This entry makes it an even dozen years since I started marking the passing years with a eponymously-long list of lessons learned in the preceding year. What’s more, this installation represents perhaps the most lessons learned in just one year.  Of course, that “just one year” included an unprecedented global pandemic that was only rounding into form when I delivered last year’s list. Inasmuch, it feels like so much longer than a year has passed since I last undertook this exercise. Thankfully, it is just one year that’s passed, and I’m as grateful as ever to be alive, healthy and witty enough to deliver this list. So, without further ado, as the grandest celebration permissible for anyone logging forty-seven (!!!) trips around the Sun, here are the things I’ve learned this past year:

1. I can’t believe it’s taken me a dozen years to write this one down – but I finally found home. And yep… home means Nevada to me. 
2. With all credit to Patty Smyth and Don Henley, sometimes love just ain’t enough.
3. I am as cool as I’ve ever been.  Here’s to the late bloomers – we did have the last laugh!
4. Deleting pictures of it does not erase your past, that requires a significant head injury and will not make you feel any better. 
5. You can tell a lot about someone by the way they play board games. 
6. Truitt’s Language Law: The more bigoted someone is about the language they speak, the less likely they are to have mastered that language. 
7. My God, Renee was right about me – all the way back in the sixth grade. I’m so sorry I didn’t see it sooner or appreciate what an investment in my future meant.
8. Yes, I’m still very much an Atheist, and that’s not irony, its colloquial license.
9. A dozen years has softened my position on most grievances, but traffic is still just collective stupidity, and we should be more embarrassed by it than we are.
10. The difference between dogs and humans is our capacity to plan what to do after we catch the car – so make sure you’re not living your life like a dog.
11. The quality of a person is directly correlated to their appetite for learning new things.
12. No one, and I mean no one, gets through with a clean sheet.
13. We are, in large measure, the sum of the commitments we make – both the ones we keep and the ones we don’t. 
14. The only person that can change a mind is its owner.
15. Privacy is the new wealth. Plan accordingly.
16. I don’t trust anyone who hasn’t been through at least one spectacular personal failure. How else do I know you’re going to be ok, once you finally have one?
17. The only real way to honor all that you’ve learned is to teach it to someone.
18. American “meritocracy” means using an objective standard to pick the best rich kid for the job.
19. The two least attractive words you can say to a woman at 47 are: “The Facebook.”
20. The biggest idiots hold the most insane standards for experts and professionals. Just because it seems like “magic” to you doesn’t mean it’s actually magic.
21. You know more than you think you do.  You also remember less than you think you do.
22. The most valuable time is the time you make for friends.
23. Showing up is the hard part. Of everything.
24. Accountability and forgiveness can absolutely co-exist, but it’s not easy.
25. The greatest advice I’ve ever gotten on handling conflict was from the late Patrick Swayze’s magnum opus – Roadhouse.  And it’s still worth remembering – be nice.
26. The solution to most every problem is education.  The trick is figuring what needs to be learned and who needs to learn it.
27. Humans have a whole lot more in common than we don’t. You know what’s different? Mars is different. Hate Mars and love your fellow man.
28. Everyone is paying 99% less attention to you than you think, and forgetting 100% of what they saw/heard, etc. almost immediately.  RELAX. 
29. Going with the flow is underrated. 
30. The important part about love isn’t where you find it, but that you find it.
31. We place far too much pressure on young people to figure out their “direction” in life.  I’m 1,000 miles from where I wanted to be in my wildest dreams and it’s 1,000 times better than I could have imagined. LET KIDS GROW THEIR OWN WAY.
32. With that said – there is no greater virtue than mentorship. Are you really comfortable with everyone else designing the next generation?
33. There absolutely is a such thing as a “stupid question” – I hear them constantly. You know who doesn’t think so? There’s one right there.
34. Support your friends’ art. Especially if you hate it. 
35. The most important thing you can bring to anything is energy. I used to think that was my weakness, now I know it’s my GD superpower.
36. You’re supposed to outgrow your parents.  If that wasn’t their goal (and it should have been), it should at least be yours. Do think progress is something for other people?
37. Despite extraordinary achievements in communication technology, there’s still no substitute for meeting face-to-face.
38. Every activity has a rhythm.  It makes no sense until you discover it, and you can’t imagine it not making sense once you do.  Find the rhythm in everything.
39. Hearing someone is easy, listening to them is hard – but usually worth it.
40. Remember, everyone around you, everyone you see during the day, everyone you know, is dealing with something. You’re not in it alone.  None of us are.
41. Do not underestimate the power of ignorant people in large groups, or the appeal of manipulating those people to our most dangerous desires.
42. The most impactful deaths in the past year have been: irony, hypocrisy and shame. 
43. Submarine life absolutely made the pandemic lock down easier. With that said, I do not recommend it for that purpose.
44. Every group has some folks in it that shouldn’t be there. The measure of the virtue of that group is what they do about it.
45. The worst kind of people are the pull-the-ladder-up-behind-themselves crowd.  You know who you are.
46. It’s good to have a friend in Vegas.  If you’re reading this, you have a friend in Vegas (who also has a spare bedroom and a liberal policy on guests *wink*)
47. In the rearview mirror – the big things were never as big as they seemed, the small things were always more important than they seemed, and no matter how long you look at it, it will never tell you where you’re headed.  So, take a look from time to time, but remember which way you’re going.