Unqualified for The Olympics, Overqualified for Thank-You Notes

My journal entry on doors that close, work that counts, and the legacy of everyday living.

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I’ve been reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss — the 4-Hour-Everything guy. The book is like a Swiss Army knife of other people’s lives: comedians, snowboarders, and billionaires. Some of it veers into life-hack cosplay (ice baths, butter coffee, wake up at 4:12 a.m. to meditate on a rock), but a lot of it lands. What keeps pinging my ribs is this quiet throughline: humans want to leave a piece of themselves behind. We are wired to make, connect, improve, and push — sometimes loudly, sometimes in the background — because after we’re gone, we still want something left standing with our fingerprints on it.

When you’re young, life is basically a hallway of doors that say, “Sure, why not?” You assume they all swing open. You can be anything, do everything, and remain somehow well-rested. That’s youth’s job — to make you bold and rosy-cheeked so you’ll try some seriously stupid stuff. And thank God for it. If we waited until we had perspective, we’d never leave the sofa.

Then the years pile up like moving boxes you never labeled. Some rooms you toured once and never went back to. Other doors? They shut. Not politely. Not with a soft click. They slam. Maybe you shut them yourself. Maybe life did — money, timing, choices, the IRS, a detour that looked smart until it wasn’t, a relationship that started like a sunrise and ended with a power outage, and let’s not forget…fleeting hormones.

There’s a cultural pep talk that says, “Anything is possible!” which is adorable and also untrue. Some things simply won’t happen now. The door is closed. The key is lost, and I’m over here labeling a plastic bin: “Things I Wanted But Physics Said No.”

Getting okay with that is hard. Like, “stare at the ceiling fan at 2 a.m. and narrate your regrets” hard. I wish I had a prescription here — three steps to serenity, five hacks to hustle, “drink this green sludge and transcend” — but I don’t. This isn’t advice. It’s my journaling in a public forum because I’m nearing fifty, and the questions are louder than the answers: What will be left with my fingerprints on it when I am well and truly dead? Five minutes after the dirt hits the top of my casket, will anyone even remember I was here? And if they don’t, does that mean this was all just motion without meaning?

Maybe the answer isn’t buried under a stack of morning routines. Maybe the answer is smaller and closer. If we are built to leave pieces, maybe the pieces don’t need to be marble statues. Maybe they’re notes we pass along through the people we love, the work we do, the tiny improvements we make, and never brag about. To care for a handful of people like it’s your calling card. To make a few things sturdier than you found them. “Legacy” is a word that wears a cape; “maintenance” wears sweatpants and gets things done.

I look back at the rooms I never entered. There were grand plans. President? Please. I once thought that sounded like the gig (in my defense I was eight years old). Now it looks like the world’s most exhausting group text that never ends. I’m okay with that door being welded shut. But there were other doors I thought I’d walk through, certain paths I’d take because — well — wasn’t that the plan? And the uncomfortable truth is: some plans aged out. The pages were written by days I didn’t even notice, by errands, emails, dinners, and deadlines. It’s not all tragic. Sometimes the best stories happen in the margins you didn’t plan for.

When I strip the drama away, I see a lot of ordinary building. Not headlines — handholds. The kinds of moments that add grip to a life. Here’s what I can list without spiraling: times I made someone laugh; an apology I gave without a “but”; the exact right message sent to the exact right person at the exact right time; the day I finally stopped trying to be interesting and just tried to be interested. None of that gets you on a panel at a conference. But it adds weight to a day. It gives shape to a year. It makes a life feel inhabited from the inside — the ripples you can’t measure but you’d notice if they were gone.

Ferriss’ parade of high-performers is energizing, but here’s what I keep noticing between the lines: many of them are excellent at subtracting. Saying no on purpose. They un-subscribe from their own chaos. They build a smaller life on purpose so they can do it louder. It’s not just about opening everything — it’s about choosing the few rooms you’ll furnish beautifully and live in fully. That’s not defeat.

So what can I still accomplish? Maybe less than my twenty-year-old self imagined — and more than my anxious midnight self believes.

Maybe the scope is tighter and the stakes are truer. I still flirt with the idea of a capital-L Legacy — A book, a big project, something you can point to with a satisfying “There.” But maybe the lowercase version is closer to the truth. Maybe it’s one dependable phone call at a time. Maybe it’s the way your kid uses your catchphrase without realizing it. Maybe it’s that you were gentle with people on the days you could’ve been harsh.

Plenty remains if I define “accomplish” like a sane person and not a motivational poster. I can be the friend whose advice starts with listening. I can make a habit of doing the unsexy parts: apologizing first, flossing, sticking to a budget, and doing the dishes. I can become outrageous at thank-you notes. I can decide that discipline isn’t punishment — it’s the way future me avoids chaos and ibuprofen. I can keep stacking the little bricks no one claps for until one day there’s a wall that keeps the wind off someone I love.

If I get to choose the sentence people say about me after the dirt hits? I hope it’s simple: She showed up. She did the work. She made things better where she could. That’s not a titan’s banner hanging from the rafters. It’s a hand-sketched note on the fridge from my kid. Unpolished and completely human.