Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

What would happen if I accomplished the things I once imagined for my life?

What if I started a company, became a pilot, traveled the world, found a wonderful wife, built an exciting career, ran thousands of miles, stayed healthy, became a great storyteller, learned to DJ, and bought a house with a yard?

The strange answer is that some of those dreams are no longer hypothetical.

I have already built parts of that life. Other parts are in progress, and a few remain wonderfully specific future plans. Looking at them together is a useful reminder that goals are not only a list of things I lack. They are also evidence of how far life has already moved.

Start My Own Company

I have not started the company yet.

But I am getting closer by building small projects and learning what it takes to turn an idea into something real. KeyTakes is one of those projects: a product I created because I wanted a better way to read and revisit useful ideas from books.

KeyTakes may be small, but that is part of its value. It gives me somewhere to practice product decisions, engineering, infrastructure, design, distribution, and the uncomfortable art of asking whether anyone actually wants what I built.

Starting a company no longer feels like a dramatic leap I might take someday. It feels like a direction I am already moving in, one project and one lesson at a time.

Status: in progress.

Become a Pilot

I am already a drone pilot.

Flying a drone has taught me to think about airspace, weather, visibility, planning, and responsibility. It has also made me more curious about aviation rather than satisfying the curiosity completely.

The next dream is to become a real pilot: get into an aircraft, learn the systems, understand the decisions, and experience the sky from somewhere other than the ground or a camera feed.

The drone is not the end of that goal. It is the beginning.

Status: airborne, but not quite in the cockpit.

Travel the World

I have visited 85 countries.

At some point, “travel the world” stopped being a distant ambition and became a description of what I had actually done. Those countries gave me friendships, stories, mistakes, meals, languages, missed connections, long train rides, and a much broader understanding of how differently people can build good lives.

There will always be more places to visit. That is one of the wonderful and slightly dangerous things about travel: the list expands faster than it shrinks.

But I do not need to keep moving simply to prove that I am adventurous. Eighty-five countries is enough evidence. The next phase can involve traveling more deliberately and appreciating the home I return to.

Status: achieved, and still curious.

Find a Wonderful Wife

My Joy is a wonderful wife.

This is the goal on the list that matters most, and it is also the one least suited to being treated like an accomplishment. Finding the right person is not a box to check. Marriage is something we keep building together in ordinary days, difficult weeks, shared adventures, and all the small moments nobody else sees.

Joy makes life warmer, funnier, and more grounded. Ambition is easier to carry when home feels like a place where I can put it down.

Of everything on this list, this is the part I feel luckiest about.

Status: found, loved, and never taken for granted.

Work in Silicon Valley as an AI Engineer

Cerebras gives me this.

I get to work on ambitious AI technology, solve difficult engineering problems, contribute to open source, support an ecosystem, and help coordinate initiatives across an organization working at the edge of inference.

It is intense. It requires a lot of energy and an almost unreasonable amount of context switching. It is also exactly the kind of environment I once hoped to find: smart people, hard problems, fast progress, and technology with the potential to change how software is built and used.

The dream was never simply to have “Silicon Valley” on a resume. It was to be close to consequential technology and contribute in a meaningful way. That part is real now.

Status: achieved, with plenty left to learn.

Place in Races and Run Thousands of Miles

Running has become a much larger part of my life than I could have predicted.

I have run thousands of miles, completed difficult races, explored mountains on foot, and learned that endurance is built through an enormous number of very ordinary runs. The memorable finish lines depend on all the mornings when nothing exciting happened and I simply went outside.

At the time of writing, I am on track to cross 1,000 running miles for 2026 during July. That number is ridiculous, satisfying, and mostly a sign that running has become part of the structure of my life.

I still want to place in more races. I like competition, and I like discovering what happens when consistent training meets a day when everything works. But the larger achievement is not a podium. It is becoming someone who keeps running.

Status: thousands of miles completed; more starting lines ahead.

Make Sure I Am Healthy

Health is not a finish line.

Exercise comes naturally to me because I genuinely enjoy running, hiking, rowing, yoga, and other ways of moving. Nutrition and weight require more deliberate attention. It is possible to be extremely active while still eating without enough awareness or treating recovery as optional.

I want health to mean more than producing impressive activity totals. It should include sensible nutrition, a healthy weight, strength, mobility, sleep, recovery, and enough restraint to keep the whole system sustainable.

The goal is not to optimize every meal and every minute. It is to remain capable of doing the work, adventures, races, and ordinary activities I love for a very long time.

Status: a lifelong practice.

Get Really Good at Joking and Storytelling

This one needs work.

I have collected plenty of raw material. Eighty-five countries, startup life, AI engineering, ultrarunning, drone flying, immigration, and the general absurdity of being a person should provide enough stories.

Having experiences is not the same as telling them well, though. Good storytelling requires timing, structure, attention, and the ability to understand what an audience finds interesting rather than reciting every detail in chronological order.

Humor is similar. It is partly instinct, but it is also observation and practice. I want to become better at noticing the funny part, shaping the story, and delivering it without getting lost somewhere around the third unnecessary piece of context.

Status: good source material, active editing required.

Become a DJ Who Really Kicks the Beat

This is also for soon.

Music can change the energy of an entire room, and I love the idea of learning how to create that experience deliberately. DJing combines taste, technical skill, timing, reading people, and the confidence to commit to the next track.

I do not need to headline a festival. I would be very happy becoming good enough to bring people together, keep them moving, and avoid clearing the dance floor through an overly ambitious transition.

Every serious life plan should contain at least one goal whose primary purpose is making the party better.

Status: cueing the next chapter.

Buy a House With a Yard

I can see this one clearly.

There is a house with enough room to breathe and a yard that makes being home feel like its own small adventure. The yard contains a Jacuzzi and a sauna, because recovery deserves infrastructure.

There is also a Golden Retriever.

This dream is partly about property, but mostly about creating a home where life can expand: room for Joy, friends, family, animals, post-run recovery, summer evenings, and weekends that do not require going anywhere.

I have traveled enough to understand the value of having somewhere wonderful to stay.

Status: not yet, but the backyard specification is remarkably complete.

The Life Is Already Happening

Looking at this list, I could focus on what remains unfinished.

I have not founded the company, earned a pilot’s license, mastered storytelling, become a DJ, or built the sauna-centered Golden Retriever habitat.

But that would miss the more important truth.

I traveled the world. I found Joy. I built a career in AI. I ran the miles. I started creating my own products. I learned to fly a drone. I built a life full of work, movement, curiosity, love, and stories that I now need to get better at telling.

Goals are useful because they point forward. Gratitude is useful because it lets me see that I am already standing inside a life I once hoped to reach.

The remaining boxes do not represent a life that has not started yet. They are invitations to keep building the one that is already here.