A few months ago I wrote a post that was basically a collection of questions bouncing around in my head with no real attempt to answer any of them.

Apparently, my brain has not gotten any quieter.

So here we go again. Five more questions that have been taking up space lately. Some are serious. Some probably aren’t. I don’t expect to solve any great mysteries here, but sometimes asking the question is more interesting than pretending we already know the answer.

1. Was Aziz Ansari right that life after the pandemic is just a little bit shittier, and does that still feel true in 2026?

I recently came across this old Aziz Ansari clip where he talks about life returning to normal after COVID, except everything is just “a little bit shittier.”

And I think he nailed it.

We are back to normal. We travel. We go to restaurants. We attend ballgames. Stores are open. Life looks mostly like it did before 2020.

But does it feel the same?

Service seems a little worse. Things cost more. Everything feels slightly less reliable. People seem a little less patient. There are a hundred small inconveniences that individually don’t amount to much, but together somehow make everyday life feel just a little harder than it used to.

Maybe I’m remembering pre-2020 life through rose-colored glasses.

But I don’t think I am.

The bigger question might be whether this is temporary or whether we have collectively decided this is simply what normal looks like now.

Or maybe giant corporations figured something out during the pandemic that they can do more with less.

They learned they could operate with fewer people, less service, more self-checkout, more automation, longer waits, and somehow customers would keep showing up anyway. Once a company realizes it can do more with less, what incentive is there to go back?

Maybe some of what feels “a little bit shittier” is just the permanent result of businesses discovering exactly how much inconvenience we are willing to tolerate.

2. If we really had only two to four years before AI wiped us off the planet, how would you live your life differently?

Let me start here.

I don’t believe AI is going to wipe humanity off the planet in the next two to four years.

But if you’ve followed the news lately, it has been pretty difficult to avoid people discussing exactly that possibility. The Wall Street Journal recently looked at how an AI doomsday scenario could theoretically happen, and The New York Times has also been digging into the debate over risks to humanity.

I don’t know enough to tell you which experts are right.

But the question itself stuck with me.

If someone could prove beyond a doubt that we only had a few years left, how much of my current life would suddenly seem ridiculous?

Would I care nearly as much about retirement planning?

Would I work as much?

Would Sarah and I travel more?

Would I spend more time with the kids?

Would I worry about things that currently take up way too much space in my head?

I’d like to think I would spend a lot less time preparing for someday and a lot more time actually living today.

Which raises an uncomfortable follow-up question.

If those are the things I’d change with only a few years left, why am I waiting for the end of the world to change them?

What would you do differently?

3. What are we missing because we’re always looking for something new?

I recently came across this Mary Oliver quote while reading about the upcoming PBS American Masters documentary on her life:

“My own nature is to like to walk the same path every day to see what I missed the day before.”

I’ve been unpacking that one ever since.

At first it sounds like a quote about taking a walk.

I don’t think it is.

We spend so much of our lives searching for something new. A new place. A new restaurant. A new vacation. A new experience. Something we haven’t seen before.

But what if the real skill is learning to see more in the places we already know?

Birdwatching has made this one hit particularly hard for me.

I can walk the same trail over and over again and have a completely different experience every time. The trail didn’t change. I did. I paid attention to something I hadn’t noticed before.

Maybe there is a lesson in that beyond birds.

How much of life do we miss not because there is nothing there, but because we stopped looking?

4. At what point do you stop trying to become the person you thought you’d be, and start realizing how much you’ve already changed?

When I was younger, I wanted everything to be spontaneous.

Plans felt restrictive. Routines sounded boring.

Now I own multiple versions of the exact same shirt.

I eat basically the same breakfast every morning.

And I love it.

Somewhere along the way I realized I don’t need to burn mental energy deciding what shirt to wear or what I’m going to eat for breakfast. If I can make the meaningless decisions simple, I have more energy for the things that actually matter.

There is a philosophy about life having four burners: family, friends, health, and work. The idea is that you can’t keep all four turned to maximum heat at the same time.

I’m starting to think there might be a fifth burner labeled “stuff that really doesn’t matter,” and I’ve spent way too much energy keeping it lit over the years.

The funny part is those little routines are probably just the visible signs of bigger changes underneath.

When I was a kid and even through college, I never pictured myself living back in Southwest Virginia.

Yet here we are.

Twenty-seven years later, I still call it home.

Maybe growing up isn’t becoming the person you always planned to be.

Maybe it’s realizing that person was working with very incomplete information.

5. Are we doing fewer things for the first time as we get older, and spending too much time documenting life instead of actually experiencing it?

Think about how many firsts you have when you’re young.

First day of school. First time driving. First job. First date. First time leaving home. First apartment. First real paycheck.

Then somewhere along the way life becomes more familiar.

Maybe that’s part of why the years seem to speed up.

This year I’ve tried to push against that a little.

Birdwatching was completely new for me.

I traveled to Phoenix for the first time.

I’ve also made a conscious effort to slow life down a little instead of treating every day like something I need to complete as efficiently as possible.

But there’s another side to this question.

When we finally do something new, how quickly do we reach for our phones?

We take the photo. Shoot the video. Post the story. Check the comments.

I’m obviously guilty of it. I carry a camera around photographing birds, so I’m probably not the person to lead the revolution against documenting everything.

But I do wonder if we are getting better at recording our lives while becoming slightly worse at actually being present for them.

Maybe we need more firsts.

And maybe every first doesn’t need photographic evidence.

Life Lately

Speaking of birds, Sarah and the girls were kind enough to spend part of my birthday weekend birdwatching with me.

That’s love.

Thanks to Isabel’s sharp eyes, I was able to find species number 100 for the year.

I probably wouldn’t have predicted at the beginning of 2026 that identifying my 100th bird would qualify as a birthday highlight, but apparently this is who I am now.

As for the weight loss journey, we’ve hit another plateau.

The good news is the weight isn’t going back up.

The bad news is it isn’t dropping nearly as fast as I’d like either.

With the cooler weather arriving, I’ve started getting a three-mile walk in first thing in the morning. I’m hoping adding that consistently will get things moving again over the next couple of weeks.

We’ll see.

For now, I guess that’s another question without an answer.

Until Next Time

Five more questions and, once again, very few answers.

I’m starting to think that may be the whole point of these posts.

The older I get, the less convinced I am that everything needs a clean answer. Sometimes it’s enough to notice something, sit with it for a while, and see where the thought takes you.

I’m sure there will eventually be a Round 3.

Until then, here are a few things I’ve been reading lately that have added a few more questions to the pile.

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