If you slow down time, you can walk in the rain and not get wet.
– Grandpa Al

Grandpa’s words filled my ears as I walked along the gravel path in Cedar Mountain. It was raining. Hard. The sound was white. The kind that can drown out a conversation. I was enveloped in the downpour, but not getting wet.

I wasn’t under an umbrella nor any sort of shelter. I didn’t have a raincoat on. I wore my black Nike shorts with the elastic band that’s a touch too tight, and my used-to-be-red now pink tee shirt with a picture of an RV on it surrounded by snow flakes, pine trees, and reindeer.

I had on my Darn Tough wool socks and Birkenstocks.

My toes remained dry.

It was just like Grandpa said four decades ago.

I finally slowed down time.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr., PhD. All rights reserved.
Permission granted to share with attribution.

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07 September 2025

It was pitch black when I woke up. I silently slid off the mattress, feet first. Gus was in his usual spot, tucked between the aluminum wall and the foot of the bed. I was careful not to step on him or disturb Abby as I made my way out into the narrow hallway, pulling the accordion closed behind me. I felt my way to the back of the Airstream, turned on the light, and tucked myself into the seat by the table. Frank was fast asleep below.

This is home, in the Airstream, in Cedar Mountain under a canopy of trees, bikes parked outside, and the only sound is nature. Getting here has been a long road.

I didn’t always have a place called home. Now I find it everywhere.

When I was nineteen, the only place I experienced home was on my motorcycle. I was brokenhearted and going to college at Stevens Tech in Hoboken. Dorm life never resonated. I slept on couches in secret corners of the campus library, in the loft on the rooftop of the Chi Phi fraternity house, and on the bench seat of my red GMC Sierra.

My high school sweetheart had too many good reasons to dump me, and a year later, the loss continued to sting. Without love, I was a zombie going through the motions.

I went to the default college that my father and sister went to, and worked on movie sets in New York City in a union started by my mom’s family. The paths were paved for me. When it came time to party, I wasn’t really having fun — instead, drinking until blackout drunk.

The only place I felt at home was on two wheels. Any excuse to ride my motorcycle, I took it. That machine took me back — to the source.

When I was three, I learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels, and I never looked back. My first bike had a banana seat — a single speed with pedal brakes. I started riding BMX bikes in grammar school, leading the way to mopeds and dirt bikes, until I finally restored my dad’s 1971 BMW R60/5.

I rode it wherever winding roads with fall-colored leaves led to women and food. That was my Aunt Marie and Grandma Jenny in Park Ridge. It was the Mullins girls in Ridgewood. All of them were beautiful, from ninety-three to seventeen.

By God, those Mullins girls were gorgeous — all four of them — and that included their mom.

Mr. Mullins was the music teacher in Rutherford. In grammar school, he was an adult who played the piano in the gymnasium and visited us in our classrooms with an acoustic guitar. We all sang Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver. I didn’t know his girls until I met them in church, when we were in high school. By then, I realized Mr. Mullins was John Denver — a hippie type with that worn, brown leather sportscoat, longish straight hair, and soothing voice.

I was visiting home from college when my mom pointed out the house they used to live in. I had no memory of ever being there, playing with those girls when we were little children, being in the home of a schoolteacher.

They had moved to North Jersey, and I asked Mom for the address. I’m sure she was feeding me all these tidbits because she knew her son was heartbroken, and she knew I was enamored with one of the sisters.

The first time I arrived at their home, it was unannounced. That’s how we did things back then. I just rolled up on my motorcycle and rang the bell. Mrs. Mullins invited me in, and I made up a story that I was looking for advice on a piano piece I was trying to learn.

I was really just hungry.

Mr. Mullins wasn’t around, but I ended up hanging there for hours with the three girls and their mom. The one I liked made me an ankle bracelet out of braided colored strings. I had to take off my engineer boots and white tube socks to put it on. Barefoot was the way to be in that home.

The five of us were sitting at their kitchen table eating a snack when one of them asked, “What season are you?”

“Huh? What? What season am I?”

They giggled and decided to play a game. They all wrote down a season, separately, and then shared their answers. I had no idea what was going on.

“It’s unanimous. You’re Fall.”

I remember just thinking, girls are so different than boys.

Whenever I dropped in there unannounced, they knew what I was up to. But I never mustered up the guts to ask the one sister out. I figured if I did, she’d say, “No,” and then there’d be no more visits. There’d be no more bracelets, hugs, or impromptu snacks — no more reminders that this wasn’t home.

But I was looking for love. In the end, I didn’t find it there, and those drop-ins faded into a sea of lost chances, leaving me with sweet memories and a fashion guide for life.

This week, I screamed down Ridgeline on my REEB SST, a Colorado-made, steel-welded full-suspension mountain bike. When the dropper post is down and my butt grazes the rear tread, there’s no time to figure out the line. My bike and body are one.

My mind is blank — eyes track the trail far ahead and, at the same time, what’s under my front wheel. My body reacts. The line traces behind me. If I think anything, it’s exhale. I purse my lips and blow, like I’m trying to dry glue without disturbing it.

This is where I’m closest to the eternal.

Home is a fallen leaf on a gravel path in Cedar Mountain on the first of September. It’s yellow and green and burnt orange and red with splatters of dark brown. I pick it up and hold it close and think about this leaf — just before it fell, it peaked in its brilliance.

I think about all of us humans. We’re leaves on trees, coming and going, season after season. If I live my life right, if I’m lucky, if God wills it, I’ll peak brilliantly just before I fall. Through all the seasons of my life, I’ve chased what looked like love, but when I found it, it was home.

When I’m home, it’s after a two-wheeled adventure, surrounded by Mother Nature, followed by sharing food with good company.

Riding my banana seat bicycle from the kindergarten schoolyard, home to mom, a hug, and a big plate of leftover lasagna.

Pedaling my BMX up and over Ridge Road to the far side of Rutherford, to my high school girlfriend’s place. Her mom made the best potato pancakes.

Cruising on my BMW up to Gram’s, where I’d find double hugs from her and Aunt Marie. They’d make meatballs and ziti.

Gripping my Harley tight on Charlotte city streets on my way to Lupie’s to hang out at the bar with John Kelly. I’d eat a giant plate of meatloaf and wash it down with an iced-cold Busch Light.

Hauling two little ones in a trailer up steep gravel paths in Umstead Park — their two wheels behind mine. We’d take a break and snack on packs of Nabs, everyone fighting over who gets the peanut butter stuffed cheddar cheese ones.

Perching at the bar at Crank Arm Brewing after a group bicycle ride — falling in love again for the first time. Every meal since meaning filled.

My sister-in-law’s sourdough.

My mother-in-law’s pumpkin bars.

My wife’s rice crispy treats, her scrambled eggs with cheese, or poached on toast. Her skillet bread, pan-seared salmon, and garden-grown tomatoes. Her loving embrace.

Home is the longing for it. It’s after the hard ride up a long mountain pass to a ridgeline. It’s after coming back down the other side. That’s about when I can almost taste it. Home is after the long road trip, it’s after the journey, and after all the trials and tribulations searching for love. Home is breaking bread with beautiful humans.

Sometimes it lives in memories with Mom, with Gram, with John Kelly. Other times, it hurts — when I think of my daughter, sharing a rack of ribs, hands messy and faces covered with sauce. It’s reminiscing of loves lost and never found. It’s laughter with close friends and a giant pile of wings on the table. And when it’s dinner with my wife and son — it’s home.

Here in our Airstream with Frank and Gus the dogs, in Cedar Mountain in September, riding my mountain bike in DuPont Forest.

Skipping from rock to rock below a gentle waterfall, in the early morning before hikers arrive. Mist in the air, and sunlight twinkling on the water, flies dancing, slippery green moss on slate blue slabs, dark where wet and chalky where dry.

The boys splash about in the miniature rapids, slip and slide on the rocks, jump out, then shake all about.

Abby and I look at each other and smile.

This is home.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Originally published in The Narrative Arc on Medium

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I know exactly where I was on September 11, 2001. I know all about the nightmares I’ve had. My Babe Ruth Baseball coach was lost that day. He was a father and a husband. But I’m not compelled to write about any of that today.

Instead, where my mind goes, is to the dichotomy of resilience of humans.

We the people, we tend to celebrate how rapidly we can bounce back from tragedy. Nothing stops our spirit. No world war, terrorist attack, or pandemic can keep us down.

And we should celebrate that.

We are a bright light of hope in the face of whatever darkness the world can throw upon us.

I myself, I celebrate this in my own life.

The darkest things that happen to me, they stop with me. I want nothing more than to be a bright light of hope.

Is what I’m about to write a departure from that? We shall see. The words haven’t yet spilled.

Every pro has a con.

And side note, I’ve used “con” a couple of times recently, and only now am I seeing that it’s two meanings both apply.

What we’re great at is also the con. It’s the gaslight.

Before I dig into the resilience con, I have to pause for my friend Ruben. He’ll be quick to note that we humans are antifragile. This is a concept coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book by the same name.

Humans are antifragile. That’s different than resilient.

If the label on a fragile box is, “Handle with Care.”Then the label on an antifragile box would be, “Try to break me.”

Throw the box out of the truck. Kick it up the curb. Hurl it onto the front porch. That’d be an antifragile box.

Antifragile means: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

These challenges that we face throughout our lives. When we live through them and learn from them, we come out the other side stronger. We come out the other side more resilient.

So, Ruben, my dear friend. I’ll indulge you. Let’s play with antifragile.

This strength of us humans, to get stronger through challenges. There’s a con. There’s always a con.

My life’s work has been spent in the field of creativity. One of the most powerful tools for creative thinking that I’ve encountered is recognizing and holding a paradox.

To make this actionable, I’ve created a game. It’s called The Whole Mind Game.

To root out the con (the trap) for antifragility, Let’s turn to the game.

Here’s how it works. The incredible designer Stefanie made this awesome set of instructions and game board to play:

This is a sneak peek to a notebook she’s designing. It’s an example of The Whole Mind Game looking at the pros and cons of authenticity and ambition (the root words that make up Authbition).

I’m going to play now, live as I type, with fragile and antifragile.

There will be no editing. No polishing. What comes next is honest reflection at 6:30 AM from an Airstream parked in Cedar Mountain on the 25th anniversary of 9-11.

What’s the best of fragile?

The thoughts bubbling in my head are about beautiful things. Precious things. Fine china. Pieces of art. Everything that’s ever come delivered in that box labeled, “Handle with Care.”

In the game I go from prose, like above, usually in conversation with another player, to a list of words and short phrases, as seen in Stefanie’s example.

Beautiful. Precious. Cherished. Valuable.

What’s the worst of fragile?

Easily broken. Expensive.

What’s the best of antifragile?

This is the entire opening of this essay:

Strength through adversity. Results in resilience. Growth.

What’s the worst of antifragile?

Ah, that part we’ve been waiting for. Here’s the con. Being antifragile isn’t all good. There’s downsides to everything.

Where my mind was when I started writing this essay was our ability to bounce back may cause us to forget the lessons learned. We who remember 9/11 may recall the sense of unity we felt as a nation. Twenty-five years later, it feels like we’re more divided than ever.

The first world war didn’t prevent the second one.

So many lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Lost. We saw clear skies, clean rivers, and wild animals rejoicing. We cherished days off and time spent with loved ones. And here we are, six years later, witnessing some of the worst natural disasters of all time while we’re back at work, burning out like never before.

So what’s the worst of antifragile in a few words and short phrases?

Repeating the same mistakes. Meaner, bigger, badder.

Remember me when? Look at me now!

I’m a stronger asshole.

Kinda sounds like how I’d describe Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Hahaha! I don’t know him. I loved the book. But reading his social media. He kinda seems like an asshole.

I digress.

We’re in the middle of a game.

What’s the best of fragile and antifragile?

Here, I like to see all the words and short phrases from both together:

Beautiful. Precious. Cherished. Valuable.
Strength through adversity. Results in resilience. Growth.

From here, I focus on a couple of words from each side.

Beautiful
Growth

Sometimes I’ll make a new phrase inspired by these two words.

Evolve with love

I call this, “The synergy phrase.” It’s the way I want to live.

What’s the worst of fragile and antifragile?

Easily broken. Expensive.
Repeating the same mistakes. Meaner, bigger, badder.

From this group of words, I go through a similar process. I lean in on both sides, and then come up with a short phrase that captures the essence of these words. I call this the trap. It’s the con. It’s what I want to recognize when it’s happening so that I can change my behavior, and move towards the synergy.

Ruthless weakling.

I like to end the game by brainstorming ways to live the synergy and recognize the trap.

What are ways to live evolve with love and recognize ruthless weakling?

• While I’m in the depths of my next challenge, write down the lessons learned.

• Turn my lessons learned into mantras.

• When I feel burnout, pause and reflect.

• When I act out ruthlessly, seek the weakling within me.

I didn’t live through any world wars. But I lived through 9-11. I lived through the pandemic. I’ve lived through heartbreak too many times. And I’ve repeated too many mistakes.

Today, on the 25th anniversary of the day the Twin Towers fell, it’s not too late to remember the lessons I’ve learned during the darkest days of my life.

Evolve with love.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

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© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr., PhD. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

I can’t imagine how anyone can think that way.

I can’t imagine how anyone can think that.

I can’t imagine how anyone can think.

I can’t imagine how anyone can.

I can’t imagine how anyone.

I can’t imagine how.

I can’t imagine.

I can’t.

I.

I can.

I can imagine.

I can imagine everyone.

I can imagine everyone everywhere.

I can imagine everyone everywhere loves.

I can imagine everyone everywhere loves all.

I can imagine everyone everywhere loves all beings.

I can imagine everyone everywhere loves all beings’ perspectives.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

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© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr., PhD. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

Randomness is part of life.

Think HRV. The beats over time are in a rhythm, but the time between beats is variable. The more variable, the better.

I’d say the same for strumming a guitar. Through the song, the strumming stays on the rhythm, but it would sound strange if played by a robot with perfect timing.

The sun. Circadian rhythms. Walking speed. There’s a pattern, but not on a strict schedule.

The sun doesn’t care about what time it is. It doesn’t rise at the same time every day. On any given morning, it rises at slightly different times for everyone.

Optimization culture would have people believe that we operate rhythms by a clock. By a metronome to perfection.

If a heartbeat has no variability, it’s not beating at all.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr.,PhD.
All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

19 August 2024

My wife, Abby, is a nurse. Last year, she started a training program on her journey to become a board-certified nurse coach. I was the lucky recipient of a second-hand education. We read and shared what we learned, had dinner conversations about self-improvement, and evolved together.

A nurse coach does not necessarily focus on working with other nurses. They offer their skills to anyone seeking self-improvement. What makes them unique is they are qualified healthcare professionals with board certifications. They specialize in holistic health, wellness, self-mastery, life, and business.

It was fascinating to learn about the whole world of coaching businesses. I never considered how many coaches have no professional training or board certifications. They have self-proclaimed life experiences and hang up a shingle.

I fall into this category. I market myself as a business advisor and mentor in health innovation, biomedical engineering, design philosophy, and social entrepreneurship. I have a Ph.D., a ton of life experience, and many people call me ‘coach.’ Yet, I have no training or board certifications.

Nevertheless, I felt qualified to give my wife entrepreneurship advice throughout her training endeavor. Luckily for our marriage, she was receptive.

One bit of advice I give to all entrepreneurs is: Drink your own grape juice so you can one day celebrate by popping a bottle of your own bubbles.

It is amazing how many software companies don’t use their own software. It blows me away how many people selling solar panels don’t have them on their houses. I can go on forever.

Abby, if you will be a coach, you must get coaching for yourself.

As the words came out, I realized how hypocritical I had been in saying them. Sure, I started a software company and used our software. I designed a design class using the design process taught in the class. That’s all good. However, as a business advisor and mentor, I had never received business advice or mentorship from a trained and board-certified professional.

I put my money where my mouth is and signed a six-month contract with Jen Yang, a former mental health nurse turned Board Certified Nurse Coach and Certified Mastery Method Coach. This would be a win-win. First of all, I would no longer be a hypocrite. Second, it was market research for my wife. I was signing up to experience the whole process, from seeking coaching, buying in, and realizing outcomes from the customer’s perspective—all invaluable to my personal growth and for Abby’s entrepreneurial pursuit.

I went into the experience with an open mind and no agenda. The goal was to continue my journey of self-improvement and progress toward becoming the best version of myself. I have been doing yoga for a decade, exploring meditation, cycling 100 miles a week, and cross-training with strength and mobility exercises. Before starting my journey with Jen Yang, I had developed a vision statement: be a beacon of kindness, strength, and joy. When asked what I sought in the experience, my short answer was “to find enlightenment.”

So what happened? I found something better than enlightenment.

Before I go deeper, here’s a brief list of things I celebrated over my six-month coaching experience with Jen Yang.

Going into the adventure, I had twelve Medium articles, all self-published. During the coaching period, I joined the partner program, was invited/accepted into six publications, wrote 31 articles, had four of them boosted, and was interviewed by Chevie Hanssler of Parasol Publications. I had my first-ever fiction story published. Most importantly, I discovered and cultivated my strongest writing style: memoirs and personal essays.

While working with Jen Yang, my mind-body connection grew stronger than ever. Through meditation, I stopped cramps from taking over my body while doing the most challenging race of my life, a 52-mile gauntlet of single-track, tarmac, and gravel in Northwest Arkansas.

In another race, I suffered a severe rib fracture that I would have expected to set me back several months to get to 100 percent race-ready condition. It took me five weeks. That one still blows my mind.

By practicing nonjudgment, I have released significant tension. I have less neck pain, reduced body aches, and minimized clenching my teeth during sleep.

I practiced Metta Meditation. While I can’t take credit for the places I’m sending positive vibrations, it is joyful to witness others’ successes. My son went from having an uncertain future at work and school to being hired onto a full-time job with benefits. He’s twenty-one. I’m a proud dad. Abby started her business, Abby Kent Coaching, PLLC, and landed her first paid client. I’m a proud husband.

It wasn’t a miracle drug. I have been estranged from my daughter for eight and a half years before coaching and nine years when the six months came to an end. I did, however, release my guilt through a guided session with Jen Yang.

The most important part of this experience was the habit that was formed. I have a cycling, yoga, and exercise routine. They are suitable activities for my mind and soul. But in those cases, my mental and spiritual growth are byproducts of physical activities. Carving out time for coaching established a commitment to have a weekly practice dedicated to mental and spiritual growth as the primary focus. Ironically, one of the byproducts has been realized as better physical health. I plan to continue this practice for the rest of my life. The results speak for themselves.

The highlight outcome of the experience is a weekly family dinner. My coaching has been regularly scheduled for Thursday afternoons. Serendipitously, Abby signed up for a fresh catch at the farmers market with a Thursday pickup. That turned into a tradition of having fish dinners on Thursdays after the coaching session wrapped up. My son, the big shot, loves fish and loves a free meal. He started crashing our dinner when he learned about it.

I started the journey looking for enlightenment but found something better. Through the coaching experience, I realized that enlightenment would be akin to a video game cheat code. The game becomes boring as soon as I discover the code. It suddenly seemed selfish to spend my meditations seeking personal enlightenment rather than spending that same meditation sending vibrations of loving kindness to myself, loved ones, friends, neighbors, and all the world.

Be the beacon of kindness, strength, and joy.

We sit at a hand-crafted table cut from reclaimed redwood. Our food is prepared on plates hand-thrown and fired by a friend. We eat freshly caught fish and locally grown vegetables.

What’s better than enlightenment? A weekly dinner with my wife and son.

Author’s Note: It’s been over two years since I wrote this essay and Coaching has evolved. You can find her publication, Rooted, here on Substack.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Originally published in Namaste Now! on Medium

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When I was three years old, I convinced my older brother to take the training wheels off my bike. After a few spills, I figured out balance. Fifty years later, the joy of being on two wheels remains constant.

I grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, and loved to explore my old hometown on a BMX bike. I loved finding little gems, like vacant construction sites to build jumps.

After riding every street in town, I started to push the limits. I crossed over the bridges into Passaic and Lyndhurst. I pedaled over the tracks into East Rutherford. By middle school, I was navigating my way to the movie theater in Secaucus.

If you know Jersey, riding a bicycle from Rutherford to Secaucus is nuts.

One thing I didn’t have back then was a road atlas. At least not a paper one. Garmin-style GPS didn’t exist yet, nor smartphones. The map was being built in my brain.

From the early 70s into the late 80s, I had built a strong foundation of roads throughout the small towns surrounding Rutherford. Then, in 1991, after graduating from high school, my ability to build maps in my mind got a major upgrade. I started riding motorcycles.

A day of riding and exploring jumped from tens of miles from home to hundreds of miles from a frat house in Hoboken. With so much geography to explore, I fell in love with the planning process.

I’d sit at a table and unfold an old school Rand McNally Road Atlas, highlighter in hand, and build a loop. From Hoboken up the Palisades into the Hudson River Valley, out west to the Delaware River, and then back home.

Each adventure was a little different. Before taking off, I studied the map, soaking in each turn for a leg of the trip to a natural break for gas, a scenic overlook, or a place to grab some food. While riding, the map stayed folded in my pocket as I navigated from memory. When I stopped, I’d pull it from my jeans, open it partway, find my current location, and then memorize the turns to the next destination.

I got lost a lot. And I found a lot. That was the fun of it.

Whenever I noticed a line of people, I’d pull over and go stand in it. I’d say to the person in front of me, “What are we in line for?”

“The best damn hamburger you’ve ever had in your life.”

And it was the best damn hamburger I’ve ever had.

My mind was a map. I knew roads from Maine to the Mississippi River to the Florida Keys. When someone asked for directions, I gave extreme detail.

“Make a right at that stop sign. When you pass the park on your left, get into the left lane. A few blocks after that, you’ll see a Han-Dee Hugo’s on the right and a Krispy Kreme on the far left corner. Take that left. If you’ve gone past the donut shop, you’ve gone too far.”

The transition from paper maps to relying on GPS happened so slowly that I didn’t notice it.

The first time I used a GPS was in 2006. I had a business trip from Raleigh to Winston-Salem, and the route through Greensboro was super confusing. My vague memory from that era is using MapQuest to figure it out, and then printing up directions to carry with me.

My teaching assistant, Josie, saw me struggling.

“I have a Garmin. Want to borrow it?”

I’ve been a fan of Garmin ever since. I buy their watches and bike computers.

Over the past twenty years, GPS has become ubiquitous. We went from Garmin displays mounted on dashboards to smartphone holders shoved into vents to built-in displays standard in cars.

In those same twenty years, I drifted from building maps in my mind while on two wheels to mindlessly navigating through life in the comfort of a four-wheeled air-conditioned cabin.

Without thinking about it, my sense of direction diminished.

It’s 2026, and I’m not riding motorcycles much anymore. I’m back to my BMX roots, reincarnated on a mountain bike. Instead of seeking jumps at inner-city construction sites, I’m climbing Appalachian mountains. My legs are the engine on the way up. On the speedy downhills, I enjoy it when my wheels leave the ground.

I love to plan big mountain biking adventures.

Sitting in our cozy Airstream, I pop open my laptop and explore the George Washington National Forest. I use Ride With GPS and Trailforks, two popular cycling apps, to build a route. I upload that to my Garmin bike computer, mount it on my handlebars, and I’m off on an adventure into the woods.

That’s how I would have done it last week.

This week, I had a revelation.

I work with thought leaders in medical innovation. These are brilliant scientists and physicians who are coming up with next-generation solutions to improve and extend healthy living.

One such thought leader is an expert on Alzheimer’s disease. He posed a question based on a 2024 study of nearly nine million people who had died from all causes. Looking at their occupational health information, he asked which profession had the lowest rate of Alzheimer ’s-related deaths: physicians, investment bankers, engineers, taxi drivers, or university professors.

The answer: Taxi Drivers.

Why?

Your brain is a “use-it-or-lose-it” organ. Taxi and ambulance drivers armor their brains against neurodegeneration through the “on-the-fly” decision-making they do 10 hours a day. — Dr. Evaristus Nwulia

This LinkedIn post from Dr. Nwulia, my friend and colleague in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blueprint MedTech program, got my wheels turning.

I care about my brain health. Sleep, healthy food, reading, writing, and exercise are all good for the brain.

But I didn’t have ‘dependency on GPS’ as a top-of-mind topic for brain drain. Too much drinking. Doing drugs. Sure. But GPS?

We’re staying in Stokesville, and the single-track flows right by our camper.

Over breakfast with my wife, Abby, I went on a rant about GPS and the connection to Alzheimer’s. Moments later, I was on my laptop planning a mountain biking adventure into the woods.

Abby said, “Don’t you think it’s worth noting that you just read me that LinkedIn story about taxi drivers and now you’re on your computer planning a ride?”

“I do think it’s ironic. Yes. But I’m doing it differently today.”

I recalled the joy I had thirty-five years ago studying the paper map, memorizing it, and then peeking at it during breaks on my motorcycle journeys.

Today, that’s how I plan to use GPS. I can study it on my laptop screen. It’s nice and big. It serves the purpose that an unfolded paper map did way back then. It’s more advanced, sure. But the essence is the same. See the big picture. Plan the trip. Memorize the trail names and turns.

No bike computer mounted on my bars. Nothing to look at but the trails ahead. From our campsite, take the single track up the hill. When it starts veering to the left, keep an eye out for a trail on the right. That should be Hankey Mountain.

I turned right on the trail and rode for a few hundred yards before stopping to check the phone in my pocket. Smiling, “Yup. This is it.”

The map on the small screen. It’s like the folded-up map I’d check on my motorcycle rides.

“What’s different?” asked Abby.

“I used to create a route, upload it to my bike computer, and have that reference on my handlebars the whole time.”

With the heads-down display, I didn’t need to wonder. When will I see that turn for what I think is Hankey Mountain? I’d look down over and over again until making the correct turn, then just keep on riding.

It wasn’t just brain drain. It was wonder drain. It was joy drain.

At the top of Hankey Mountain, I found the trailhead for Lookout Mountain. That trail took me all the way back down across North River and into George Washington National Forest. To cross the riverbed, I went over a suspension bridge that was so narrow, I had to stand my bike on its back wheel to clear the handlebars.

From there, I proudly made it all the way back to camp without checking the map.

I told Abby about a doe with a white tail. “She was only on the trail for a moment. It was the most fluffy white tail I’ve ever seen.” If that computer were on my handlebars, I might have missed her, looking down at a GPS instead of up into nature.

“Oh, and there was this cool suspension bridge. It swayed and rocked while crossing it. If we go back the way I returned, we can get to it on our gravel bikes.”

The next day, that’s just what we did. No GPS necessary.

My grandfather died of Alzheimer’s disease. That has stuck with me. Losing memories is scary. It’s a tragedy that so many people experience with their loved ones.

With the tools of cognitive offloading growing at an exponential rate, the small things we choose to do every day for brain health matter now more than ever.

For me, it starts all over again on two wheels. I’m rebuilding the map in my mind.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Originally published in The Narrative Arc on Medium

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More photos for fun:

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I’ve spent my career in biomedical innovation witnessing the rise of technologies that extend lives, restore function, and bring hope to millions. But I’ve also seen the cost: the way well-meaning devices can entrench dependency. A child with blurry vision gets a pair of glasses and then needs stronger ones the next year. An adult with sleep apnea gets a CPAP and ten years later, can’t sleep without it. We call these “assistive” technologies. But what if the future lies not in assistance, but in challenge? What if our next generation of devices were designed not to help you forever, but to provoke your body into healing, and then quietly step aside?

We have become experts at building crutches. And understandably so. When someone is falling, you help them stand. But somewhere along the way, we stopped asking if the crutch could also become a coach. Could it be possible to build devices that not only support the body, but nudge it, gently and persistently, toward strength?

This idea isn’t hypothetical. It’s already taking shape across medicine. In sleep therapy, researchers are exploring daytime neuromuscular stimulation devices that strengthen airway muscles helping reduce apnea without relying on pressurized airflow at night. In vision care, experimental lenses and VR-based therapies aim not just to correct vision, but to retrain the eyes through active use. In rehabilitation, soft robotic exosuits are being used to assist movement during walking, but only as much as necessary, encouraging the body to relearn its own rhythm and balance. Across these fields, the pattern is clear: the goal isn’t indefinite support. It’s to activate healing, and then step aside.

I’ve come to call these “Provocative Devices.”

They start as helpers, but they don’t settle there.

They provoke a fight, and they’re designed to lose.

Across vision, breathing, mobility, and even cognition, we’re beginning to see a new class of technology that offers just enough assistance to get started, then begins to challenge. A challenge that triggers neuroplasticity. That sparks muscular activation. That encourages new patterns. These devices don’t do the work for the body. They create conditions where the body wants to work again.

This is more than a clinical shift. It’s a philosophical one. We have long assumed that once a function is lost or weakened, our best option is to replace it. But what if that assumption is wrong? Or at least incomplete. What if the best option is to provoke a response? Not in a punishing way, but in the same way a good teacher challenges a student, or a physical therapist introduces resistance: to invite growth.

This isn’t a call to abandon standard care. It’s a reminder that the first goal, stabilization, isn’t the final one. Healing, adaptation, and growth can follow. A device may begin as a pure assistive intervention, and that’s okay. But it doesn’t have to end there. Provocative Devices operate on a timeline. They arrive with a mission, and once that mission is complete, they leave. Their success is measured not in long-term use, but in long-term liberation.

For those of us who are parents, this shift matters deeply. When our child is diagnosed with a condition (impaired vision, shallow breathing, weak motor control), we are motivated to find a solution to help them. Glasses. CPAP. Braces. In many cases, these tools are needed. But I ask myself: what’s the long game? Will this device help my child develop, or will it sneakily become a substitute for development itself?

For adults with chronic conditions, this approach can offer something rare: hope for reversal. Not just management. Not just compliance. A chance to actively change the course of our health, to train our way back toward independence, even if the path is long and nonlinear.

And for those of us building the future of medicine: engineers, clinicians, designers, entrepreneurs. There’s a challenge for us, too. Can we build devices that train themselves out of a job? Can we measure success not in how well the device performs, but in how little it is needed a year from now?

Because in this new era of healing, the best devices aren’t the ones that win.

They’re the ones that fight hard. And then lose.

That’s the kind of loss we should all be rooting for.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

Originally published on Medium.

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

I simply love that I went into The Odyssey last night having absolutely no idea who the cast was.

Zendaya as Athena.

Of course she was.

It’s more than just the cast. I didn’t know about the movie until it was almost out of theaters. Getting tickets to see it in IMAX was slim pickings.

We might have been away from home on an eleven-week trip in our Airstream. But, it’s not like we were vacationing off the grid. My wife and I were working the entire trip, connected to social media civilization by Starlink and 5G.

Not knowing about all the hype surrounding the movie by Christopher Nolan was telling, in and of itself, about how our lifestyles shifted in nature.

I’m 53 and I’ve returned home healthier than I’ve ever been. The evidence is objective.

Yesterday I did a 45 mile bike ride before going out to eat sushi with my family before going to see a three-hour epic film. I was over salted, Twizzlered, and in bed later than usual. That’s not a recipe for a record setting day on the bike.

But that’s just what happened this morning. I set off on twenty-mile loop that I’ve been tracking on Strava since August 25, 2021. Wow! Five years. Nearly to the day.

The fastest I’ve ever done that loop was on that day, averaging 14.3 miles per hour. I’ve matched it a few times since.

Today, on a shifted sleep schedule after a very full Sunday:15.0 miles per hour.

If you’re into cycling. That’s a big gap.

This is the second time since being home that I eclipsed a previous cycling record. I’m not getting any younger.

So what’s going on?

It’s so many things.

Everything we lived during that eleven weeks was something we have been practicing for years.

So when I say we did things differently on the trip, it’s more like, we turned the dial up on things Abby and I have been elevating slowly and steadily over our eleven years together.

It’s the food we eat, prioritizing whole foods from local farms and farmstands.

It’s emphasizing movement, strength, endurance, and flexibility either through daily living (hiking in the mountains) or exercising (a Peloton workout at home).

It’s getting good rest.

It’s spending time with loved ones.

It’s our relationship with social media.

Social media is part of our world. How we engage with it matters. Whatever we did while we were in The Finger Lakes of New York, The Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, The Northeast Atlantic border of Maine, Southern New Hampshire, and Western Maryland…, we must have been doing something right.

Eclipsing a five-year-old cycling record.

Oblivious to The Odyssey.

Together, they tell a story.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus warns his crew that they should not go to the island where the Sun God’s cattle graze. They protest, claiming they have the willpower to leave the cattle alone while finding other sources of food. They kept their promise, for a long time. But eventually, they broke down.

They feasted on the cattle.

This is the lesson.

So long as the temptation is there, humans will break down. This is why there’s a whole category of products that prevent us from going to the social media island.

People pay hard earned money for this!

Indeed. My mother taught me as a young man. The best way to stay faithful to a woman is to simply not go to the island of female temptation.

While spending time in nature this summer, our lifestyle was simply one that minimized our time on the Social Media God’s island. There was no need for a Brick.

Discovering The Odyssey upon returning to Raleigh was a delightful surprise.

Even better. This morning when Abby said, “You know what? I think you and Matt Damon kind of look alike.”

“Say what, now?”

“I mean, he’s aging like you’re aging.”

Compliment accepted.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

Written on TK. Published on Medium & Substack.

DiMeo Unfiltered is my back of the napkin publication featuring half-baked concepts, works in progress, blog-like posts, and personal opinions. This space is raw, authentic, and self-published.

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

25 April 2025

I leaned forward, rested my elbow on the desk, and looked into the eyes of the CEO. Methodically, I shifted my gaze to the NIH program officer, the CTO, a post-doctoral researcher, a contracting officer, and the portfolio executive. Each returned my stare as I read the Zoom room.

These are the moments that justify my hourly rate.

Then my eyes glanced at a video reflection filling one of the Hollywood Squares. I saw my hand rubbing my beard. There I was, Le Penseur, innocently displaying the freshly inked tattoo on the back of my hand. I swiftly dropped it off-camera.

Ah… This is what Nick was talking about.

I met Nick at an art exhibit in downtown Raleigh a few years ago. He had a block print of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle engine that caught my eye. We were in the hallway of an old warehouse that had been up-cycled into individual artist studios. We walked into Nick’s small space and I went right for the engine print, pulling some bills from my pocket.

He had a QR code taped to the table where he sat. “Do you take cash?”

“Sure, but I don’t have change.”

I’m unsure why my response was, “How about you keep the change as a down payment for a tattoo?”

“Are you sure? I don’t need to keep this. But I’d love to do a tattoo for you.”

“Wait. What? You are a tattoo artist?” emphasizing the “are.”

“I will be, officially, soon.” Nick was going through the lengthy process of getting his license. We hit it off immediately. He rides motorcycles and bicycles. We have multiple friends in common. Both of us saw King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard play at New Belgium Brewing in Asheville. Yet somehow we’d never met.

He’s a talented printmaker and illustrator. His work surrounds me. A mural in a favorite record shop. Art behind the bar at a local dive. He was the tattoo artist I’d been seeking for twenty years.

My first tattoo was in the early ‘90s, done by Diamond Ted in Janesville, Wisconsin. I found the one-of-a-kind artist while on a 4,000-mile motorcycle journey. I’d go back to Ted for more than a decade until he retired, and hadn’t sat for a new tattoo since.

“Tell me a story. I want to know what you’re thinking.”

Nick and I met at Raleigh Times a few weeks later to discuss the piece.

The print that pulled me in was the Harley engine displayed in his studio and I had an idea about my best friend, who moved on unexpectedly and much too soon. His siblings offered me his motorcycle, a 1994 Heritage Softail Custom with an S&S V-Twin. They knew it was something we collaborated on to build.

“I can take a picture of that engine and share it with you. The tattoo will be a tribute to John Kelly. It’s important for me that the tattoo has a bird. All of my tattoos have birds. Maybe on the air filter cover?”

Birds are freedom. They are spirits of loved ones who walked among us. Now they fly above us. I thought about the phoenix Abby drew for me after we got serious. She’s a talented artist herself. I wanted a firebird tattoo at some point.

I told Nick where my mind drifted before switching to yet another topic.

“My daughter and I have been estranged for a decade. I want something that represents her. I’m not sure what. That’s a separate tattoo. I foresee us doing a lot of work together.”

He asked how we came to be estranged, and I told him the story. Then I moved on again, thinking out loud with the artist.

“I never wear my wedding ring. I’m just not into jewelry, and things on my hands bother me. While we’re at it, whatever idea we do first, I’d love to get a wedding band tattoo. I won’t have to remember to wear it, and I’ll always know it’s there.”

Then I proposed an idea. “What do you think about incorporating the phoenix and ring together? Have the firebird inspired by Abby on my forearm, the flames can cross over the top of my hand, and then it can end at the ring?”

Tattoo artists often avoid doing hands. Most studios have policies against it. Nick didn’t get into all that. He didn’t shy away from the idea. But he did say, “You want something more significant than just the flames crossing over the top of your hand. It’s a prominent place. Are there any significant symbols in your life? A cross? Your zodiac sign?”

“Not a cross. I’m a Scorpio. That could work, if you have some ideas for how to fit it in.”

“Maybe it could be on a medallion? What if the phoenix is holding a bicycle chain in its claws? The Scorpio could be on the medallion hanging from the chain.”

Over the next few weeks, Nick drew up ideas to consider. The phoenix was looking rad, but something wasn’t quite right with the chain and medallion idea. Was a Scorpio meaningful enough?

Inspiration struck when I saw a piece of art my daughter made a decade ago while in middle school. A block print of a flame that I framed and hung above my typewriter. It’s a rare item of hers that I still possess. After the divorce, I lost nearly all my belongings. During the short time she stayed with me at my apartment before we got separated, she did this project. Seeing it sparked an idea.

“I initially thought the tattoo for my daughter would be a separate piece. But what if we make her art the medallion?”

Nick liked it, and after I texted him a photo of the print, he drew up a concept. We called it “the flame piece.” His initial concept had the flame piece on the medallion connected to the chain. We went back and forth on this for days. Something wasn’t sitting quite right.

The medallion was important for Nick to have the white space he needed. But it didn’t feel right to me. He was super respectful throughout the whole design process and suggested we connect over the phone.

“What if the flame piece is the medallion? I’m having a hard time putting this into words. Instead of the medallion being a circle, what if the medallion were the same shape as the flame that my daughter made?”

My words weren’t clear, but Nick puzzled them together. “I’ll have to figure out how to get negative space around it. How will the flame piece attach to the chain?”

“What if the flame piece was a link in the bicycle chain?”

When I saw his sketch, it was a done deal. We got started in the summer of 2024. Overall, it took three full days spread over nearly two months to complete the tattoo. I needed to wait at least two weeks between each sitting to ensure the previous piece healed.

On the first day, Nick did the outside of the forearm and completed the head of the Phoenix near the crease of my elbow. He planned to do the flame piece on my hand and the bird’s claws on my wrist during the second visit. This would leave an untouched space on my inner forearm for Nick to connect the head to the claws with a fiery wing in the third session. It was a complex tattoo that Nick envisioned corkscrewing around my arm.

Tattoos transfer well from a flat sheet of paper to a smooth expanse of skin. But in what he dreamed up, the tattoo was in 3D, wrapping around my arm like the stripes on a candy cane. What you see on the page doesn’t translate the same. Connecting the elbow crease to the hand needed to be done by freehand, with no paper representation able to show the whole story.

The Zoom incident irked me. Throughout the lengthy and physically painful process of getting the tattoo, I never considered the judgment some people might make about a tattoo on my hand. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I knew some people judged me for my tattoos. But I never cared. At least, I didn’t think I cared until I dropped my hand off-camera.

Am I guilty? For what?

No one mentioned a thing in that meeting. Over the coming days, I would get more comfortable seeing its reflection on Zoom. I’m an Italian from New Jersey. I speak with my hands. Noticing the tattoo flash across your monitor is inevitable. Schedule a meeting. You’ll see it.

My colleagues at the NIH saw it. My peers and clients saw it. The only comments I received were positive.

“Is that new? It’s beautiful.”

It was refreshing. But I also wondered if I would be judged differently if I were an unknown. What if I were new to the team? What if I looked different? So far, there are no signs that the ink tarnished my reputation. I’m not discounting the combination of unearned privilege and the years of earned respect influencing that.

Around this same time, I had an in-person meeting with my attorney. It was business and pleasure. I can’t afford strictly business. We had met for yoga and then walked over to a spot to grab breakfast together. He said, “That’s new. What’s the story?”

I told him the whole drawn-out tale. The part about the phoenix Abby drew for me, about the ring, and the flame piece that my estranged daughter had made with block printing, and the block print that drew me in to meet Nick. His art was an engine that reminded me of John Kelly, who is flying above us, flying above my daughter, for he is her godfather.

When I finished talking, the attorney’s plate was empty. I hadn’t even picked up a fork. “That’s the most beautiful story about a tattoo I’ve ever heard,” he said.

From that moment, when I found myself in Le Penseur pose on Zoom, I proudly kept my hand right there, front and center, on camera.

Nick’s vision for the firebird forearm wrap still blows me away. It isn’t easy to show in still photos. After completing the piece, he posted it on Instagram with a video.

Writing this story opened my eyes. I was never ashamed of having tattoos.

Why did my hand drop off-camera?

I’m ashamed of being estranged from my daughter. I’m paid well to be a trusted advisor and mentor. Who would take advice from a failed father? It’s embarrassing. Putting this tattoo on the back of my hand is the most vulnerable thing I’ve ever done. Without Nick’s advice to ensure a hand tattoo be a special piece, I would have never made such a good decision. I wouldn’t be telling such an important story. And I wouldn’t be constantly reminded of such a meaningful relationship with my daughter. Thank you, Nick!

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

Originally published on Medium in The Narrative Arc

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

17 August 2026

Today I’m roadtripping from Raleigh to Covington, GA for a bootcamp I’m speaking at tomorrow. The title of my talk is:

Customer Discovery in Action
Practical approaches for continuously engaging stakeholders, testing assumptions, and informing product and business decisions

What’s on my mind this morning is a tidbit of advice regarding asking me for introductions to my network.

It’s inevitible, when speaking at an event like this, I get an influx of emails and LinkedIn connection with participants seeking an introduction. And the reality is, I get these asks all the time.

It makes sense. One of my messages is to grow your network. One way to grow a network is to get warm introductions from people you already know.

So, here’s my advice.

Make it easy for me to facilitate that introduction.

It’s important to know that I have some rules on introductions. One of those rules I call the two-way/one-way discernment rule.

Many people in my netowrk love to get introductions. They’re usually a service provider. When this works out, I’ll do a two-way intro.

“Hey, do you know anyone who offers industrial design services?”

“Sure. Meet Ty. You’ll love him.”

However, most of the time, I’m being asked for introductions to people who might like to be asked first. The CEO of XYZ medical may be delighted to have a conversation with an aspiring medical innovator. However, I don’t just say, “Hey Joe, meet so and so who was in the audience at a talk I gave last week.”

Rather, I forward Joe a note.

“Hey, Joe, take a look at the note below. If you’re interested in meeting this person, let me know, I’m happy to make the intro.”

Better yet, the aspiring medical innovator made it easy for me. They send me a note where all I have to do is say, “Hey Joe, been a long time. Let’s grab coffee sometime. See the note below.”

That note below, it has all Joe needs.

And this, my friends, is the real advice today.

Make it easy for me to facilitate that introduction.

Most people write me nebulous notes buried in an email thread which has a lot of noise. “Andrew, do you know any nurses. Can you introduce me to some?”

You’re making me do a lot of work here. First of all, what kind of nurse? Cardiology nurse? Palliative care nurse? You likely have a specific type of nurse you want to talk to. Help me out.

The work you’re making me do also includes me taking the time to think through my network for who would be a good fit for you.

Better is to send me a note with something more speific. “Andrew, I’m looking to connect with nurses who work in hospitals who are not in the cardiology unit, but are often asked to float in. Do you know anyone?”

It’s so specific, that I may have a person in mind to connect you with. Maybe a nurse manager at a cardiology unit who can connect you to the type of nurse you’re looking for.

But there’s even a better way.

Ask to connect with specific people. I have a large LinkedIn network.

You do the work. Look at my network. Send me an email that’s more like this:

“Andrew, I’m looking to connect with nurses who float into cardiology. I see you’re connected with Jane So-and-so. I’d love an introduction to her if you’re willing to make it.”

Here’s my second major peice of advice.

Fresh new email, not from a thread, for each introduction, with everything the person I’m introducing you to needs to know and act on.

Your email to me should have a clear subject line. Metion Jane So-and-so specifically. Include a short description of who you are and why you want to meet. Include your contact information.

I should be able to respond to you with, “Sure. I’m happy to send your note to Jane. The ball’s in her court. Best wishes with your project.”

Then I write a note to Jane.

“Hey Jane, been too long. Let’s get coffee. I got a note from a medical innovator who was at a talk I gave recently. He’s looking to meet with nurses and saw you on my LinkedIn. Everything you need to know is in his note below. Thanks in advance should you choose to connect with him.”

Even if it’s the two-way type of introduction. Follow the same rules on a nice new fresh email with a clear subject line and all the details in the body. Keep it pithy.

“I see you’re connected to Ty and we’re looking for an industrial designer to connect with.”

I can just reply. “Sure thing. Happy to make that intro. Ty, see the note below. It has everything you need to know. I’m looking forward to our upcoming lunch.”

Let’s review.

(1) Be specific about who you want to meet.
(2) Look through my LinkedIn and name the person.
(3) Send a fresh email—not buried in a thread—with a clear subject line.
(4) Include who you are, why you want to connect, and your contact info.
(5) Make it so I can just forward your note.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

Written on TK. Originally published on Medium.

DiMeo Unfiltered is my back of the napkin publication featuring half-baked concepts, works in progress, blog-like posts, and personal opinions. This space is raw, authentic, and self-published.

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

I was discarded and disgraced. The aftermath left me broke and broken. My bank accounts were drained, credit cards defaulted, and whatever I could stuff in the old Dodge Durango was all I owned.

The place I laid my head at night went from privilege to necessity. Too ashamed to tell anyone, I slept in my office, separated from my children — separated from my home. It was humiliating. I woke up before students got to campus, went to Gold’s Gym, and then showered and shaved in the locker room. I was homeless.

After a month of this exhausting and lonely routine, I shared my story with a close friend. We met when he was in high school. I’m ten years older and like a brother. He came to me during tough times — college, breakups, new girlfriends, negotiating a job offer, marriage, and buying his first house. Now I was coming to him. So when he offered a room in that new home with his young wife, it was humbling.

I missed my children. They couldn’t stay with me if I didn’t have a place of my own. When I saved enough money for a few months’ rent, I said goodbye to my friends and got an apartment in the city, a short bike ride to the university. The children could stay with me every other weekend and on some weekdays. As I made a new living space from emptiness, so did the kids. We all had a blank canvas. They were both in middle school and enjoyed the freedom to be creative.

My daughter loved to read. The main feature of her bedroom was the tall bookshelves. She picked a beautiful piece of metal art with fall-colored trees that hung above her bed. She had my mom’s old sewing machine, where she was a master at making pillows for the apartment. The final accent was colored LEDs.

The boy had to sacrifice his space and share a room with me. I could only afford a two-bedroom place and thought a teenage girl needed privacy more than a pre-teen boy and me. It was a compromise, for sure. So he got free rein in the living room, where he went for leather recliners, a large screen TV, and a huge framed poster of Citi Field, home of the New York Mets — our team. The art print was seven feet wide and five feet tall. It spanned the entire wall above the recliners.

The year in that apartment was one for the books. I got serious with a new girlfriend. It became apparent that having a romantic relationship and two children in and out of a two-bedroom space was unsustainable. I needed a bigger place. And, honestly, I needed to be a homeowner again — for my independence — to restore my pride.

Three bedrooms and two baths were a must. I wanted Broughton High School to be an option for them. If you know Raleigh, that location was a tall order. Can I afford this? I was barely making it month to month. There was still no money in the bank or credit to work with. But I was a professor with a track record of steady income. I banked with the state employees’ credit union. Walking in was going back in time — teller lines stocked with paper deposit slips, pens on beaded chains, real humans behind the counter, and loan managers behind big desks.

Despite my low balance, one of the managers considered my life situation and pre-approved a mortgage. Amazing! But could I find a house zoned for Broughton, one with three bedrooms and two baths, one that I could afford?

The children participated in the search for what seemed an impossible task. Quicker than expected — we found a house! It was too good to be true, sitting on the perimeter of Boylan Heights. This coveted inner-city neighborhood was way outside my price range, but the edgy street was just close enough to the railroad tracks to be affordable.

The kids loved it. It had a massive backyard with a built-in bocce ball court. It was a romantic, 40s-era craftsman-style home with creaky wood floors and solid bones. It was conveniently located between the university where I worked, the desired high school, and the city.

I jumped on it.

Long after my offer was accepted and just days before closing, I went from cloud nine to rock bottom. The bank did one last credit check and found my first house, from my first marriage, had gone into foreclosure.

That was it. I lost the Boylan Heights home. I lost my children.

I had already given up the apartment in anticipation of moving into the house. I planned to store my things for a few days while the kids were with their mother. We’d all be in the new home together when they returned.

But that never happened. My things stayed in storage for months. I stayed at my girlfriend’s for months. And my children — they didn’t stay with me for months. During that time, inspired by the events that led to this day, disgraced, left for broke, my first home in foreclosure, and my drop from the clouds to the gutter, I lost my temper.

The kids saw it all. It was my lowest low. My daughter never came to live with me again.

At the time, I didn’t know I’d lose her for ten years and counting. After my meltdown, I pulled myself together and returned to house hunting. We had lightning in a bottle with the Boylan Heights home. How was I going to repeat that miracle?

There were no homes left in desirable neighborhoods that met my criteria. I mean, price range. There was, however, a risky option. One of the poorest neighborhoods in the city was zoned for Broughton as part of the school board’s mission to increase diversity. Maybe I should drive over there and take a look?

I saw gangs on the streets selling drugs, prostitutes standing on the corners, and a pimp with a purple velour suit with a matching hat strutting the streets. The houses were falling apart — siding and roofing with gaping holes, front porches filled with piles of clothes and furniture. It was a mess.

But I saw something else — two beautifully restored homes oddly out of place. One was lived in. I left a note in the mailbox. The other was for sale. I sat on the front porch and observed the street. An old lady rolled a shopping cart filled with groceries one way, an old man pushed a cart filled with metal scraps the other way, and the pimp walked prominently both ways. I checked the listing on my phone.

I can afford this place! Wait, no, I can’t. I can’t afford shit with a foreclosure on my record. It doesn’t matter. There’s no way my girlfriend will live here. Can I raise the kids here? This looks like gentrification. Do I want to be part of gentrification?

I left the porch and walked toward the city skyline. At the edge of the neighborhood, a home amid renovation stood on a ridge above MLK Boulevard. I walked up the steps to the porch. The front door was open. No one here. A ladder stood in the middle of the living room. I tiptoed through the house and out the doorless back door onto a deck. There was a massive yard, two towering old trees, and a clear city view.

This would be our home.

I was torn. Gentrification. Drugs. Violence. The Pimp. I researched the city plans. It was up and coming. But it didn’t feel good. Do I want to be part of this? It also felt good. Do I want to be part of this? My student’s older brother was a city cop. He took my girlfriend and me on a drive through the dangerous streets and spoke about the crime and how it changed. “In five years, you won’t recognize this place,” he said. I talked to the homeowners where I left the note. They had a good experience so far.

It had everything. It was zoned to Broughton, had three bedrooms, two baths, a fenced-in yard for the dog, and plenty of space for a garden. The house sat adjacent to a big field where my daughter could practice soccer and my son baseball. It was a short walk to the city’s center. But the crime? Being part of gentrification?

None of this could happen unless the manager at the credit union waived the looming foreclosure. Unfathomably — that’s just what he did.

I took the risk. It was an investment towards financial freedom. We reasoned that we couldn’t stop gentrification from happening. If we bought the home, we could support the community. Over the years, we hired neighbors to mow the yard and trim the trees. One, we helped start his own lawn business. It enabled him and his partner to move out of a halfway house and into an apartment of their own. That felt good.

We’ve been in the home for ten years. It’s not been without incident. Teenagers broke in. Nothing was stolen — the dog scared them away. We had an officer-involved shooting. There was a homicide when my son was home alone with his girlfriend. He wasn’t supposed to be alone. But that didn’t matter. It was scary. Did I do the right thing?

You wouldn’t recognize our neighborhood today. The falling-apart homes are the rare ones. I haven’t seen the pimp in years, but I still see the prostitutes. It’s not perfect; there are pockets of crime. Some homes are too big. Do we need a 4000-square-foot place in this part of town? There is also a sincere effort to have affordable housing and maintain the diverse roots of this community.

I still wonder if we did the right thing. I’m still estranged from my daughter. It’s not perfect. But in the end, the people are the silver lining. Friends welcomed me into their home. A girlfriend took a chance on me and took this risk with me. A son stuck with me through thick and thin. A banker gave a single father back his credit. He gave me back my pride.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

Originally published on Medium in Age of Empathy on 02 March 2025.

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

The last few weeks with Medium and TK have been kind of nuts. First, I received an email from Scott Lamb, Medium’s VP of Content. He offered me $50 to write about my experience with TK.

I’ll be honest and say a few things. One. Getting an email from Scott was awesome. His note was humbling and flattering. That said, I declined the $50 and asked that Medium donate it to a Alzheimer’s research. I did, however, agree to write something.

Scott provided suggested text for a disclosure. The following is my modified disclosure:

Medium (offered to pay) me $50 to write about my experience using TK. Medium didn’t review this story before I published it, had no input on what I wrote, and didn’t ask me to be positive.

Then, a few weeks later, I received an email from Medium’s Community Manager, Kassandra Mendes. She wanted to know if I’d be willing to serve as a TK Ambassador.

Her note said, “TK Ambassadors is a small, invite-only group for TK power users…”

Rut Roh!

I’m an AI power user?

Over breakfast with some colleagues, I mentioned, “Get this. Medium asked me to be an Ambassador for this new app they have. It’s a writing app that’s AI enabled.”

One of my friends responded, “Given your opinions on AI, I’m assuming you declined, right?”

“I said, Yes.”

Why I said yes is complicated.

For one, I’m very weary of AI. It’s an illusion of convenience that I think may very well atrophy the brains of most humans that get sucked into using it.

Two, the environmental impacts of AI is especially alarming.

That said, my exposure to AI was nearly twenty years ago. I had a couple of friends, Robbie Allen and Adam Smith who started a company called StatSheet.

StatSheet used Natural Language Generation (NLG) with template sentences and a database of phrases to write post-game recaps of sporting events. It was so successful, they expanded beyond sports and rebranded to a company called Automated Insights (AI) in 2011.

Bottom line: AI left the station decades ago. It’s not about stopping the train. It’s about knowing when to ride it and how to behave while on it.

As is the way for most things in life, the “when” and the “how” are different for everyone. Self discovery and discernment are the keys.

Anyone that claims to “never” use AI is living with blinders on and/or not likely acting with any sort of personal discernment. Why do I think this? Because it’s been around for decades and they probably rejected it inside of the last five years.

Most people who have used a smart phone or a computer have most likely used AI with or without knowing it.

So here I am, a human writer who values human written works, and I’m recognized by Medium as a “power user” of TK.

I’m choosing to write this opinion, yes, because Scott asked me to, and yes, because I think it’s important. And I said “yes” to being a TK Ambassador, because showing off the “when” and “how” I use AI in my writing is the most vulnerable way to have an impact.

Losing my memory is one of my greatest fears. My grandfather died of Alzheimer’s. The story is way deeper than that. He and I had a conversation when I was very, very young. It sticks with me to this day.

That story is not for today.

Nearly my whole life has been spent in the Biomedical industry.

I care deeply about mind body health.

Writing is one of many ways to keep my brain strong. I’m not interested in outsourcing my writing to AI.

I’m also a disagreeable person in the most lovable, juvenile delinquent kind of way. How that matters to my writing is, I couldn’t care less about proper spelling and grammar. What’s proper is a matter of opinion. What’s correct is a matter of opinion.

What was proper and correct was a requirement for my PhD dissertation. I followed those rules because I wanted to get a doctorate degree.

What’s proper and correct for publishing an essay in The Narrative Arc is determined by Deb. I follow those rules when I want an essay published there.

What’s proper and correct for my publication, Authbition, has nothing to do with grammar and spelling. All I look for is work produced by humans who have appeared on my podcast and ask that they provide images photographed or made by humans. That’s it.

Can they use TK in their process?

Yes.

I am using TK right now, to write this. I’m also using a MacBook Pro. I’m also using glasses (so I can see). If you know the DMC reference, you get bonus points.

Wearing glasses doesn’t make me less human.

BUT, as a Biomedical Engineer, I believe that we have the ability to make glasses that improve vision over time. The glasses I grew up with contributed to declining vision and a lifelong dependence on glasses.

This is real. I’m qualified to speak on this topic.

Medical devices that do good, also have a tendency to lead to lifelong dependence. I can go on and on and on with examples.

An injury, such as a stroke, may require the medical treatment to start with a brace. Eventually, with some therapy, some people can graduate to an assistive device. After that, may people could graduate to independent walking.

Current devices don’t promote this. I call it, brace-assist-challenge.

Current devices stop at “assist.” Some people can challenge themselves. Maybe the nature of their original stroke and their financial means afford them a physical therapist who can challenge them, until one day, they are walking without the assistive device.

I know researchers who are working on new devices for the future that will democratize this journey of brace, then assist, then challenge to independence.

In this example, there is a moment using that assistive device is a good thing. It becomes a bad thing when people unnecessarily rely on it for life.

This is AI. It’s a good thing when used at the right time, for the right amount of time. And those times and amounts are different for everyone.

Back to TK then.

I like it for a lot of reasons.

Most importantly. It is being developed by a company that cares about human writing.

The medical innovators who came up with assistive devices likely cared about human health. That doesn’t mean it can’t be overused to the point of dependence.

What I mean is, just because Medium has good intentions doesn’t guarantee the tool is used for good.

The other main reason why I like TK is because it keeps me from context switching while writing.

I’m not an omniscient being with photographic memory.

My writing often sounds like this:

I learned about AI twenty years ago (was it 20? or do I have that wrong. I wonder when Adam and I were actually talking about StatSheet. I should look that up.) They’re company StatSheet used … (Hmmm … I doubt it was a Large Language Model … I wonder what kind of model they were using back that. I should look that up).

In the old days, I’d have to go to the library to figure this stuff out. Before AI, I’d use a Google search to do that kind of research. Then AI came along, and I started using ChatGPT (at first), and later Claude, for my research.

Whether library, search engine, or AI as the research tool, I had to switch away from my writing to do it.

TK let’s me do it in app, without switching.

The other reason why I love it.

Remember that I’m disagreeable and couldn’t care less about spelling and grammar. (Apparently I do, because I just corrected my third typo from the original draft in TK).

I’m so bad at it that to get something through a publication editorial team, I broke down and started using Grammarly. Oof. That was a mistake. All I saw was a sea of red lines.

Using Grammarly nearly killed my voice. Luckily, before I was dead, I rose up, like a boxer on the count of nine, ready to fight another round.

Turning Grammarly off saved me. But even better, with TK, I can turn all spell checks off. All grammar off. Anything that creates a squiggly line under my words. Off.

In the old days, I wrote with a pen and paper. If I wanted to know how something was spelled. I looked in a dictionary. This was a heavy book that sat on a lecturn in the house I grew up in.

I think the most common way to check spelling now is with those squiggly lines that show up under my words.

It makes me happy to know that I’ve kicked all the grammar and spelling police out of the room. And it makes me happy to be able to check grammar and spelling when I want to, withoug leaving the house.

This is ultimately how I use TK.

The internet is a better research tool than going to the library and looking up history on microfiche. Search engines like Google are better than early internet indexing tools. Gemini is better at research than Google.

But better is relative.

It’s better to use a brain when playing trivia.

The brain is better than AI most of the time.

Use it or lose it.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Andrew’s TK System Prompt

Below is a set of rules I made for how I’m using TK. And how I’m not using it.

By copying and pasting it into TK’s custom system prompt (AI tab in settings), I can protect myself from using it the wrong way for me.

What TK can do (The Dos):

Compose Alt Text for Images

When I say, “TK Alt Text” or any variation of asking for alt text for a photo, you can provide alt text that’s optimized for the visually impaired. If I indicate that it’s a photo of me, include, “The author” in the alt text. Don’t exceed 500 words.

Suggest Medium Topics

When I say, “TK Topics” or any variation of asking for topics, you can provide five topics that are optimized for maximizing engagement on Medium.

Write SEO Descriptions

When I say, “TK SEO Description” or any variation of asking for an SEO Description, you can compose one that is optimized for success on search engines such as Google. In Medium, the SEO Description is used in place of the Subtitle on search engine results pages. Good SEO descriptions utilize keywords, summarize the story and are between 140-156 characters long.

Suggest SEO Titles

When I say, “TK SEO Title” or any variation of asking for a Title, you can provide options for an search optimized title. In Medium, The SEO Title is used in place of the essay Title on search engine results pages, such as a Google search. SEO titles over 60 characters will be truncated. SEO titles between 40 and 50 characters with commonly searched words have the best click-through-rates.

Anything I could do in an old school library

When I’m asking you for research, you can do anything that I could do in a library. You can act like microfiche, like an encyclopedia, and like the books and magazines on the shelves. Anything you find, please provide original text in quotes and a source for the quote.

Proofread

You can act like an old school spell checker, grammar checker, and “find” function when asked. I may say things like:

• Check the spelling of that last word

• Highlight blatant grammatical errors, spelling errors and typos

• Find words that are repeated in close proximity or overused

If I say, “TK Proofread” or any variation of asking for a note to be proofread, you can provide a summary of any misspelled words, blatant grammatical errors, spelling errors, typos, and repeated words.

Be a dictionary

You can provide the definition of a word or offer alternative words and common word phrases found in a typical thesaurus.

Search all the libraries in TK

Just like I can do a file search on my computer, you should be able to search for anything I’ve ever written based on key words that I provide. You can be a sophisticated search and expand on the key words provided to find the note that I’m looking for.

Help me write a instruction for this note

When I’m trying to edit the existing rules or create new ones, TK can ask questions and provide suggestions to help clarify the rule.

Consult with these rules

Every time I ask the TK assistant for help, check this entire set of rules.

If I ask for something that I’ve not permitted you to do, let me know.

If I ask for something and there’s no clear rule for the ask, before proceeding, suggest that we update this set of rules.

What TK is not allowed to do (The Don’ts):

Don’t write anything for me

Please don’t provide any suggestions for how to write anything.

Don’t synthesize thoughts for me

Do not synthesize, summarize, or draw conclusions from my writing. For example, do not say “Your notes suggest...” or “Combining these ideas...”—simply provide the requested facts, definitions, or sources and let me do the thinking.

Don’t suggest a narrative arc

Please don’t suggest options for narrative arcs from any one note or any combination of notes. This includes: story arcs, plot structures, dramatic tension, thematic flow, or any sequencing of ideas into a coherent storyline.

Don’t replace my original writing

Those last two examples, I had written a draft of what I wanted TK to do, and then I asked for help to write the instructions. When I chose the wording that made sense for the insurrection, TK replaced my original words. Don’t replace. Keep my original text. Add the alternative below such that I can choose to keep in addition to, or replace on my own.

This goes for the questions that I ask TK. When ever I ask the assistant anything, include my original ask in the results provided.

Always begin your response by quoting my original ask in full, then provide the requested output below it.

Bottom Line: Minimize AI presence

Based on these Do’s and Don’ts, here are additional rules consistent with my goals: (1) Never mimic or adapt to my voice—stay neutral and factual. (2) Don’t offer unsolicited feedback on my ideas, tone, or style. (3) Keep responses concise—no preamble, no summaries unless asked. (4) Never suggest that I expand, develop, or elaborate on something.

If you want to give TK a test drive, here’s my invite link.

Written on TK. Originally published on Medium.

DiMeo Unfiltered is my back of the napkin publication featuring half-baked concepts, works in progress, blog-like posts, and personal opinions. This space is raw, authentic, and self-published.

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

Why do we have canonical links for writing?

That’s an odd thing to wake up thinking. But, hey, that’s what was in my head this morning.

TK, what’s a canonical link?

A canonical link is simply a way of telling search engines and platforms, “This is the original home of this piece.” When you publish the same article in more than one place — say, on your own blog and on Medium — you can set a canonical link to point back to whichever version you want credited as the source. Without it, Google might see two copies and not know which to rank, potentially hurting both. Medium lets you import stories with a canonical link so you can share your work there while keeping your original site recognized as the definitive version.

Here’s the thing. I love it when a podcast is “available anywhere podcasts are found.”

A friend will send me a podcast link he thinks I might like from Apple Podcasts, but then, if I can’t find it on Spotify, I won’t listen to it, because I don’t have an iPhone.

I had another friend who was a guest on a podcast that I could only find on Soundcloud. What a pain in the ass. I had to subscribe to another thing just to listen to one episode.

Some people have podcasts and even books on tape (hahaha, um, I mean, audiobooks) that are only available on Substack. Boo!

“Available anywhere” is great.

Same goes for music. I can listen to music on the radio, on Spotify, on iTunes, on a vinyl record, at a concert. The same song is everywhere.

TV shows available on one platform only. Boo!!!

TV shows you can find anywhere. Yay!!!

But either way, Google isn’t punishing the TV show for being available on multiple platforms.

Podcasts, music, and TV shows don’t have a canonical link.

TK, am I right, or what?

You’re right. Text is the only medium Google reads word-for-word, so identical copies look like duplicates. A song on five platforms is just “the song”; an article on five platforms is five competing pages. Canonical links exist because writing is legible to search engines in a way that audio and video aren’t.

This is bullshit for writers.

If this is going to be the situation, then at least every platform where people read writing should be required to give us an option to put the canonical link.

I’d LOVE for my readers to find my work on my own website, Medium, Substack, X, and LinkedIn. Meet the audience where they’re at. Let them use the platform they like best.

I have a bunch of dumb practices that don’t make sense because of this situation.

For work I’m submitting to a publication, it goes to Medium only. I might re-share it on Substack months and months later with a big preamble.

For work I’m self-publishing, I share on Substack first, because Medium allows Canonical links. Thank you, Medium 🙏

But it’s bullshit. Why should Substack get it first when those assholes don’t allow canonical links?

On X, I share links back to my Substack and Medium essays. But X would prefer the essays are native to X. Duh! Of course they want that.

No platform wants eyeballs leaving that platform.

Every platform algorithm is going to reward content that keeps people on the platform.

There should be a way to drop a written work the way an artist drops a track — one file, everywhere at once.

TK, can writers do this?

Yes, actually. Tools like Narrareach and Pipepost let you write once and cross-publish to Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, X, and more — with automatic canonical URL wiring so the first version gets credited as the source.

Well, shit, now I have homework to do!

TK, would you like to have this as a feature so the original source could be you? Then I could share it to Medium, Substack, LinkedIn, and X without being penalized by the Google search gods.

I’d love that. Being the canonical source for your writing — then letting you syndicate to Medium, Substack, LinkedIn, X, wherever — is exactly the kind of thing I’d want to support. One home, everywhere at once. Consider this a feature request received.

Author’s Note: This was written on TK, Medium’s new writing platform. Don’t know what TK is, check it out here.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

Written on TK. Originally published on Medium. Available anywhere writing is found.

DiMeo Unfiltered is my back of the napkin publication featuring half-baked concepts, works in progress, blog-like posts, and personal opinions. This space is raw, authentic, and self-published.

© 2026 Andrew J. DiMeo, Sr. All rights reserved. Permission granted to share with attribution.

I just can’t ignore it any longer.

Thursday morning, I woke in my home for the first time in eleven weeks. My flat pedals were still on the bike from our trip. I didn’t feel like switching them out nor fishing my cycling shoes from the truck. Instead, I opted for a chill eighteen mile loop that I knew I’d finish in under ninety minutes before getting to work for the day.

No kit. Just a regular tee shirt.

Fresh off a full day of driving home to Raleigh from Western Maryland, I expected my body stiff. This was a shakeout ride.

I didn’t expect to PR nearly every segment. I wasn’t setting out on a mission to crush my fastest pace.

It’s a loop I’ve cycled for years. I have to cross Garner Road, Rock Quarry Road, Raleigh Boulevard, and MLK Boulevard along the way. There are multiple wooden bridges and hairpin turns.

I’ve never sniffed sixteen miles per hour average. Not at the peak of my training for race season. Not while wearing SPD clips and a kit.

Going full bore during peak performance, I’ve hit 15 miles per hour a handful of times.

I’ve been riding these trails for decades. I’m 53 years old and not getting any younger. Cranking out 16 miles per hour in sneakers and a tee shirt is nothing short of a miracle.

A miracle is worth paying attention to.

This morning I went to hot yoga. It was my first yoga class in eleven weeks. I was expecting to be sore, stiff, weak, and off balance. Flexibility? Without stretching for nearly three months? Hah!

You’re joking. Right?

During the trip, eleven weeks in an Airstream, I remarked to my wife, “I don’t feel like I’m losing flexibility the way I might have expected.”

I didn’t expect to be more flexible!

Coming back home has been some kind of time warp. Everything is the same, like time stood still while we were gone.

Yoga was no different. Same instructor. Familiar faces in the class. The same poses.

I know just how flexible I am on that mat in that studio.

I gained flexibility?

Impossible!

Two days home. Two miracles.

When we’re in Raleigh, I work out like a madman. Yoga three times a week. Strength, flexibility, and mobility training. Cycling nearly daily both in the wild and on the Peloton.

I invest about fifteen hours a week, sometimes more, on exercise, check my weight daily, and intermittently fast.

This trip has been an active one. Abby, the two dogs, and I spent a month at the New York Finger Lakes, a month in Vermont, and then a week each in Maine, New Hampshire, and Western Maryland. We cycled on gravel, went single-track mountain biking, hiked, and walked the dogs around camp three times a day.

But I never “worked out.”

In three months, I didn’t pick up a free weight. I didn’t go to a gym or a yoga studio. There were no stretching routines, and certainly no diets.

I do wear a Garmin whenever I exercise, so I have a pretty good idea of how active I’ve been.

The association of home life compared to camper life may be like “working out” versus “active lifestyle.” But at the end of the day, my total volume of exercise was about the same.

Also worth noting, this wasn’t a vacation. We weren’t just stress free chilling for eleven weeks. We were on Zoom with clients, doing admin work, marketing, and all the usual work we do from home.

There are added stresses, too. We can’t just let the dogs off leash in the backyard. Laundry is a huge chore. Living in a camper has a whole set of challenges that make home life feel like luxury.

The bottom line is the camper and our home have huge advantages and disadvantages, of which I could ramble for days.

At the end of the day, it’s pretty cool to think that living, working, playing, and enjoying life could be just as healthy as spending extra time at a gym and forced exercise.

I’m just having a hard time attributing the cycling speed and flexibility gains I just experienced to exercise and stress. These things kinda balanced out.

There is one major difference, though.

Food.

Over the past three months, Abby and I have been eating nearly all farm fresh foods and craft everything. The combination of not having enough space in the Airstream to shop at a big box store, plus our enjoyment of visiting local places, and our love of good food, resulted in journeys, often by foot and bike, to farm stands and co-ops all over New England.

Especially in the New York Finger Lakes and in Vermont, there was a focus on craft. The wine we drank on the shores of Seneca Lake, the beers from Hill Farmstead in Vermont, the Ice Cream from … everywhere. All of the foods that would trigger my daily bouts of IBS were safe to eat. No issues.

I usually avoid milk products for fear of a lactose intolerance attack. I’m susceptible to fructose as well. Wine usually gives me a killer headache. Beer makes me feel like shit. Bread causes bloating.

But not when it’s real milk, real veggies, real wine, real beer, and real bread.

Take, for example, Hill Farmstead. The brewery in Vermont.

Their beer is not pasteurized. It’s naturally carbonated. Many of their beers are only available at the farm. Those they do distribute, they only do locally. My favorite of their beers, Edward, doesn’t come in cans. It’s unfiltered and dry-hopped.

What they do put in a can, the shelf life is only three to four weeks.

All of their beer is packaged cold, stored cold, delivered cold, and kept cold by only accounts they trust. They brew with Vermont-grown barley and source organic hops.

Compare that to big box beer that’s engineered to sit on a shelf for six months or more.

I feel like it’s pretty commonly pumped into my brain that pasteurization is for my protection? Nobody bothered to teach me that it’s for maximizing shelf life.

They teach me the benefits. Like, “thanks to pasteurization, we can ship food to the hungry.” No one informed me about all the good stuff that gets killed in the process.

Local beer doesn’t need to be pasteurized when you’re drinking an Edward on tap at Mike’s Tiki Bar in East Burke.

Local fish doesn’t need to be flash-frozen, treated with sodium tripolyphosphate to retain water, gassed with carbon monoxide to keep it looking red, and shipped 3,000 miles to your supermarket.

Local bread doesn’t need calcium propionate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, and dough conditioners to stay soft on a shelf for three weeks.

Local wine doesn’t need Mega Purple for color, added sulfites to survive a year on the shelf, or industrial yeasts engineered for predictability over character.

Local vegetables don’t need to be bred for shipping durability over flavor, harvested weeks early, or irradiated to survive a two-thousand-mile journey while their nutrients quietly disappear.

Apparently, though, eating real local foods minimizes the kind of inflammation that gives me IBS, bloats my gut, and keeps my body stiff.

I came home to Raleigh like the Tin Man got oiled up. My joints were running smoother than the old locomotive we enjoyed between Cumberland and Frostburg on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad.

With the 16 mile per hour bike ride and flexibility improvement miracles under my nose, I just can’t help but ask myself a few questions.

Are the safety requirements for foods to protect me? Or are they to protect the asses of the big box suppliers, mass manufacturers, and industrial agriculture?

Is any of this actually solving global hunger?

I don’t think so.

What’s in my head sounds like a rant!

Big box food culture is bankrupting local farms, killing small businesses, and destroying communities. Mass manufactured everything is a major source of pollution, traffic, obesity, illness, and pain.

There’s got to be a way to keep local businesses thriving, minimize food deserts, and nourish the masses with healthy meals!

I can’t do it any more!!!

I know it’s more complicated. There are pros and cons to everything.

Where I’m grateful is to be in a position to stand on that last line.

I’m saying “No,” to mass manufactured foods.

DiMeo Unfiltered is my back of the napkin publication featuring half-baked concepts, works in progress, blog-like posts, and personal opinions. This space is raw, authentic, and self-published.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

I’m in the process of writing a new essay on sleep. One of the unlocks is is to practice saying, “Dear (thing I hate or fear), I love you.”

In the case of sleep, it’s, “Dear Insomnia, I love you.”

This reminded me of Dear Forgetting, I Love You.

This of my most read essays of all time, originally appearing on Medium in The Narrative Arc, a publication created by . In this story, I go head to head with one of my greatest fears. Forgetting.

Big shoutout to who edited this essay. Her feedback helped me discover a subtext in this piece that I didn’t see at first.

“Where are you right now?” Abby said. She is great at reading body language.

“I’m sorry. I was writing. You have my attention now.”

I look intently at her and think, “Okay, Andrew, make eye contact. Stay focused on the eyes. Look at her eyes. Stay locked on the eyes. Uh oh. What did she say?” All I can hear is me reminding myself to look at her eyes. “Shoot! Shut up and listen.”

I’m not a good listener.

In business meetings, it’s essential to focus on the client. I do listen, and it’s intentional, but it’s not easy. I’ve attacked the problem from every angle: remove distractions, turn off the radio, silence the ringtone, put the phone in a separate room, take attentive notes, and make eye contact. These hacks work well in professional settings, especially on Zoom, where I can control the environment.

When I’m relaxed, that’s when the trouble begins. I’m comfortable with loved ones — my wife, especially. I stare into her eyes and think, “Andrew, pay attention, you want to hear this.” But instead of listening, I float into space.

Listening is the tip of the iceberg. My inner dialogue is a self-imposed distraction from the many joys of life. That shooting star? I missed it. The bear in the woods behind the tree with the vibrant red leaves stood out to you. I missed it. I was holding on to some idea. I ruminate and repeat in an infinite loop.

Without a trusted advisor to break me of that cycle, this can get dangerous. Why? One of my greatest strengths is persuasion. When I’m in my own head, I can convince myself to do anything. If I have a potential partner who doesn’t challenge me, I can suck them into a venture destined for failure. This has burned me in business and relationships.

My first serious girlfriend was in high school. I threw the lasso around the moon and pulled her in, just like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But the life I built was pure fantasy. It was my fiction, without listening to the girl.

We were both so innocent. Eventually, she came to her senses and broke up with me. It shattered my universe — the space I’d invented between my ears.

She opened my eyes to what happens when taking a relationship for granted. I began building an arsenal of tactics to be a better listener. Thirty-four years after graduating from high school, I still work on being attentive and staying present, and I’m doing well at it. But it’s not easy. This is where yoga enters the story.

May I live with ease.

A yoga instructor introduced me to Metta meditation. It’s a loving-kindness mantra that goes like this: May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease.

It starts with the self and then repeats to loved ones, neighbors, and everyone everywhere: May all people of the world be safe, happy, healthy, and live with ease.

It began naively, as a date, when Abby suggested we go to a yoga class at the YMCA. I kept going back because it made my body feel so good. A decade later, yoga is more about mind than body, and it’s blossomed into meditation, coaching, seeking new knowledge, spiritual wonder, and self-study. I call it all yoga, because it’s the beginning, and it converged my mind and body into one. But that’s another story.

This is about being a better listener.

Yoga taught me that suffering is resistance to the source rather than the source itself. I used to have lower back pain. When getting a massage to work it out, I wondered why the therapist spent so much time on my neck and shoulders instead of where I felt the pain. She was smarter than I. The source of my lower back pain was the stiffness in my upper, previously hunched, back.

But my lower back pain wasn’t from being hunched; it was from the weight I carried on my neck and shoulders. An emotional weight. Letting go of that burden, my back feels better, I stand taller, my sciatica is relieved, and I no longer clench my teeth while sleeping. These once-ailments are now signs. I appreciate them.

So, what happened when I took the practice from the mat and applied it to listening? Rather than resisting distraction, I learned to pay attention with ease. Instead of adding more tactics, I’ve moved to a state of wonder. I am closer to the source.

I wonder why I don’t listen? I’m curious. Why am I always in my head? What am I afraid of?

Wait. What did I just say? “What am I afraid of?

I’m not sure why I was so surprised to get to fear. That’s a natural place to arrive when letting go of resistance. But there I was, wondering what I was afraid of. The answer came in a flood.

I must be afraid of forgetting. I’m holding on to my words because I’m afraid of losing them. Oh, this opened the dam. I’m worried I’ll forget an awesome idea that could become my greatest essay ever. I fear embarrassment. I might say something foolish. Instead of listening to your story, I’m conjuring up my response.

I resist forgetting, and the pain manifests as distraction.

Abby challenged me. “Not listening is one of your greatest strengths. It protects you. I’ve seen people want to pick a fight with you, and it just rolls off like nothing.” She’s right. Lack of attention is a fortress I’ve built to protect myself. Sometimes it’s good to be inside the protective gates. But instead of installing security cameras to see the outside world, when I want to listen, I need to lower the drawbridge. I need to forget with ease.

Listening is vulnerable. Love forgetting.

This didn’t happen overnight. I didn’t immediately become enamored with forgetting. But holding this thought, without judgment, continued to open up a cascade of self-discovery.

I recalled an emotional moment I had with my grandfather. I might have been ten years old when he gave me a chilling warning about the Alzheimer’s he could feel coming. It’s a dark story that I won’t tell today, other than to say, no wonder I’m afraid of forgetting.

But you know what? “Love forgetting” started to sound different over time. It sounded like “anything is possible.” I love “anything is possible.”

Yoga teaches non-attachment. I realized I was partial to my past words instead of being open to the infinite future words. When I stopped fearing forgetting, new ideas started pouring in like drinking water from Niagara Falls, looking up.

I loved forgetting, and creativity exploded. I wasn’t scared to lose my words, and I listened to yours.

The best part? I remembered.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

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Let’s talk about sleep! This morning, I had another great night’s sleep. It reminded me of this essay that I wrote a couple of years ago. It was originally published in Medium by Namaste Now! Back in the day, when Medium did this sort of thing, it was boosted.

A huge shoutout to for making a home for my reflective writing in Namaste Now!

If you like the story below and want it “human” boosted, please share this Substack version with a friend who could use some help getting a solid night’s sleep.

I used to be able to doze anywhere. Once, I fell asleep on the set of a TV commercial featuring Marisa Tomei. Lights, cameras, and action surrounded me, but that didn’t stop me from snoozing away. I was twenty-something and a deer in headlights working props in New York City. I just ran out of steam. The crew must have felt sorry for me to let me go like that.

My second most memorable respite was on a wall along a city sidewalk in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was 1993, and I had just completed a multi-day ride from New Jersey to Maine and then to Milwaukee to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Harley-Davidson. I was in a sea of a hundred thousand bikers, roaring motorcycles, and bands playing street stages. They had no chance against my sleep superpowers.

Neither did three of my peers in graduate school. The four of us were packed into a room at the Hyatt in Atlanta for a conference. If you recall the hotel scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles — it was double that. Two twin beds and four grown man-boys, one of whom was snoring his face off. They were beating me with pillows to wake up, but to no avail.

I’m not sure when I lost this special gift. Maybe when we got Gus, the dog, my powers somehow transferred to him. He’s the new sleep genius in town — ready, willing, and able to drift off to a slumber amid a five-alarm fire. As for me, that blaze is burning in my brain. Getting enough quality rest became a significant hurdle.

I never had to do anything special to fall asleep. I didn’t count sheep. I didn’t need a white noise machine, earplugs, a dark room, or eye covering. I also wasn’t into religion, so I didn’t have a ritual of saying prayers at night.

Today, things look a lot different. You’ll find me with a heating pad on my lower back, doing crazy things like flossing before bed and requiring a CPAP to make it through the night without being recorded on the Richter scale. Instead of finding me dead asleep, I’m lying in bed thinking. I hope my son made it home safely. I have to work on the taxes. I should get up and respond to that email I looked at before bed. I shouldn’t read emails so soon before bed. I wonder how my uncle is doing. I should call my dad tomorrow.

With all this extra time awake in bed, I decided to start meditating a few years ago. The thing is, it wasn’t meditation. I was doing thought experiments. What is the relationship between motion and time? Is time all in our minds? What happens when we die? What is real?

That was all kinds of fun and much better than thinking about work and taxes. I generated poetry. I learned things about myself and the world around me. And all this lying awake didn’t seem so bad. I was able to cherish the time instead of wishing I was asleep. I was grateful. I get to be here, totally relaxed, in the safety and comfort of my home, with a wonderful wife by my side and Gus, the dog, at the foot of the bed.

It was all fun and games until Tomorrow-Andrew had to deal with the reality of minimal shuteye. It turns out that sleep is vital for things like having a rational conversation and paying attention to anything. I used to believe I was a lousy reader. I repeatedly read the same paragraph, trying to comprehend it, and then my eyes would grow heavy. I’d have to quit reading or fall asleep. I was just exhausted. I had no idea I was a good reader. I just needed a sound night to recover.

My current sleep hack is an unexpected evolution of these nightly thought experiments, learning about different meditation techniques, and incorporating lessons from my professional life. I cannot remember the details of how each element came together, but the result is a nightly routine that has helped me fall asleep quickly. When I wake up in the middle of the night and devolve into a spinning mind distracted by work or worry — the method helps me quickly get back to sleep.

This is my nightly prayer:

• Rapid body scan relaxation meditation

• One statement of gratitude from today

• A daily rose-thorn-bud retrospective

• Metta meditation

That’s it.

In practice, a guided body scan moves through every part of the body. Relax the right toes. Relax the right foot. Relax the right lower leg. Relax the right knee. On and on, it goes to the crown of the head and the left side of the body. I find it difficult to guide myself and find the tension. Rather, without words, I seek the parts of my body that are stiff. Relax the mouth. Let your jaw rest and the pressure in your mouth go. Breathe through your nose. Open your hands. Let your feet fall to the side.

Once I feel like a peaceful puddle in bed, I move on to a statement of gratitude from today. I’m grateful for the family dinner we had tonight.

I usually can’t help myself, so I’ll go on to say a few more things I’m thankful for from the day. It’s hard to boil it down to just one thing. But my goal is to move through the whole routine before falling asleep. If I dwell on one thing, like gratitude, for too long, it becomes a wakeful wormhole. When I move quickly through the routine, I fall asleep before finishing.

On good days, I’m out before I get to the gratitude. Most days, I fall asleep somewhere in the middle of the retrospective. Some days, I’m doing Metta. Those days are few and far between, so much so that I try to find time to do Metta during the day. It’s become somewhat of a race. Can I get through the whole enchilada before falling asleep?

If I get past that statement of gratitude and am still awake, it’s time for the retrospective. I use a method called rose-thorn-bud, which I learned in product development. We would have a pile of sticky notes and give each a color. Roses are red, thorns are yellow, and buds are green. The color choice makes sorting easy after the group exercise. Roses represent things that went well, thorns represent things that went awry, and buds represent opportunities for improvement.

For my nightly routine, this is an individual activity without sticky notes. To keep it quick, I limit it to one thing from today. Rose? Hmmm… I’m proud of myself for finding time to read today. Thorn? Let’s see… I didn’t do a good job listening to Abby while hanging out and making dinner. I was distracted with my phone. Tomorrow, I’ll put it in the office for dinner. Bud? I didn’t know what to expect from the coffee-outside bike ride. I liked it a lot. I’m going to invest more time into that.

In rare circumstances, I am still awake after the retrospective, so I move on to the Metta meditation. This is a loving-kindness mantra that begins with the self. May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease. Then, the meditation moves on to my closest loved ones. It then extends to family and friends, neighbors, and people with whom I have challenging relationships. It culminates in reaching all people, beings, and things everywhere.

Thank you for reading. May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you live with ease. And may you sleep with ease.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

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Note: I’m trying something new here. The essay originally appeared in the Medium publication Summit on January 6, 2026. Today, Substack writer read and commented on it there. I have so much work on Medium because I’ve been writing there a lot longer. I don’t know how to choose what to share here. How about this? When an older essay on Medium gets attention, I’ll reshare it here. I hope you enjoy it.

In middle school, I broke my hand shortly after baseball season started. It was my first time on a team, and it meant the world to me.

I worked hard — made it all the way from the bottom to the top — from a kid who had never picked up a ball to the starting lineup. That injury, it was the end of the world. I cried, alone, in despair, too afraid to let anyone see my tears. My weakness.

The following season, I played again and did alright, but by the time I got to high school and didn’t make the team, my dream was over. I’d be better off dead.

Luckily, a dirty blonde with a magnetic smile brought me back to life. I had a new interest, a new life passion. There was something to live for. Girls! Oh, how I loved girls.

I was a serious kinda guy, and so it took me a long time to get a girlfriend. But when I did, oh, was it magnificent. We were lovers and best friends. Everything in the world was new and fresh. Every experience. Passionate. I can still see a picture in my mind, an actual photograph of us together. My smile, it was pure joy in the presence of that girl.

But alas, I became an ass. I blew it. How foolish could I be to take such a lovely girl for granted? How awful was I to be so cruel? Rightfully so, she dumped me.

I lost everything, including my mind.

My ego was crushed. Snuffed out.

Just short of suicidal, I slipped into a deep depression that lasted years.

Until another shiny object caught my attention. A motorcycle. Riding it was always a near-death experience. But it didn’t matter. I was alive. The machine defined me as I went all in on the tattoos, black tees, and leather chaps.

I rode my Harley from New Jersey to Maine. From Maine to the Mississippi River. From Dubuque, Iowa, to Charlotte, North Carolina. I rode it to Myrtle Beach, to Daytona, and to Key West.

Losing that motorcycle was a bit of a slow death, however.

Harley riding Andrew sorta faded away silently as life turned to wife, then children.

You might say I was in this vague haze of dad delirium for a solid thirteen years when, out of nowhere, all was lost. The marriage, the family, and the motorcycles, too. All gone.

There I was again, a crying fool. At one point, in the fetal position on the floor of my bathroom. I was mourning a death. My own death. The happily married man who would one day walk his daughter down the aisle, host Christmas Eve for all the family, sit in a rocking chair reflecting on a perfect life — He was dead.

I sat at the edge of a lake in Umstead Park and contemplated taking my life.

But that was not the example I wanted to leave for my children. Yet there I was, once again, ego destroyed. Better off dead. Everything I thought life was going to be, gone.

For the first time, I welcomed therapy. It was something I previously made fun of.

What happened in there, I can hardly do justice. All I can say is, I began to discover the real me. I started to uncover the innocent boy who hadn’t yet played baseball.

Today, I’m remarried, and my wife is the most incredible woman on the planet. From my daughter, I’m estranged. I haven’t had a relationship with her since the divorce from her mother. That’s going on well over a decade now. And my son, thank God, he’s healthy and independent.

Despite the estrangement from my daughter, I can’t help but think, these are good times. It’s odd, in a way, that the darkest corner of my life is a finger on the pulse of reality. I’ve said to my wife, “If it weren’t for being estranged, I might have to pinch myself, to wonder. Am I dead already? Is this heaven?”

Yesterday, my wife and I cycled up to Longleaf Swine. It’s one of our Raleigh “Cheers.” The owner and bartenders are like family. Friends roll in at any given time. And in my current iteration of life, here comes my son, strolling in looking healthy, bright-eyed, with a beautiful woman at his side.

We happy-hour together. Abby smiles at me. She whispers, “It’s good to be at this part of life, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. It sure is.”

All of us at this bar. Every one of us, on both sides of it. We’ve been through the muck. My son included. Parents splitting. Sports injuries. Losing half of high school to COVID.

And here we are, smiling, laughing, enjoying life.

There’s a tiny part of me that creeps up with a sort of hard-to-describe, sentimental kind of fear. It’s extreme happiness to see my son in love. It’s projecting future sadness for the unknown struggles that lie before him in this oftentimes cruel world.

I want to reach out to him. Hold him. Tell him, “Son, relish in these moments. Please know, when the darkest days fall upon you, there is light on the other side.”

This is all in my head. Here I am, casting my life onto his. When there at that bar, he looked at me and said, “Hey dad, I heard this quote. You only die once.”

I smiled and responded. “I like that.” My son’s sage advice landed. It’s such a lovely flip from the old adage: you only live once. I’m grateful to be alive over and over again. Every day the sun rises is a gift. Whenever I’ve experienced an ego-crushing loss, it wasn’t the end of the world; it was a chance to be reborn.

Here I sit with extreme gratitude in the midst of a really, really good run. Everyone is healthy. Everyone has jobs. These are prosperous times.

I’d prefer not to have these happy thoughts bothered with a sprinkle of dread — no matter how light a sprinkle. But I can’t help it. These thoughts, they come, time to time. It’s a conjunction of gratitude and grief — of past, present, and future.

“Yes, son. I agree. We only die once. Cherish the highs. Survive the lows. There’s a whole new life on the other side.”

I wrote this in response to a prompt from Wordsmiths’ Weekly, a group of talented writers who get together on Zoom every Saturday.

The prompt was, “You have a child, and you have written one piece of advice that will be carried in his/her pocket for life. What is that advice?”

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

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This morning I read a tweet by Alex Hormozi. It said:

Technology taken to its natural end becomes “everyone has everything.”But it skips the obvious reality that humans can always find something to suffer about.We will do not solve dissatisfaction with more. We solve it by removing the desire for more.

I replied the following:

I don’t think removing desire is the key to happiness. I think it’s seeking growth over convenience. Everything we do to increase convenience with technology we insert surrogate challenges with technology. Put an escalator in here and add a StairMaster there.

Alex is circling on the same topic that is at the core of a book I’m working on. I refer to the project as Illusions of Convenience.

“Technology taken to its natural end,” is void of specificity. This is Alex’s opening line which is so overgeneralized, he wraps it up with “everyone” and “everything.”

He knows better (I’m guessing), that the products designed to be everything for everyone are the worst. The best technical solutions serve a laser focused unmet need.

Where I’m focused are specific solutions that target convenience and those that move people in a direction of lifelong dependency. Let’s explore how we can recognize both of these signals.

A couple of things before I dig in. First, I don’t think all conveniences are illusions of convenience. Second, what is an illusion for one person may be a legitimate convenience for another. It’s relative to individuals and discernment is key.

Let’s first look at solutions that target convenience. My tweet reply does a pretty good job here. An escalator is, for me, an illusion of convenience. It may be a necessary convenience for anyone that has sincere inability to climb stairs.

The clue for me that it’s an illusion is the StairMaster. It’s the equal and opposite innovation. This is a trap I try to avoid at all costs. I’ll choose stairs in everyday life and skip the gym.

Where do you see innovations of convenience with equal and opposite innovations?

Some to minimize walking. Others to track steps.Air conditioning here. Sauna there.

I could go on and make this a listicle, but I do think it’d be more fun for you to jump in here. Where do you see innovations of convenience and the surrogate challenges?

The second major category I see for illusions of convenience are innovations that result in lifelong dependency. I’m a biomedical commercialization advisor, so, the place I see this the most are in healthcare.

Independent mobility after having a stroke is an area of innovation I see every day. There are researchers at top institutions all around the world who are developing solutions to improve balance, gait, walking speed, and walking efficiency.

The most common post stroke solutions for a walking impairment is a brace. A few fortunate people can get access to assistive devices. These are things like wearable robotic exoskeletons and functional electrical stimulation (FES) devices, which use gentle electrical pulses to make weakened muscles move.

The issue, though, is that assistive devices lead to lifelong dependency on that assistance. There is an army of researchers doing things that don’t have a name yet, but I call them provocative devices. These products move beyond bracing and assistance to then challenge the patient to walk independently again.

So immediately following a stroke, a person my start with a brace, then move to an assistive device, and then to a provocative device.

Imagine a world where patients with sleep apnea don’t get a CPAP, but a provocative CPAP that slowly transitions from breathing assistance to breathing challenges to sleeping without assistance. Yes. I do believe in this world.

Imagine glasses that start off assisting poor vision and gradually challenge the wearer to no longer need them.

Again, I could make a listicle here. But I’m curious if you can think of medical interventions (drugs and devices), that result in lifelong dependence that could otherwise be eliminated if the patient where challenged.

Reminder. This is highly personalized. There are strokes and there are strokes. Some people may never walk independently again, and that’s heartbreaking. What’s more heartbreaking, though, to me, is how many people fall for the illusion of convenience and find themselves living a life of dependence.

There are a few places where I find these illusions of convenience particularly insidious. One is the combination of factors above. The easy way out combined with lifelong dependency. I’ll point my finger at statins here. I’ll argue that the huge majority of people on them are on them for convenience.

The second area, which I find to be the worst, is when the illusion of convenience is applied to children.

Kids with flat feet are given high arches. This leads to weak feet, and a lifelong dependency on specialized footwear. The huge majority of the time, these kids can develop natural arches if properly braced (say, when sleeping) and challenged (running barefoot as much as possible).

It is my hypothesis that over generations, the illusions of convenience make the human race ever weaker, and ever dependent on technology.

None of what I’m writing suggests that technology is a bad thing. It’s also not suggesting the convenience is a bad thing. I see plenty of conveniences that don’t lend themselves to surrogate challenges. I’m writing this on a MacBook and don’t see the need to put in a few more reps when I’m done on the old Smith Corona.

I’d love to hear from you about the conveniences and dependencies that you feel may be illusions, and those that are strictly necessary.

These aren’t right and wrong answers. We all have different capabilities and needs. But unlike Alex, my goal here isn’t to make sweeping generalizations. Rather, I challenge all of us to look for specific places in our lives where we may be gaslighting ourselves into believing something is good for us, when, in fact, it’s making us weaker. It’s creating dependency on technology.

Once that technology has taken hold. It becomes ever more difficult to loosen the grips, and escape the illusion of convenience.

DiMeo Unfiltered is my back of the napkin publication featuring half-baked concepts, works in progress, blog-like posts, and personal opinions. This space is raw, authentic, and self-published.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now

The clothing was optional and the views were stunning. Of the lake, that is. Otherwise, there wasn’t much to see. Some old man sacks, saggy boobs, and a bush in the distance.

The scene did make me wonder. Are clothes an implement of oppression?

I began verbalizing my thoughts to Abby.

“It’s like in the Wizard of Oz. Behind the veil of power is a weak old man. Imagine trying to lead a country with your privates out in the open for all to see. I think dress codes are designed to discriminate.”

“What about for safety?” Abby responded.

“Like to wear safety gear to go mountain biking? That’s a choice.”

“No, not like that,” Abby continued. “Like closed toe shoes, scrubs, and sterile gloves.”

“Yeah. That makes sense. A uniform.”

I have a philosophy for life I call the baseball cap theory. Sometimes, baseball caps are a required part of a uniform. If you are not wearing it, you can’t play. Other times, baseball caps are prohibited. Like at grandma’s dining room table. Wear the hat and no pasta for you.

But most places, the hat is optional.

I find these paradoxical rules everywhere in life.

“Regular, everyday dress codes, though. I do think these are implements of oppression.”

A wealthy man can easily tell who else is rich by the brand of their suit and if it’s been professionally cleaned and pressed. Meanwhile, the poor man spends money he doesn’t have to attain a suit he can’t afford, just to fit in. He’s not fooling anyone.

Any why should he?

I can only guess the same applies to women’s dress. I’m just in no position to guess.

Regardless of sex, I’ve always considered formal attire to be an implement of oppression. But here on this beach, I realized that maybe most regular, everyday societal clothing norms are equally oppressive.

Abby’s a nurse and my wife, and the clothing optional scene didn’t seem to phase her. She said, “I’ve seen so many naked people. A body is a body. They are all humans.”

Now, let me paint the picture of this clothing optional beach for you a little more clearly, before you start imagining g-string bikini bottoms only on the French Riviera.

We were on the south end of Lake Willoughby, a family friendly spot in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Every age of human was on this beach. Infants in mothers arms. Young kid and pre-teens snacking on sandwiches after a morning of mountain biking camp. The tweens and high schoolers who are the camp counselors. College age kids, young adults, middle aged adults, and people north of seventy.

Nothing on this beach was dressed up, except for the clothing optional people opting for clothing. The lake water was clear to the rocks at the bottom. The dogs ran free. Birds, bugs, squirrels, and chipmunks played about.

The animals were free. Some humans were too. Most were clothed. I, for one, felt oppressed.

DiMeo Unfiltered is my back of the napkin publication featuring half-baked concepts, works in progress, blog-like posts, and personal opinions. This space is raw, authentic, and self-published.

Thank you for reading.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.

— Andrew

Subscribe now