Between my “most professional” gaming days at the end of high school, selling all of my consoles and games in college, and restarting after being gifted a Nintendo Switch a few years ago, I spent almost a decade playing near-zero games. It was a productive break.

In those ten years, I’ve attained two college degrees, made many friends, and learned to fend for myself in the world of writing. I’ve built a career I love, found a home, and fell in love with a wonderful person.

And now, after all that, it was a great time to rekindle an old passion. I’m less obsessed about video games than I used to be. I can play casually and enjoy each game for its own sake. The habit has returned as a hobby, this time. Nothing more, nothing less.

In hindsight, I would do it all over again — but that’s the thing about 10-year breaks: You can’t plan them. Can’t “decide” to take one. Can’t put it on your calendar and “lock it in.”

If you love video games, roller-skating, or comic books, and a good friend tells you, “Hey, why don’t you stop all of that for ten years?” you’d give them a crazy look and go about your day. But we do it all the time, don’t we? We drop habits like apples accidentally falling out of our grocery bag, not even realizing we lost them until years later — and when we find them again, we conclude: Actually, the timing worked out rather well.

If you end up taking a 10-year break from something, it means that whatever lands in its place will be a better fit for your life at the time. Don’t worry so much about what you hold on to vs. what you let go. Allow patterns to flow in and out of your life as needed.

It’s never too late to catch up with an old friend — and perhaps, after a decade-long detour turns out to be the perfect time to meet again.

There are only two ways a writer can estimate how a sentence will ring in the reader’s head: She can write it, and she can read it.

Most writers’ default is to write the sentence once, then read it again and again, and start tweaking. Over the years, I’ve learned that, often, it’s better to just retype the sentence.

Thousands of times, I’ve moved a line down from the existing paragraph only to type it again in exactly the same way. It’s a different kind of exercise in empathy. Reading a sentence is one thing. Typing it another. Both can allow you to inch a little deeper into the reader’s head.

Of course, retyping sentences also affords you the chance to change some words indeed. Will you use a synonym here this time? Or will — and should it — come out just as it was? Sometimes, you can only truly grasp how a string of words rings the second time around — and that counts for reading them as much as it does for writing them.

In a time when you can not only cut, copy, paste, revert, and undo your work with a single button but actually have the computer draft a sentence for you, then edit it ad infinitum, it’s easy to choose to do less manual labor, not more. It’s also a time when doing the latter might make all the difference.

When the sentence doesn’t sound quite right, type it again — and when the world screams at you to ship more stuff faster, remember that attention and care are never wasted, no matter how loudly the song of mediocrity plays.

“We can clock out of a job, but we can’t clock out of our health,” my friend Kaki Okumura writes in her book Wa — The Art of Balance. We understand that we’ll spend almost half of our waking lives at work, she says, and so naturally, we ask a lot of questions about it. Questions like:

“What is my dream job? What kind of career and position will grant me freedom and fulfillment? How can I find this while still making a living that can sustain my lifestyle?”

“We don’t ask the same questions or revisit them with the same frequency and level of reflection as we do our career, but our health is just as impactful, if not more,” Kaki continues. We may spend 50% of our lives at work, but we spend 100% of it in our state of health — however poor or prosperous that state might be. Why not afford it the same level of intention? Well, today, let’s!

What is your dream health? What kind of physical and mental condition will grant you freedom and fulfillment? How can you find it while still making a living, prioritizing your other values, and pursuing all the physical and mental activities you want to enjoy?

Like the challenges with our careers, the questions about our health are worth revisiting, Kaki thinks. “A dream job at one point in our life is not a dream job at another.” And just like figuring out our way through the working world, the prompts about our wellbeing do not come with stock answers. As another author trying to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western culture once wrote: “Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view or a mere book.”

That author was Bruce Lee, and though he knew books were not the end of it, I believe he’d have thought Kaki’s a good place to start.

During a hotel stay, I noticed a vase on a shelf in the lobby. The big, open foyer relied mainly on wood and light, natural colors. As a contrast, the designers had used ceramic tiling for the decor elements, kept in blue and white — the colors of Bavaria. The vase came in those same colors, but something was off.

Upon closer inspection, I realized the vase was broken — but not really. The lid was fine, and it sat exactly where it was supposed to be, but beneath it was not a ceramic container. Instead, it was a transparent, plastic vessel in the shape of a vase, inside of which rested the broken shards of what must once have been the original. “Ha! What a great idea!” I thought.

Perhaps it was an art piece intended to be half-broken, half-perfect from the start. Maybe someone actually broke the vase and 3D-printed a replacement. Regardless, the object reminded me of kintsugi, the Japanese art of integrating mistakes instead of making them disappear.

When a teacup breaks, you can use invisible glue to mend it and hope no one will notice. Or, you can fix it with seams of gold, turning what was once a symbol of its brokenness into the main feature of an entirely new creation.

That vase was also kintsugi, but it took the philosophy to yet another level: Sometimes, the best way to repair what’s broken is to not fix it at all. Simply displaying its remains might be enough.

After one of my worst alcohol benders, I woke up on a stretcher in the hospital hallway. I had neither my wallet nor my jacket, and my phone was almost out of battery. A kind nurse gave me a bottle of sparkling water, and while it marked the start of my return back to civilization, I promptly lost its cap on the way home. For more than a year, I kept that empty, cap-less bottle on my desk. It was the perfect reminder of knowing your limits, and I haven’t landed back in the hospital since.

Whether it’s the lid, the base, or the leader of your book club that no longer wants to serve its function the next time some part of your life breaks, remember: Not every problem needs to be fixed, and even the ones that do don’t have to be put together exactly the way they were before they fell apart.

I have a tendency to clean up after myself — and not just in the house. I want my profiles on writing platforms to be clean. I want posts sorted and curated, and each one nicely formatted too. One of my big fears is dying without having my digital affairs in order.

Most of all, however, I don’t want to repeat myself. That feels like clutter. Like cheating. I want each of my posts to be part of a painting, a giant painting that’ll make perfect sense at the end. That’s impossible, of course — especially when you write a daily blog.

Shipping art daily isn’t akin to painting — even when it’s painting. It’s wandering. You’re creating a path, and sometimes, when you navigate unknown terrain, you’ll end up where you began. You’ll walk back and forth between two points, trying to understand their connection. On occasion, you’ll even trudge in circles. Of course you’ll repeat yourself!

Every artist remixes the art that came before. Some pieces must be remixed again and again by one person until they achieve their final state — for now. Some lessons must be learned twice, others are worth being reminded of. And all that repetition? All the messiness and lack of polish? Everything is part of the trail — not just the one you’re carving, but also the one you’re leaving behind.

A meteor cannot care about the glowing tail it leaves behind, but if it could, don’t you think it’d rather hurtle along in darkness? “Don’t mind me, just passing through, nothing to see here!” But often, there is something to see, and when we catch a glimpse of glowing light in the night sky, we rarely fail to pause and wonder.

Your trail might not be made of blog posts or melted rock, but I assure you you’re leaving one — and that’s exactly as it should be. Trails are a way of connecting. They allow others to follow in our footsteps. Perhaps not always literally, but they do open doors to curiosity, reflection, and the inspiration for, well, more remixes! More trail-making!

If, 100 years from now, someone falls down a rabbit hole of your essays, only to find that rabbit hole ends in an unfinished piece, that piece might be the one you’ll have worried the most over — but it might also be the one they’ll pick to be their favorite.

Don’t try to clean up your life in real-time. Let a glowing trail form in your wake, and keep flying relentlessly ahead. It’s okay to leave some things behind — and it’s also okay if those things don’t fit neatly into one box.

It could have been so simple. A short piece about our hobbies not needing to be extravagant. That’s all I wanted. I could have started with my girlfriend’s claim that she is “boring,” my own lack of eclectic interests, or even a rant about the afterlife not being an award ceremony. I had plenty of options.

Instead, I went down a rabbit hole for an hour. I thought about more possible intros. I chased down some old articles of mine about video games. Then, I read those articles, until…stop!

In one swift motion, I closed my laptop. “PAUSE.” It was time to hit the reset button. For the next few minutes, I just sat there. Breathing. Listening. Thinking. No music. No multimedia wonder-world inside a screen. Just me and my brain. Then, I opened my laptop again and started typing these words.

Closing the laptop has become one of my favorite reset rituals. For most of us, the computer is where everything happens. Therefore, the easiest way to take a break from everything is to shut down the computer. With modern laptops, it only takes the simple, one-second gesture of closing the lid. They even allow you to jump right back in as soon as you’re ready.

When the screen is on, so is the bombardment. Information comes at you fast. The result is often meandering. You try to surf the web’s waves, hoping to get where you’re trying to go — but the current might carry you away any minute. Sometimes, it’s easier to reload the game and start over than to look for a path through the jungle back to the beach.

Close the laptop. Close it deliberately, and close it often. Close it when you’re not sure you need to close it — as soon as you do, you’ll know it was still the right decision. Close the laptop after every completed task, and close it randomly throughout your day. With modern technology, it’s never a final goodbye nor a big disruption — only a break we need more often than we care to admit.

Writing while sick is a bit like stretching a pulled muscle: You’re not going to deliver your best performance, but if you get the dosage right, you’ll return to peak form a little faster.

When your brain feels foggy, you only have so much time and energy to make a point. To clear the mist and grab something worth saying. Just like a strained muscle, a broken brain needs extra care and a slower pace. If you provide those things, however, if you keep guiding yourself along, you’ll hit the ground running once the fog fades and the sun reappears. You’ll have maintained the right level of hum, and back in full swing, you can keep doing what you’ve done all throughout: keep swinging.

Don’t expect miracles of yourself every day — but don’t give up your best habits on your worst days either. Lower the heat, and move on. On the 10,000-mile journey, what matters is not how fast you can run but whether you have the courage to take at least a single step each day, regardless of how small it may be.

It only took a few hours of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a recent installment in the long-lasting series and the first one I’ve played in years, to realize: This is what Pokémon was always supposed to be. Open roaming in a vast, 3D-world. Pokémon freely wandering about, ready for you to catch or battle them at any time. Interesting towns and people, endless side quests, and a leveling system that feels neither too easy nor too tedious.

“If only it had always been like this from the beginning,” I thought. “In comparison, the original Game Boy games look like a boring crossword puzzle.” But then I thought a bit more, and I realized: “Actually, back then, those games were like that.” To an eight-year-old’s infinitely imaginative brain, a few moving pixels very much felt like the expansive, colorful world a grown man can only see when it actually appears on his screen.

Funnily enough, no matter how many new, high-end graphics games I play, I can still go back to those old games and get the same feeling. Perhaps nostalgia preserved it. Maybe this special feature is limited to only a few select titles, but in any case, it’s a nice reminder: Imagination can bridge any gap.

When you can’t afford a real Ferrari, perhaps a virtual one might do, and if a three-star dinner is too expensive, a nicely set up table at home can still make for an extraordinary evening. Sometimes, the reality we long for won’t exist for another 25 years. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it right here, right now — if only in our beautiful minds.

To any seasoned Pokémon player, the new games are a dream come true. More than anything, however, they feel like a return to home — to something that was always there, except now the whole world can see it.

Take pride in using your imagination. If nothing else, it’ll sweeten the long wait while the rest of us catch up.

This morning, I was reading in bed. Window open, soft music playing from my laptop. Suddenly, different tunes began to mix with the mellow lo-fi beats: Someone in our quarter was playing the violin. They were clearly practicing, yet also good enough for a layman like me to barely notice the odd notes here and there. “Amazing!” I thought. “Real, live background music for reading!” I turned off Youtube and kept turning pages.

Some 20 minutes later, my girlfriend asked me to close the window. It was getting cold. I was happy to comply, and with the window, the violin melodies also fell — one into its lock, the other into silence. I turned Youtube back on and kept turning pages.

Before I eventually got up, I looked around the green area between our quarter’s many apartment buildings. “How many people live here?” I wondered. “200? 500? 1,000? How fascinating that a single instrument can provide the soundtrack for so many lives at once. Then again, how many will have listened? How many were even aware of the music?” Questions, questions, questions.

And even though none of them found answers, I did learn a lesson: When there’s a violin playing, and you’re lucky enough to hear it, listen. You can always return to the road to destiny, but you can never plan when life will give you a gift. Accept them as they arrive, and even if the timing isn’t perfect, chances are, you’ll still be glad you opened them later.

Appreciation isn’t about the volume of the music or how long the song lasts. It’s about seeing the good when it happens — and choosing to witness it while it does.

When I started Four Minute Books, one of the premier destinations for book summaries was Actionable Books. They popped up on Google all the time, and their catalog was massive. I remember looking at their site, thinking, “My god, almost 1,000 summaries! And here I am with just a handful.”

Eight years later, I happened upon them again. They now had a whopping 1,155 summaries in their library. “Wait a minute…” I thought. I checked our post count, and, sure enough, on Four Minute Books we now had 1,277 summaries. Somehow, somewhen, we overtook them — and I didn’t even realize it.

It’s easy to overestimate what you can do in a year, but we also have a tendency to underestimate what we can do in a decade. Focus compounds, and the best way to focus is to not just ignore the competition but outright forget it.

That’s exactly what Actionable Books did, by the way. They built a corporate training software, and over 1,000 companies use it. Were the book summaries ever their main focus? I don’t know, but in their own lane, they are very successful. They just kept driving, and I’m sure that, with or without realizing it, they, too, have overtaken many a “competitor” along the way.

There’s that saying that where losers constantly cast jealous looks towards winners, the winners simply chase their next win. But winning means helping people and creating value, and that indeed not just takes but deserves all of our attention.

Forge the path only you can forge. Maybe someday, you’ll spot someone in your rear view mirror who, only a few moments ago, seemed to be far ahead — but even if not, as long as you’ve got your eyes set firmly on a better future, you’ll always be on the right track.