I. Dead People: How They Inspire Me to Live 🔥

II. The End of Human-Kind 💀

I See Dead People – What They Told Me 🗣️

Ever get stuck in a creative rut?

You’re trying to express yourself through writing, music, art, dancing or cooking – whatever it is you do to create – but you can’t quite get that inspiration you need to GO. 

It’s called writer’s block, and it happens to the best of us. And if you’re sitting there reading this, convinced that you aren’t a “creative,” you’d be wrong.

Every brief moment in your life is a creation.

You create your reality through your choices, and your life ends up becoming the sum of those choices.

YOU are the creator of opportunities, feelings and experiences that you choose to endure.

So don’t let me hear that you aren’t creative. 

So, what if you get writer’s block for your life?

What if you run into a rut that makes the monotony of life excruciating and dreadful? How can you find inspiration for the next chapter of your life’s story book? 

You copy someone else’s homework.

No, I’m not saying to mimic the mannerisms and consumer habits of online influencers – that’s not really living.

I’m inviting you to get radical, and to get random.

Whose life can you take inspiration from that will bring you a renewed sense of purpose and drive?

What kind of person can put gas back in your tank, and make you GO with just a few sentences about their journey? 

A dead person. 

That’s right. Dead people and their stories are perhaps the most potent sources of creative inspiration that you can find, and they’re everywhere. 

While there aren’t any zombies with biographies or book deals, there are humans with obituaries. 

In most newspapers across the country, (if you can find a physical one, even better) there are daily postings illustrating the lives of the recently deceased, outlining their achievements, high and low, plus a brief description of their decades-long journey through the furious whirlwind of life. 

And, when you read some of these obituaries, you’ll find that many of them are super random.

How they cope with the pains and hardships of life varies, but one common theme is that they often do it with a unique flourish of style and grace.

Take a look at this obit from an adventurous Indiana man as an example. 

Gary Wolflet, 72, tragically died in Ohio last week in a plane crash involving a homemade aircraft.

Ahead of his death, Wolflet prepared a darkly humorous and heartfelt obituary that was published posthumously.

He humorously acknowledged not knowing how he would die, writing the obituary in advance, and ironically, he passed away doing one of his favorite hobbies — flying.

“I am completely dead now,” he writes from the beyond. “I am surprised that it took this long to happen.”

Gary then chronicled a series of cartoonish close calls that occurred over the course of his life — including taking a baseball to the head as a Little Leaguer, being kicked in the stomach by his sister’s horse Cricket, getting hit by a car, narrowly escaping the collapsing of a chimney, and taking a spill down a flight of stairs while holding a concrete-lined safe that landed on his chest.

After that last fall, Gary said he was forced to go to a doctor. That’s when he discovered he had prostate cancer — “I had just dodged another bullet.”

“I cannot tell you here what sort of event actually killed me as I wrote this obituary before I was completely dead. Someone else will have to fill in the details later on I guess,” he added, not knowing he’d end up leaving this life doing one of his favorite things.

But he did. Doing what you love just before the lights go out is a great way to go, but the lesson is to life a life full of the things that bring you true joy right now.

They don’t have to be death-defying hijinks like in Gary’s case. They can be simple, strategic, or spontaneous. But doing many things, or anything is your best bet. Finding joy and peace in these actions is a magnificent reward. 

From a moral perspective, kindness and love is a a strong director for the actions you should take.

Be good, and share the goodness given to you. It’s a winning formula that Gary also employed.

“I stayed lovingly married to the same woman for a long time,” Gary says. 

“I cut about 100 cords of firewood. I fixed a lot of problems for a lot of people over the last fifty years.”

How many of us could write such a colorful recounting of our life’s events if we were to die today? How many people could we proclaim to have helped?

How many mountain’s peaks or cavern’s depths could we stake our claim to?

This isn’t an exercise to promote anxious haste, but one to open up play.

An invitation to go forth and toy with the tools available to our disposal in this human-filled playground on Earth, partnered with the endless gifts of the natural world.

There’s only one life we have to live, and doing the most with it can look like anything.

With the opportunities available to us every day, why not produce the most abundant concoction we possible can? 

Life is a stage, and we are the performers – the best part about our show is that we can choose how to deliver it.

Let’s take a look at the life of another recently passed player. 

Norton Garfinkle died on March 20, 2025 at the age of 94.

Garfinkle was a professor at Amherst College and a serial entrepreneur. He founded a company that detected land mines for the U.S. and foreign governments. He invented a news database search algorithm and sold it to Reuters.

He developed PLAX, the first pre-brushing dental rinse.

He started Electronic Retailing Systems, which provided self-checkout systems to supermarkets.

He started a company that published Lamaze Parent Magazine.

Now, again, before you grit your teeth in an anxious “why haven’t I gotten any of these grandiose achievements done in my own life” kind of way, take some time to realize just how long 94 years is.

This guy Norton sure got a whole lot of stuff done in that time, and to great success, but that’s because he took his time doing it.

He didn’t wait around for opportunities to show up at his door, but he did pace himself in pursuing things he thought of as purposeful or with utility.

He consistently showed up to do stuff, and to create things that were not certain to succeed. 

I’ll share one more obit that can viscerally illustrate my plea to you.

I want this final example to demonstrate the calling that creation is sending out to you, because you may not really be hearing it. 

Mark Alan Crowder, 70, of Hillsville, Virginia, passed away on May 20, 2025.

He was a brilliant, hilarious, and endlessly curious soul with a deep love for science, spirituality, the ocean, and a good bargain.  

Mark spent a lifetime learning, dreaming, working, and inventing. He could do it all: he was a college pitcher and quarterback, while juggling a chemistry major at JMU.

Mark was stationed in Germany while serving in the Army, read tarot cards in Jamaica, smithed leather in Galax, and hitchhiked to Florida toting a brass still. Mark was known by some as the unofficial mayor of Bradenton Beach, Florida.

He worked with a successful treasure hunting crew looking for sunken Spanish galleons, nurtured an incredible collection of bromeliads, and created amazing exploding balloon creations. Mark was an aspiring entrepreneur, inventor, and scientist. 

Did you catch that last part? Aspiring.

At 70 years old, following a full and diverse life of achievement and exploration, Mark was continuing to aspire towards more achievement.

Not in a trying-to-prove-something-as-quickly-as-possible way, but in a love-of-curiosity-and-contribution way. True creativity. 

That’s something we’ve lost sight of in the modern world, where production and consumption are the barometers of success, rather than true individuality through collaboration and introspection.

The lens through which one can project their soul is creativity, and if that lens is fogged-up or unused, we can’t show the world – or ourselves – who we really are.

And then, if we go an entire lifetime without taking these creative risks, who do we end up becoming? Someone with a boring and brief obituary. That’s who.

That obit won’t be reprinted in this newsletter, that’s for sure.

Any story worth telling has ups and downs, and it doesn’t have to involve Avengers-style heroics to be good.

Something as simple as a gardening journey or a trip around the boroughs can be a thrilling experiment in creativity.

Being known as the person who hits the dance floor first at any event is another powerful characteristic. There’s so much that you can do to build your story.

Look inward to find what brings you joy, and what brings you closer to what feels right. If it feels random and obscure – good. You’re on the right track.

If you can’t find it, keep looking – there’s a reason you’re here, and the lines of your obituary are begging to be written.

There’s a final solace in knowing that, even if in the cosmically impossible chance that you have no distinct purpose or quirky path to take in life, that your calling as human is to be good.

To be kind, loving and present.

To treat creatures of the vast kingdom around us with dignity and equality, and to let the algorithm of nature to take its course with us in tow. 

Our guy Mark knew something about that.

“Mark had an uncanny way with animals,” his obituary reads.

“However, the only thing he was ever truly afraid of was a skunk, always saying ‘that’s an animal that will teach you about respect’. 

Mark is remembered for being deeply loyal, and believed in helping others whether they had the sense to want it or not. 

Despite his many talents, he was always able to laugh at himself, which may be the most important one of all. 

The Rise of AI and The Collapse of Human Virtues 🤖

Okay, I know the thumbnail is super click-baity and fear-stoking, but YouTube is in a weird place – you have to do that to get on the algorithm.

The end of human existence is nowhere near, but the end of what makes us human is at risk of coming true.

Human fundamentals are the principles, virtues and core foundations that make our species so special.

They can include community, connection, faith, emotionality, vulnerability, empathy, and of course, creativity.

Those things make us people and not machines, but the problem is that we are steadily slipping further away from these features, and toward a broken dystopia where robotic characteristics present more advantages than ever.

We fear the robots, placing distance between them and us, failing to realize that we’re also getting further from other humans.

The loss of connection is subtly converting us into the robots we fear.

That’s good news for the corporations and technocrats that will utilize advanced technology to stoke fear and division amongst humans, profiting off of our insecurities and habits of consumptive coping.

The more we buy and escape to blur the bleak reality of disconnection and disrepair at present, the more we become pawns in a broader game of corrupted power – and the more we lose our humanity.

In a world where we don’t own much of anything – our cars are leased or rideshared, our homes are rented, and our data and identities are for sale at a bargain, the only remaining morsel is our human dignity.

We should hold on to that and build on it with a furious rage that AI can’t replicate, and that corporations can’t defeat, because really, it’s the only option we have left.

That’s what I talk a little bit about in this week’s video.

Keeping your eye on the prize of community, and fostering a steady presence in the biological world is how humans have made it this far.

Developing useful skills and quality attributes (yes, including tech + AI-based ones) will serve as your armament in the next fight – the one against the dystopic Orwellian-reality that a select few would like to create.

I write a lot about themes of humanism and community in this newsletter, and the backdrop is often against the unpredictably chaotic world we’ve inherited.

A world that appears to be splitting apart by the seams – it’s ugly truth is presenting itself in a way that we believed was not possible, and that can be deeply unsettling.

And that’s why I instruct on these subjects – not because I want to make you afraid of what’s ahead, but because I want you to be prepared for it.

I have been to the mountaintop, and I know the way toward the promised land …

I hope these weekly nudges encourage you to be you, and that my work is bridging you towards a place of healthy growth.

Thank you for reading, and for being the best (and most human) version of yourself possible.

Peace!

Red