Today begins a new “adventure drive” — and a longer one by far than any previous.

Since every road trip needs a playlist, here are a few songs for starters:

• “The Load-Out/Stay,” by Jackson Browne
• “Flyin’ Shoes,” by Townes Van Zandt (though I usually listen to Lyle Lovett’s version)
• “Adios to California,” by John Hiatt
• “The Road Goes on Forever,” by Robert Earl Keen (or Joe Ely’s cover)
• “L.A. Freeway,” by Guy Clark

The drive’s a bit longer than that, but that’ll get us rolling.

Wherever you are and whatever you’re up to today, cheers to a new adventure.

***

And you put the pink card in the mailbox
Leave the key in the old front door lock
They’ll find it likely as not
I’m sure there’s something we have forgot
Oh Susanna, don’t you cry, babe
Love’s a gift that’s surely handmade
We’ve got something to believe in
Don’t you think it’s time we’re leaving?

— Guy Clark, “L.A. Freeway”

Over the past several weeks, a friend and I have been working our way through some wayfinding books.

We started with the classic What Color is Your Parachute?, moved on to Designing Your Life, and have The New Rules of Work in the on-deck circle.

Enough people have already celebrated each of these books that there’s no point in adding another blurb.

Instead, I want to highlight how we’re reading them: we schedule an hour each week to meet on Zoom and work through a chapter together. Or not together, exactly, but independently with video on, under time constraints, and with scheduled time to share insights and questions.

Sure, we’re 80/20-ing these books — but that’s 80 percent further than we were getting when we’d each bought them with best intentions and let them simply pave our shelves, as it were.

This might or might not work for a novel (I haven’t tried it and I’m not eager to), but if there’s some work you’d like to get done, it’s amazing how much momentum you can get by scheduling it and working together — even virtually.

Given the chance, it’s enormously important to get around the people who are part of your natural network.

These are the people who can open doors and create opportunities, who are in on the joke, who share your idiom.

I was listening to part of Guy Clark’s 70th birthday concert the other day, and one of my musical heroes, Lyle Lovett, walked onstage. Introducing Guy’s song “Anyhow I Love You,” Lyle told the story of going to Nashville as a young man and leaving a demo tape at the studio where Guy worked.

On subsequent trips, Lyle continued, people would tell him, “Oh, I heard about you from Guy Clark.” As Lyle put it, Guy was speaking up and standing up for him before the two had even met — and that’s what allowed Lyle to build his own extraordinary career making records.

I encountered Lyle’s music (or at least his records) before I started listening to Guy’s, and those songs have been the soundtrack to some of the best times of my life, as well as tonic during hard times.

And, if not for Lyle’s pluck and Guy’s stand, where would that music have been when I needed it?

***

All these communities of affinity are much smaller than we tend to think. And this kind of inter-generational generosity is what makes them go ’round.

There’s no question that there are insidious, incestuous networks out there that are more interested in mutual self-preservation than cultivating a community over the long haul.

But there are also always opportunities to get in front of the people who need to hear you or play talented newcomers’ stuff for the people who need to hear it.

Who could you promote today that others will celebrate later?

Panic never helps.

Prudence and prevention, sure. But not panic.

(Panicky energy no doubt arises — it just has to be channeled and grounded.)

Good feedback usually starts from an “I” statement.

Since feedback is essentially personal opinion, it’s better to signal that than to make a blanket assertion. “I don’t like that color” has a different valence than “Purple is not an appropriate color for a house.”

(Ditto “I’m offended by your comment” vs. “That’s offensive!”)

But not all “I” statements are created equal, either.

“I hate purple houses!” might be an “I” statement, but it’s a conversation-ender. “I’ve never seen a purple house before … why did you decide to do that?” is an honest opinion that invites an honest response.

Being personal is a good start. But being open counts for a lot, too.

Here’s a concept — why can’t we vote:

by mail?

in a generous window?

by ranked-order choice?

We’re probably going to be stuck with extremely limited choice of parties for years, but large primary fields are likely here to stay for the foreseeable future, too.

Early voting is nice where it’s allowed, but lots of candidates dropped out after ballots were printed, voted, and counted this year.

As long as we’re stuck with just two parties managing unruly constituencies ranging from Jeb! to Trump or Bloomberg to Sanders, we really ought to start caring about how votes are ranked.

I heard someone say recently that she’d fired a bunch of her friends.

Diagnosed with a probably-terminal illness in the prime of life, she was given maybe a year to live — which naturally forced her to prioritize pretty quickly and firmly.

I wasn’t struck by the fact of this winnowing so much as the way she went about it. After pruning her list of friends, she invited all those she’d decided not to keep up with to meet up. She then told them to their faces what she had decided and why.

On one level, these sudden breaks sound sharp — perhaps almost cruel. But, as I reflected on it, I thought how generous, in an age of ever-expanding lists of “friends,” it could be to have real closure, for a reason, face to face.

Happily, this person has outlived her initial prognosis. And, hopefully, most of us will never have to prioritize so ruthlessly or especially so soon. But I’m left wondering: which friendships do I really want to keep tending, and how should I attend to those that are no longer really part of my life?

It takes a lot of effort to land on a lily pad.

Careful planning, a big leap (look out for the snapping turtle), and a skillful landing.

And then it’s comfortable: a rest, a snack, a chance to recoup between leaps.

But then it’s time to leap again. That’s no insult to this lily pad, or that corner of the pond, and each leap brings its own challenges and joys.

You can’t live on any pad forever. But you can thank this one for its service, plan a little, scan the scene for turtles … and then leap onward.

Two interesting reads to highlight this week: the first on meaningless corporate language, and the second on the meaning of society’s “decadence” and individual action.

Here’s Molly Young on why corporations speak the way they do (at Vulture, via Longreads): https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/spread-of-corporate-speak.html

And here’s Peter Thiel reviewing Ross Douthat (at First Things, via Farnam Street): https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/03/back-to-the-future

Enjoy (?).

Of many arresting images in Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song, one has been sticking with me in recent days.

Writing about something that was once a big piece of his life and has since been laid aside, BD says it was like a rocket booster — essential to reach the current trajectory, but no longer part of the journey.

How many of those rocket boosters has each of us had? How many are still powering us upward?

And, when we look down, how should we feel about those stages that brought us here but are no longer carrying on?