While there is still time, take your kids on a long road trip.

Memories are like roadside scenery glimpsed from a car hurtling down the freeway at 78 miles-an-hour. The driver sees the least, preoccupied by the task at hand. The passenger in the front seat sees a little more but not enough given she spends time looking at the driver, searching for signs of distraction or weariness. The passengers in the back have the opportunity to see the most because they are — literally — along for the ride, blissfully out of control and with nothing but time on their hands. The idle backseat passengers can best see what’s really close up, or really far off, and only then like freeze frame glimpses of washed out Kodacolor photos rescued from a dumpster bound shoebox...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. The text version of this essay can be found on Medium where it was published contemporaneously. (image: "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park" by Diego Rivera, 1947.)

The answer to a casual question at lunch, 35 years ago, taught me everything I needed to know about choosing a career.

I knew my father’s cardiologist for a dozen years before my father needed him.

In the early 1980s the medical community was just starting to build applications for patient record keeping using the new personal computers coming on the market at the time. Through circumstances I am totally unable to recall I was introduced to an eminent cardiologist—I’ll call him Dr. Don—whose research work required him to collect data on his groundbreaking coronary angioplasty cases. I wrote a little code for him and it remained an entirely professional relationship except for the occasional lunch at the local tennis club. They were awkward discussions...

Listen to the rest by clicking the play button, above. This essay is the story which provided inspiration for The WorkNotWork Show, a podcast dedicated to finding and speaking with those, like Doctor Don, who are living their dream careers. A version of this essay also previously appeared on Medium on October 14th, 2016. (header photo: ©Jim DeLillo on iStock.)