late?”

This is the dilemma with AI CapEx. Meta announces $135 billion in CapEx, so Google does the same, so Microsoft does the same, so Amazon does the same, and on and on. Meanwhile, Nvidia and TSMC and their suppliers pile up cash.

Michael Burry tells a story from Warren Buffet in his recent conversation with and in . The story is about two department stores on opposite sides of a street. One store installs an escalator, so the competitor across the street says, “I better do the same.” They both made a huge CapEx investment only to establish equal footing. So nobody wins.

The Tower of Bubbles

In the case of AI, the “escalators” are represented by the shared narrative that investing in AI infrastructure will create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), leading to a prosperous society for all to share in. Once built, we’ll have the “option to work” because AGI will be doing everything for us with the only limits being compute and energy.

This narrative is embodied in what I’m calling a Tower of Bubbles, made up of every entity involved in the current post-pandemic AI boom cycle.

The “bubbles” that make up the tower are any asset or enterprise whose valuation is sustained more by narrative and expectation than by current or plausibly achievable return on invested capital (ROIC).

Let’s define AGI:

How I Define AGI (without help from AI): the widespread adoption of AI systems that are able to think and act like humans at every layer of society.

How ChatGPT Defines AGI: AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is an AI system that can learn, reason, and apply knowledge across any domain at a level comparable to a capable human—without being retrained for each new task.

A group of ~100 global AI leaders are spreading this AGI narrative on podcasts, at Davos, and at an endless number of summits. They are the world’s heroes. I’m glued to everything Jensen Huang says; he’s truly inspirational. But I have to remind myself that it’s entirely in his interest for AI infrastructure spending to continue, which is perhaps why he’s making so many public appearances.

The Collapse

If Sorkin is correct, we’re living in a bubble and if Burry is correct, ROIC will be the “pin” that pops it.

When it happens, the bigger bubbles (Mag 7, AI-linked orgs, Major Investors) will likely survive through bailouts (AI now seen as national security) or massive corrections to valuations. A percentage may be allowed to dissolve to set an example like Bear Stearns in 2008.

The tiny bubbles (the thousands of AI startups) that are currently receiving a record amount of funding will lose funding and mostly go bankrupt with talent and IP being absorbed by the remaining survivors.

Banks, asset managers, 401K’s, and pension funds will be hit hard in the correction. This is where the biggest societal risk will lie: populism and mass unemployment. This could trigger the government to print more money for stimulus checks on top of bailouts, setting the stage for inflationary effects.

How to Prepare

I didn’t buy a bunker and I’m not “prepping” as I write this. I’m living life and still invest in markets. But even the world’s most respected investor, Warren Buffet, is strategically stockpiling cash. I think that might be the best indicator of all in this story.

And I’m doing the same. Even if it’s saving $25 a week, just prepare some ammo. That doesn’t mean, “We’re doomed. Give up.” It simply means, “Be ready.” The correction will be a buying opportunity.

Elon Musk’s mindset shift is helpful here: it’s better to be an optimist and wrong, than a pessimist and right. He says there will be more AI-fueled robots and cars than people, which requires institutional investment through big players like Blackrock. Perhaps this is why Larry Fink was on stage with Elon at Davos last week?

AI infrastructure will still move forward as the new digital intelligence infrastructure. The work on AI must continue in the interests of economic and national resilience. The surviving AI-linked companies will become a great investment opportunity, especially assuming they will be trading at amazing discounts, like Amazon was after the dot com bust.

And I’m personally excited for the potential of an AI future. From interactions with Optimus robots, to flying cars, to AI headsets—sign me up as a future early adopter of all of these technologies.

But for any of this to work, the prosperity of AI will need to be shared. Nobody could have stopped the spread of electricity after it was invented. The genie’s out of the bottle with AI. Yet how each one of us chooses to use “the electricity” is up to us. We are individually responsible for transforming the utility into societal value.

Closing

So be ready for the opportunity in the tower collapse. Also be ready for the collapse NOT to happen on your watch. Worst case, you will save some cash for a crash that doesn’t happen.

A final reminder. This is all natural. Our economic system is literally built on the idea that we have to destroy the old to create the new. Yes, there will be casualties as the economy and society restructures.

In 1942, Joseph Schumpeter called this dynamic “creative destruction”.

Joseph Schumpeter introduced “creative destruction” most clearly in his 1942 book:

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

That’s where he defines capitalism as an evolutionary process that constantly destroys the old while creating the new—industries, firms, jobs, even social structures.

I close with Sorkin’s 60 Minutes interview, where he’s asked about the timing of all this, because that’s the hardest part to predict. He states, “It’s hard to know how things get out of control. When confidence disappears, it happens like this.” As he says “this”, he snaps his fingers.

The interviewer then asks, “Do you think that we will have a crash?” He confidently replies, “We will have a crash, I just can’t tell you when.”

Like the Tower of Babel, LLMs will disperse into their own sovereign AI direction when the Tower of Bubbles collapses, and the great reset will begin.

I’m in the eye of the AI storm. I’m a mid-career, white collar tech industry employee and an early adopter of AI. I went all-in from the time ChatGPT was launched just over 3 years ago.

When I started using it, it was like the first hit of a drug. Once I got my first dose, I went back to ChatGPT like, “Got any more of that Chat?” And the more I used it, the more addicted I became.

Using AI has proved that the more I can do, the more I feel obligated to do.

Fast forward to today, I’m beyond an overdose. It’s been a 3-year long AI binge. I use it so much that my wife started calling me “The Robot”.

The other day I used 5 LLMs in a single day. I used ChatGPT, Grok, Meta, Claude, Gemini and my employer’s internal LLMs. I also use apps for every creative task imaginable, like Canva, Runway, and Descript. And I now build my own apps and agents with Cursor.

These past few years I’ve increased my productivity in ways that I never dreamed possible. That’s all great, but something feels off, and it’s not just me.

The AI Gnaw Condition

Like for many AI power users, the constant pressure to task AI has left me unfulfilled and in a state of low grade burnout. Tony Robbins would say that I’m facing the dilemma of achievement vs. fulfillment. There’s a big difference, he’d say.

Here’s how I sum it up: AI has made me think that I could, and therefore should, be doing more all the time.

I call this condition the AI Gnaw, defined in my personal experience as (and with a little help from ChatGPT):

The AI Gnaw Effect: a persistent psychological pressure felt by AI power users—the anxiety that if you could generate more tasks for AI, you should.

, the co-founder of Anthropic, has recently expressed a similar sentiment:

Here we have one of the main figures in AI, talking about the same gnawing feeling. He feels guilt when he hasn’t “tasked some AI system to do work”. Bingo. That’s it.

So if I feel The Gnaw, and Jack feels The Gnaw, then maybe you do too? Perhaps it’s a societal condition many are suffering from? Let’s explore that.

The Gnaw is a generative condition responsible for massive energy and GPU usage increase. Every GPU we task triggers more energy used by Generative AI.

It reminds me of an old 1950’s movie called The Blob (later redone in the 80’s). Set in a small American town, a mysterious meteor crashes nearby. Inside it: a gelatinous, living organism—the Blob. At first it’s small and slow. But every person it absorbs makes it bigger, faster, and smarter.

Replace the Task, not the Purpose

The Gnaw is similar to The Blob, getting faster and smarter as it consumes every AI power user in its path. We early adopters quickly surrendered to it, realizing that it’s faster and smarter than we are. Instead of resisting, we outsourced our energy and cognitive load to it.

And why not? To us, it’s like the progression from walking to biking to driving. By surrendering to The Gnaw, we learned to stop trying to be a “genius”. Instead, we are becoming a “genius at tasking AI”.

But tasking AI has come with a cost. When we replaced our Tasks with AI, an addiction started. Like The Blob expanding, The Gnaw created a constant urge to replace every Task with AI. This began exposing Purpose. Because when Tasks collapse, Purpose is exposed.

To illustrate Tasks vs. Purpose, I like to use the meme where the wheel was invented. Everyone is running around pulling boxes of rocks, trying to justify their Tasks not realizing that a wheel would serve the same Purpose, just faster and more efficiently.

Jensen Huang is often asked about how AI will destroy jobs. He usually responds with, “AI will replace the Task not the Purpose”.

He illustrates with this example: “If you observed me working, you would think that I’m a Typist. That’s the Task I do. AI can replace that Task. But it can’t replace my Purpose, to lead Nvidia.”

So if your Purpose is the Task, The Gnaw will consume you.

Quick Personal Example

Take my current day job for example. My inputs are 1) requests to explain the products my company sells, and 2) requests from execs to explain our products to an audience.

I perform a variety of Tasks to deliver outputs like messaging docs, presentations, event plans, videos, and web pages. This is the “box of rocks” that I’ve been pulling around for over 15 years. I take Time to work on Tasks like writing documents, building presentations, presenting to audiences, and joining calls.

The outputs of these Tasks include more clicks on compelling web pages, better keynotes that drive action at events, and more customers in our Sales pipeline. All of this leads to more revenue, more profit, and more shareholder value. I am an instrument of the capitalist market system.

The Tasks to deliver those outputs can now be “carried by the wheels” of AI. I would be a fool not to use those wheels. AI doesn’t autonomously do them yet, so I can still add value to my employer by managing AI. My Purpose is no longer doing the Task, it’s tasking AI.

So The Gnaw is absorbing my Tasks day by day. And good riddance. Less work for me. But I can see why many white collar workers are experiencing existential dread. Layoffs are creating panic about someone’s role being found out as “the Task”.

It’s starting to look like the movie “Office Space” when Corporate is looking into what people in the office actually do. In an iconic scene, two consultants (“the Bobs”) are brought in to evaluate staff. They sit employees down one by one and ask the classic line:

“So… what would you say you do here?”

This. This is what’s happening across all of Corporate America. AI Consultants are the new Bobs, as The Gnaw is growing.

AI native startups are proving that more employees aren’t the answer to revenue growth. They are growing faster and with more revenue per employee than ever recorded. It’s the new North Star — using AI to increase revenue per employee.

2025 ushered in the “year of Agentic AI” as Jensen Huang announced in January last year. He was right. I think 2026 is the year where we’ll see more resistance and cynicism with AI. These are natural growing pains.

Should we stop The Gnaw before it’s too late? I don’t think we can, or should. This is the nature of economics.

In 1942, Joseph Schumpeter called this dynamic “creative destruction”. I prompted AI for a better definition and here is what it generated in 2 seconds:

Joseph Schumpeter introduced “creative destruction” most clearly in his 1942 book:

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

That’s where he defines capitalism as an evolutionary process that constantly destroys the old while creating the new—industries, firms, jobs, even social structures.

The AI Gnaw is just an evolutionary economic process. In this definition, you’re either “creating the new”, or you’re the “old being destroyed”. Take your pick.

Surviving The Gnaw

In this Gnaw world, there are one of two sides you will find yourself on—you’re either the “old being destroyed” as the Task. Or you are “creating the new” and managing AI to replace the Task.

If you’re “the Task”, you’re like the Typist in Jensen Huang’s earlier example. It’s time to begin using AI to type. Just accept that AI is better, figure out how to do your job with AI, and then do it.

And avoid trying to use “strategic incompetence” defined as:

Strategic incompetence is the deliberate choice to appear bad at something in order to avoid responsibility, effort, or accountability—while still benefiting from the outcome.

There’s no excuse to not learn AI. It’s the easiest technology to learn and use, ever. All you have to do is talk to it. If you don’t get it, start with “I don’t understand how to use AI, can you help me get started?”

If you’re an AI power user obsessed with its implementation, you’re more at risk from burnout than from being replaced. But you also need to accept that you will never run out of Tasks you can automate with AI. Treat AI as something you manage in order to gain Time, and then use that Time wisely.

This is where we now turn our attention.

AI Managers Need a New Contract

You might think, sure, using AI is easy, but managing AI hasn’t reduced my workload and given me more time. And you’d be right. Of all things I’m doing with AI, saving time is not one of them. But that’s been my choice.

40% of white collar workers agree (see below WSJ article). An outdated contract still uses Time as the only measure of efficiency. But Time is only one input. This article’s graph misses those factors. Let’s analyze this a bit more.

A new contract is needed that measures our efficiency with new factors—Energy and Cognitive Load—instead of only Time. Let’s dive in and give this a shot.

Existing Contract

Here’s what the existing/old employer contract looks like in reality. A white collar worker’s efficiency is a function of how much Time we take to complete Tasks that lead to Valuable Outputs. The Tasks are performed using Energy and Cognitive Load. The more experience we have, the better we are at managing our Energy and Cognitive Load.

If it was written as a formula it might look something like this:.

Worker Efficiency = Valuable Output ÷ (Worker Time x Worker Energy + Worker Cognitive Load)

New Contract

In the new contract equation Workers use Time to manage AI to perform the same Tasks, so AI absorbs the Energy and Cognitive Load elements. See how they disappear in the new formula:

Worker (Manager of AI) Efficiency = Valuable Output ÷ Worker Time (To Manage AI)

In this contract Workers are measured based on the Time it takes me to manage AI. Experience is no longer a limiting factor because AI is trained on experience to deliver Valuable Outputs perfectly.

Human experience still matters though because AI isn’t flawless (hallucinations, poisoning, unoriginal ideas). This is why all companies still insist on “human in the loop”.

This is also why managers of AI are still needed. In my line of work, not having a human in the loop would be like allowing an autonomous agent to generate and publish messaging to a website without review. That’s just not happening any time soon.

And this is why everyone keeps saying, “you won’t lose your job to AI, you’ll lose your job to someone who uses AI.” Exactly right.

Fighting The Gnaw

In conclusion, ending The Gnaw means embracing AI to gain Time. Accept AI’s capacity to replace your Tasks, and begin to manage it to deliver Valuable Outputs. Then use the Time you gain wisely.

That’s the new contract. We can finally stop thinking about work in terms of “40 hours per week” thinking. Think in terms of Valuable Outputs instead of just Time as the only measure of your efficiency. Outsource the Energy and Cognitive Load to GPUs.

Employers—you can reward your star AI managers with the most important human resource—Time. That’s what we want the most.

Maybe this is why Elon Musk thinks we’re heading toward a future where “work will be optional”. I’m not banking on that outcome. But by managing AI wisely, I gain Time that I can choose to spend on soul-enriching Tasks.

I choose to use my Time to unplug from The Gnaw—from anything requiring GPUs to function. For me, that means going outdoors, writing essays like this, and spending time with loved ones. These are my SPUs—Soul Processing Units.

AI, when managed well, provides me with Time to spend on what matters most. That’s how I will fight The Gnaw.

I may be romanticizing ‘vibe coding’ a bit, but for some of us older folks, it’s opened doors that were shut for a long time. Let me explain. Creating an app had been a dream of mine for 20 years.

As far back as 2006, when Facebook was still a new thing, I sat in a McDonald’s in China sketching app ideas with a classmate of mine from Germany. He and I sat there imagining all kinds of futures.

But for whatever set of reasons, I lost touch with that dream. I tucked away the possibility in some dusty chest in my brain’s attic, like the one Clark Griswold discovered in the Christmas Vacation movie.

Fast forward to today. I just deployed my first app to production—Narrly.AI. The entire process, from coding to the website, was done without hiring or outsourcing a single task. (Sure, the tools I used are hosted elsewhere so technically that’s like outsourcing. Ok, fine, you got me there.) But in reality I am able to directly control the full loop.

I’m not trying to gloat. The reality is that the app is still mostly unused and the odds are against it winning any clicks in today’s attention economy. I haven’t (and don’t plan to) quit my day job any time soon, and still have a ton to learn. It was a total pain to get the app deployed—it took 8 months of random dev sessions between work and life priorities.

I also took a two month detour building prototypes in Replit and bolt.new. Then ChatGPT recommended that I go all-in on Cursor. I took the bait. It was the tool I needed for the job. Save yourself the time and just start there. This was the first time I truly understood what an application was made of—it’s really just a folder composed of files (.js, .json, .ts, etc.).

My goal was to create an app for my brand Cyber PMM but I spent a lot of time learning how to build. I didn’t follow a plan and was all over the place. I began building 3-4 apps at once and lost focus. Running all three of environments was chaotic, yet blissful. I was deep into the weeds, prompting Cursor chats with dozens of tabs open, testing, learning and building. I found my new happy place.

Yet it all seemed theoretical and “classroom-ish”. I wanted more than just a set of half-baked apps that I never shared externally. I needed to deploy something in public. So I began to execute against that objective. I would aim to deploy an app in 2025.

My first major detour was attempting to fine-tune an LLM based on a custom dataset. I ended up using a mix of HuggingFace, Mistral, Llama, and Google Colab, PyTorch, and Python. I finally tuned and hosted a model, but it needed to “stay warm” and that meant more costs. Users need speed. Reality set in.

I went back to the drawing board learning from failure. All along I was getting comfortable in Cursor. I uncovered the mysteries of the AI world. I was getting closer to deployment. It was like that image of the gold miner turning away in the tunnel just before a big discovery.

I went with a Fireworks-hosted API integration with OpenAI’s newly released (at the time) model GPT-OSS-120B. That release was perfect timing, because this open source model allowed me to LLM functionality into my app with speed and scale. I integrated the model and began building the app skeleton.

Then came my Mad Scientist phase. I was in my basement, privately laughing to myself out loud one minute while shouting curses at ChatGPT the next. It went on like this for a few months. Family and friends were getting concerned. Yet I pressed the gas even more.

It was hard to stay focused. I had two apps in development and something had to give. Either I would fail at both or one would succeed. Instead, I built a merged application that used a Platform + App model. Narrly is the platform, and Cyber PMM is the first app on the platform.

I finally had the right formula. Simplicity arrives after a ton of complexity. Build. Fail. Rebuild. Build. Fail. Rebuild.

The app started to get “good enough” and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I could have spent years building the perfect product, or I could release what I had. Besides, I was fully intent on hitting my 2025 release target, and December was approaching fast. I refined focus, cut away any extra features, and prepared to ship.

One fine December morning, after 8 months of effort, I quietly shipped the app. I didn’t announce it, just kept it quiet and saw a 20 year old dream take shape. My wife and I celebrated. I finally did it. I released my first app.

No matter if the app succeeds or not, I now have the formula of tools and processes for building apps with AI efficiently. And I’m sharing it with you.

10 Things to Know Before Building Your Own App

Here’s what you need to understand before you start on your own dev journey:

1. Release the bare minimum. The first public release lays the infrastructure for future development. Getting a basic app shipped is harder than it sounds, even with AI. Design a minimal viable product (MVP)—in other words what’s the least amount of functionality it can have at launch? Just focus efforts there, and if you get new module or feature ideas, put them on a list somewhere for later.

2. Go with Cursor. I used Cursor for all my integrated development environment (IDE) needs. It’s only $20 per month to use. I’ve thrown a TON of prompts at it across multiple apps, and it never failed to deliver. There were a few times where was slow, but 95% of the time it processed my prompts and coded on my behalf.

3. Get a Powerful Machine. Hardware is a factor you can control. I invested in a Mac Studio and never had a glitch. No forced restarts, apps don’t crash, and everything works (Hint: it’s the opposite of Windows machines). It’s a variable you can control. I’m now setting up a DGX Spark with a Blackwell chip inside for my next development phase and beyond excited.

4. Use LLM APIs Where You Can vs. Fine-Tuning. My major app detour was trying to fine-tune and host my own model. Just take the shortcut for your first app deployment. Besides, you need to get the foundational app concept proven first, then down the road if you want to work on a model swap, you can invest your time there.

5. Use Firebase for Auth, Data Storage and Security: Avoid any user data being stored on your machine at all costs. By integrating with Firebase, you can easily and quite affordably host all user data securely. Also, Firebase allows your users to “Sign in with Google” which saves a lot of hassle when trying to manually create profiles.

6. Master the Language of Prompting. Prompting is the fuel for Cursor. Knowing how to talk to AI is a massive skill in this process. Nearly everything will be solved with the right prompt. I’ve learned techniques like, “Just investigate this issue - don’t implement any changes yet.” This is a way to ensure Cursor doesn’t mess things up, which it will do if you are wily with your prompting.

7. Push Your AI to Greatness. Sometimes you need to get pushy with AI. Ask it, “Is that really the best you can do?” It works wonders. Sometimes AI will limit itself and you need to understand how to push it. Add to your prompts, “Use the best available modern techniques for formatting tables here - make sure it’s the best user experience that’s ever existed.” Don’t limit your AI.

8. Get Used to GitHub. Make sure you establish a Github account so that your files can be privately hosted there while you’re building. It’s free, and not doing this can lead to disaster. One time I lost a major feature after I accidentally overwrote a file and it couldn’t be recovered. I didn’t understand how to push to Github yet, a mistake you can avoid by continually pushing your app to Git. Just get used to telling Cursor, “push to Git.”

9. Use Vercel for Hosting. I use Vercel to host my apps and now use it for a website. This eliminates the need for Wordpress. It’s amazing how fast you can push updates to deployment from your local machine to public consumption. For example if I change a logo file in a folder using Cursor, I simply say “Push to Git.” Then Vercel receives the Git update. This is the Cursor — Git — Vercel chain.

10. Use Canva for Your Logos and Custom Graphics. Just like your developing and shipping your own app, you can handle design too. With a Canva subscription, I eliminated the need for a design agency, the shadyness of using Fiverr, and any other expenses.

I hope this is helpful for you. As I continue to build out apps and grow Narrly.AI, I’ll share more of what I’m learning along the journey here at Dane’s Newsletter. Be sure to subscribe to keep up with what I’m building and learning.

And I’m open to questions so feel free to message me on Substack if you want to chat. Or drop in a comment to share your dev journey if you have had a similar experience.

Keep creating,

Dane

I love the entire experience, as it always brings a sense of adventure and discovery. 2025 was even more special. We reviewed the program and saw that Ken Burns was in town, launching The American Revolution series. I instantly knew that was the film I wanted to see most. I thought it would surely be in line with his other greats such as the Civil War series, Thomas Jefferson series, and many others.

Speaking of Thomas Jefferson, just a few weeks after our experience in Telluride, we visited Monticello in Virginia. I had a chance to tour Jefferson’s home and it turned out that Ken Burns was also there in 2025, so that was another point of connection between this experience and the overall adventure. It’s weird how things come together. You can hear the tour guide in this video as he mentions how Ken Burns was in attendance at the July 4th celebrations that year.

Anyway, I love watching Ken Burns’ documentaries because they always educate and reveal things in way a history buff like me can’t get out of a thick book. In fact, the historians who write the books I read are usually featured for much of his documentaries, explaining battles, figures, and locations in detail. I could spend a decade reading dozens of their books and would never get to the overall level of combined understanding that these long documentary series provide visually.

Random idea - maybe AI will allow us to put books into a chat, and generate a Ken Burns style documentary, but we’re not there yet!

I definitely didn’t expect that I’d meet Ken Burns—a producer who has influenced me quite a bit through his documentaries over the past few decades. One of which was the National Parks: America’s Best Idea documentary, which partly inspired my passion for touring our national parks.

But that’s what happened. After fly fishing a local river that morning, we coordinated our entire plan that Saturday around waiting in line to be the first group allowed entrance into the Masonic Hall Theatre (calm down conspiracy theorists). We stood in the baking high-elevation sun for about an hour, then finally the velvet ropes were removed, and we were allowed in. Thus began our adventurous ascent up the creaky, Victorian-era stairwell.

As we walked into the musty theater, I began thinking, “wait, he might actually be here. I hope I can meet him.” Sure enough, before they played Part 3 of the 6-part series, up walked Ken Burns to the front, and he began educating us about the behind the scenes dynamics of the documentary IN PERSON. Very cool experience.

Here’s his edited intro:

After the documentary ended, I needed to make a restroom stop. As I was about to open the door, I heard a group walking behind me. I turned around and saw it was him. This was my opportunity. I introduced myself and called my wife over.

The gist of our conversation:

“Hi Mr. Burns - I’m Dane, thank you for the film today and all your others. Especially the one on the National Parks.” as I shook his hand.

He kindly responded, “Thanks, nice to meet you!”

I went on, “In fact, my wife and I…” as I waved her into to the conversation, “we have visited over 55 National Parks so far.”

“That’s great!…” he proceeded to explain how a colleague of his who worked on that series was also in his group that day.

I kept going, “we were supposed to visit Isle Royale this year but didn’t reserve the boat ride in time so we’ll get it next year,” as I looked down in park logistics shame.

He chuckled and responded joyfully with a brief story on how there is an island within island on the island of Isle Royale. He also took me off guard when he pronounced it “Royal” (as in Royal-ty) after I pronounced it, “Royale” (ROY-AL). I resisted the temptation to debate pronunciation. I was probably wrong anyway—after all, he did the documentary.

Anyway, long story short, I called me wife over, introduced her, and then she snapped a photo of us together, after I took off my hat and looked like I just woke up from a long nap. Here it is:

Full Circle Moment - Watching the Series

So of course when I saw the full series was recently released, I couldn’t wait to watch it. Last week I subscribed to PBS Documentary channel on Amazon Prime, in order to watch the full American Revolution series. I wasn’t disappointed.

The stories inside the series are eye-opening, and at times it felt like I was there in the 1770’s during the revolution with George Washington designing schemes to take back New York from the Brits. I felt like I was an eyewitness to the battles, and at times wondered how we ended up winning when we had such a disadvantage.

There were even admissions by the historians that without some form of providence, it seemed physically impossible for us to win that war. It made me think of my American roots, and about the lives lost in the fight for establishing the United States.

It also made me think about leadership, and strategy, and enemies. It made me think about our country’s situation today. It made me think about how they survived without North Face jackets or today’s warm-weather gear. For example, my wife has these electric hand-warmers that we bring to outdoor events. How did they survive without those, I pondered.

But there was Washington’s army, in sub-20 degree temps in the humid northeast, crossing the Delaware River and watching their fellow soldiers literally freeze to death, before winning a decisive battle near Trenton that turned the tide…in New Jersey of all places.

Did I mention that I was born and raised in New Jersey? That made things all the more relevant as I glued into this epic saga. I wondered if they stopped for pizza during their campaign? Kidding. But seriously, there were reports that the soldiers went without food or pay for long periods, making the victorious results of the war even more improbable.

Needless to say, Ken Burns did it again. I was glued to the screen. He got me thinking. He led me on the path of discovery. And this time it was even more special as the meeting in Telluride enhanced my experience all the more.

It seems that when I least plan events, that’s when adventures and discoveries that last a lifetime are more likely to occur. Maybe my own personal revolution is to try and control outcomes less, and be open to adventure more.

Anyone that’s done any soul searching will have come across the truths of what our inner wounds do to us as adults. Our entire personality is shaped by the decisions of our parents, and their parents before them. If you ignore that journey, you are ignoring your true self. And if you ignore your true self, you live as a false self.

That’s my modern summary of a hundred years of psycho-analysis from Carl Jung to John Bradshaw.

For many years I’ve lived as a false self. Searching for attention and acceptance through achievement to build a superficial defense around a non-existent ego (“I”). Hard truth to face for sure. Reality is hard.

It took many years of soul-searching, acceptance, and prayer, and I’m at the point where I’m rebuilding my “true self” after unlearning the “false self” who still hangs around and wants attention. I should name him. He’s always there.

If you get it, you get it. And if so, you’re probably still reading. And you know how totally exhausting it is to live for the approval of others. It manifests into creating your own perfect model persona every day, “I’m supposed to be happy,” or “I’m supposed to be smart,” and “I’m supposed to be successful and act this or that way.” This daily effort made me totally twisted into a fake person.

Escaping this false reality takes courage and drastic corrective actions to create a new reality, in line with your true self. For some, it’s not a “get back on track” exercise because there never was a track. We were born into chaos, and never had a track. As a puppet of other’s expectations my entire life, I was not courageous enough to face the darkness of solitude, to explore my inner emptiness and discover who I really was.

In short, I’ve never existed. I was a pawn in other people’s dramas. As the saying goes, “sorry I can’t remember my childhood, I wasn’t there at the time.” If you know, you know.

After finding the courage to face this painful reality, I’m moving forward, unafraid of what my false self thinks. It takes courage to face reality. The temptation of escaping by scrolling on Instagram and LinkedIn for hours is real. I’m still not totally facing reality most days and I often want to check out and daydream.

So that’s why I’m doing this. To face reality. To create it. To exist. To arrive at my point of view, instead of regurgitating someone else’s. It’s time to create reality. And I invite you in for the ride.

First Mission: (Actually) Creating

As a result of the reality I just shared, I generally suck at creating. Just this week I was given professional feedback that has been consistent throughout my career and life. “Dane, you need to establish a point of view. You need to better express it and defend it.” That’s one manifestation — the lack of an ability to create a point of view.

When I was a kid, I remember I wanted to be an artist. But I could only copy the drawings of others. I would copy Marvel comic book characters perfectly. But I would rarely find the courage to imagine my own artwork. One observer remarked as I was drawing the character The Thing, “Dane, one day maybe you’ll draw your own stuff.” And I never forgot those words. That’s been my goal my whole life, to create my own stuff. Writing is a big part of that.

I didn’t just wake up this morning and arrive at wanting to be a writer. I’ve actually been writing my whole life. I won a prize for it in high school. A teacher once told me, “you’re a good writer.” I even found a handwritten story called “Ahmal and His Lost Frog” in an old box from grammar school. The signs were always there. However, similar to my experience with copying drawings, my writing has been mostly a reflection of the reality of others, not my own. It’s time to change that.

And that will require courage. It’s already taken me years of stepping into growth groups, developing emotions, and searching “inward” (life’s longest journey). Like for many of us, this journey has been hard. We don’t just unfreeze a life of frozen underlying emotions. Thawing out takes years.

Yes, I’m afraid of other people not liking my writing. I have a deep desire to be accepted. I don’t want to make waves as the youngest sibling. All survival mechanisms of what John Bradshaw nicknamed the “Lost Child” archetype in his life-changing book Homecoming.

As I have gotten older, I’ve realized writing is now non-negotiable. I might manifest my creativity in other ways in the future (like creating songs, art, or crafts) but writing is where I’m at today.

What will I write about? I think limits are unnecessary and will hinder my creativity. But some ideas I have right now include;

• I am writing a book called Courage in the Current, which imagines the life of a trout named Platte, who lives in Cheesman Canyon (one of my favorite places on earth). This book is nearly drafted, and I simply can’t wait to begin publishing it. I don’t know if Amazon print or Substack is the right delivery vehicle yet. We’ll see.

• The Reality of the Cybersecurity Industry - I can’t ignore the fact that I spent 13 years working in Cyber. I want to share what I’ve learned. I published a book called Through the Cyber Maze in 2025 to describe my roller coaster ride through the industry. However, I think I might dive in more, to explore where the industry is and where it’s headed.

• A Couple’s Guide to Exploring All 63 US National Parks - my wife and I are planning to visit the “final 2” national parks in the United States this year. This will be quite an “achievement” but I need to be careful. I can’t make this about “achieving”. It’s much more than that for us. The journeys we took together have really been instrumental in our relationship, in understanding nature, and in appreciating the beauty of God’s creation.

• The Guide to Fly Fishing in Colorado - I have spent many quiet hours on the solitude searching for trout (and peace) on the tranquil rivers of Colorado. Fly fishing has taken me 6 years to even start to understand, and I suspect I won’t be a master of it until I’m too old to cast. I’d like to share guides even if they get a bit technical and nuanced.

• The Reality of the Soul - how can you face and change your inner reality by investing the time and energy to look inward, find faith, and battle your inner demons. This is where I’d like to focus on the science of the soul (= psychology) and spiritual realities of Christianity, which has been a major force in my entire life and I don’t want to hide that any longer.

• Creating Digital Products with AI - I have absolutely loved learning how to use tools like Cursor, setting up an AI supercomputer with a DGX Spark, building a local AI Assistant to keep your data safe, and using Canva, Vercel and other tools to create digital products. I would like to share these practical tips with you so you can create yours too.

• Creating Wealth Through Wise Investing - Investment management has been a big learning area for me over the past decade or so. I’d like to share tips and tricks to smart capital allocation, wise investing, and personal economics.

• Leading Quietly in the Workplace - I’ve spent nearly 18 years in corporate environments and I’d like to share how you can be valuable in the AI era, through time management, productivity, meeting management, managing upward, managing others, and leadership techniques.

• Creating Future Narratives - I am very interested in the use of AI for creating narratives, especially for inventing future markets and predicting outcomes with future narratives. I built a product called Narrly AI that generates these narratives, so I will publish examples from time to time to spark discussion about potential futures such as “the future of flying cars” and other topics.

• Revisiting Chinese Language and Culture - I am totally fascinated by China. I lived there for six years, and want to revisit my learnings from that experience, and share more about Chinese language and cultural realities.

That’s where I’m at for now…

Let’s Create Reality

I invite you to subscribe to my writing if you want to “create reality” with me. What does “create reality” even mean? I’m still not sure it even makes sense. But these are the two words that most describe my mission.

Create = why I now wake up every day. Whether it’s writing here or creating narratives for my day job or creating apps with AI. I am constantly creating so I’ll be writing about those experiences.

Reality = the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual limits within which I must create. So understanding reality is essential for creativity.

The result = Create Reality. When I create, I have a chance to impact reality instead of escaping by living in the false self. It will take courage. And in the process, perhaps I can impact your reality, and inspire you to create your own new reality.

Disclaimer: No AI was used in writing this. Honestly.

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