About These Posts

Each day I add a new journal entry to my social media feeds. Here, I take that day’s entry and expand it through the lens of my Good Life Creed, which you can read about in my book Going Alone (available for free on this website). These dissections aim to connect ordinary reflections with the enduring objectives and principles of the Creed.

Journal Entry (10/14/25)

I’m a few days removed now from preparing myself to return to America. There’s a relief I hadn’t realized I needed in knowing I’m ready—that my life is staged for a sudden return home if called. The documents are in order, and Yumiko and I have an understanding about how we’d again manage two households in two countries for as long as necessary. I’ve worked out the finances, the health insurance, where and how I’ll live—I’m ready.

There’s peace in that readiness, in knowing that as an expatriate, I could go back if the life I left behind should need me again. Seventy-two hours is all it would take to be on the ground in California, helping where I can, being there when I’m needed.

Dissection

This reflection embodies the stillness that follows preparation—the inner peace that arises when readiness is no longer a source of anxiety but a condition of being. The work of planning, once done, becomes a form of spiritual order: a life kept in balance, staged to move without hesitation when called upon.

The Creed resonates here in three particular ways:

#Prepared (Objective: Be Always Ready to Die)

Readiness for travel becomes a mirror of existential readiness—the practice of keeping one’s affairs, mind, and duties in steady order. To be able to depart without delay is to live without unfinished business.

#Path (Principle: The Path of Wildness)

This moment also reflects the courage to move when movement is required. The preparations form a literal and metaphorical path—an act of decision and direction that aligns with the forward motion of life’s unfolding.

#Scriptwriting (Principle: Scriptwriting)

Two possible futures are written here—one of departure, one of continuation—and both are authored with intention. To acknowledge and prepare for each is to claim authorship of one’s unfolding story rather than leave it to chance.

Takeaway

True peace is rarely found in circumstance; it resides in preparedness. When life’s paths diverge, the aim is not to choose one over the other, but to be ready to walk either without hesitation. In that readiness, the mind grows calm, and the will—no longer caught between fear and indecision—stands quietly resolved.