This was a good “let’s-just-go-do-something” outing.

The something turned out to be me hitting a big trash can with a tennis ball.

You know what? That’s something.

There were other things, too. I listened to a bunch of classic rrrrock songs while biking down to Hawthorne and thought about the drumming: “I bet I could play that.”

That’s ambition, motivation, hope.

Also while biking along the beach path, I looked out at the Pacific Ocean and thought, “There it is!”

That’s… awareness! So big, the Pacific Ocean. The vastness. Can be overwhelming. If you think about it. And I did. So — quietly — that’s courage.

Sure! Why not? When you’re the one keeping score. That is really the deal. I told my friend Ai a while ago, when she asked me the title of my famous story in the LA Times, I told her, “Retired man finds something to do with his time.”

Joking but also true. So there I was, yesterday, Monday, getting the week before Memorial Day started, cranking the intensity up in honor of it being my friend Jimmy’s birthday, just wanting like I always do to live the life I know Jimmy hopes me to be living… I made this video of me after making many attempts to hit a trash can with a tennis ball and failing, failing, failing: