TL;DR: This week I rode mountain bikes along the Pacific, watched a car drive itself through San Luis Obispo, sat with a question I thought had no answer, and learned (again) that what I’m holding tightest is sometimes the thing most ready to be handed off. Also, it’s my birthday month. More on that at the bottom.

TSN 26.14: “On Carrying Less”

April 6, 2026

Hiya

The bluff was flat and wide open, the kind of trail that didn’t demand anything from my legs or my lungs - or, my mind. What it DID demand was that I look up.

To the left, the Pacific was doing what the Pacific does - crashing and pulling and not caring at all about our schedule. To the right, wildflowers. Low brush. Families. Other cyclists. All of us moving through the same serene corridor of the Central Coast, each at our own pace, each carrying whatever we’d brought with us that morning.

I’d brought a lot.

Later that same day we rode single track.

And if the bluff was permission, the single track was a demand. Climbing through the mountains of San Luis Obispo County (country that reminded me of the Los Padres Forest where I used to ride in the early 2000s) there was no room to drift. No space to rehearse a conversation I hadn’t had yet or inventory what I hadn’t finished.

The trail required all of me. Every root, every loose rock, every switchback on the descent said the same thing: be here, or go down.

I have been chasing that feeling for a while. I just didn’t always know where to find it, or what to call it.

Three days. Four routes. Biking and hiking… with a good friend. And somewhere between the bluff and the single track and the fire roads where my buddy and I rode side by side - matching effort, matching cadence, letting the conversation go where it needed to go - a question started forming that I couldn’t quite name yet.

It named itself on the way to dinner.

We got in his car.

He tapped a few things on the screen, put his hands in his lap, and placed both feet flat on the floor. For the next twelve minutes, as we crossed San Luis Obispo, I watched the car make decisions that he - and we - didn’t have to.

It slowed for a pedestrian.

It waited on a cyclist.

It navigated an intersection without anyone telling it to.

My buddy and I kept talking… strategy, models, what we’re each building. All while something else handled the road.

I know not everyone wants to sit in the passenger seat of a car driving itself.

But here’s what landed for me:

there are things I am still doing entirely on my own that could be handled (better, faster, more carefully) if I let them go.

That’s not a question about technology. It’s a question about what I’m gripping.

I have been studying self-efficacy for a long time. Long enough that I wrote a book chapter about it in 2011 and am still surprised by how front-and-center it sits when I look out at what I’m attempting. What I believe is possible sets the ceiling on what I’ll try.

And right now, the ceiling feels close.

Part of that is the season.

Jodi is fully present to her mom, who is in hospice at home, watched over around the clock. I watch her carry that. I watch my sister Felice carry the same weight for our mom (maintaining a life, a profession, a self) while never fully stepping away.

I am doing what I can. And I am asking myself, honestly, whether what I can do is enough.

The models I’ve been studying all week are all pointing at the same thing. The gap between who I want to be and what I currently have to give is real.

And I will not close it by gripping harder.

At dinner early in the week, another friend asked me asked me a question. One I had already - unconsciously - decided was unanswerable. Turns out I had done two things as well:

1) I hadn’t stayed with it long enough, and

2) I had never tried to answer it with someone who sees me clearly and cares about me deeply.

Walking along the riverwalk after dinner that night, we’d matched cadence without discussing it. Side by side, step by step, the conversation going where it needed. He listened, and asked me questions.

Not advice.

Not a fix.

A couple of questions, and the willingness to let me walk with the prompt.

What came to me in that moment will last.

I’m sure of it.

I am learning (slowly, and not always gracefully) that the carry is not the point.

The conversation is.

Where are you this week?

JW

PS — It’s my birthday on Friday… And if you’ve been looking for a way to mark it, I have one ask in mind.

Hit reply and I’ll tell you what it is.