Find what you love and let it kill you

I’m a star-shaped balloon,

running out of gas.

I reached for the moon,

but it was beyond my grasp.

You should have seen me an hour ago.

I was the star of the show.

Now I’m down on my knees.

Just looking for a shoulder to cry on.

I used to read a lot of Charles Bukowski. He has a famous quote: Find what you love and let it kill you. I don't think that's necessarily good advice but it's got stopping power.

For Bukowski it was booze and writing. Probably more the booze than the writing. I don’t think he'd argue that.

Writing isn’t something I necessary love to do. It’s more like something that I have to do. It’s like exercise. I fucking hate exercising. But I feel a lot better when I do it and more importantly I feel really shitty when I don’t.

After years of failing at various exercise regimens, I finally found one that works for me.

I call it toiling.

The goal is to remain on your feet and doing things for as much of the day as possible. Vacuuming, dishes, laundry, sweeping, fixing stuff, garbage removal and rearranging heavy furniture are all good toils.

For more aggressive toiling we turn our attention outdoors. Mowing the lawn, raking leaves, shoveling, gardening, watering, trimming, painting the house and building stuff are all excellent ways to get in some good cardio, build muscle mass and possibly increase the value of your home.

For the last three months I’ve been using an old-fashioned hand planer to smooth out my rough-sawn boards. It’s an excellent arms workout. My forearms are intense.

Toiling has gotten me out of a lot of so-called exercise. It’s better than paying a gym membership and I get a ton of stuff done around the house.

But there’s not really a way around writing. The thoughts keep coming. The desire to dive into them and see where they might go turns into a relentlessly nagging voice inside your head that is constantly interrupting your normal train of thought.

For the past two years I’ve been on contract with Rivian. It’s been an amazing experience and my first time working directly for a brand.

First of all, I truly believe that Rivian’s CEO, RJ Scaringe, is best described as the polar opposite of Elon Musk. Is he perfect? Nobody’s perfect. Is he evil? Definitely not. He’s just a genius engineer that graduated MIT early and borrowed $50,000 from his father to try and build an electric car.

And honestly, he built a damn good one.

Having spent 25 years working on blue chip brands I’ve seen how a lot of companies are run. Many of them are led by the sales department. Others are led by operations and some are led by finance.

Rivian seemed different to me. Because RJ is an engineer, Rivian is led by its engineering department. And when they figure out how to make something better, they don’t just wait around for next year’s model.

Here’s the thing that’s most interesting to me about EVs in general. After working on this stuff for two years and completely immersing myself in the category I can unequivocally say to you that EVs are by far a vastly superior product than traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.

First, they’re fast as shit. If you don’t know what instantaneous torque is, you’re in for a real surprise. At the low end of the spectrum EVs have 300-400 horsepower. At the high end of the spectrum, they can make a Ferrari look like it’s going in slow motion.

Also, pretty much everything on an EV is software based which means you get sent over-the-air software updates that add new features and capabilities to your existing vehicle.

If you have a service issue, many times it can be addressed using remote diagnostics.

And if you get bored with your vehicle’s performance, EVs can offer you new drive modes and performance packages that have the ability to make it feel like a completely different vehicle.

But here’s the thing that really fascinates me about EVs. I don’t want one.

I just don’t.

And I’m really not sure why.

The easy answer is they’re expensive, the charging infrastructure isn’t quite there yet and the battery technology is advancing a bit too quickly to know for sure that you’re not going to have something better come out next week.

But like I said, those are the easy answers.

There’s something else that’s keeping me from adopting what I now know is a vastly superior product.

Maybe it’s the Elon effect?

I certainly couldn’t drive a Tesla.

Maybe it’s the sense that even the car companies themselves aren’t all-in on EVs. One day they say they’re committed and then the next day they’re shutting down the factory that builds them.

If I could get one, I’d get a Rivian.

And I’m not just saying that because I worked there for two years and wouldn’t necessarily say no if they asked me to come back.

I’d get the R1T. I’ve always wanted a truck but never thought I could have one because they don’t have trunks. Where are you going to put the groceries?

But the R1T has a front trunk and this really cool gear tunnel. So I could put the groceries in there and I’d still have a truck.

But I can’t. It’s out of my range.

So I keep writing.

I keep toiling.

I read a little Bukowski.

And another day passes.

Thanks for reading. If anyone needs freelance writer help, I’m available.