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A fierce storm tore its way across the state, blowing sticks and branches, leaves and debris with the force of a baby hurricane. The looming dark sky provided warning before its full dramatic performance: billowing clouds, gusting winds, whitecaps on the water, and winds you could hardly stand against. Then the curtain finally came down.

The responsibility of home ownership includes cleanup after the storm. Lots of branches down, lots of leaves, and as I walked out to survey the damage at the waterfront, I spotted what looked like a good-sized log drifting against the side of my dock.

I should move that, I thought, like a responsible adult. So I kicked my shoes off and was about to wade into the water … when the log moved, and stared me down like it was ready for an oversized meal. It was an alligator pretending to be a log. I have decided he can remove himself at a time of his choosing. I will not be rushing him. I don’t need the drama. Nor will I dangle my feet in that water again.

But here’s the thing about that storm: It cleared the air. It stripped the dead branches off the trees. It reminded the yard … and me … what actually matters and what’s just deadwood waiting to fall. Storms do that. They’ve always done that. And so, apparently, do alligators.

The Storms We Hate

I’ve spent years preaching the importance of embracing storms … the metaphorical kind. And I want to be completely honest with you: I didn’t look at hard times the same way when I was young.

Hard times were bad. Difficulty was an obstacle. I wanted none of it. I wanted the straight line from here to success. No pain but all the gain.

I still don’t love a storm. Let’s not romanticize this too much. But I understand them now in a way that the younger version of me simply could not. Because almost every storm I’ve ever weathered was one I created myself. Unbridled ambition, moving too fast, not thinking about the human beings in my path, not paying close enough attention, overspending and under-listening. I bumped into people. I bruised egos. I left some wreckage in my path.

The storm was the universe handing me the invoice.

Brilliance or Arrogance?

Recently I worked with a brilliant young man. Talented. Driven. A force of nature. And watching him was like finding an old photograph of yourself that you’d prefer no one else ever sees.

All he cared about was forward momentum. Career trajectory. Results. Speed. And if you weren’t keeping up … if you didn’t respond fast enough, produce fast enough, think fast enough … you were either getting a very pointed conversation or he wanted you fired. He had the impatience of a man who had somewhere important to be, and you were on the escalator and in his way.

He thought he was impressing me, yet I recognized every single move. Because I made every single one of them myself at his age.

He didn’t bruise my ego. He couldn’t … I’ve been working on that particular vulnerability for decades. My approach now is borrowed straight from Ted Lasso: Be a goldfish. Short memory. In one ear, out the other. Don’t carry what other people are putting down.

But watching him, I felt something more interesting than irritation. I felt clarity. Because that relentless, forward-at-all-costs energy … that is the arrogance of youth. And the arrogance of youth creates storms. And those storms? That’s the classroom. That’s where the actual education happens.

Screaming Billionaires

I’ll give credit where it’s due: Some of the most driven people on the planet … the screaming, table-pounding, “sleep-is-for-the-weak” crowd … have built extraordinary things. I genuinely admire the output, even when I cringe at their methods.

But I don’t have the stomach for it. And honestly? I don’t want it.

Because here’s what I’ve noticed: The people who rule by fear or pressure may win on the scoreboard. But they lose something far more valuable: the trust of the best people around them, who are counting the days until they can work somewhere else. Quality people don’t stay where they’re not respected. And a life surrounded by people who are merely tolerating you is a lonely kind of winning.

I’ll take a slower lap with people who actually want to be in the room. And if that prevents me from being a billionaire, I’m good with that. I have to live with myself.

Gift or Trap? 

Now here’s where I turn the mirror around. Because the opposite of the arrogant young man isn’t wisdom. It’s the risk of becoming calcified.

Ancient wisdom … the kind you earn after decades of hard lessons, failed ventures, relationships tested and sometimes broken, and a few alligators you almost grabbed … is a remarkable thing. We understand human psychology now in ways we couldn’t at 30. We can accomplish through patience and insight what we used to try to brute-force. We know which fights aren’t worth having and which relationships are worth protecting.

I wish I’d known then what I know now is probably the most universal human sentiment in existence.

But. And this is a big but.

The dark side of ancient wisdom is being stuck. Closed. Certain. Done learning. Convinced that the way things used to be done is the way things should be done. Treating new ideas like threats. Treating younger thinkers like they don’t get it yet.

To me, that is the kiss of death.

The Echo Chamber Curse

What I fight against every single day, if I’m honest, is the seduction of my own certainty.

It’s comfortable to be right. It’s comfortable to surround yourself with people who agree with you, who validate your worldview, who watch the same channels and read the same social media posts and conclude the same things you do. The world becomes very small and very manageable and very … wrong.

I intentionally fill my life with people who are not like me. Different ages. Different backgrounds. Different cultures. Different starting points. Different political views. I love the energy of someone at the beginning of their career … hungry, maybe a little pushy, occasionally exhausting, always alive. I love the people in my world who are mid-career, dropping the worst habits of youth, picking up the first gifts of wisdom, and holding me accountable to keep up.

They make me better. Sometimes they make me uncomfortable. That’s how I know it’s working. Because discomfort is actually a key to all growth. When you find yourself squirming a little … embrace it.

Your Brain Is Rooting for You 

Here’s something worth knowing: Your brain, unlike most things past a certain age, actually wants to keep growing.

Without getting too technical, neuroscience has given us the concept of neuroplasticity: the brain’s remarkable ability to form new neural connections throughout life. Not just in childhood. Not just in your 30s. Throughout life. The brain retains the capacity to rewire, adapt, and strengthen well into old age … but only if you use it. Challenge it. Expose it to novelty. Make it work. The brain changes itself based on what you do and what you don’t do.

And here’s the one nobody expected: Your brain loves cholesterol. Loves it. The brain is the most cholesterol-rich organ in the body … it contains roughly 25% of all the cholesterol in your system, most of it used to make your neurons fire efficiently. We spent decades demonizing the stuff, and it turns out the organ doing the demonizing needed it to function. And statins, it turns out, are not what they were cracked up to be, only extending life for about four days and often causing memory problems or worse.

An unused brain atrophies, just like an unused muscle. Sitting still … intellectually, emotionally, experientially … is a slow erosion. The people I’ve watched become their worst selves in later life almost all had one thing in common: They stopped being curious.

What I Can’t Control

We have very little control over what happens to us. But we have enormous control over what we do with it.

We can control what we put in our bodies and what we let rot inside our heads. We can control whether we say yes to a new experience or talk ourselves out of it with excuses or fear dressed up as reasons. We can control whether we get on a plane to someplace that scares us a little,  learn a phrase in another language, try the food, and sit with the discomfort of not understanding something, and come out the other side larger than we went in.

Personally, I don’t want to sit mindlessly watching the news. I want to travel the world. I want new languages stumbling out of my mouth. I want to understand why people who seem so different from me fight so hard for what they believe, and to genuinely ask myself what I might be missing. I want to read what challenges me, not just what confirms me.

The lounge chair and the news cycle are always there. They will wait for me. The world will not.

Questions Worth Asking

I ask myself some version of these every day. What about you?

What are you treating as settled that might actually be worth reopening?

Where is the arrogance of your youth still running the show, and where has it finally started to quiet down?

What has your ancient wisdom closed off that you should still be curious about? You don’t have to be old to be set in your ways. I’m fighting like mad to get someone I know to adopt some new technology that will change his life, yet he refuses.

What are you accepting as gospel simply because you’ve believed it for a long time, or because your parents or grandparents believed it?

When did you last do something that made you feel genuinely new? Or really uncomfortable?

What is one thing you’re calling “I’m too old for that” or “I’m too young for that,” which is actually just fear with a better vocabulary?

I don’t have clean answers to any of these, but I have a commitment to keep asking.

The Bottom Line

Youth’s greatest weapon is its energy and hunger, but those are also its greatest liabilities. It’s why insurance for reckless young men is expensive. Age’s greatest gifts, perspective and patience, are also its greatest threats, if we let them calcify into certainty.

The goal is to stay in the tension. Stay curious. Stay in the room with people who make you stretch. Let the storms clear out your deadwood. And for heaven’s sake, before you reach for something at the edge of your dock … look more carefully. Some logs have teeth.

Now go do something that surprises you.

Eric Rhoads

The water does something at this hour that defies explanation. Thousands of shifting diamonds blink across the surface as the Florida sun finds its angle. I’m squinting from the shore at silhouettes of palm trees and lounge chairs so perfectly arranged they look airbrushed into a brochure.

A dolphin surfaces 50 yards out, indifferent to my admiration, then disappears. And overhead, an osprey circles in that slow, focused way that tells you she’s not sightseeing. Then she stops.

She announces, then dives.

The osprey calls out before she commits. It’s not a warning to the fish; the fish can’t exactly reschedule. It’s an announcement: I’m here. I see you. Here I come. Then she folds into a javelin, hits the water with the kind of commitment that makes you wince, and rises with golden talons wrapped around something that didn’t get a vote in the matter.

She didn’t circle forever. She didn’t weigh the risks or consult anyone. She didn’t overthink it. She announced. She dove. She ate.

I’ve been thinking about that all morning.

What the Osprey Knows

Here is what the osprey is not doing: She is not explaining to her osprey friends that she’s “taking some time.” She’s not posting about it. She’s already circling again.

I say this not to shame anyone whose definition of a good Tuesday involves a golf cart and a satisfying nine holes. If the green fills you the way a fish fills an osprey, then play every course on the continent with my blessing. There is no right or wrong here.

But I have a suspicion that some of you are circling without committing. That you feel the pull but have slowed the wings a little because someone or something … a decade, a culture, a well-meaning doctor … suggested you’ve earned the lounge chair. That maybe this is the phase characterized by the gradual, graceful reduction of ambition. And maybe some mornings you’re not sure you agree.

Breaking What Works

Here’s what I know about myself: I try to be like the osprey. I have insane ideas, and so I announce them, to shame myself into getting them done. Without the announcement, there is no accountability. Without action … the dive … I’d keep circling with no consequence, no skin in the game, no reason to actually leave the air.

The announcement is the commitment. It’s not bragging; it’s burning the bridges behind me. 

Most people keep their big ideas private, and that’s precisely why most big ideas die quietly, somewhere between the coffee cup and the calendar. You can circle a private idea forever. The moment you say it out loud, to someone who will remember, the dive becomes non-negotiable. Your reputation is now in the water ahead of you.

Breaking Old Habits

I didn’t build a company to produce the same widget for a thousand years. I love reinvention. Not reinvention out of crisis, but the deliberate, mildly reckless act of breaking something that isn’t broken, just to see what happens next. I like to do it personally and professionally.

The thrill isn’t in the outcome. The thrill is in the not-knowing. The moment before the dive, when anything is still possible. It’s a dopamine rush, and I’ve decided I’m not interested in giving it up just because I’m old enough to know better.

So my next stop: The Florence Academy of Art in Italy, five concentrated weeks of classical drawing and painting training, starting right after Easter, where excellence is the only acceptable standard and they will tell me with precise Italian politeness that my drawing is structurally incorrect, to erase and start over, and slow down this time.

I don’t need this to sell more paintings. I’m not building a curriculum around it. I’m doing it because the box exists and I want to know if I can check it. That’s the whole reason. And I just told you, so now I have to.

So I’ve been going to life drawing groups, practicing more than I normally would, trying to arrive less embarrassing than I currently am. That has limits, but I intend to reach them.

Business Gets the Same Treatment

And it’s not just the art. Back at my company, I’m launching new things — not out of pressure, not because the old things aren’t working, but because the best version of what I can offer my customers doesn’t exist yet, and I want to build it.

The excitement isn’t in knowing how it will go. It never is. It’s in the dive itself, the commitment before you know what you’ll come up with.

Every new thing I’ve built felt slightly insane and very scary in the early stages. I usually get resistance to every idea, rolling eyes, “Here we go again, another harebrained idea” from some of my advisors. That feeling, I’ve decided, is a good sign. Comfort is not a reliable compass. If everyone immediately agrees it’s a great idea, it’s probably not that great an idea.

It’s About the Hunt

Life, it turns out, isn’t about the fish you catch or accumulate, though those are nice perks. It’s about the hunt — the challenge, the unsettling electricity of knowing you’ve put yourself at risk, and announcing it so loudly that failure is no longer a quiet option.

The osprey doesn’t circle because she’s afraid of the water. She circles because she’s choosing her moment. But here’s the thing most people miss: At some point the circling stops being strategy and starts being avoidance. And the fish doesn’t wait.

You know which one you’re doing. We always do. Even though we tell ourselves stories about timing and finances, and convince ourselves that someday will come, most times there’s not another fish coming. 

The osprey is already circling again. The water is genuinely spectacular. And somewhere overhead, something is about to dive.

Where will you dive?

What are you in need of circling?

Eric Rhoads

God clearly has a sense of humor.

While much of America spent this week battling hurricane-force snow, record lows, and the kind of ice that makes your driveway look like an Olympic luge track, I’m watching the sun rise over the Atlantic. Pink clouds. Mild waves. A forecast promising near 70 by afternoon.

I’m in Hilton Head, SC, and hosting my Winter Art Escape artist retreat, reconnecting and painting with old friends and new, each of whom had stories of missed flights, white-knuckle drives, and the kind of slipping and sliding that makes you question all your life choices.

Meanwhile, I’m sipping coffee in paradise, wondering how I got so lucky.

Except I know exactly how I got here, and “lucky” had little to do with it. Blessed would be a better term.

The Pinball Theory of Life

When I was a kid, there were these magnificent contraptions called pinball machines. You’d stand there gripping two paddles, fire a silver ball upward into a maze of lights and bumpers, and pray it didn’t ricochet straight into oblivion. The goal was simple: Land that ball in the high-value hole. The reality was chaos. No matter how skilled you were, random bumpers would send your ball careening in directions you never intended, landing you in circumstances you never predicted.

Which, as it turns out, is a perfect metaphor for life.

I run my schedule with surgical precision. Every calendar slot filled. Meetings stacked like Jenga blocks. Recording sessions, broadcasts, online events, conference calls, employee and customer meetings, in-person conferences … barely a breath between them. I’m the guy who plans his bathroom breaks. And yet, all it takes is one unexpected bumper — a flight delay, a last-minute emergency, someone running 20 minutes late — and suddenly the entire day ricochets in a new direction.

The thing is, I’ve made peace with other people’s chaos. When someone’s late to my meeting, I don’t stress. But that pinball still fires off sideways, creating a cascade of rescheduling, apologies, and dominoes falling in slow motion.

Our New Post-College Rhythm

The last few years, my bride and I developed a rhythm: Christmas at home with the family, then we’d load the dogs in the back seat and make the two-day drive south to escape the frozen tundra we’d tolerated most of our lives. We don’t fly because we need a car, and our dogs — well, let’s just say they don’t have the credentials for air travel. 

But this year, the rhythm broke. One of the triplets moved home between college graduation and his first real job, starting mid-January. Another came home job-hunting and landed something around the same time. So we stayed put to be with our kids. I hosted Watercolor Live from home, attended a two-day board meeting, and had exactly one week — one glorious week — to escape to sunshine before my next trip.

Packed and ready to go, a week ago Friday, we were minutes from loading the car.

Then Chewy, our oldest dog, a tiny maltipoo with more personality and confidence than any dog we’ve ever owned, started crying out in pain as his body slowly deteriorated at 17 years. The meds that had been working stopped working. And a week ago yesterday, his suffering stopped and we said goodbye.

The Grief Nobody Warns You About

Only pet owners truly understand the weird, gut-punch grief of losing a fur-baby you’ve held and played with for years. It’s surreal. They’ve always been there — background music to your life — and suddenly the soundtrack goes silent. You trip over little landmines: blankets, leashes, bowls. Each one detonates a fresh sting.

My friend Steven Burke lost his beloved cat, Charcoal, the same week. We commiserated. There’s something oddly comforting about shared grief, even when it’s about creatures who can’t talk back but somehow communicate more clearly than most humans.

Here’s the strange part: Losing Chewy that week actually worked out. If we’d been halfway to Florida when it happened, we’d have been dealing with it in a hotel parking lot somewhere in Georgia, debating whether to turn around or keep going. Instead, we were home. Together. Present. And Chewy was with us and part of the family as he faded away.

Now we can’t leave for two more weeks anyway — I had to fly here for Winter Art Escape, then fly back to host another online event, Gouache Boot Camp, and shoot a new pilot for PBS, before we can finally slip away for a brief stay.

The pinball landed exactly where it needed to land.

Which brings me to the question everyone asks when they lose someone — furry or otherwise: Will I see them again?

The Heaven Question Nobody Wants to Answer Honestly

Our pets supposedly don’t have souls. At least that’s what most theologians tell us. I hate that answer, because anyone who’s looked into a dog’s eyes knows there’s something there. Personality. Loyalty. Love that puts most humans to shame.

Some people say pets go to heaven to be with us. Others say they reincarnate — dogs become humans, humans become dogs, and we all keep cycling through until we get it right. I’d like to believe my dogs will meet me in heaven one day, tails wagging, ready to spend eternity playing fetch.

But heaven is a tricky subject.

Do Bad People Go to Heaven?

Have you ever been to a funeral where everyone talks about some questionable character like he’s Mother Teresa? “He’s in a better place now,” they say, while you’re sitting there thinking, Really? That guy? The one who stole from his business partner and cheated on his wife? THAT guy gets heaven?

Yet pretty much every funeral treats the afterlife like a participation trophy. Everybody gets in. Just show up to life, then collect your golden ticket on the way out.

Except that’s not how it works.

“I’ll be there because I’m a good person,” some say. Sounds reasonable. Except the Bible doesn’t grade on a curve. No matter how good you are, good doesn’t buy your ticket.

“I’ll earn my way in by doing good works,” others insist. Volunteering. Charity. Helping little old ladies cross the street. Noble? Absolutely. Enough? Not even close.

Here’s where I lose some of you, and I know it. I’ll get emails saying, “I loved your Sunday notes until you got religious.”

But here’s the thing: I’m not religious.

Being religious means belonging to a religion — following rules, checking boxes, attending the right building on the right day, saying the right words in the right order. That’s not me. Rick Warren nailed it: “You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.” Many religions tell you the only way to God is through them — their rules, their rituals, their secret handshake. Some claim all religions are just different paths up the same mountain, that it doesn’t matter what you believe because we all end up in the same place.

I think that’s naive. Especially if you’ve actually read the texts. They contradict each other on pretty fundamental stuff — like whether God is one being or many, whether salvation is earned or given, whether Jesus was divine or just a really good teacher.

Nothing to Earn, Which is Refreshing

The bottom line: You cannot earn your way into heaven. It’s not Jesus plus church attendance. Not Jesus plus helping orphans. Not Jesus plus saying the right prayers. Not Jesus plus anything.

The “plus” comes after. A changed heart creates the desire to be better, to love more, to help others. The good works flow from grace, not toward it.

Billy Graham put it perfectly:
God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ‘I love you.’”

Which is why — painful as it is — we’re probably not going to see our dogs in heaven. Or good people who never accepted the invitation. It’s not complicated: Be a Jesus follower, not a religious person.

There are hundreds of documented witnesses who say Jesus wasn’t just a prophet. He died on a cross — horrifically, publicly — and was resurrected, and was seen by over 400 people afterward. This isn’t just religious propaganda; it’s documented in ancient texts written by people who had no reason to lie and every reason to recant when some were being executed for their testimony.

One of my favorite books is The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel — an atheist investigative reporter who set out to debunk Christianity once and for all. His conclusion? The evidence was so overwhelming that his only rational option was to accept Christ, who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Grace for Leaky Cups

Now the critics are sharpening their pitchforks, so let me be clear: I’m not saying this to earn brownie points or secure my reservation upstairs. Despite all the terrible things I’ve done — and trust me, there’s a list — I’ll be there. Because we’re forgiven. All of it. Every mess, every failure, every regret, when we accept Christ. Therefore even bad people can be forgiven.

Here’s my favorite analogy:

Imagine a paper cup filled with water, and the water represents God’s Spirit; His presence, His glory living in us. We were created in the image of God, designed to hold His Spirit, for fellowship with heaven itself. But when sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, it shattered that image. It pierced the cup. Suddenly we couldn’t hold water anymore.

Every sin we commit pokes another hole. No matter how hard we try to be good, to fill ourselves with God’s presence, it leaks out. We can’t contain Him on our own. Our brokenness destroys our intimacy with God.

But when we accept Christ, He covers our sin — like slipping another perfect cup around our broken one. Now the water doesn’t leak out. The essence of Christ, the Holy Spirit, can fill us and stay because Christ has covered every hole, every flaw, every sin. There are no leaks anymore.

That’s called being justified by faith. That’s what it means to abide in Christ. And with the perfection of Christ covering us, we can enter Heaven. Otherwise scoundrels like me would never have a chance.

The struggle is that we keep trying to do it on our own, forgetting that we need that outer cup covering us constantly.

Or picture this: You’re being robbed. A man points a gun at you. Just before he fires, someone else steps in front and takes the bullet because he loves you that much. That’s what Christ does when we accept Him.

But here’s the part nobody tells you in the brochure: Life doesn’t get easier. Things don’t magically improve. Problems still pile up. Bills still come due. Dogs still die. The pinball still hits bumpers you didn’t see.

But you don’t go through it alone. And sometimes — often, actually — He wants you to have problems so you’ll learn to depend on Him instead of yourself. Part of accepting Christ is losing ourselves, our pride.

Prayer doesn’t always work the way we want, either. I’m thankful for most of the things I prayed for that didn’t happen, because in hindsight I can see that something better came along.  I just had to be patient and trust the plan — even when the plan looked like chaos.

When I read my Bible daily, things go better. I’m more focused. More grounded. When I don’t, I slip up, say things I regret, make decisions I have to undo later. It’s a lot like painting. If I don’t paint every day, I slip up. If I don’t stay in the Word, and in prayer, I slip up.

I’m far from perfect. I battle my ego constantly. I fight for humility, trying to remember that the good things that happen aren’t because I’m special — they’re grace. It’s a constant struggle, because human nature wants to beat its own drum, to claim credit, to believe we’ve earned what we have.

But I believe all good things come from Christ.

Why I’m Telling You This

If you’re still reading — and bless you if you are — I’m not sharing this to convert you. I don’t have that power. But once you find this kind of joy, you kinda want others to experience it. The Bible says we’re invited, and if our heart is stirring, we need to accept the invitation. I’m not here to push anything on you. I’m just sharing my thoughts on heaven so you can understand a little more about who I am, what I stand for. I don’t want to be the church lady or act in the ugly way the media portrays Christians.

It’s hard to understand why bad things happen to good people. A young star quarterback with a huge future was killed in our state a couple of weeks ago. It’s heartbreaking to see TV ads with kids in cancer clinics, fighting battles they didn’t choose.

Why?

All I can say is: Trust the plan. There’s a reason we may never know. The pinball hits bumpers we can’t see, ricochets in directions we don’t understand, and lands in holes we didn’t know existed.

But someone’s running the machine.

Chewy’s Last Lesson

I miss that little guy. His blanket is still in the corner. His bowl is still by the door. Every time I see them, I feel the sting.

But here’s what I’m learning: The unexpected redirections aren’t accidents. They’re part of a game I can’t follow from where I’m standing. Maybe Chewy’s timing wasn’t random. Maybe staying home that week mattered for reasons I’ll never understand.

The silver ball is still in play. The flippers are still in my hands. And even when the ball drains and the game seems over, someone keeps feeding in quarters to let me play again.

That’s grace.

And I’m grateful — even through the tears, even seeing the empty dog bowls, even through the pinball surprises I never saw coming.

See you next week,

Eric Rhoads

Something is amiss. Summer weather filled our holiday season, and we’re still getting amazing sunny days when we should be shivering. The birds are singing like spring. The dead trees are about to sprout spring greens. Nature is confused here in Austin, Texas, this year.

The house has a different sound now.

I noticed it first this morning when I meandered into the kitchen in my bare feet — the floorboards creak louder when there’s one less person moving around upstairs. The coffeemaker’s gurgle echoes off the kitchen walls. Even the dogs’ collars jingle differently, as if the sound waves have more room to travel before finding a surface to absorb them.

The Last Sunday Dinner

A week ago today, we gathered for what would be our last Sunday dinner as a complete family for the foreseeable future. Yesterday, Berkeley, our youngest triplet, drove away with a U-Haul to start his dream job at a space company five hours away. As I said grace over our meal, my voice cracked. The words caught in my throat like breadcrumbs. The reality of our last Sunday dinner, after 23 years of them, was, well, pretty hard to take.

You see, I know how this story goes. I left home at 17 and never moved back. Not because I didn’t love my parents, but because that’s what you do — you launch. You fly. You build your own nest. And now, watching my son’s taillights disappear down our street, I recognize that same fierce independence in him. The same need to forge his own path, filled with joy and possibilities, yet tearing up to say goodbye.

Ambushed by Memories

Memories ambush you at moments like these. His surgery at eight months old — repairing something we discovered by pure chance that could have caused serious problems in adulthood. Teaching him to tie knots for Scouts, shooting BB guns, driving him on his first date, and countless band concerts at school. That first blacksmithing lesson when he was 9, his eyes wide behind safety goggles as the hammer met hot metal. Now he’s making more money than I paid for my first house, having sailed through 11 interviews when most people don’t survive the first.

Here’s what nobody tells you about success: Sometimes the things you’re most proud of are the things that hurt the most.

Flipping the Switch

When I was in my 40s, I was still allergic to the idea of children. I watched my cousin’s baby vomit on him once, and I nearly gagged myself. How could he just … not care? He wiped it off like it was nothing, kept cooing at her, completely unfazed, no drama. I swore that would never be me. I had plans. Big plans. Plans that involved me, myself, and I.

But life has a way of flipping switches you didn’t know existed.

When I met my wife, something fundamental shifted. Suddenly, the thought of creating humans who would call me Dad became not just acceptable but essential. We had them later in life — triplets, if you can believe it. The doctors sat us down, tried to convince us to “reduce” the pregnancy. Better odds, they said. Lower risk of complications. What they really meant was better statistics for their university hospital’s funding reports.

We didn’t even consider it. “We’ll take whatever we’re given, thank you.”

And we did. Three babies. Fifty thousand diapers. Three college tuitions. Fifteen trikes and bikes. Three broken hearts as each one drives away to start their own story. Fortunately for us, one is working and living at home to save money before moving out.

Joy Versus Happiness

The Apostle Paul wrote his letters to the Philippians from prison. Ten years behind bars for preaching what he believed. You’d expect complaints, bitterness, maybe a little “woe is me.” Instead, he writes about joy. Not happiness — that’s conditional, tied to circumstances. Joy is different. Joy exists in the midst of pain, in the center of loss, in the heart of change.

My friend Gary Bertrum taught me this. He’s been coming to my painting retreats for years, filling our evenings with his guitar and his laughter. Two years ago, he went home feeling unwell. What followed was two years of unbearable pain — an incurable disease that stripped him down to a skeleton, hundreds of hospital visits, and treatments that would break most spirits. Yet every time I hear from him, he radiates something I can only call joy. He doesn’t talk about himself, or his pain, or the treatments. He continues to be encouraging and loving, asking about others. He is selfless. He’s teaching me how to live by showing me how to die. And he’s not questioning or blaming God, he is praising Him.

Music in Silence

This is what I’ve learned from empty chairs and quiet houses: Joy isn’t found in keeping things the same. It’s not in the accumulation of stuff or the achievement of milestones. It lives in the terrible, beautiful reality of loving people so much that letting them go feels like tearing off a piece of your soul — and knowing you’d do it again in a heartbeat.

The house may sound different now, but I’m learning to hear music in the silence. Each empty chair is a trophy, proof that we did our job. We raised humans who can fly.

And that sound you hear? That’s not emptiness.

That’s joy.

Eric Rhoads

P.S. If you missed my free online event last Thursday about goal-setting for artists (though the principles apply to anyone), you can still catch the replay [here].

Watercolor Live is coming! We’ve made exciting changes this year that will transform how you see and create watercolor art. Whether you’re a beginner or looking to refine your techniques, this is your chance to learn from masters who will share secrets it took them decades to discover. The energy of creating alongside hundreds of other artists is absolutely electric. [Join us here.]

Valentine’s Day Deadline: The early bird deadline for the Plein Air Convention is February 14 — save $300 if you register before Valentine’s Day. This is where the entire plein air world gathers to paint, learn, and push boundaries together. After last year’s record attendance, spaces are filling fast. [Secure your spot here.]

The angry sound of a trillion BBs is hitting the old metal roof of this Texas ranch house as a thunderburst opens up overhead, dumping a tsunami of water so vast it will flood all the nearby rivers in minutes. Here, the Texas Hill Country stretches in gentle waves of limestone and cedar, vineyards catching early light like strings of jewels draped across the landscape. A hawk circles overhead, its cry echoing off the hills as it navigates thunderheads the size of skyscrapers. Last weekend’s drive through these rolling hills still lingers — the old farmhouses weathered by decades of sun, the way light plays across the land at golden hour. It’s not Tuscany, but maybe that’s exactly the point.

Italy’s Siren Song

Three weeks since returning, and Italy still inhabits my bloodstream like a fever I can’t break. Florence calls with the voice of every Renaissance master who ever mixed pigment on a worn wooden palette — and I can’t get it out of my head.

My right brain — the creative me, the dreamer, the one who loses hours drowning in a single Caravaggio — refuses to let go. I can still smell the turpentine of ancient studios, hear the scratch of charcoal on paper from my lesson at Studio Ten, see afternoon light pouring through magnificent windows onto marble floors worn smooth by centuries of artistic pilgrims.

The Florence Academy of Art represents everything my creative soul is starving for: three years of intensive training, daily immersion in techniques refined over generations, the simple luxury of showing up each morning with nothing on my mind but becoming better. Not managing. Not building. Just becoming.

The Texas Chains

Texas holds me with different chains entirely — golden ones, perhaps, but chains nonetheless. My left brain — practical, responsible, annoyingly logical — keeps running the numbers. The empire I’ve built over decades sits here, rooted in this soil like those ancient live oaks that refuse to be moved. Employees depend on me. Millions trust and rely on me showing up.

More than that, my work transforms lives. I don’t just teach painting techniques; I help people discover who they might become. I help them live their dreams and find their tribe. It’s not merely a living — it’s a legacy. How do you abandon something that gives others the very transformation you’re desperately seeking for yourself?

The Ghost of What Might Have Been

Memory is a particular kind of torturer. Fifteen years ago, after selling our San Francisco-area house, I floated the idea to my wife: What if we raised the kids in Italy? What if I spent three or four years at the Academy while they grew up speaking Italian, eating real gelato, and understanding that the world extends beyond the American suburbs? She seemed on board. The kids would have thrived. I was ready. She was warming to the idea.

Then Pooter the dog got cancer, and everything derailed. Life got complicated. We moved to Austin on a whim, the kids got established in schools and friendships, and leaving would have been disruptive. Then somehow 15 years evaporated like morning mist burning off the hills, and that window slammed shut while I wasn’t watching.

Now I kick myself with the particular venom reserved for roads not taken. Fifteen years. Gone. If I wait another 15…

When Dreams Collide

Two dreams collide in my chest like continental plates grinding against each other, creating earthquakes in my soul. Can both exist? The romantic in me wants to believe in miracles of time management: Wake at 4 a.m. to work for a couple of hours and do meetings, head to school at 8, study art in Florence all day until 7, work the business and homework until midnight, sleep five hours, repeat. The realist knows that sounds less like ambition and more like a scheduled breakdown. Would I last a semester? A year? Would exhaustion destroy both dreams instead of fulfilling either?

The Mathematics of Impact

Multiplication matters more than any single painting I might ever create. That’s what the practical voice whispers when I’m brutally honest. If I stay here, keep building — I can touch exponentially more lives. Train millions more artists. One person studying in Florence is addition. Training others to teach and transform? That’s multiplication. But does that math mean my own dreams have to die on the altar of service?

I recall Richard Schmid telling me of his dilemma. “I could be a brilliant artist or a brilliant concert pianist. I wanted to be both, but I knew I could only do one well.”

The Retirement Lie

Some cheerfully suggest retirement as the solution, as if I’m suddenly going to transform into someone who retires, quits working, and heads to Florence with my RV. That’s not happening. I’ve seen what happens to driven people who stop driving — they park permanently. It’s like putting regular gas in a body that runs on jet fuel. 

The Betrayal of Romance

What if Florence is a fantasy I’ve polished so bright it bears no resemblance to reality? What if I get there and discover three years of intensive training doesn’t deliver the transformation I’ve imagined? Or worse — what if it does, and then I face an entirely new conflict: abandon my carefully built business to pursue this newfound artistic mastery, or try to merge them, creating yet another impossible balancing act?

The Distance Between Dreams

An Italian family visiting Texas might feel exactly what I feel walking through Florence. The romance isn’t in the place — it’s in the distance from our daily lives and the difference from what our day-to-day surroundings look like. They might stand in my Hill Country at sunset and think, “This is what I’ve been missing. This simplicity. This space. These wide-open skies.” Meanwhile, I’m longing for their narrow cobblestone streets and Renaissance light.

We always want what we don’t have. But sometimes, just sometimes, that wanting is telling us something true.

The False Binary

Experts would say I’m manufacturing a false choice. That I’m creating binary thinking as a defense mechanism — it’s easier to say “this OR that” than to do the harder work of finding “this AND that.” But what if some choices really are binary? What if some dreams require all of you, not just the leftover pieces?

The Artist’s Answer

The artists I most admire would tell me something different: Stop talking and start doing. Pick one. Any one. Because the only guaranteed failure is spending another 15 years debating which dreams deserve to live while all of them slowly die.

The Space Between

But here’s what the voice of hard-won experience whispers: Conflicting priorities aren’t problems to solve. They’re tensions to manage. The pull between creation and multiplication, between personal mastery and collective impact, between the romance of Florence and the reality of Texas — maybe that tension is where the real art happens.

Not in choosing one over the other, but in living creatively within the space between them. Or maybe that’s just another excuse.

Testing the Waters

What if I started drawing every single morning, right here, before the day’s demands arrive? What if I tested the brutal schedule now, at home — eight hours of art study daily, life drawing locally, getting up at 4 and working until midnight? What if I scheduled one month next year — just one — to study somewhere, anywhere, with no guilt attached?

What if instead of treating this as an all-or-nothing proposition, I treated it as an experiment in living?

The Deathbed Test

Here’s what I know with absolute certainty: On my deathbed, I won’t regret the business I built or the lives I changed. But I will regret the art I never attempted, the skills I never developed, the version of myself I never met because I was too busy being practical. That regret will burn hotter than any success will shine.

The Window Opens

I’m thankful to be fully alive, healthy, and with choices. The kids are grown and launched. College is paid for. The business runs smoother than it ever has when I disappear for weeks. Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe it’s exactly the right time. Maybe this is the window I’ve been waiting for, and I’m just too scared to climb through it.

Maybe the romance isn’t in Florence or Texas at all. It’s in finally having the courage to stop choosing and start doing. If it’s important enough to be, it will become a priority. Or I’ll find another excuse.

Your Turn to Choose

If you’re reading this and nodding because you too have a dream gathering dust while you do the responsible thing — stop nodding and start planning. Not someday. Not after you retire. Not when the timing is perfect. The timing will never be perfect. Life will always get in the way.

What’s one small step toward that dream you could take this week? Not the whole dream — just a step. Call it research. Call it exploration. Call it foolishness if you must. But take it. Because 15 years from now, you want to be someone who tried, not someone who almost did.

I’ve already started life drawing, and I’m exploring art programs. It’s not Florence yet, but it’s movement toward my dream. Movement is everything.

The Courage Question

My friend Cesar Santos, one of the most accomplished classical artists alive, burned every bridge behind him, sold his house, moved to Florence, and changed his painting style entirely, putting his entire income at risk to follow new dreams. This took tremendous courage and doubled my respect for him.

Two women I met at the Academy, after raising kids and being caregivers for everyone else, decided it was their turn. They moved to Florence to study art. It took tremendous courage and unbridled passion. I admire this kind of courage and wonder if I have it in me.

What dreams do you have that require you to muster that same courage?

Letting go of comfort requires tremendous bravery. Moving out of our comfort zones to take risks with unknown consequences. Are you ready to let go and get uncomfortable?

Or will you be like me, writing about it 15 years from now, still wondering?

Your Dreams Can’t Wait — Neither Should You.

Eric Rhoads

Church bells are ringing from every corner of this ancient city as the sun comes up over the distant purple mountains. Glancing out the window of my apartment, other than modern appliances and plumbing (thank goodness for the plumbing — have you read about Renaissance sanitation?), it’s easy to feel like I could be living at a time when these same bells inspired people to create some of the finest artwork ever known to man.

The funny thing? Back then, they didn’t call it the Renaissance. That term was invented 200 years later by a French historian who looked back and said, “Wow, something amazing happened there.” Which makes you wonder: What are we calling our current moment? The Age of Anxiety? The Era of Endless Scrolling? The Age of AI?

 Medici Money

Here’s what actually sparked the Renaissance, and it’s not what your high school art teacher told you. Sure, there was a “rebirth” of classical learning after monks spent centuries copying Greek and Roman texts by candlelight. But you know what really made it happen?

Money. Lots of it.

The Medici family — basically the venture capitalists of the 1400s — decided that commissioning art was better than buying another villa. They turned patronage into a competitive sport. Cosimo de’ Medici would commission Donatello, then his rival would have to one-up him with Brunelleschi. It was like an arms race, except with marble and frescoes instead of missiles. And here’s the kicker: These artists weren’t creating in some romantic, peaceful, inspired bubble. They were stressed, underpaid (usually), and constantly competing for the next commission. Michelangelo once said he saw the angel in the marble and carved until he set it free. What he didn’t mention was that Pope Julius II was breathing down his neck about deadlines the entire time.

Did They Know?

So did the people of Florence know they were changing the world? Almost certainly not. Vasari — who wrote Lives of the Artists in 1550 and basically invented art history as we know it — had to explain to people that something extraordinary had happened. Imagine that. The greatest artistic movement in Western civilization needed a publicist to tell people it had occurred.

This is the part that keeps me up at night: 

We only know about the Renaissance because someone bothered to write it down. Vasari chronicled who painted what, who slept with whom, and which artist insulted which patron. Without him, half of what we “know” about this era would be lost. Today, we’re documenting our every breakfast burrito on Instagram — but are we actually capturing anything worth remembering?

Renaissance in Hindsight

I think about this because there have been some recent Renaissance activities in the art world — for instance the plein air movement, which over the last 20 years has exploded from nothing to hundreds of events and thousands of painters creating landscape work that rivals anything in history. But here’s the question that haunts me: Will there be a Vasari for this movement? Will someone in 2245 look back and say, “That’s when landscape painting was reborn”? Or will it all get lost in the digital noise?

The Renaissance happened because of constraints, not despite them. No photographs or AI-generated images meant you had to paint reality. No power tools meant moving marble required ingenious engineering. No internet meant if you wanted to see a master’s work, you walked to their studio or to view a collection. Today, we have infinite access and zero constraints. We can see every painting ever made on our phones. We can learn any technique from YouTube or PaintTube. We can connect with artists worldwide instantly and view their latest paintings on Instagram.

So why aren’t we all creating masterpieces?

The Paradox 

Maybe because the Renaissance taught us the wrong lesson. We think it was about genius — Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello (yes, the Ninja Turtles are named after them, which tells you something about our cultural priorities). But it wasn’t about individual genius. It was about a city-state that created conditions where genius could emerge: competition, patronage, masters teaching apprentices, and most importantly, people showing up.

Leonardo da Vinci said, “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” Not the joy of scrolling. Not the joy of having an opinion about something you read in a headline. Understanding. Which requires time, curiosity, and actually leaving your house.

I can’t claim to know how to start a movement or a Renaissance, even though I’ve been involved in a couple of them in my own small way. But what I do know is that we can stimulate our own personal Renaissance through exposure to new things, to new ideas.

Through First-Time Eyes

Having spent the last couple of weeks in Europe, seeing and painting parts of Switzerland and Italy, I’ve been able to see it through the eyes of a few of my guests who were experiencing it for the first time. Their eyes were wide, their imaginations were stimulated, and their curiosity was piqued. “How could they possibly have done all of this? How could they possibly have built these cathedrals before heavy equipment?”

And that question — that genuine bewilderment — is where Renaissance begins. Because here’s what most people don’t realize: Medieval builders didn’t know they lacked heavy equipment. They just solved problems with what they had. They used counterweights, pulleys, and thousands of workers who spent their entire lives on a single cathedral they’d never see completed. Imagine dedicating your life to something you’ll never see finished. Now imagine telling that to someone who gets anxious when their Amazon delivery takes three days instead of two.

The Duomo in Florence took 140 years to complete. Brunelleschi’s dome — that impossible feat of engineering — was built without scaffolding, using techniques he invented on the spot and refused to share with anyone because he was paranoid about competition. The whole thing could have collapsed and killed hundreds. It didn’t, and now it’s been standing for 600 years.

Meanwhile, we abandon projects after three weeks because our Instagram engagement isn’t what we hoped.

A Deliberate Journey

I’m reminded of a trip my wife and I created very deliberately to take our then-12-year-old children to Europe, starting in England and then moving to France on a spring break. Our goal was to help them see a world they had not seen before, to help them realize that the world they live in is small and narrow, and that the world out there is broad and different and interesting and worth exploring. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as seeing a first-timer hit Europe, particularly when it’s a child staring at the domes and the castles and the cathedrals, and seeing how life is different for people in these places — watching as people walk everywhere or take trains, things we don’t do in the suburbs we live in.

Curiosity Drives Growth

Personal Renaissance comes through stimulation driven by curiosity, and if we wait for it to happen, it rarely will. We have to step out. We have to take action. We have to get away from the ways we’re used to doing things and try new things. 

Here’s what I’ve learned from studying the Renaissance and trying to create my own: The Renaissance wasn’t about having unlimited resources or perfect conditions. It was about working within impossible constraints and finding creative solutions. Those artists mixed their own paints, built their own scaffolding, and solved problems that had never been solved before — not because they were superhuman, but because they had no other choice. It was all about relentless passion, believing in something so deeply that you do whatever it takes for however long it takes, and never give up.

You want your own Renaissance? Stop waiting for perfect conditions. Stop waiting until you have more time, more money, more security. The Renaissance happened during political turmoil, economic uncertainty, and literal plague. Your excuses are looking pretty thin.

Breaking the Filter

So many of us are seeing the world through the filter of the news media, hearing stories that may not be entirely balanced — something that’s only realized by getting out there yourself. I’m reminded of my trip to China, when probably 30 people told me not to go, that it was dangerous, that my organs would be harvested, that it was a Third World country, that I’d be walking through human excrement, that the food is inedible.

I’ve noticed something fascinating: the people most certain about how dangerous or terrible a place is are usually the people who’ve never been there. They’re experts in a geography of fear, a cartography drawn entirely by cable news and social media algorithms designed to keep them scared and watching.

Those things people warned me about may have been true at one time, probably were, but I didn’t see that. Yet if I had listened to the media, I would’ve continued to believe it. I had to find out for myself.

The Renaissance happened partly because the Black Death killed 30 to 50 percent of Europe’s population, which sounds horrific (and was), but it also meant survivors had social mobility for the first time. Peasants could become merchants. Merchants could become patrons. The old order broke down, and in that chaos, new possibilities emerged.

Today, we’re not facing a plague (well, we recently did, but that’s another story), but we are facing a different kind of death — the slow suffocation of curiosity. And unlike the Black Death, this one is voluntary. We’re choosing the comfort of our echo chambers over the discomfort of discovery.

Regular People Everywhere

I don’t particularly feel extra brave for going to China, but a lot of people thought I was crazy. I can’t wait to go back. I can’t wait to see more. I can’t wait to take groups of people there to let them experience it on their own. It’s hard to believe that a place like that is “the enemy” when you’re dealing with regular people on a day-to-day basis who put their socks on the same way that you and I do. I think that we’re all fed what people want us to believe, for some reason that perplexes me.

The Travel Conversation

It seems like every time I go somewhere interesting, I want to have this discussion. I want to tell people to get out of their armchairs, to get off their social media, and to get out and see the world — to see the results of the Renaissance, to see the beauty of the people in other countries, to see cultures coexisting peacefully in spite of what the media tells us. Yet so many are operating from fear because they’re getting their information from a screen.

Your Personal Renaissance

So if you want to create your own personal Renaissance, here are some thoughts:

One: Have curiosity. Question everything. Ask yourself why. Look into the reasons behind the reasons.

Two: Get out of your box and out of your comfort zone. Comfort is the enemy of progress. Comfort may provide stability, yet stability may cause mental bedsores.

Three: Travel. See the world. Open your eyes to new possibilities.

Four: Put yourself in a position to interact with people you never would otherwise.

Painting With Strangers

Every day during this trip, when I was painting in public places, young kids or teenagers would be curious to see a painter working on a painting outdoors. I would engage them, invite them to paint with me (with parental permission, of course), and most of them would do it. I’d teach them and give them a couple of lessons to get them engaged, and might even have them paint on my painting — not worrying about whether they were going to ruin it. They’d get excited, and that led me into conversations with the people around. The past couple of weeks, I’ve met people from Germany, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Russia, and many other countries, and had an opportunity to see the world through their eyes, to get their opinions.

This is pure Renaissance thinking. You know why? Because that’s exactly how the masters worked. Apprentices would paint backgrounds, grind pigments, even paint entire sections of “the master’s” work. Collaboration wasn’t a buzzword; it was how things got done. Raphael had an entire workshop of apprentices painting from his designs. Was it still “his” work? The Renaissance said yes. Our modern obsession with individual authorship would have confused them.

When I let those kids paint on my canvas, I wasn’t risking ruining it. I was enacting a centuries-old tradition. And more importantly, I was doing what those Renaissance masters did: passing it on. Because here’s the secret they knew and we’ve forgotten — art isn’t about the final product. It’s about the transformation that happens in the making.

The Hotel Trap

If I came to these foreign countries on my own, staying in a hotel and using a tour guide, I’d never meet any of these people. But I talk to everybody. I introduce myself to people in restaurants. I talk to anybody and everybody I can. I talk to waiters. I’m curious. I have rabid curiosity, and that’s what informs my own Renaissance. Because if I’m not reinventing myself every couple of years, I’m gonna get stale. And so will you.

The Challenge Awaits

Vasari tells a story about the proto-Renaissance painter Giotto. The Pope sent a messenger asking for samples of his work. Giotto took a canvas, dipped his brush in red paint, and in one perfect motion, drew a circle freehand — so perfect it looked drawn with a compass. He sent only that. The messenger thought he was being mocked. The Pope recognized genius.

The point isn’t that Giotto could draw a perfect circle (though, seriously, try it — you can’t). The point is that mastery looks simple. From the outside, we see effortlessness. We don’t see the thousands of circles drawn before, the failures, the persistence.

So here’s my question: What’s your circle? What’s the thing you’re willing to practice thousands of times, fail at repeatedly, and still show up for tomorrow? Because that’s where your Renaissance begins — not in Florence, not in some magical moment of inspiration, but in the daily showing up, the consistent practice, the willingness to look foolish while you learn.

What will you do to create your Renaissance? Or will you sit comfortably watching the news, hour after hour, or scrolling social media day after day? Yes, you can grow from watching social media, but you can also get a lot of indoctrination. Get out of your box. It’s narrow. There are walls. And life is so much richer when you do.

Questions for You

What if the greatest artistic movement of your lifetime is happening right now, and you’re missing it because you’re watching Netflix? 

What constraints in your life could actually be gifts if you stopped seeing them as obstacles? 

When was the last time you spent 140 hours on anything? 

What if comfort isn’t just the enemy of progress — what if it’s the enemy of being fully alive? 

And here’s the one that scares me most: What if 500 years from now, someone looks back at our era and wonders how we had access to all of human knowledge in our pockets and did absolutely nothing interesting with it?

The bells are still ringing. The sun is still rising over purple mountains. An angel is still trapped in that marble, waiting for you to set her free.

Are you going to pick up the chisel, or just take a selfie with the statue?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Eric Rhoads