Month: September 2026

Money is a global scoreboard. There’s a globally recognized list of the richest people, and an absolutely minuscule slice of the population could ever compete on it. For everyone else, money is relative. It’s local. A small amount goes a long way in some places and barely stretches in others.

Trying to land on any global list, richest, most followed, most anything, rarely adds up to much. Very little any of us does will be significant across generations. That’s just true, and it’s fine.

But that doesn’t mean nothing we do matters. Significance is a local concept. It lives in the people and living beings within range of your life, the ones you can actually touch. For most of us, that range holds far more weight than we tend to give it credit for.

Chasing likes, followers, or any metric everyone can measure and compare puts us on a global scoreboard built for envy. The real scoreboards, the ones worth keeping score on, are local.

Ed Sheeran had a wonderful note about writes music when he feels extreme emotion. On an ordinary day, the songs are fine, but they don’t carry the same depth. It’s when he’s exceptionally sad, or happy, or in love, or heartbroken that the good ones show up.

I’m no Ed Sheeran of course. But over the years, I’ve come to realize the same is true of writing.

When I write about something I feel indifferent about, the words don’t flow, even when the lesson underneath is a good one. They come out feeling… flat.

When I’m feeling something strongly, a memory of a moment in a national park, or sitting with the disappointment of a failure, the writing just hits better.

Embrace those extreme emotions, we must.