Last night’s crickets performed their deafening concerto outside my window here in Austin — that ancient sound of summer that transports me instantly to childhood. It’s remarkable how the sound of 10,000 crickets’ chirps can unlock an entire vault of memories: my mother calling us in for dinner, telling us to come home when the streetlights come on, screen doors slamming, my brothers and I racing barefoot across grass though the sprinklers, staying up late and sleeping late, and watching it rain from the safety of the garage, sitting in old webbed lawn chairs commenting about how God is bowling. Tonight I’ll hear different crickets as I arrive for the summer at our Adirondack lake home, but they’ll be singing the same timeless song, the rhythm as reliable as my grandmother’s heartbeat when she’d hold me during thunderstorms at her lake, miles from where we go now.

Bronze Warriors

Summers were our family’s sacred season. My cousins and I would transform into bronze warriors, armed with bottles of baby oil that we’d slather on like war paint, laying out on the dock determined to achieve the perfect tan. We’d sprawl across multi-colored terrycloth towels — mine was an orange ’60s design with yellow fringe that tickled — turning ourselves like rotisserie chickens every 15 minutes. The local radio DJ even told us, “Time to turn over.” The real rebellion came with the Sun-In, which we’d spray with abandon on our heads, convinced we’d emerge as blondes like the Beach Boys we were listening to on the radio. Instead, we looked like tigers with our streaky orange hair, but we wore those stripes with pride.

Firework Memories

The Fourth of July meant sticky fingers from watermelon, seeing who could spit the seeds the farthest, the sulfur smell of sparklers, and my dad with his apron and chef’s hat, manning the grill like a backyard hero. We’d stack our plates high with charred hot dogs, overcooked baked beans, and Grandma’s secret recipe potato salad that had definitely been in the sun too long, but somehow never made us sick. As darkness fell, we’d lie on our backs on the boat, watching fireworks paint the sky, my grandmother pointing out which ones looked like chrysanthemums, which ones like weeping willows. Between the booms, you could still hear the crickets.

Silver Spaceship

My grandparents’ silver Airstream trailer was our gateway to paradise. Parked permanently at the lake, it gleamed like a spaceship that had landed in the perfect spot. Inside, everything folded, tucked, or transformed — a bed became a table, a table became a bench. It smelled of coffee and sunscreen and the particular mustiness of lake living. Grandpa kept his fishing lures in an old cigar box that I was allowed to organize but never touch without him.

Patriotic Period

When my parents finally saved enough for their own lake house, I claimed the back upstairs bedroom and immediately set about destroying it with my 13-year-old’s vision of sophistication: dark navy blue walls (three coats to get it dark enough) and fire-engine red shag carpet that shed like a molting bird. My mother’s eye twitched when she saw it, but she just handed me another paintbrush and said, “Well, you’ll be the one living in it.” My father added, “Looks like the inside of a baseball glove,” which I took as a compliment. Twenty years later, when I was home for Christmas, I found a photo of that room tucked in Mom’s album with a note: “Rick’s Patriotic Period.” They never said a word, but they saved the evidence.

Lake Time

Our summer days unfolded with delicious predictability. Wake up whenever. Pull on yesterday’s swimsuit, still damp and smelling of the lake. Grab whatever was in the fridge — usually cold leftover hot dogs. Then down to the dock, where time moved differently, measured not in hours but in successful ski runs, perfect cannonball splashes, and who could sing the loudest as we played “Hot Fun in the Summertime” on the pontoon’s 8-track player.

Yellow Lightning

My father’s pride was a banana-yellow speedboat with metal-flake sparkles that caught the sun like scattered diamonds. He’d bought it new from a dealer who’d thrown in some fuzzy dice, which my mother immediately relocated to the garbage. That boat was genuinely the fastest on the lake — or at least we believed it was, which amounted to the same thing. Dad would open the throttle and we’d scream across the water, the bow lifting until we were practically airborne, my mother white-knuckling the handle while pretending to enjoy herself. Those were such good times. 

Party Barge

The pontoon was our party barge, though our parties consisted mainly of 11 teenagers singing off-key and arguing over who had to ski first in the cold morning water. The green vinyl seats would stick to our thighs, leaving waffle patterns that we’d compare like tattoos. Someone always brought a guitar they couldn’t really play, and we’d butcher Beatles songs while the sun set, feeling profound about life in the way only teenagers can.

Next Generation

Now I watch my triplets creating their lake mythology. They’ve grown up with the same rhythms on a different lake — morning swims, all-day ski runs, sailboat races, evening bonfires where we burn marshmallows into charcoal and call them s’mores. They raid the neighbors’ fridges with the same entitlement I once did, treating the lake community like one extended kitchen. 

History Repeats

My kids learned to sail in the same little Sunfish I did, turtling it the same way I once did. They still make cannonballs from the swimming platform that send tsunamis over the dock, just as my brothers and I did. And a few times a week all the kids and their friends make a trek to the rope swing where, if you time it just right, you can clear the shallow rocks and land in deep water.

The Last Summer?

It was painful when I grew up and could no longer spend all summer at the lake. An occasional day off allowed me to visit sporadically over a couple of decades. I’m sure my parents were heartbroken when we left their lake nest. Now two of my three just walked across graduation stages, diplomas in hand, futures spreading before them like unmarked maps. They’re filling out job applications, practicing interview answers, ironing clothes that don’t have swimsuit strings. We’ve given them this gift: one last endless summer. The whole family. No internships, no summer jobs, no productivity metrics. Just one last full summer at the lake. And then, we’ll be lonely, wishing they were there all summer, every summer with us. We pray for jobs they can do remotely. 

Future Knowledge

I want to tell my kids what I’ve learned — that they’ll blink and be 40, sitting in some office, trying to remember the exact green shade of the lake in July. That they’ll spend decades attempting to schedule their lives around two-week vacations, jealously guarding long weekends, calculating how many more summers they might have. But you can’t explain this to someone who still believes summer is a renewable resource. My son balked when I said, “You typically don’t get any vacation time off your first six months, and then in most jobs you get two weeks a year.” 

Beautiful Prison

Here’s the thing about owning a lake house: It owns you back. Every June, when our friends jet off to Europe or to explore hidden beaches in Thailand, we return to the same dock, the same view, the same neighbors who’ve watched us grow from sunburned kids to sunburned adults with sunburned kids of our own. I’ve declined trips to Paris, missed opportunities in Prague, said no to safaris and cruises and guided tours of anywhere that isn’t here.

Sometimes I wonder what stamps my passport is missing. But then I watch the same sun set over the same water, and it’s completely different from yesterday’s sunset, and I realize I’ve been traveling all along — just vertically instead of horizontally, diving deeper into the same coordinates rather than skimming the surface of new ones. I would not trade it for all the trips in the world. Time at the lake is precious. Every year when we leave, we count the days till we return.

Counting Summers

What if this is my last summer? Not my last summer breathing, necessarily, but my last summer in this configuration — all three kids here, the family constellation complete, nobody yet scattered by jobs or marriages or the million ways life pulls us from our centers. I cherish every moment.

Perfect Chaos

If it is the last, then it’s already perfect. Not Instagram perfect — real perfect. The kind where my son complains about the WiFi speed and my daughter monopolizes the kayak and my other son leaves wet towels everywhere. Where we run out of milk and someone always drinks the last beer and the neighbors’ dog barks at 6 a.m. Where we play the same card games my grandparents taught me, where we grill the same burgers my father perfected, where we tell the same stories until they become incantations.

Devoted Repetition

My kids tease me about being stuck, about choosing the same view year after year. They don’t understand yet that repetition is a form of devotion. Watching the same water lets you see how it’s never the same water. That knowing every board on the dock means feeling when one needs replacing. That the neighbors who’ve watched you grow up become a kind of family you choose by staying. There are 90-year-olds across the lake that have been on the lake every summer since they were born, never missing one. Two of our three have never missed a summer at the lake. To us, it’s a gift like no other.

Future Understanding

They’ll understand someday, when they’re sitting in some far-off city, successful and homesick in equal measure. When they realize that all their traveling was just a long way of coming home. When they book their vacations for the same week in July, bringing their own kids to add new layers to our sediment of summers.

Paying Attention

This summer — this particular alignment of souls and sunshine — won’t come again. By next year, my kids will have jobs that count vacation days like a miser counts coins. The lake will look the same, but things will never be the same.

Memory Banking

So I pay attention. I memorize the sound of all three laughing at once. I snapshot the sight of them piled in a canoe on the dock for their annual canoe picture. I cherish the chaos of a dozen friends raiding our fridge and catching us up on the rest of their year, and watching them grow into adults. These are the deposits I’m making in a bank I’ll draw from in winters to come.

Present Memory

What would make this your best and most memorable summer ever? Maybe it’s not about making it memorable. Maybe it’s about being present for the memory as it forms. About tasting your coffee while it’s hot. About feeling the dock boards under bare feet. About joining the terribly off-key singing on the pontoon. About saying yes to one more ski run even though you’re tired.

Cricket Wisdom

The crickets already know what I’m still learning: that the best song is the one you sing every night. That beauty compounds through repetition. That summer isn’t a season but a state of grace we’re offered again and again until we’re wise enough to accept it.

Inherited Understanding

My grandparents’ parents left me more than the legacy of each summer spent on the water. They left me the understanding that happiness isn’t found — it’s repeated. That the same jokes get funnier with age. That the same stories improve with each telling. That the same place, returned to with intention, becomes sacred ground.

Tonight’s Symphony

Tonight, the crickets will sing their ancient song at the lake when I arrive. I’ll have a few days of peace and quiet before the rest of the family arrives. Projects need to be done. The internet wires were cut by a shovel and need to be restrung. The boat will need gas. There will be lots of projects to fill up the week. The stars will reflect on water that’s been reflecting for generations before us. And I’ll sit on this lake where I’ve been sitting for 30 years, holding my favorite old coffee mug, knowing that I’m living the answer to my own question.

Best Ever

This will be the best summer ever. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s happening. Because I’m here to see it. Because my kids will be close enough to touch. Because the crickets are keeping time, and time, for now, is keeping us.

Tomorrow’s Coffee

Tomorrow I’ll make coffee again. I’ll sit in this same squeaky 100-year-old wicker chair on the screened porch overlooking the lake. I’ll watch this same water. And it will all be completely new, because I’ll be one day older, one day wiser, one day more grateful for the beautiful trap of staying put, for the perfect prison of a place that’s loved you longer than you’ve loved yourself.

Patient Lake

The lake is patient. It’s been waiting all winter for our return, holding our place, keeping our secrets. And we come back, summer after summer, not because we have to, but because we finally understand that here — this dock, this water, this view — is where we’re most ourselves. The crickets here in Austin have been singing all night, but tonight different crickets will sing the same song, and I’ll be home. Where else could we possibly want to be?

Don’t ignore the mundane, the repeated patterns, the sameness and predictability. Cherish it.

Eric Rhoads

PS: Soon I’ll head to the airport, board a flight, and I’ll be at the lake by bedtime. After a quick stop for groceries, my daughter and I will take a boat across the lake to our little island, and begin our annual summer tradition. I can’t wait.

BIG NEWS: Iconic Moviemaking Artists

For a couple of decades now, I’ve been painting digitally. I love to paint on my iPad when I’m traveling or when I don’t have paints with me. Also, I’m using digital painting to create composition ideas and value studies of my paintings. And though I’m pretty good at it, I want to get better.

We have just signed six of Hollywood’s top digital artists to do a one-day event called Digital Painting Live. Not only will you get to watch people paint, each of them is also a traditional painter, so they will be giving painting advice that applies whether using a brush or a stylus. Imagine watching the men and women who create the backgrounds and characters for movies like Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Marvel movies, Disney movies, and more. These artists are iconic. Check it out at DigitalPaintingLive.com.

Paint Camp in the Adirondacks

On Saturday we’ll have about a hundred artists checking in for my annual Adirondack painting retreat. I’m looking forward to seeing you there. www.paintadirondacks.com

Breaking Tradition

When the triplets were born, I made a pact with myself that I’d do no business travel in the summer. Only twice have I ever violated that pact. But this will be a shorter summer because I’m flying to China on Father’s Day for a three-week speaking and painting tour. Two of my kids and a video crew will be with me, helping create a documentary about this rare trip. I’m not sure if I’ll get Sunday Coffee out or not. So if not, you’ll get a few repeats. 

Last night’s crickets performed their deafening concerto outside my window here in Austin — that ancient sound of summer that transports me instantly to childhood. It’s remarkable how the sound of 10,000 crickets’ chirps can unlock an entire vault of memories: my mother calling us in for dinner, telling us to come home when the streetlights come on, screen doors slamming, my brothers and I racing barefoot across grass though the sprinklers, staying up late and sleeping late, and watching it rain from the safety of the garage, sitting in old webbed lawn chairs commenting about how God is bowling. Tonight I’ll hear different crickets as I arrive for the summer at our Adirondack lake home, but they’ll be singing the same timeless song, the rhythm as reliable as my grandmother’s heartbeat when she’d hold me during thunderstorms at her lake, miles from where we go now.

Bronze Warriors

Summers were our family’s sacred season. My cousins and I would transform into bronze warriors, armed with bottles of baby oil that we’d slather on like war paint, laying out on the dock determined to achieve the perfect tan. We’d sprawl across multi-colored terrycloth towels — mine was an orange ’60s design with yellow fringe that tickled — turning ourselves like rotisserie chickens every 15 minutes. The local radio DJ even told us, “Time to turn over.” The real rebellion came with the Sun-In, which we’d spray with abandon on our heads, convinced we’d emerge as blondes like the Beach Boys we were listening to on the radio. Instead, we looked like tigers with our streaky orange hair, but we wore those stripes with pride.

Firework Memories

The Fourth of July meant sticky fingers from watermelon, seeing who could spit the seeds the farthest, the sulfur smell of sparklers, and my dad with his apron and chef’s hat, manning the grill like a backyard hero. We’d stack our plates high with charred hot dogs, overcooked baked beans, and Grandma’s secret recipe potato salad that had definitely been in the sun too long, but somehow never made us sick. As darkness fell, we’d lie on our backs on the boat, watching fireworks paint the sky, my grandmother pointing out which ones looked like chrysanthemums, which ones like weeping willows. Between the booms, you could still hear the crickets.

Silver Spaceship

My grandparents’ silver Airstream trailer was our gateway to paradise. Parked permanently at the lake, it gleamed like a spaceship that had landed in the perfect spot. Inside, everything folded, tucked, or transformed — a bed became a table, a table became a bench. It smelled of coffee and sunscreen and the particular mustiness of lake living. Grandpa kept his fishing lures in an old cigar box that I was allowed to organize but never touch without him.

Patriotic Period

When my parents finally saved enough for their own lake house, I claimed the back upstairs bedroom and immediately set about destroying it with my 13-year-old’s vision of sophistication: dark navy blue walls (three coats to get it dark enough) and fire-engine red shag carpet that shed like a molting bird. My mother’s eye twitched when she saw it, but she just handed me another paintbrush and said, “Well, you’ll be the one living in it.” My father added, “Looks like the inside of a baseball glove,” which I took as a compliment. Twenty years later, when I was home for Christmas, I found a photo of that room tucked in Mom’s album with a note: “Rick’s Patriotic Period.” They never said a word, but they saved the evidence.

Lake Time

Our summer days unfolded with delicious predictability. Wake up whenever. Pull on yesterday’s swimsuit, still damp and smelling of the lake. Grab whatever was in the fridge — usually cold leftover hot dogs. Then down to the dock, where time moved differently, measured not in hours but in successful ski runs, perfect cannonball splashes, and who could sing the loudest as we played “Hot Fun in the Summertime” on the pontoon’s 8-track player.

Yellow Lightning

My father’s pride was a banana-yellow speedboat with metal-flake sparkles that caught the sun like scattered diamonds. He’d bought it new from a dealer who’d thrown in some fuzzy dice, which my mother immediately relocated to the garbage. That boat was genuinely the fastest on the lake — or at least we believed it was, which amounted to the same thing. Dad would open the throttle and we’d scream across the water, the bow lifting until we were practically airborne, my mother white-knuckling the handle while pretending to enjoy herself. Those were such good times. 

Party Barge

The pontoon was our party barge, though our parties consisted mainly of 11 teenagers singing off-key and arguing over who had to ski first in the cold morning water. The green vinyl seats would stick to our thighs, leaving waffle patterns that we’d compare like tattoos. Someone always brought a guitar they couldn’t really play, and we’d butcher Beatles songs while the sun set, feeling profound about life in the way only teenagers can.

Next Generation

Now I watch my triplets creating their lake mythology. They’ve grown up with the same rhythms on a different lake — morning swims, all-day ski runs, sailboat races, evening bonfires where we burn marshmallows into charcoal and call them s’mores. They raid the neighbors’ fridges with the same entitlement I once did, treating the lake community like one extended kitchen. 

History Repeats

My kids learned to sail in the same little Sunfish I did, turtling it the same way I once did. They still make cannonballs from the swimming platform that send tsunamis over the dock, just as my brothers and I did. And a few times a week all the kids and their friends make a trek to the rope swing where, if you time it just right, you can clear the shallow rocks and land in deep water.

The Last Summer?

It was painful when I grew up and could no longer spend all summer at the lake. An occasional day off allowed me to visit sporadically over a couple of decades. I’m sure my parents were heartbroken when we left their lake nest. Now two of my three just walked across graduation stages, diplomas in hand, futures spreading before them like unmarked maps. They’re filling out job applications, practicing interview answers, ironing clothes that don’t have swimsuit strings. We’ve given them this gift: one last endless summer. The whole family. No internships, no summer jobs, no productivity metrics. Just one last full summer at the lake. And then, we’ll be lonely, wishing they were there all summer, every summer with us. We pray for jobs they can do remotely. 

Future Knowledge

I want to tell my kids what I’ve learned — that they’ll blink and be 40, sitting in some office, trying to remember the exact green shade of the lake in July. That they’ll spend decades attempting to schedule their lives around two-week vacations, jealously guarding long weekends, calculating how many more summers they might have. But you can’t explain this to someone who still believes summer is a renewable resource. My son balked when I said, “You typically don’t get any vacation time off your first six months, and then in most jobs you get two weeks a year.” 

Beautiful Prison

Here’s the thing about owning a lake house: It owns you back. Every June, when our friends jet off to Europe or to explore hidden beaches in Thailand, we return to the same dock, the same view, the same neighbors who’ve watched us grow from sunburned kids to sunburned adults with sunburned kids of our own. I’ve declined trips to Paris, missed opportunities in Prague, said no to safaris and cruises and guided tours of anywhere that isn’t here.

Sometimes I wonder what stamps my passport is missing. But then I watch the same sun set over the same water, and it’s completely different from yesterday’s sunset, and I realize I’ve been traveling all along — just vertically instead of horizontally, diving deeper into the same coordinates rather than skimming the surface of new ones. I would not trade it for all the trips in the world. Time at the lake is precious. Every year when we leave, we count the days till we return.

Counting Summers

What if this is my last summer? Not my last summer breathing, necessarily, but my last summer in this configuration — all three kids here, the family constellation complete, nobody yet scattered by jobs or marriages or the million ways life pulls us from our centers. I cherish every moment.

Perfect Chaos

If it is the last, then it’s already perfect. Not Instagram perfect — real perfect. The kind where my son complains about the WiFi speed and my daughter monopolizes the kayak and my other son leaves wet towels everywhere. Where we run out of milk and someone always drinks the last beer and the neighbors’ dog barks at 6 a.m. Where we play the same card games my grandparents taught me, where we grill the same burgers my father perfected, where we tell the same stories until they become incantations.

Devoted Repetition

My kids tease me about being stuck, about choosing the same view year after year. They don’t understand yet that repetition is a form of devotion. Watching the same water lets you see how it’s never the same water. That knowing every board on the dock means feeling when one needs replacing. That the neighbors who’ve watched you grow up become a kind of family you choose by staying. There are 90-year-olds across the lake that have been on the lake every summer since they were born, never missing one. Two of our three have never missed a summer at the lake. To us, it’s a gift like no other.

Future Understanding

They’ll understand someday, when they’re sitting in some far-off city, successful and homesick in equal measure. When they realize that all their traveling was just a long way of coming home. When they book their vacations for the same week in July, bringing their own kids to add new layers to our sediment of summers.

Paying Attention

This summer — this particular alignment of souls and sunshine — won’t come again. By next year, my kids will have jobs that count vacation days like a miser counts coins. The lake will look the same, but things will never be the same.

Memory Banking

So I pay attention. I memorize the sound of all three laughing at once. I snapshot the sight of them piled in a canoe on the dock for their annual canoe picture. I cherish the chaos of a dozen friends raiding our fridge and catching us up on the rest of their year, and watching them grow into adults. These are the deposits I’m making in a bank I’ll draw from in winters to come.

Present Memory

What would make this your best and most memorable summer ever? Maybe it’s not about making it memorable. Maybe it’s about being present for the memory as it forms. About tasting your coffee while it’s hot. About feeling the dock boards under bare feet. About joining the terribly off-key singing on the pontoon. About saying yes to one more ski run even though you’re tired.

Cricket Wisdom

The crickets already know what I’m still learning: that the best song is the one you sing every night. That beauty compounds through repetition. That summer isn’t a season but a state of grace we’re offered again and again until we’re wise enough to accept it.

Inherited Understanding

My grandparents’ parents left me more than the legacy of each summer spent on the water. They left me the understanding that happiness isn’t found — it’s repeated. That the same jokes get funnier with age. That the same stories improve with each telling. That the same place, returned to with intention, becomes sacred ground.

Tonight’s Symphony

Tonight, the crickets will sing their ancient song at the lake when I arrive. I’ll have a few days of peace and quiet before the rest of the family arrives. Projects need to be done. The internet wires were cut by a shovel and need to be restrung. The boat will need gas. There will be lots of projects to fill up the week. The stars will reflect on water that’s been reflecting for generations before us. And I’ll sit on this lake where I’ve been sitting for 30 years, holding my favorite old coffee mug, knowing that I’m living the answer to my own question.

Best Ever

This will be the best summer ever. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s happening. Because I’m here to see it. Because my kids will be close enough to touch. Because the crickets are keeping time, and time, for now, is keeping us.

Tomorrow’s Coffee

Tomorrow I’ll make coffee again. I’ll sit in this same squeaky 100-year-old wicker chair on the screened porch overlooking the lake. I’ll watch this same water. And it will all be completely new, because I’ll be one day older, one day wiser, one day more grateful for the beautiful trap of staying put, for the perfect prison of a place that’s loved you longer than you’ve loved yourself.

Patient Lake

The lake is patient. It’s been waiting all winter for our return, holding our place, keeping our secrets. And we come back, summer after summer, not because we have to, but because we finally understand that here — this dock, this water, this view — is where we’re most ourselves. The crickets here in Austin have been singing all night, but tonight different crickets will sing the same song, and I’ll be home. Where else could we possibly want to be?

Don’t ignore the mundane, the repeated patterns, the sameness and predictability. Cherish it.

Eric Rhoads

PS: Soon I’ll head to the airport, board a flight, and I’ll be at the lake by bedtime. After a quick stop for groceries, my daughter and I will take a boat across the lake to our little island, and begin our annual summer tradition. I can’t wait.

BIG NEWS: Iconic Moviemaking Artists

For a couple of decades now, I’ve been painting digitally. I love to paint on my iPad when I’m traveling or when I don’t have paints with me. Also, I’m using digital painting to create composition ideas and value studies of my paintings. And though I’m pretty good at it, I want to get better.

We have just signed six of Hollywood’s top digital artists to do a one-day event called Digital Painting Live. Not only will you get to watch people paint, each of them is also a traditional painter, so they will be giving painting advice that applies whether using a brush or a stylus. Imagine watching the men and women who create the backgrounds and characters for movies like Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Marvel movies, Disney movies, and more. These artists are iconic. Check it out at DigitalPaintingLive.com.

Paint Camp in the Adirondacks

On Saturday we’ll have about a hundred artists checking in for my annual Adirondack painting retreat. I’m looking forward to seeing you there. www.paintadirondacks.com

Breaking Tradition

When the triplets were born, I made a pact with myself that I’d do no business travel in the summer. Only twice have I ever violated that pact. But this will be a shorter summer because I’m flying to China on Father’s Day for a three-week speaking and painting tour. Two of my kids and a video crew will be with me, helping create a documentary about this rare trip. I’m not sure if I’ll get Sunday Coffee out or not. So if not, you’ll get a few repeats. 

Darkness envelops me like a velvet cloak, not a single photon daring to peek through the bedroom window. The world holds its breath in that magical pre-dawn stillness. After stretching with a yawn so massive it threatens to dislocate my jaw, I remember my secret mission: stealthily brew that life-giving coffee before tiny footsteps and demands for breakfast shatter the silence, giving me these precious moments to share my thoughts before we rush headlong to the airport for my big artist convention.

Pondering Life 

Contemplation visits me uninvited but welcome as I balance on this tightrope between yesterday and tomorrow. This morning’s meditation feels especially poignant because it was on just such a morning that I awoke from one of those dreams so vibrant, so insistent, it felt less like subconscious meandering and more like a heavenly telegram from God delivered directly to my soul.

My Vivid Dream

A massive castle came to me in my dream state, a magnificent stone fortress with soaring 50-foot ceilings, where flags of every nation flapped gently in some unfelt breeze. I find myself centered at an impossibly long table, a feast fit for royalty being laid out by silent servants, while the fireplace — tall enough to stand three of me stacked like cordwood — sends golden light dancing across ancient stones.

Surrounded by the Greats

Legends surround me at this dream-table, their faces somehow familiar though we’ve never met in real life. But I recognize them from their self-portraits. Leonardo da Vinci gestures animatedly across from me, Rembrandt nods thoughtfully beside him, and as my gaze travels the length of this improbable gathering, I recognize each face — women and men whose artistic breakthroughs hang in the world’s most prestigious galleries and museums.

The air is thick with laughter and camaraderie as wine flows freely and conversation dances between tales of masterpieces created and techniques mastered and debates about which medium is the ultimate. We speak of pigments and brushstrokes, of types of clay and marble,  as lovers discuss their beloveds — with passion, reverence, and intimate knowledge born from lifetimes devoted to capturing beauty.

As this feast of great artists continues, I somehow realize that this isn’t our first gathering, but one of many — a tradition where artistic souls reconnect like old friends, the highlight of our collective year.

A Dream That Never Stops

This vivid dream of a gathering of artists continued to haunt me in my waking hours for weeks afterward, replaying in Technicolor detail during vivid discussions about art. Then one morning, after yet another nighttime return to that stone castle, I feel something — a presence, a gentle pressure on my shoulder, and a whisper: “You need to invite everyone to the annual dinner, Eric.” I don’t recognize the voice, but its authority is undeniable. Is this divine guidance? Or just my subconscious playing telephone?

Sudden Clarity

The meaning became clear during another bout of soul-searching — something vital was missing from my life. PleinAir Magazine, my passion project shuttered three years earlier due to financial realities, had left a gaping hole. Galleries had scoffed, “We don’t sell unfinished plein air paintings.” Art supply companies shrugged, “There aren’t enough plein air painters to justify advertising dollars.” Yet former readers still contacted me regularly, their disappointment a mirror of my own. I felt the self-induced pressure for it to return.

My Bold Announcement

Soon after this moment of clarity, I gathered my team of senior advisors to announce my revelation: We must resurrect PleinAir Magazine and simultaneously launch a convention. I explained the dream as eyes rolled, everyone thinking I’d finally gone crazy. My grand plan was to unite the scattered tribe of outdoor painters, with the intention of creating a movement that barely existed at the time.

Serious Discouragement

Without hesitation, my trusted advisors told me it was a bad idea. “Don’t do it, you’ll be ruined,” warned my top lieutenant. “We’re just regaining financial footing — this is suicide,” pronounced my numbers person, spreadsheets practically quivering with fear.

Insistence

I pride myself on listening to my advisors, and it’s rare that I ever pull rank. Yet defiantly, I claimed victory as I rose from my chair, spine straight despite knees knocking beneath the conference table. “We’re doing this one year from today,” I declare, knowing full well I’m gambling with my business, my dwindling savings, and potentially the roof over my family’s heads.

History Writes Itself 

Though bullets were coming out of my pores, knowing the risk was high and my team was against me, it turned out to be a good call. The magazine flourished, the movement exploded, and plein air events multiplied like rabbits across the landscape. Subscribers arrived by the hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Advertisers who once scoffed were lining up with checkbooks open. The timing, it seems, was divinely perfect. That was 15 years ago.

On the Runway Soon

In just a few hours from now, my wife, three kids, and me will be joining my dedicated team for a week of organized chaos as we create an unforgettable experience for our plein air family. Dozens of vendors, 80 master instructors, and nearly a thousand attendees will gather to celebrate what Jean Stern calls “the largest movement in the history of art.”

Fear whispered to me about losing everything back then. My gut shouted louder. The risk terrified me, but the dream’s gravitational pull was irresistible. Failure has lurked too close to home in the past, sharpening its claws. I’d lost everything before — the memory of that emptiness still haunts me. But this time I had three small humans and a spouse depending on my judgment. Relaunching the magazine and creating a convention was either brilliant or catastrophically stupid — possibly both simultaneously. My gut insisted this path was necessary, and hopefully, lives have been transformed because of it.

I’ve learned to understand that our gut speaks truth when we’re brave enough to listen. What is your gut telling you right now?

Fear accompanies greatness like a shadow — inseparable but ultimately powerless unless given authority. Every remarkable person who’s built impossible things knows fear intimately. Their differentiation isn’t fearlessness, but action despite trembling hands and racing hearts.

Dreams call loudly, though we often pretend not to hear, turning away from their persistent call. What vision keeps returning despite your logical objections? What do you know deep in your soul needs manifestation, even though you can’t fathom how you’ll accomplish it?

Don’t Let Details Stop You

Details remain hidden until your commitment materializes. You don’t need a complete roadmap — just the courage to take the first step. Even when the math screams “Impossibility!” if your gut vibrates with certainty, if you know that inaction means permanent regret, you must leap. The rest always falls into place. But it starts with commitment.

Our Brains Betray Us

Worst-case scenarios are always exaggerated in our minds. Yes, you might lose material possessions — homes, cars, bank balances. But your essence remains intact, perhaps even energized by a passionate pursuit. Solutions materialize when desperation fuels your creativity and the solutions you need to make your dream give birth. Yes, you’ll work harder than you believed possible. But most importantly, you won’t die wondering, “What if?” You won’t look back with the regret of not pursuing your dream, and you won’t ever have to wonder what might have happened.

Failure teaches lessons impossible to learn elsewhere. I’ve been so broke that ketchup packets became a food group. I survived, and I know if I crash again, I’ll subsist on ramen and determination. But ignoring my purpose? That’s soul-starvation of the worst kind.

The failed dream that almost crushed me

Technology dreams were big in 1999, when I envisioned putting music on this newfangled internet thing. It hadn’t been done. So I marched into Silicon Valley, charmed millions from investors’ wallets, built a company, and invented technology to stream radio and audio online. My team created standards still used today that had been deemed unworkable back then. In fact, most engineers told me what I wanted to do was impossible and defied physics. I interviewed 50 engineers, and 49 told me, “What you want to do is impossible.” I hired the one who said, “Yes, it’s impossible, but I’ll figure out how to do it.”

Soon employees are hired, and we’re doing business with iconic brands, and I’m meeting with the biggest names in Silicon Valley, like the founders of Google. Massive progress is made, and impossible technology is invented. And soon we are the number two consumer of streaming in the world. But one September day ends everything when planes hit the towers and investment money evaporates, and my company collapses into bankruptcy. I lost millions that others had entrusted to me, and my own dreams were shattered. The weight of that failure crushed my spirit, plunging me into years of depression where risk-taking became unthinkable. The wounds festered until I realized how much time I’d wasted nursing them instead of healing.

Behavior models excellence when you embrace the big dreams and necessary risks — but please, don’t emulate my years of paralysis and self-flagellation. That part of my journey was an unnecessary detour and a waste of human breath.

Finding Your Gifts

Gifts remain unopened within each of us — offering unique perspectives and solutions the world desperately needs. Most lie forever dormant, smothered by a blanket of fear. What would happen if you reframed your fear as excitement and took your shot?

Movement requires action, and thankfully I did not listen to the negative voices calling for caution in my head. Without taking a terrifying leap, PleinAir Magazine would not exist today. The convention might never have materialized. The plein air movement might have remained a scattered collection of individual painters rather than a global phenomenon. Perhaps someone else would have stepped forward — maybe even done it better. But I was the one chosen for this task, and when inspiration strikes you with similar force, you must recognize you’ve been selected for a purpose only you can fulfill.

Dreamers change everything when they cast aside risk and fear in pursuit of possibility. Every great woman or man who has built something life-changing has experienced fear. Join our ranks, and watch how your courage transforms not just your life but ripples outward to touch countless others. This is your moment. Hold your breath and jump in. No matter the outcome, you’ll never look back in regret.

Eric Rhoads

PS: A Little Nervous
Despite organizing this big convention many times before, my stomach still performs Olympic-level gymnastics. What if we mess up with a thousand people depending on us? It’s an enormous production. Yet excitement consistently outmuscles anxiety. Looking back, the journey seems impossible — especially for someone who skipped college, started without funding, battles ADHD daily, and finds business calculations more challenging than space flight. Success materialized despite my limitations, suggesting divine intervention for purposes still unfolding. I’m just grateful to have been hired for this unlikely role!  I hope to see you there.😊

PS: Switzerland Beckons
A couple of days ago we closed registrations for our upcoming Switzerland painting adventure, but fate intervened — one couple has cancelled at the last minute, which means two lucky souls can claim these coveted slots. I’ll share details during the convention, unless you grab these final seats before they vanish. Discover more at www.pleinairswitzerland.com.

PS: Hollywood Meets Canvas
I’ve had a 20-year secret love affair with digital painting. It accompanies me during travels, helps me solve compositional puzzles, and occasionally joins me outdoors. My iPad is filled with my digital paintings, sketches, and compositional experiments. On a skill scale of 1-10, I’m barely a 3. Asking around, I discovered everyone’s experimenting with it while feeling similarly inadequate. This made me wonder: Who are the world’s preeminent digital painters? The answer materialized instantly — those wizards crafting Hollywood’s breathtaking matte backgrounds and visual designs. I’ve convinced these industry giants — the artistic geniuses behind Lord of the Rings, Avatar, and countless blockbusters from the most prestigious studios — to teach you digital painting during a special one-day event on June 14. Whether you’re a digital novice or experienced pixel-pusher, you’ll discover new creative freedom. Not to replace traditional methods but to complement them, using devices you already own. More importantly, watching these masters work will elevate your non-digital painting exponentially. Register at www.digitalpaintinglive.com.

The first light of dawn creeps across the Texas sky this morning, a gentle watercolor of pinks and golds that feels both timeless and fleeting. The dew clings stubbornly to the wildflowers, their purple and yellow heads nodding in the whisper of a breeze that carries the mingled scents of fresh coffee, rain-washed earth, and honeysuckle. From somewhere nearby comes the persistent, hopeful chattering of grackles, and their abrasive sound puts me on high alert, awakening me better than coffee.

Suspended Time 

On mornings like this, time seems suspended. The porch swing creaks in gentle rhythm, a metronome marking moments that will never return. The coffee mug is warm between palms that once were held by my mother’s steadying hands. There’s something about these quiet moments that peels back the layers of adulthood, revealing the child within who still longs for the comforting presence of Mom. I’m missing her today.

Love Unbounded

Mother’s love is perhaps the most profound miracle of ordinary life — a love so expansive it seems to defy the laws of nature. It’s like the Texas sky itself — boundless, ever-present, sheltering us through storms and sunshine alike. Even when they’re gone, mothers leave an imprint on our souls as permanent as the lines on our palms.

Empty Chairs 

For those experiencing their first Mother’s Day with an empty chair at the table, an unheard voice on the other end of the phone, I see you. That first year carries a special kind of ache, a bewildering emptiness where celebration once lived. The calendar pages keep turning with cruel indifference to our grief, bringing us to days marked by absence rather than presence.

Enduring Presence

Yet in that absence, we find the enduring power of a mother’s love. It lives in the recipes we’ve inherited, like her amazing beef Stroganoff, which has never been the same in my kitchen. Mom’s influence is eternally passed on unexpectedly as phrases from her lips emerge from our own mouths, in the values that guide our decisions, and in the way we love our own children. I even catch myself saying things I swore I’d never say to my own kids, things that came from my mother. A mother’s love is like the horizon line — even when she disappears from view, her influence continues to shape the landscape of our lives.

Wild Gardens

Today, as we honor mothers everywhere, let’s remember that motherhood is like tending a garden that grows wild and wonderful in unexpected ways. It’s the quiet strength of showing up every day, of bandaging scraped knees and mending broken hearts, of celebrating triumphs both small and significant. It’s like holding water in cupped hands — precious, essential, and impossible to fully contain.

Time’s Gift

For those whose mothers still walk this earth, today is a gentle reminder not to wait. Make the call. Write the letter. Ask the questions. Share your gratitude. And for those whose mothers have passed beyond our reach, perhaps today we can honor them by embodying their best qualities, by telling their stories, by becoming living memorials to the love they poured into us. Let our kids know the legends of our youth and the stories of the mother only we knew.

Stubborn Beauty

The porch will always be here, the coffee will always brew, and the Texas morning will always break with stubborn beauty. But mothers — they are the irreplaceable treasure, the North Star by which we navigate our lives long after they’re gone. Thank God for mothers.

Timeless Wisdom

In honor of the power of motherhood everywhere, I pulled some quotes about motherhood from the book of Proverbs:

“She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” — Proverbs 31:26

“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it.” — Proverbs 22:6

“A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son brings grief to his mother.” — Proverbs 10:1

“May your father and mother rejoice; may she who gave you birth be joyful!” — Proverbs 23:25

“A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish man despises his mother.” — Proverbs 15:20

“Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.” — Proverbs 31:28

“A wife of noble character is her husband’s crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones.” — Proverbs 12:4

“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.” — Proverbs 31:10

“Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all. Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” — Proverbs 31:29-30

“For wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.” — Proverbs 8:11

Eric Rhoads

Dawn breaks early across the Texas landscape this morning, carrying its own special music — mockingbirds competing for attention, the rustle of new spring green leaves dancing in the warm breeze, and the hoot of a confused owl perched atop our water tower. There’s something magical about these mornings here on the long porch that wraps around this Texas ranch house, where I sit with my coffee reflecting on whatever comes to mind.

This morning, as I watch the intricate dance of nature unfold around me, I’m reminded of how often the most valuable treasures require us to dig beneath the surface. We live in a world of quick fixes and instant solutions, yet the most transformative answers often lie several layers deeper than our initial search. Chances are if I were to dig deep on my own property, there would be a massive cave that would fit the Empire State Building — or at least an aquifer filled with spring water.

The Doctor’s Verdict

Years ago, I faced a non-life-threatening physical issue that left me in constant pain. My doctor delivered what felt like a life sentence: “Nothing can be done. You’ll need to learn to live with it.” While most people trust their doctors without question, I don’t. I respect them, respect their time commitment to medical school and their experience, and I’m willing to listen. But I also know all humans – doctors included – have biases and tend to get set in their ways. So I’m always asking, “What if they’re wrong?” 

Medical Certainties That Weren’t

The reason doctors must keep their licenses current with continuing education is because what are thought to be facts are often proven wrong. What seems safe today becomes tomorrow’s danger. Even medical journals have been proven wrong countless times, yet people believe them as gospel.

Think about what doctors have told us in the past that is no longer valid today. Most still tout cholesterol-busting drugs while recent studies indicate cholesterol is actually good for your brain, and the lack of it may contribute to Alzheimer’s. Some doctors still push low-fat diets, while the latest wisdom embraces good fats. When I was a kid, ads claimed “9 out of 10 doctors recommend Chesterfields” cigarettes — which turned out to be terrible advice. And the food pyramid, pushed for decades to benefit the grain industry, has been largely debunked as we now understand most grains are meant to fatten cattle, not humans.

What we see as standard medical practice today will eventually be challenged, and some current treatments will be shown to destroy lives.

The Persistence of Questions

The question that changed everything for me was simple: “What if my doctor is wrong?” Unwilling to accept a lifetime of pain, I began digging deeper. Second opinions from other doctors yielded the same verdict. Most would have stopped there, but I was not willing to accept the sentence. Alternative medicine practitioners offered hope but no results. Yet I persisted, asking questions, exploring unconventional approaches, and refusing to settle for the accepted wisdom.

Eventually, my search led to an unconventional treatment that even a doctor friend dismissed as “a waste of time and money.” I pursued it anyway. After multiple sessions, the problem medical science had deemed permanent vanished. The pain that was supposed to be my lifetime companion disappeared because I was willing to dig below the surface of conventional wisdom. I could give you three or four examples of medical issues that have been solved by this same persistence.

The Parallel in Your Life

Does this resonate with you? Have you ever solved what others considered unsolvable simply because you refused to accept the first, second, or third answer? What problems in your life right now might benefit from this deeper exploration?

When Life Hangs in the Balance

Now imagine the stakes elevated — your very survival hanging in the balance. When doctors recommend aggressive treatments like chemotherapy and radiation, is that the time to dig deeper or explore alternatives? The question becomes infinitely more complex because the answer might determine life or death, and timing is often tight.

The Cautionary Tale

Apple founder Steve Jobs famously rejected conventional medical treatment in favor of alternative approaches for his pancreatic cancer. His decision ultimately proved fatal — by the time he returned to conventional medicine, it was too late. Even his vast wealth couldn’t change the outcome. Yet we can never know with certainty if earlier conventional treatment would have saved him either. Some diseases defy even our best efforts.

The Contemporary Dilemma

I have a dear friend currently battling aggressive cancer who wisely chose to follow medical advice given the disease’s severity and progression. Yet emerging peer-reviewed research suggests a complementary treatment that wouldn’t interfere with his current protocol. In fact, it’s saving people with his disease, or at least buying them more time. His stance is to take the treatment only if his doctors approve. But what if their rejection stems not from evidence but from professional entrenchment? If the alternative posed no risk to my current treatment, I might choose differently. What would you do?

Beyond the Information Gatekeepers

We exist in an information ecosystem where a select group of experts determine what constitutes legitimate knowledge. Those operating outside established frameworks are often labeled as fringe thinkers or conspiracy theorists. We often get our news from someone who promotes what we already believe. The left thinks the right is crazy, the right thinks the same about the left. Are extremes really a good idea? How can we be certain the gatekeepers are correct? How can we be certain the alternative thinkers are right? We can’t. That’s precisely why we must question our information sources and explore beyond conventional wisdom. True understanding requires depth and never accepting the first or second answer.

The Solution Paradox

A mentor once shared wisdom that transformed my approach to problem-solving: While most of us can generate two or three solutions to any problem, those initial ideas are rarely optimal. The best answers typically emerge only after generating 20 to 50 possibilities — a process that forces us beyond comfortable, conventional thinking into the uncharted territory where innovation thrives. It’s not easy or quick, which is why most people don’t dig deep.

Depth in Relationships

This principle extends beyond problem-solving or accepting medical advice. Are you facing challenges with your children or family or work? How deeply are you willing to dig for meaningful solutions that address root causes rather than symptoms? Recently, I resolved a persistent personal issue only after extensive research led me far beyond mainstream approaches. Because I did not rule out the unconventional, my life was changed. The answer had been waiting, but only at a depth few are willing to reach. Where will you go that is beyond the mainstream?

The Hidden Treasures

Life’s most profound gifts are discovered through depth — in conversations that move beyond pleasantries, in relationships that transcend superficiality, in business connections built on genuine understanding rather than transaction. Surface-level engagement rarely yields significant value. The gold lies beneath layers of effort, discomfort, and persistence — requiring us to sift through considerable “dirt” before discovering the nuggets that transform our lives.

The Investment of Depth

A truly meaningful life consists of meaningful memories and experiences. Depth requires investment — of time, inconvenience, and often financial resources. Yet this investment yields returns others never discover. The question isn’t whether you can afford to go deep. It’s whether you can afford not to.

The Philosophical Core

At its essence, the pursuit of depth reflects humanity’s most noble characteristic — the refusal to accept limitations imposed by conventional wisdom or the appointed “thinkers” or “gatekeepers” of our time. It’s never a bad idea to ask yourself, “What is the reason they are pushing their particular narrative?”  When we dig deeper, we assert that reality is more complex, more nuanced, and more possibility-filled than commonly recognized. We acknowledge that truth often lies not in what’s immediately visible but in what remains hidden until we commit to the search.

The depth-seeker embodies the recognition that what we know is dwarfed by what remains unknown. Yet ironically, this humility becomes the foundation for a more empowered existence, as we free ourselves from the constraints of unexamined assumptions and well-worn paths.

What if you were to explore the depths in your own life today? What if you were to question what those in the high tower in white lab coats or on the TV screens are telling us is true?

Eric Rhoads

The rhythmic hum of Manhattan traffic invaded my dreams before I even opened my eyes. Construction jackhammers pounded in perfect disharmony with taxi horns and the constant murmur of 8 million souls moving through their day. The smell of street vendor pretzels and coffee wafted through my cracked hotel window, along with that distinct perfume that is uniquely New York — a blend of ambition, exhaust, and possibility. My brain struggled to reconcile these sensations with my expectations of birdsong and Hill Country morning dew. Then reality crystallized: I wasn’t in Texas anymore. I was smack in the middle of Manhattan, having flown in for a quick speech at the American Watercolor Society Banquet.

Business Trip Transformation 

Before having kids, business trips were personal adventures. I’d add extra days to explore, discover, and soak in new experiences. But somewhere along the way, I developed the habit of treating trips like surgical strikes — get in, do the job, get out. This time, though, I managed a small victory: visiting the new Sargent exhibition at the Met before rushing to the airport. And I even allowed myself the luxury of an afternoon flight rather than my usual pre-dawn scramble.

Time Management Magic

People often apologize for “taking my time,” assuming I’m perpetually overwhelmed by my hectic schedule. The truth? I don’t feel busy. There’s wisdom in that old saying about giving tasks to busy people if you want them completed efficiently. I’ve learned that work expands to fill available time —- give me an hour for a task, I’ll finish in an hour; give me four days, and somehow it takes all four days.

Deadline-Driven Success

Before this New York trip, I had several projects with looming deadlines that I’d postponed until the final day. Then came the inevitable minor emergencies, leaving just three hours to complete everything. Somehow, magically, it all got done. The principle about filling available time truly holds water.

Goals Require Speed

As a young businessman, I once heard billionaire W. Clement Stone speak about goal-setting. Instead of placing targets years into the future, his mantra was simple: “Do it now.” Most goals can be accomplished rapidly if you engage your brain. The busiest person I know, Elon Musk, runs several companies as an active CEO — not just an investor, but the person setting agendas and driving execution. He recently noted that any project with a long timeline is fundamentally flawed. His approach? Shorten everything.

Question Your Timelines

What are you currently dragging out that could be completed now? I know, you’re convinced you need all that time. So am I … until I ask myself: “If I had to get this done in 10 days instead of 10 months, what would I do differently? What would need to happen?”

Speed Creates Success

Most of us take too long to accomplish things. When you set audacious goals with compressed timelines, people get uncomfortable and list all the reasons it can’t happen. Yet impossible achievements occur every day. The key lies in eliminating unnecessary steps, dreaming big, and embracing speed.

Acceleration Beats Stagnation

There used to be a driving-safety campaign called “Speed Kills,” but in life and business, slowness is the real killer. Recently, when AI program DeepSeek suddenly surpassed competitors, Elon Musk didn’t accept second place. He gathered his team and gave them two weeks to make Grok 3 demonstrably superior. Sleep became optional. The result? A breakthrough that catapulted them ahead. Sometimes speed truly matters.

Life’s Ticking Clock

One day, you’ll wake up after a long career, having believed time was abundant, only to realize the countdown is accelerating. All those things you wanted to accomplish might never happen. You face two choices: accept defeat or shift into overdrive.

Thirty-Year Vision

Imagine you’re 30, with potentially 60 more years ahead. If you adopt speed as a principle, you could accomplish 10 times more and magnify your impact on the world exponentially.

Balance Requires Contrast

Not everything benefits from acceleration. Some experiences deserve slowness — savoring fine wine, celebrating birthdays with your children, enjoying unrushed conversations with friends amid nature’s beauty.

Age Versus Mindset

I visited a friend yesterday and met his parents — a very elderly couple confined to rocking chairs, seemingly just waiting for life’s conclusion. I caught myself thinking I hoped never to become so sedentary — then discovered we were the same age. Here I am, planning for 30 more dynamic years, moving quickly, leading teams, launching new ventures, while they’ve chosen a different pace. The leisure-focused life works for some, but not for me.

Purpose Drives Energy

My paramount goal? Extract every drop of juice from life while blessed with good health. It’s not about money — it’s about discovering my limits and maximizing my positive impact. For me, speed matters. What about you?

Eric Rhoads

The morning light illuminates golden-green pollen as it drifts through the sunbeams, nature’s own glitter suspended in air and tickling my nose, much like the scent of sweet perfume from the color-filled wildflowers that filter among the spring grasses, growing wildly out of control like a rumor at a small town diner. 

Here I sit comfortably on my long, covered Texas porch overlooking the distant hills as I spot a smattering of Indian paintbrush, LYF (little yellow flowers), and a couple of iridescent bluebonnets lending their fragrance to the breeze. 

A chorus of bees hum their industrious melody among stands of tall greenery, within earshot but thankfully not within reach. We recently made our way back from the warmth of Florida beaches and have now returned to the ideal spring climate, the comfortable perfect days before the oppressive Texas heat sets in. 

It’s good to be home, and just in time for Easter. Happy Easter to you!.

Solitude Embraced

Sundays offer a different quality of silence than other days. It’s a chosen quietude rather than an absence of sound imposed by circumstance. My phone remains face-down, notifications accumulating unheeded. There is luxury in this deliberate disconnection, this small rebellion against perpetual availability and the dopamine rush of being needed. Somehow I’ve managed to resist reading my social media for a full month. I feel like I’ve had a restful time away. Oh, if I could give it up entirely and still survive in business. 

Wisdom Distilled

As I cradle my mug, I ponder the strange headlines about scientists working to cheat death through 3D-printed organs and brain transfers. Immortality in a lab, they promise. And recently news that if you sit in a hyperbaric chamber every day for 60 days, you can gain the health and cognition you had 20 years ago. Maybe I could check my social media while in a hyperbaric chamber while getting red light therapy after swallowing my 30 daily vitamins to reverse my aging? Hmm … something more to do.

Do we really want to live forever? Or should we give others a chance at their turn on earth? 

Tales Transcend Time

My great-great-grandfather has now lived for about 270 years. He was a Tennessee sheriff with wisdom that outweighed his ammunition. Legend tells how he spotted a fugitive by a campfire, and, instead of rushing in with guns blazing like some dime-store novel hero, he removed his badge, approached unarmed, and said, “Howdy, stranger, can you spare a cup of coffee?” Over flames and conversation, he disarmed the man with interest rather than intimidation. Eventually, he admired the fugitive’s gun, held it in appreciation, and only then made his arrest. Five generations later, I sip my coffee and realize I know a man I’ve never met — his patience, his cunning, his humanity — all preserved not in formaldehyde but in family narrative. He lives on.

Legacy Through Osmosis

Scientists tout hyperbaric chambers promising 20 additional years, while I silently transmit centuries to my children without even trying. My father’s entrepreneurial confidence flows through me like genetic material, not because he lectured me on business principles, but because I witnessed his phone calls, his negotiations, his presence. “Dad College” had no tuition but paid dividends beyond calculation. Now my children roll their eyes at my intentional lessons but absorb my every interaction — how I speak to strangers, how I treat their mother, how I navigate disappointment. They’re downloading my operating system whether I acknowledge the file transfer or not. It’s how I’ll live on … like it or not.

Immortality’s Mirror

I wonder which of my expressions my daughter will unconsciously mirror at 40. Will she inherit my laugh or my scowl? My generosity or my occasional insanity? The thought sobers me faster than my caffeine. We chase longevity supplements and cryogenic preservation without realizing we’re already achieving a kind of immortality through behavioral inheritance. I’m embarrassed recalling the times I’ve complained about bad drivers or slow service with my children watching — those moments potentially echoing through generations like ripples in ancestral waters.

Deliberate Eternity

As I take the final sip of my now-cooled coffee, loaded with lion’s mane to prevent Alzheimer’s, cinnamon to reduce inflammation, and MCT oil to superpower my brain, I wonder if wisdom follows the same pattern — revealing deeper notes with time and perspective. 

The longevity movements focus on extending our individual timelines, but they miss that we’re already smeared across time like watercolors bleeding beyond their borders. My great-grandfather’s jovial nature and creative business skills were adopted into my father’s life through osmosis, then unknowingly transferred to me — a kind of immortality achieved not through science but through story and presence. 

Perhaps my artistic side comes from my mother’s Aunt Ruth, whose oil paintings hang in the homes of her descendants, skills and passion probably acquired from a generation or two before her.  Our mental DNA and behavior may have been passed down for hundreds of generations. We don’t need hyperbaric chambers to transcend our lifespans; we need mindfulness about which parts of ourselves we’re programming into the future.

Tomorrow’s Ancestors

Setting down my empty cup, I realize that today I am someone’s ancestor — perhaps someone not yet born but destined to know me through the stories my children will tell, through the habits they unconsciously absorbed when I thought they weren’t paying attention. The greatest form of immortality isn’t avoiding death but creating life worth remembering, worth emulating, worth passing down like cherished recipes or heirloom furniture. The bluebonnets beyond my window will wither by next week’s heat, but their seeds ensure next spring’s revival — just as our words and deeds plant themselves in generations we’ll never meet.

Wisdom Distilled

Perhaps the true path to immortality isn’t found in laboratories or hyperbaric chambers, but in the conscious cultivation of our legacy. Science may eventually print new organs or transfer consciousness to younger vessels, but it cannot manufacture meaning or transmit values. (Or can it?) 

Our immortality project began the moment we entered this world and will continue long after we leave it — carried forward in the mannerisms of our grandchildren’s grandchildren, in stories told around future fires, in approaches to problems solved with wisdom accumulated across centuries. We live forever not by escaping death but by embracing the profound responsibility of life fully lived in full view of those who will carry us forward. 

The most potent immortality isn’t measured in extended years but in extended influence — the invisible inheritance we leave that shapes worlds we’ll never see.

And what about the lives we touch, those we influence — who may change forever, then influence the outcomes of their future offspring?

The real question isn’t whether you’ll live forever. You will. The question is: What version of you deserves that kind of immortality?

Eric Rhoads

The Florida humidity descended upon us like an overeager aunt at a family reunion — unwelcome, smothering, and absolutely unavoidable. This morning, the fog rolled in with theatrical flair, a dense curtain of moisture so thick you could practically spoon it into your coffee. My patio, normally offering panoramic views of the shoreline, now revealed nothing but ghostly outlines of what might be trees or might be strangers lurking with nefarious intent — impossible to tell in this atmospheric soup. The pelicans, those prehistoric-looking buffoons of the sky, pierce through the silence with their haunting croaks, invisible sky-beasts announcing their kingdom. “I’m here! I’m here!” they seem to crow, though nobody asked. And hiding behind this temporarily enchanting meteorological performance lurks the true villain of our coastal story — the oppressive heat that’s limbering up in the wings, ready to make us all regret our real estate choices for the next five months. Time to leave.

MASTERMINDS OR MADNESS?

About 15 years ago, I found myself in one of those suspicious motivational conferences, the kind where speakers pace stages like caged panthers and use words like “paradigm” and “synergy” with alarming frequency. The concept du jour? Masterminds. Though I’d encountered this in Napoleon Hill’s work (you know, those Depression-era self-help books your grandfather swore by), I’d dismissed it as some antiquated prosperity gospel. Then speaker Lee Milteer took the stage — a woman who could probably convince penguins to buy ice — and explained how we’re all essentially bumbling around in our own mental echo chambers. She pitched her group with a price tag that made my credit card whimper in advance. Against all logical judgment, like a moth to an expensive flame, I joined.

TERRIFYING TRUTH MIRRORS

The night before my first meeting, I tossed and turned like a novelist on a deadline. I desperately needed accountability, yet feared it with the intensity of someone about to have their search history read aloud. What masochistic impulse drives us to simultaneously crave and dread honest feedback? The meeting itself was a carnival mirror of revelations — I saw my own business flaws reflected in every other “successful” person there. Turns out those polished LinkedIn profiles and confident elevator pitches were elaborate facades hiding the same broken plumbing I was dealing with. The relief was refreshing, like finding out everyone is equally insecure and flawed.

UNEXPECTED BUSINESS THERAPY

A few months later, something shifted. Parts of my business began performing like they’d been secretly training for the Olympics. The group had become my business therapy — a place where my mental blockages were not only diagnosed but treated with the combined wisdom of people who’d already made the mistakes I was currently perfecting. After milking that first mastermind cow dry, I moved on to a marketing-focused group. Different players, same game — except this time the collective brainpower tackled my marketing strategy like the bees swarming around a honeycomb.

ADDICTION TO PERSPECTIVE

I hopped from group to group like someone channel-surfing for business wisdom. Five years here, five years there — each offering a different flavor of tough love and strategic insight. And though I’m still in a group I’ve loved for the past five-plus years, I succumbed to the inevitable entrepreneurial urge to create my own thing, launching an Art Business Mastery group for artists looking to transform their passion into profit. The irony wasn’t lost on me — I’d gone from reluctant participant to the very person inflicting accountability on others. Like an ex-smoker turned anti-tobacco crusader, I became evangelical about what I once feared.

BEAUTIFUL MENTAL DEMOLITIONS

There’s something intoxicating about watching someone’s limiting beliefs crumble before your eyes — like witnessing a controlled demolition of mental architecture that no longer serves them. As a coach, I’ve developed a particular fondness for being the wrecking ball, though I dress it up in kinder terminology for marketing purposes. The “aha” moments arrive like perfectly timed plot twists in a thriller — unexpected yet somehow inevitable. I’m not telling you this to sell you anything, but rather to emphasize the transformative power of allowing someone to call your bluff. True transformation is taking place already.

FRIENDSHIP CASTING CALLS

My friendship roster resembles a carefully curated theatrical ensemble — each player cast for specific emotional and intellectual contributions. Some friends exist purely for belly laughs, while others are painting buddies, and others serve as my personal truth-tellers, unafraid to point out when I’m starring in my own self-deception. 

Do you have someone who loves you enough to tell you when you’re being an absolute idiot? If not, you’re missing the most valuable relationship currency available. Curiously, I’ll accept hard truths from near-strangers that I’d bristle at coming from my own family — a psychological pretzel I’ve yet to fully unravel. I’m trying harder to listen to wise counsel from all corners of my life.

LONE WOLF DELUSIONS

Left to our own compromised brains, we humans are spectacular at getting things wrong. Our thinking isn’t just occasionally flawed — it’s a funhouse of distortions, biases, and self-serving narratives implanted by our parents, our teachers, and those who have innocently skewed our view of the world. Yet our egos, those fragile little creatures, recoil at correction like vampires from sunlight. We desperately need outside intervention, particularly in this era where social media algorithms function as yes-men on steroids, reinforcing whatever nonsense we already believe. Your mental diet requires as much scrutiny as what you put on your plate — possibly more, since nobody develops arterial blockages from consuming too many bad ideas (though society might).

DIGITAL DETOX REVELATION

Remember that cruise where I mentioned taking a social media break? What started as a vacation necessity has morphed into a three-week abstinence that I’m carrying like a sobriety chip. When the scrolling urge strikes, I redirect my twitching thumbs toward either a book or a paintbrush — substituting creation for consumption. The results have been nothing short of revelatory. My anxiety levels have plummeted like tech stocks in a bubble burst, or at least this past week’s stock market, and internal peace has moved in where constant outrage once resided. Most fascinating of all is how the gossip and “news” that friends still share now sounds like dispatches from a particularly unimaginative dystopian novel.

CLARITY THROUGH SEPARATION

Distance has transformed me into an anthropologist of modern communication — observing with detached fascination as others breathlessly repeat claims that would make even mediocre fiction editors demand revisions. The adage about repeated lies becoming truth hits differently when you step outside the repetition chamber. We’re all swimming in a sea of manipulated information, but most never realize they’re wet. Your sanity demands that you occasionally towel off and ask, “Is this actually true, or have I simply heard it so often that questioning somehow feels wrong?”

ACCOUNTABILITY TREASURE HUNT

What structures could you implement to receive regular reality checks?

Where might you source fresh perspectives that challenge rather than comfort? 

How might you discover those reputation-damaging blind spots that everyone sees but nobody mentions? 

Aging, that much-maligned, somewhat painful process, offers at least one gift — the gradual deflation of ego that allows wisdom to sneak in through previously guarded entrances. The young person’s certainty gives way to the middle-aged person’s questions, which I find infinitely more useful.

MENTAL GATEKEEPING BENEFITS

While many of my contemporaries’ brains calcified into human documentaries of outdated thinking or pure belligerence, I find myself increasingly receptive to new ideas — savoring the awakening that comes right before growth. This openness isn’t accidental but the result of vigorous mental gatekeeping. I’ve become ruthlessly selective about what narratives I permit to reside in my brain, which paradoxically creates more space for genuine exploration. The resulting clarity reveals just how masterfully we’re all influenced by forces with vested interests in our beliefs.

ANCIENT WISDOM ENDURES

“Seek and you shall find” — four words that pack the punch of a philosophical heavyweight. This isn’t just biblical wisdom but a cognitive principle with applications far beyond the Bible. When you actively pursue diverse perspectives, you inevitably discover new terrain — mental landscapes previously obscured by the fog of familiarity. 

You need not adopt every new idea that crosses your path, but allowing them temporary shelter in your thinking expands your intellectual real estate. A great awakening, like this morning’s dense fog that transformed familiar scenes into mysterious new worlds, fresh input can reveal beauty in what was previously mundane — if only we have the courage to step out into the mist.

Eric Rhoads

The Texas spring arrives not like a whisper but a symphony — a crescendo of scents and colors that assault your senses with joyful abandon. Bluebonnets stretch across fields like nature’s own Impressionist canvas, their sweet honey-vanilla fragrance carried on breezes that rustle through new grass. Stand among them and close your eyes: Hear the drone of industrious bees, the distant lowing of cattle, the soft percussion of petals brushing against each other in the wind. Open your eyes and witness the miracle — blue so intense it borders on supernatural, the scene kissed by morning dew that transforms ordinary fields into galaxies of sparkle. Touch a petal and marvel at its velvet strength, simultaneously delicate and resilient, like all the best things in life. This is Texas in the spring — not just a sight, but an immersion, a baptism in sensory wonder.

Tradition, Texas Style

I love tradition with the fervor of someone who’s collected far too many vinyl records and still writes thank you notes by hand. One tradition I’ve adopted since moving to Texas about 15 years ago is the annual bluebonnet painting pilgrimage — a ritual as sacred to Texas artists as barbecue is to the state’s collective waistline. If I’m lucky, these floral celebrities last a couple of weekends before fading away like one-hit wonder bands from the ’80s. There’s no predicting where to find them; Mother Nature is notoriously bad at returning texts about her planting schedule. Though I have my favorite spots, some years they don’t appear there at all, while other years they fill fields like someone spilled the world’s largest bucket of blue paint, then walked innocently away from the scene, whistling.

Kidnapping a Friend

This year, I indoctrinated — I mean, warmly introduced — one of my friends who recently moved to Texas into our state-flower painting obsession. The poor soul had no idea what he was in for when I kidnapped him at dawn for what I called a “quick painting excursion.” Six hours and 147 miles of back roads later, I’d shown him all my favorite spots, driving past rickety windmills that creak philosophical musings to the cattle, crumbling barns with rusty tin roofs that somehow still keep out rain through sheer Texan stubbornness, and old tractors that stopped working sometime during the Carter administration but remain standing as monuments to rural stoicism.

Once we found the perfect spot — after I rejected 17 “almost perfect but the light is 0.3% wrong” locations — we set up by a river, looking down upon a scene so picturesque it made my cynical heart grow three sizes. We immortalized it in paint, each brushstroke a tiny rebellion against time’s relentless march. I never sell my bluebonnet paintings because they are too valuable to sell, like trying to put a price tag on laughter or the perfect sunset. They spark memories of years past, painting with friends — some who are still around to compare brushstrokes, others who now paint celestial landscapes in whatever comes after this life. These canvases are my personal time machines, worth more than any figure an auctioneer could imagine.

Capturing Memories

Building memories is such a gift — a gift we often squander in our rush to document rather than experience. I feel profound sympathy for those who lose their memory, not just because of the medical tragedy, but because I get such rich gratification thinking about my past. It’s like having a private theater in my mind where I can replay the director’s cut of my life, complete with behind-the-scenes commentary.

This week I spent a lot of time in my studio, which is my version of a man cave, except instead of sports memorabilia and a mini-fridge full of beer it’s packed wall-to-wall with paintings that chronicle my existence better than any diary could. Photos don’t give me the same effect — they’re too instantaneous, too factual, too literal. They capture a millisecond without context, like reading only the punchline of a joke.

Painting, however — now that’s where the magic happens. Probably because when painting, I stand in one place, not just observing but interpreting the scenery or the people, taking signals received through my eyes (already an interpretation of wavelengths of light, if we want to get philosophical about it), processing them through the unique filter of my consciousness, sending signals down my arms, orchestrating a complex dance of muscles, tendons, and nerves to move my hands to wield my brush. It’s less documentation and more translation — reality filtered through the imperfect but beautiful sieve of human perception.

There is something transcendent about standing in a place, staring at it for two or three hours. When I look at these paintings later, the entire experience floods back — the sights, sounds, and special moments, like a deer leaping across the scene with balletic grace, or curious strangers approaching me and chatting about their own artistic aspirations or their uncle who “also paints, you two should talk.” These experiences are permanently embedded in the canvas through some alchemy of memory, pigment, and time that science has yet to adequately explain. Paintings don’t just capture light — they capture time, emotion, and the peculiar magic of being conscious and alive in a particular moment.

Big Time Memory Making 

I feel as though my life has been rich, especially these last years since I’ve made a deliberate effort to create memories — the kind that appreciate in value, unlike that questionable timeshare investment I made in 1985 and can’t get out of. In spite of the hassles involved in creating most of them (the flat tires on remote roads, the sunburns in uncomfortable places, the mosquito bites in even more uncomfortable places, the endless flights stuck in coach with a screaming baby), the memories are rich rewards that no tax authority can touch.

This intentionality is the secret — not passively waiting for special moments to happen while scrolling through other people’s curated lives on social media, but actively making them happen through conscious decisions and sometimes-uncomfortable effort. The best memories often lie just beyond the boundary of your comfort zone, in that territory marked “Here Be Dragons” on the map of your life — except the dragons usually turn out to be friendly, if somewhat prone to singeing your eyebrows.

The philosopher Seneca observed, “Life is long, if you know how to use it.” Most of us complain about not having enough time while simultaneously binge-watching entire seasons of shows we don’t even particularly enjoy. The paradox of modern existence is that we have more free time than any humans in history, yet feel more time-starved than ever. Perhaps the answer lies not in having more time, but in living more fully in the time we have — in choosing experiences over possessions, creation over consumption, and presence over distraction.

Frozen by Fear 

Last week in one of my coaching groups, a woman told me she wanted to come to the Plein Air Convention and then visit family, but, living in Canada, she feared the possibility of arrest if she did not have her papers with her. The news media was circulating fear with the enthusiasm of a toddler distributing cookie crumbs on a freshly vacuumed carpet. This fear narrative impacted her so much, it made her decide not to come. After I outlined that one of my friends in Canada had visited three times in the last four months, without any such hassle or fear — and in fact, the only danger he faced was excessive politeness and an addiction to maple syrup and buffalo check shirts — I convinced her to give it a shot.

Though the world is filled with wonder as technology changes at a pace that would make our grandparents suspect witchcraft, it’s also filled with narratives that social media algorithms have fine-tuned to promote fear or anger — emotions that keep us scrolling, clicking, and consuming content like digital addicts. Maybe I should not have said this, but I said, “Don’t let the fear mongers win. They’re selling you a product you don’t need to buy. Don’t assume what you’re being told is true without verifying it yourself. And if there is actual doubt, do your homework and find out the truth.”

Anxiety has been called “the dizziness of freedom” — that feeling we get when facing the boundless possibilities of choice. But what if our greatest anxiety should be not about what might happen if we venture into the unknown, but what will certainly happen if we don’t? The slow atrophy of possibility, the gradual narrowing of experience, until our lives become as small as our fears are large.

The Lie of Danger

Recently I was invited to travel to China, and I asked one of my friends if they wanted to come along. The response I received was, “It’s not safe, the food isn’t clean, and it’s dangerous for Americans.” Having done my homework and talked with numerous people who have actually been there — radical concept, I know — I said, “That’s simply not true; it’s a media-driven lie. Why let fear stop you from experiencing one of the oldest civilizations on Earth?”

How many extraordinary experiences have we all missed because of stories we’ve been told — or worse, stories we tell ourselves? The most dangerous place in the world is inside the prison of unfounded fears, where the walls are built of headlines designed to terrify rather than inform, reinforced by our own reluctance to question narratives that confirm our biases. Mark Twain supposedly said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” though I suspect if he were alive today, he’d add, “but only if you actually go, rather than reading terrifying clickbait about why you shouldn’t.”

When offered a chance to fly on an international trip, one of my kids actually said, “No, thanks, I can see it on Instagram.” I’m sorry, I love Instagram, but you can’t experience life through the photos of others. 

Digging for Courage

Where is fear stopping you? Not just the obvious fears — spiders, public speaking, that weird noise your refrigerator makes at 3 a.m. — but the subtle ones that whisper rather than shout?

What stories are you telling yourself that may not actually be true? How many of your limitations are self-imposed sentences beginning with “I can’t” or “I shouldn’t” or “People like me don’t”?

What evidence do you actually have for these limitations? Would it stand up in the court of rational inquiry, or would it be dismissed as hearsay and conjecture?

How many of your perceived boundaries are just that — perceptions? Imaginary lines drawn in imaginary sand?

What adventures await just beyond the artificial horizon of your comfort zone?

My goal is to see as much of the world as possible, even the toughest parts and the most difficult trips, because my feet still hold me upright and my brain still functions well enough to navigate Google Maps (mostly). If that ever changes and those opportunities are no longer possible, I don’t want to have regrets heavier than the souvenirs I never bought, memories more bitter than the foreign foods I never tasted.

The Simplicity of Living Fully

The intent of life is to live. Not to observe from a safe distance, not to hesitate until conditions are perfect, not to wait for better circumstances or more appropriate timing or the planets to align. To live — fully, immediately, and without the need for a user manual or five-star reviews.

As Thoreau put it more eloquently than I could: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Replace “woods” with whatever calls to your soul — mountains, cities, oceans, or yes, fields of bluebonnets — and you have a philosophy worth painting.

What can you do to enrich your time on earth? Not just pass the hours, but actually enrich them, like adding texture to a canvas or depth to a painting?

How much are you telling yourself all the reasons you can’t do things? And what if, just for a day, you decided those reasons were simply stories you’ve been telling yourself for so long you mistook them for reality?

What extraordinary experience is waiting for you just beyond your excuses? What masterpiece remains unpainted because your brushes stay dry?

Be intentional. Be bold. Don’t ever give up or give in. Life is short, but it’s wide enough to contain whatever adventures you’re brave enough to pursue. And if you’re very lucky, those adventures might include standing in a field of Texas bluebonnets, paintbrush in hand, capturing not just a landscape, but a moment in time that will never come again in exactly the same way.

Eric Rhoads

The mist hangs low over the water, dancing in the first rays of sunrise. The gentle sway of the tides rocks me as I take in the first sip of my coffee, rich and aromatic, bringing warmth to the cool morning air. The distant calls of seabirds punctuate the rhythmic lapping of waves against the shore. My fingertips trace the weathered wood of the small table beside me, worn smooth by salt and time. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, tasting the briny sweetness that only comes from being near the ocean. Am I in a dream? Or did I awaken to a window, a balcony, and water for miles as far as I can see?

Exactly one week ago at this time, we awoke at six, ran quickly to grab some breakfast in the massive buffet, came back to our room, grabbed our bags, departed the ship, got a ride home, then rushed to the Orlando airport to drop off our daughter, then drove home … exhausted, I took a nap and awoke in a different paradise.

The Floating City

My daughter was on her last spring break, with her college graduation coming this spring, and one of her dreams was to experience life on a giant cruise ship. We picked The Wonder of the Seas from Royal Caribbean, which a year ago was the world’s largest — now it’s the third largest. It houses up to 7,000 guests and 3,000 crew and is like a floating 20-story building. It was an incredible experience, with an onboard central park, multiple theaters, art galleries, and a shopping mall. I enjoyed ziplining, ice skating, waterslides, and some amazing music. Yet those things don’t matter much to me. The best part for me was time with family and a complete internet-phone blackout. It was a perfect opportunity to escape the news, social media, texts and phone calls, and work. (Though I did spend two and a half days at sea finalizing the new second edition of my marketing book.)

The Value of Disconnection

This wasn’t my first internet blackout. I’ve done it once before, for a week, but I had forgotten how wonderfully valuable it was. Think about your typical day online. For me it’s an eight- or 10-hour day of screentime, staring at my computer, writing, doing about five hours a day in meetings on video, hosting five YouTube one-hour shows a week in the studio, doing a one-hour Plein Air Podcast each week, writing several columns and blogs and marketing pieces, managing a large team of people, dealing with financial reports, marketing reports, and employee needs, and then going home, having dinner, and using the three to four hours in the evenings to catch up on a dozen different social media accounts, which includes posting, commenting, responding, and messaging others. It’s also when I catch up on texts, which I don’t typically have a chance to check during the day. Frankly, it’s all very addictive. It’s a high-speed merry-go-round, which is a lot of fun, fairly exhausting, and yet fulfilling because I tell myself my work is changing the world in some way. And it’s all a part of doing business and staying in contact with friends and family these days.

The Resistance to Return

What I discovered during the blackout was much like what I found with the inability to travel during COVID. When it was over, I did not want to return to the high volume of business travel, days on airplanes and nights in lonely hotel rooms. Once my vacation ended last week, I resisted going back into the full social media routine. In fact, a full week has gone by and I’ve opened Facebook only one time, briefly, to message someone. I know I can’t stay away forever, but I’m trying to give myself a mental break for as long as possible, even though all the meetings and broadcasts have resumed.

I highly recommend forcing a break from social media.

The Weight of Responsibility

Upon my return, I picked up the phone to hear from a friend and client, who was calling to let me know his company was going to go out of business. He felt the right thing to do was to let me know before the rumor mill caught up to me.

I sank deeply in my chair, my eyes welled up, and I found myself devastated by the news. In fact, so much so that I could not sleep that night. I spent most of the wee hours of the morning tossing and turning, processing his news and trying to come up with solutions to help save his business. Plus, his news came soon after another client had laid off half of their staff for survival. Could I be next?

When I think about my whirlwind of activity, after hearing this news I’m happy I have the opportunity to be busy, to be blessed with a thriving business. As I tell my staff, “We never take lightly the demise of anyone, because it could be us next time.”

The Familiar Ache of Failure

With no words to express how I felt, all I could do was kindly tell my friend, “Been there, done that.” I could actually remember the sinking feeling I experienced as I flashed back to 2002, when my internet radio company, RadioCentral, had to be closed, my dreams shattered, and my family of team members had to lose their jobs. Then having to experience the humiliation of bankruptcy and a bankruptcy auction, seeing millions of dollars in equipment that we fought to be able to buy selling for pennies on the dollar. Years of effort and innovation down the drain. Worse was seeing the dream of revolutionizing radio and audio disappear.

If there was good news in any of this, it’s that my friend said, “It’s been coming for a few years. We’ve been fighting the battles to try and prevent it, but the inevitable cannot be ignored.” And he said, “I’m at peace with it.”

How can he say that? His world was just ripped apart.

Identity Beyond Business

It’s important as I relay this unfortunate story to point out that this man’s identity is not tied up in his business; his identity is in his faith and his family. No one is sick or dying. He knows that failure wasn’t his management, it was his market, the economy, and the conditions he faced. Nothing he did could have saved this business, and in spite of my decades of experience, I could not come up with a solution he had not explored over the years. His company was too small to be big and too big to be small.

Lessons in Resilience

Since I write this each week in hopes my young adult children will eventually embrace the result, I’ll say this here: There are forces beyond our control, and though we feel we can control everything, we can control very little in actuality.

My dad used to tell me his stories of pacing the floors trying to find ways to survive, and I too have experienced failure multiple times. Moments when this company I now have almost closed its doors in multiple recessions. In fact, when interviewing potential employees, I look at their failure as a positive, not a negative, because once someone has had their teeth kicked in, they know what it feels like and will fight like mad to never let it happen again.

One of my best friends, now deceased, who was a CEO, told me it never gets easier, it just changes. I concur. 

The Hidden Struggles

It’s easy for outsiders to place blame, to make companies out to be big bad corporations, but few ever know of the sleepless nights, the weight of responsibility of massive debt, or knowing the lives of your employees and their kids will change for the worse if you screw up. Sadly, I have screwed up. Sadly, I have disrupted lives. No matter how good a business owner you are, sometimes you can’t survive.

The Courage to Begin Again

What I’ve learned through my own failures and witnessing the failures of others is that resilience isn’t about avoiding the fall — it’s about how quickly you get back up. My friend’s sense of peace comes from understanding that this business was a chapter, not the entire story of his life, and that God has a plan that’s probably better.

There is a unique wisdom that comes only from standing in the ashes of something you built and asking, “What next?” It’s the wisdom of knowing that your worth isn’t measured by what you own or what title is engraved on your business card. It’s measured by the courage it takes to begin again. It takes a special breed to dust off and restart.

I think about the crew members on our cruise ship, many from developing countries, working six months straight without a vacation, then returning home for just two months before starting again. They do this to provide for families they rarely see. That’s true resilience — finding joy in the work despite the sacrifice, finding purpose in providing despite the separation.

The Balance We All Seek

Perhaps the real lesson in all of this — from my friend’s business closure to my own social media blackout to the cruise ship workers separated from their families — is that we’re all seeking the same thing: balance. Balance between work and rest. Between digital connection and real presence. Between success and failure. Between identifying with what we do and remembering who we are. Between us and our Maker.

So as I sit here, looking at the seductive blue glow of my phone and the dozens of notifications waiting to pull me back into the whirlwind, I’m making a commitment to maintain some of that precious balance I found on the water. Not to abandon my responsibilities, but to hold them in proper perspective. To remember that even if everything I’ve built were to disappear tomorrow, the most important parts of me would remain intact.

And isn’t that the greatest freedom of all?

Eric Rhoads