Something changed in me this year. I know, because I was on the phone with a friend a few weeks ago. I was telling her about all the work I’m putting in with Stry and Very Quotatious and the fellowship, and she didn’t say anything.

And then I saw her a few days later, and I told her that I was speaking at TEDxMU, and I mentioned that I’d started working out with a trainer for the Belly Challenge, and she just stared at me. It looked like she was trying to X-ray me, to look straight through me, to figure out whether or not she was talking to the Dan she used to know.

She knew something had changed. She knew that I’d started to find a new center.

I started to realize it, too. And I started to think about what had changed. And then it hit me. It feels like just a moment ago that I figured it out:

I fell in love.

And here I am writing it, and not caring how cheesy it sounds:

I fell in love.

And again, and again, because it is too wonderful not to say:

I fell in love.

I fell in love with the waking up in the morning absolutely full of awesome. With the feeling that I have when I’m absolutely exhausted after a workout. With the smile I have on my face when I cross something else off my TeuxDeux.

I fell in love with doing. I fell in love with building things. I fell in love with the work.

And then I started to notice a whole world full of fellow builders. Turns out I’d lived in this world the whole time, and I’d barely noticed.

I know now: We live in a world where amazing things happen. We live in a world where there are so many people putting the tiniest dents in the universe. We live in a world overstretched with awesome.

I used to be stressed, and I still am. But now, stress is good stress. Excited stress! The “We’ve got a deadline to make because we’ve got shit to do!” kind of stress.

I find myself smiling a lot. I find myself in front of journalism classes, running around and jumping on chairs and yelling about building things and being awesome, and the students look at me wondering how much Starbucks it takes to make me this loud at NINE FUCKING O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING ON A TUESDAY, and then I tell them that I don’t drink coffee, and they look at me like I am absolutely mad.

And I am. You have to as mad as I am to do the things that I want to do.

There is so much to do, and there is not enough time, but that’s okay. The truth is, there is enough time for now.

And the truth is: When you are as in love as I am, it feels like I have all the time I will ever need.

And the truth is: When you are as in love as I am, time hardly matters at all.

What we build is what matters, and time is only there to show how long it can last.

I have a friend who is studying to become a doctor. On test days, I’ll often get a text or an email from her, asking for a word of wisdom. She knows I’ve got a Delicious loaded with inspirational links and ideas, and I’ll dig through there and send her something. I love helping, and she loves asking. It’s a win for both of us.

But I’d like to be able to share that joy with a wider audience. So I’ve launched a new side project: VeryQuotatious.com. The name comes for a quote from Shaq, he of a thousand quotable remarks. I’ve designed the site to be an internet home for inspiration, advice, thought and other wisdom suitable for quotation.

The quotes are all hand curated, and I’ve tried to bring in quotes from modern thought leaders — entrepreneurs, thinkers, scientists — as opposed to the standard grab bag of Gandhi sayings.⁽¹⁾

I hope it brings you as much joy and wisdom as it has brought me.

But it’s a milestone. And we, as people, are geared to love milestones. They don’t necessarily tell us where we’re going, but they remind us from where we’ve come.

In a way, that’s frustrating. Because sometimes, it feels like we’re always just starting. Hit 13 and you’re starting life as a man. Hit 16 and you’re starting life as a driver. Hit 18 and you’re starting life as a college kid.

But on the other hand: we are always just starting. We’re always getting new beginnings. We’re always looking forward.

So maybe what milestones really are are an opportunity to remind ourselves of one of the reasons why life is so worth living:

The potential to make tomorrow better than today.

I read this story last summer, and I didn’t fully understand it. I loved it, and I bookmarked it, and I read it a half-dozen times, but I didn’t really get it.

It was about Bob Bradley, the former coach of the U.S. men’s soccer team. The story was by Luis Bueno, who used to cover Bradley when he was the coach of Chivas USA. And the reporter remembers one thing about Bradley:

The work.

No matter the results on game day, at practice, all Bradley wanted to talk about was the work. Writes Bueno:

It seemed like every time I caught Bob Bradley after a training session, he brought up the work. The work was good, the work was getting better, the work, the work, the work… It was hardly ever about wins and losses, mostly always the work.

And when I read that story for the first time, it only kind of clicked. It had been a long time since I had worked really, really hard. I had gotten lazy. The passion wasn’t really there. I’d become one of those guys that Todd Snider was thinking of when he sang, “Everybody wants the most they can possibly get / For the least they can possibly do.”

And that story about Bob Bradley was one of the ones that got me moving again. I had to wake up in the morning and do the work. To miss a work day? Unacceptable.

But I still didn’t really understand what all that meant. It wasn’t until recently when it fully clicked. I’ve been on a heavy work binge — on Stry, on side projects, on the Belly Challenge, on my personal life. I’ve been putting in the work, and I’ve been filling up my TeuxDeux and crossing it off and filling it up again. Damn if I’m not as happy as I’ve ever been — even though I’m working as hard as I’ve ever worked.

Then I saw this quote by Jay Bilas, the former Duke basketball star and current ESPN commentator. He wrote a fantastic piece on toughness, and this quote absolutely floored me:

“I was a really hard worker in high school and college. But I worked and trained exceptionally hard to make playing easier. I was wrong. I once read that Bob Knight had criticized a player of his by saying, “You just want to be comfortable out there!” Well, that was me, and when I read that, it clicked with me. I needed to work to increase my capacity for work, not to make it easier to play. I needed to work in order to be more productive in my time on the floor. Tough players play so hard that their coaches have to take them out to get rest so they can put them back in. The toughest players don’t pace themselves.”

And there it was: Work begets more work. Until you put in the work, you don’t know how hard you can really go. Only with work can you understand.

So today is a work day. Today, I will do the work.

Will you?

Fast. It’s moving so damn fast. So many things to cross off the to-do list. So many things happening all at once. So many tasks. Knock one off, another one takes its place.

Slow. It’s moving so damn slow. So much time between now and May, and May just won’t come. Why can’t it all just come faster?

So fast, and so slow.

And yet I know: A thousand baby steps to get to where I need to go.

Back on Aug. 1, 2010, I officially launched Stry. I was a month into my three-month stay in Biloxi. I wasn’t making any money, and I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen to me. That night, I wrote down this thought about my future. I’m sharing it here on the Interwebs for the first time.

The weird thing about this point in my life is how little I actually want. I do not want to buy a fancy car, or to own a private plane, or to have any sort of extravagance. I’m unemployed, and trying to turn this period into self-employment. I would be happy with enough money to keep the lights on.

The only thing I really want these days is enough money for food. In San Antonio, I bought expensive cheese and frivolous amounts of quesadillas. And I could afford it. At no point did I worry about being able to feed myself. That was nice.

Right now, I’m not in that position. I have no source of income. I think about the quality of the apples I’m buying before I buy them. I see orange juice as a luxury item.

I do not want to be rich. I just want to be able to live without wondering whether or not the apples in my hand are above my economic status.

It is 72 degrees in St. Louis today, and it is January. This, by itself, would be considered unusual, except that today, something even more unusual is happening:

I am traveling on Amtrak.

When I was a kid, living just outside Washington, D.C., I used to love traveling by train. I loved riding D.C.’s subway, the Metro. I knew every stop on the Red Line. I knew every transfer point. I used to love traveling down to D.C.’s Union Station, and on the rare occasion in which we got to hop on a train and head to New York, I was always terribly excited. Such an elegant, simple form of transportation, I thought; a big coal engine powering towards the big city.⁽¹⁾

Still, when I got older, riding trains lost its luster. I remember when I was a kid, I saw an episode of “Reading Rainbow.” LeVar Burton rode along the American Southwest by train, sleeping in a private sleeping car, the cities rolling by as he dreamt.⁽²⁾ No billboards, no roadside chains. Just a railroad cutting a wide swatch through open countryside.

When I went to school out in Missouri, I told my friends that I wanted to go home for winter break once by Amtrak. Just a short train from St. Louis to Chicago, then an overnight home to D.C. My friends looked at me like I was suggesting Spring Break: Darfur.

Looking back, I’m not all that suprised by their reaction. I’d like to think my friends feel the way most Americans feel about Amtrak: As thought it’s slightly less desirable than traveling via oxen-led wagon. Travel to Europe, and the trains there are new, fast, clean. Barcelona to Madrid in 2.5 hours! Wide seats! Quiet cars!

By comparison, Amtrak feels like riding in a Yugo. Right now, I am sitting in an Amtrak car, traveling north to Chicago. To travel the distance via Megabus — the low-fare coach famous for $1 seats — would’ve cost me $66 each way. On Amtrak? $28.80.

Megabus comes with 120 volt electrical ports at every seat, and WiFi throughout.

This Amtrak train, by comparison, lacks air conditioning. It’s 72 degrees outside, and pushing 80 inside the car.

I am sweating and sweating, and I have already stripped off two layers of outerwear, and I am starting to understand why Americans look at the Amtrak experience the way it very well may be intended:

As a form of punishment.

❡❡❡

Flying kind of feels like that too, these days. It didn’t use to. I remember this airline that used to fly out of D.C.’s National Airport, called Business Express. They served me biscotti cookies, and it’s likely that no one in recorded human history has reacted to biscotti cookies with quite as much excitement as I did that day. Flights meant meals, and airplane wings to pin to your coat, and sometimes even in-flight movies. I reminded my mom the other day of the flight we took out to Salt Lake City when I was in first grade. I told her that they showed “Mrs. Doubtfire” on the flight.

She wanted to know how I could remember such a thing, but really, how could I ever forget?

I was 6.

They showed a funny movie on an airplane.

At that point in my life, it was probably the single funniest movie I’d ever seen.

I was in the sky, watching a funny movie.

How could I ever forget that?

❡❡❡

I’m actually not moving from this very Amtrak car, even as the temperatures rise. The motor for the A/C whirs and whirs, but nothing cool seems to blow out of the vents. The car up ahead is cooler, maybe even in the 70s. But it’s also packed with teenagers, and loud. My car, for all the heat, is at least quiet. People keep standing up from my car and moving elsewhere. The car keeps getting less and less crowded. And somehow, the thought of five hours in a quiet sauna seems to beat five hours of noisy chill.

❡❡❡

We stop in Alton, Illinois. There is a sign on the platform, white text on blue background, that says so. It is about the size of a piece of loose leaf paper.⁽³⁾

This is somewhere, I guess.

❡❡❡

There are a lot of kids on this train, and I think I’m starting to understand why parents — especially the single parents who seem abundant on this train — would prefer Amtrak to other forms of transport: It’s easy to be a kid on a train. There’s lots of space to move, and there’s no real understanding among the passengers about how to behave on these things. The couple behind me is gossiping and eating Triscuits. In the car behind me, a group of teenage girls moves in pack, squealing each time the train takes a bump and throws them off their stride. Two girls in black, kind of in goth dress but without any of the hallmark makeup, appear to be power walking up and down the train, though I’d expect to see a pedometer or two soon if they’re to keep up this pace. The kids, meanwhile, almost skip-walk through the train, alternately noisy and silent.

We’re traveling through strange, unidentifiable land, and as long as people keep their hands and feet inside the vehicle, nobody seems to even notice — or at least, mind — what anyone else is up to.

❡❡❡

I suppose I’m building to a point here, which is that travel has this strange, wondrous quality when you’re a child. It’s magic, really: The Journey! To unknown lands! The airplane stewardness hands you a pair of pin-on wings, and suddenly you feel like an explorer of the skies, venturing into the unknown. Or you’re on the road, and the miles roll by in your mom’s stationwagon. You’re playing the license plate game, and every state feels like a new discovery. It is new, and it is strange, and it is wonderful, so much so that you hardly even notice how uncomfortable travel is.

Or maybe uncomfortable is the wrong word. Unremarkable is more like it. The thrill of travel wears off. It becomes common, and then dull, and then a nuisance. This trip to Chicago? Five hours, and even though I don’t have to do anything other than sit here, it’s almost annoyingly plain. A big part of these trips — or layover-induced waiting, for that matter — is just finding a way to endure the boredom.

Maybe that’s why adults hardly ever seem to get excited about travel. I can remember only one exception: In seventh grade, my family flew to London, and we did so in British Airways’ business class. When we landed at Heathrow, my father and I were the last ones to disembark. Neither of us wanted to leave the plane. We’d never before been treated with such hospitality.

❡❡❡

I start looking for that old travel magic, and I find it in the seat pocket. Well, the lack of things in the seat pocket, at least. There’s no magazine on this train. Nothing but a safety guide. On airplanes, I love flipping open the in-pocket magazine to the back pages, and tracing my fingers over the route map. There’s no such map here, and no signage as to where we’re actually traveling. This train makes stops, but I don’t know where. I am somewhere in Illinois, and I am traveling at moderate speed in the general direction of Chicago. I have no real idea where I am. I do not know the route. Aside from a passing Wal-Mart, nothing much seems familiar.

I am headed towards Chicago, and I am confident that I will get there, though I do not exactly know how.

❡❡❡

We make a stop in Carlinville. The station is about the size of a Chevrolet Suburban. Maybe smaller. It’s not clear how the conductor even knows to stop there. I imagine some days, the train passes right on through Carlinville, only to realize at the next stop that they’ve left passengers behind.

❡❡❡

The air conditioning comes on. Well, maybe not A/C. But air that could definitely be described as “not hot.” This, as far as I am concerned, is major progress.

I’m upgrading my Amtrak experience from “travel-themed punishment” to “not entirely uncomfortable.”

I’m also beginning to notice — and I’m not sure if it was like this the whole time, or it’s just because the sun is down at about 10 o’clock on the horizon, and the light is just so — but the windows seem shaded in such a way that the world outside has this sepia glow. I feel like I’m traveling through a moving Instapaper portrait of America, and it’s actually rather soothing.

I’ve decided to re-upgrade my Amtrak experience to “not all that bad, now that I think about it.”

And other things, too: The seats are decently wide, and the leg room is considerably more generous than coach seats on planes. Parking at St. Louis was easy — even securely gated — and I didn’t have to put my bag through an x-ray machine or take my shoes off before getting on the train.

I decide to hold my Amtrak experience at “not all that bad, now that I think about it.” For now, at least.

❡❡❡

We coast into Springfield. That seems like the right verb here. Speeds into Springfield is certainly not right. It doesn’t seem like the conductor is trying to stop the train, either. Mostly, it seems like he’s taken his foot off the pedal, and we’re just hoping to lose inertia by the time the platform arrives.

We coast into Springfield.

On the left is a big domed building, that concrete-gray that all the government buildings back home have, and then a darker gray dome on top. I am not sure if it is gray, or cobalt, or maybe a charcoal offshoot of gray. I don’t know much about colors, but I do know enough about domes to guess that it’s the Capital building for this state. It is probably the last thing I will see before it gets dark.

And it is getting seriously dark now. The not-hot air continues to blow above me, and Chicago is up ahead, though I am not sure where. I am confident I will get there, but I do not now how.

The train starts to fill up. I’ve got an empty seat beside me for now, but I probably won’t by the next stop. There are four or five cars on this train, 19 rows in each car, four seats in each row. The ticket-taker tells me that by Chicago, they’ll all be full.

Who knew that this many people still traveled by train?

We coast into Springfield, and then we roll onward to Chicago, into the dark.

Forbes ran a story on their website this week about Best Buy. The lead paragraph read:

“Electronics retailer Best Buy is headed for the exits. I can’t say when exactly, but my guess is that it’s only a matter of time, maybe a few more years.”

Then it went on to detail numerous problems with Best Buy’s supply chain.

Now, I have a friend who’s about to start a new job this year with Best Buy. She’ll be working with their supply chain. So I sent her the link.

Naturally, she was bummed. She started saying that, well, at least she’d get a nice line on her résumé out of the job. At least she wasn’t really planning on staying there all that long.

And that crushed me. Because it wasn’t too long ago that I was reading headlines like this about my own industry:

“Sometime soon, millions of people may find themselves unwittingly involved in a test that could profoundly change their daily routines, local economies and civic lives.

“They’ll have to figure out how to keep up with City Hall, their neighborhoods and their kids’ schools — as well as store openings, new products and sales — without a 170-year-old staple of daily life: a local newspaper.”

Newspapers and big-box stores: we’re not all that different. So I sent my soon-to-be-working-at-Best-Buy friend back an email. It read:

Hey, I work in journalism. My senior year, I every morning, I went to a site called Paper Cuts to see which newspapers were slashing newsroom jobs that day. I say this all the time: Journalism companies are in love with their own demise. Back then, I was too.

And looking back, I’m horrified. Why glorify your own downfall? We journalists have infinite tools at our disposal. Why not spend more time focusing on making journalism more awesome?

Anyway, I suppose that’s the challenge before you: Either buy into Best Buy’s slow demise, or get working at making everything you touch more awesome.

Time to get into the latter category. I hope my friend at Best Buy will. I hope my friends in journalism will, too.

But what I would like to discuss is a sort of corollary to the bucket list. See: We have the bucket list, which looks long term. We have the to-do list, which covers the immediate.

What we don’t have is that list for the in-betweens in our lives.

I had a conversation with a friend last week, and I brought up this mantra that I’ve been carrying around for a few years now: “In this life, you find things you love and people you love, and you make time for both.”

And she said the most wonderful thing: Well, I suppose I should start making a list of things.

I couldn’t agree more. Because, I suppose, that’s really what I did at about this time last year. It wasn’t a bucket list that I started thinking about; I wasn’t looking to compile things that I hadn’t yet done in my life. Really, I was looking at things that I just wasn’t making enough time for in my day-to-day life, and seeing which of them I’d like to find time for in the coming months.

I didn’t write that list down, sadly, but if I had, my 2011 List of Things I Love would’ve looked like:

See more live music
Join a sports team
Find more opportunities for spontaneity
Read more often
Launch a side project
Do more yoga
Write and code

I’m proud to say that I checked almost all of those off the list this year. I’ve seen 35 concerts this year, from local bands releasing their first album to U2. I joined a kickball team in DC. I made a few spur-of-the-moment decisions. (What? There’s a Groupon for skydiving? Yeah, I’m in!) I’ve read 12 books, and I’ll be through 13 by year’s end. I didn’t quite launch BooksAround, my social literacy experiment, but I can get that done in the next two weeks. I took weekly hot yoga classes. I’m blogging more than ever, and I worked my way through a CSS tutorial. All in all, I made a lot of time for a lot of things that had gotten lost since college.

And yes, being active with that list meant that I also got to cross stuff off the bucket list. (Skydiving? Check. Visiting Israel? Check. Going to a show at Red Rocks? Check.)

Now I’m thinking about next year’s List of Things. I’d like to keep all of the above in play, but I’d also like to add three things:

Travel more
Speak publicly
Ship things

The first is self-explanatory. I love to travel, and I’d love to make more time for it next year. I don’t have any specific places in mind; I’d just like to get up and go.

The second is something I’ve come around on this year. In 2011, I’ve twice gotten a chance to give speeches to 150+ person rooms, and I’ve learned that it’s a hell of a rush. I used to fear public speaking. Not anymore. I’m never going to be a stand-up comic, so getting 150 people to keel over in laughter during a PowerPoint is about as close as I’m going to get to that sensation. I really love getting up in front of a big room, and I want to find more opportunities to speak in public next year.

And as for the third thing, that’s a business term I’d never even heard until this year. But it means: Create a product and bring it to market. Make stuff and put it out in the world for people to use.

I’ve spent a hell of a long time with Stry — from concept to now, I’m well over 18 months into this company — and what I’ve got to show for it is some blogging from Biloxi, my current fellowship and a few public appearances. What I need to do in 2012 is get this thing out in the world. I need to ship, and ship more often. I love the feeling of satisfaction that comes from getting little items done on a project. I want to experience what it’s like to bring something big to market.

So that’s my 2012 List of Things. What’s yours?

I am 24 years old, and I’m going through a period of transition in my life. It’s that time of the year when I start getting all thoughtful about where I am and where I’m going, and at this very moment, I’m stuck in Kansas City Int’l, waiting for a flight home. So I wanted to write this down.

At age 24, there are certain things I’ve come to believe hold true. I know that my beliefs will change. I know that I will change.

But here, at 24, is what I believe:

-Try not to regret bad decisions. Just make the best decisions you can with the best information you have.
-When you find that you’ve done wrong, and you have a chance to make it right, don’t idle.
-Uncertainty breeds opportunity.
-Be spontaneous.
-Listening is an active process.
-So is life. Don’t be passive.
-Only the people who show up get to make change. So show up.
-Don’t be afraid to fail.
-It’s alright to get rejected. Getting rejected means you’re trying.
-At 18, you don’t know that you don’t know what you want.
-At 24, you know that you don’t know what you want.
-Sometimes, you’ve got to do it for the story.
-Do something. Be something.
-Define your greatness, and then go out and do something about it.

And most of all, this:

-In this life, you find things you love and people you love, and you make time for both.

I’m just trying to live up to that every day.

Those lovely people in the photo at top: My little brother and my little sister.