October 21, 1987. The stock market was recovering from its crash two days earlier. Robert Bork was two days from being, well, Borked. And a woman at Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, NC, gave birth to a bundle of joy. Or maybe it wasn’t joy. Maybe it was a bundle of class, sass, and kickassery.*
Whatever you call that bundle, he just turned 30 years old on October 21, and today, December 2, he celebrates another milestone:
Today, I have been alive for 11,000 days.
11,000 days!
So I figured I’d do what I did on my birthday and celebrate by asking what your effing problem is. But first, I have to share 11 things I’ve learned in the last 11,000 days. These aren’t necessarily the most important things I’ve learned, but they’re on my mind today.
- Relationships matter.
- Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it still sucks to have a limited income.
- It hurts to be excluded.
- It hurts even more to be rejected — especially if it’s for some bulls**t or irrelevant reason.
- You can lead someone to knowledge, but you can’t make them think.
- You don't need sex, drugs, or beer to be happy. But you may need rock and roll.
- Leadership isn’t always based on position.
- Michigan is beautiful, but Colorado and Arizona are nice too.
- When someone close to you dies, the grief is often worse before they actually pass.
- Take nothing for granted.
- The Detroit Tigers don’t have a bullpen to speak of.
Well, those are just a few of the things I’ve learned over the past 11,000 days. My FP, such as it is, is that I’ve learned lessons 2 through 5 the hard way in recent years.
So what’s your freaking problem?
*That autocorrected to “chicanery”. Make of that what you will.