There’s a difference between aspirations and goals. Aspirations are divergent, while goals are convergent. Aspirations ideate what you want to achieve, but goals articulate how you want to achieve them. And you need both. Aspirations without goals keep you in the realm of fantasy. Achieving goals without aspirations is merely survival living. If you’re not careful, either extremity will keep you suspended from being meaningfully productive — whether it is the lofty ideals or the unfulfilling, measurable details. If, however, you marry your divergent dreams with convergent measurables, you can, with some discipline, achieve what you want.

But will your achievements be sustainable? …

The Antihero in Literature vs. Real Life

I previously wrote about Ulysses S. Grant, a former U.S. General and President who was either celebrated for his military leadership or maligned for his seemingly wavering politics — sometimes in the same conversation. I considered him an antihero, but because of his historical persona, he may feel like a literary figure rather than a real person with real issues. This perception makes the difference between seeing a hero as superman saving the people of Metropolis or a fireman saving a family from a burning house.

In literature, the antihero is the central character in a story who lacks conventional heroic attributes like honesty, bravery, and moral integrity. It is still relatable in real life, but I’ve attempted to create more concrete parameters to help modern people relate to a more realistic persona of an antihero. …

Researching American history to find accurate anecdotes can be overwhelming to those of us who didn’t have a natural affinity to history when we were younger. That feeling of anxiety probably stems from all the mundane history and government classes from grade school. The enchanting stories we could’ve found intriguing were all deeply wedged between old century dates, dusty political structures, confusing battle names, and esoteric geographic locations.

Then again, so The Lord of the Rings, but the storytellers of those classroom textbooks were no J.R.R. Tolkien. Although few (very, very few) of my teachers tried to make history relevant, all I could hear was Charlie Brown’s teacher’s monotonous “Waah, Wa-Waaah” droning for 90 minutes. But perhaps some of us needed more than 90 minutes in class and a few hours of homework to sift through facts and dates to find the exciting narratives that make characters like Ulysses S. …

As political unrest and racial tension continue to agitate and pull at the Liberal, Conservative, Black, and White threads of the United States fabric, there is one common thread that stitches them all together: Protesting. At some point, you probably asked what’s the aim of organizing a large group of people and raising picket signs in the middle of a road. How can this make a systemic impact? Was it accomplished with the distant hope of lawmakers seeing hundreds or thousands of people on social media or local TV news and motivating them to initiate changes from their public office? What about when a peaceful protest turns into a riot? …

As a designer, I never cared much about kerning, tracking, and leading until two things happened: I was properly introduced to Adobe InDesign, and I eventually took typography a little more seriously. Joseph Campbell would probably place this newfound attraction to typography in The Meeting with the Goddess stage of the Hero’s Journey. After getting a handle of Photoshop and Illustrator, a good friend of mine challenged me to add InDesign to the mix. I didn’t think it was an essential tool until I needed to crank out posters as the Public Relations officer of our student government on campus. InDesign powerfully brought all of my design elements together so seamlessly. …

When I saw the latest 2020 Buick commercial, my head turned away in disappointment ever so slightly with barely pursed lips — like Miranda Priestly’s pout scene in The Devil Wear’s Prada. It was as if I refused to be worked up by such a letdown. “Not again,” I thought.

The commercial starts with the driver picking up his friend for dinner. Surprised as she sits in the SUV, she rhetorically inquires, “Nice! This is the new Buick?” To which the driver corrects her, “You mean the new Alexa.” The “Buick vs. …

Inferences have a magical power that references can never quite embody. Hearing, “A dinosaur is coming!” is one thing. Seeing the plastic cup of water reverberate in the beverage console of a safari jeep to foreshadow the dreadful tyrannosaurus is quite another experience. Anticipation builds when envisioning the scrawny showdown shadow of a 6 o’clock silhouette crawling towards the dusty, sandaled feet of Goliath before the boy David emerges with five smooth stones. We don’t perceive our world and surroundings all at once. Scientifically, we take in our world through inferences, imagination, and impressions. …

History of Bidding and Messaging

Travel back in time with me to March 2000. The dot-com bust has begun, and tech companies are quickly collapsing, leaving behind a massive graveyard of corporate fossils to be excavated as case studies for years to come. During this turmoil, there was one fledgling startup that asserted itself as the most profitable e-commerce platform. Not even Amazon could compete with them at the time. eBay was king. A few years later, another company emerges from the peer-to-peer boom that has thrived during the dot-com debacle.

Skype then gets acquired by eBay two short years later. It might’ve seemed like a match made in Bidding and Messaging Heaven, but this brief union came at a detrimental cost. If eBay and Skype might’ve heeded the warnings of Jack Welch’s Six Sins of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), both parties would have begun to avoid traveling down the road to perdition. But it would take more than Jack Welch’s wisdom to prevent what would end up being a significant acquisition failure. …