In 2024, I took a bold step toward furthering my education. As 2025 draws to a close, I'm exactly halfway through the program.
The challenges have been significant but so have the rewards. The experience has given me a new perspective on how I spend my time and what I can accomplish when I work really hard.
I'm eagerly looking ahead toward taking more classes and, if I'm blessed to live that long, graduating and putting this knowledge to use in my career.
Our lives exist in a larger context, however, and the backdrop to these small successes has been even more challenging.
For the first time in my long life, the biggest threat to my country comes not from foreign adversaries but from our own leadership. They like gluttonous termites gobbling up everything for their own enrichment while weakening the very structures that have supported and protected us for so long. There's no safe harbor, no institution they won't dismantle, no rule that they won't break if doing so serves their own interests.
We have raised a desperate plea for help from Pest Control, but unfortunately, their first available appointment is three years away. It's hard to imagine what will be left if the termites keep munching unchecked for three more years.
We live in dangerous times. Wars rage on. Research has been defunded. Corruption has been embraced as official policy. Disease prevention and climate protection have been derailed by special interests. Investors have done well as democracy crumbles, but how long will it be before that bubble bursts?
It's hard to be optimistic, but we have to keep going. We have to keep fighting and hoping that our efforts will be enough to get things back on track. When our personal ambitions are subject to the whims of a corrupt and malicious government, we have no freedom at all.
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