The things I want my kids to know — in case I'm not around to teach them by the time they've grown.

Raising children is quite the task. There are many facets to leading a good life and becoming a real contributor to society. When I watched my first child be born, it hit me all at once: I carry one hell of a responsibility to teach my kids as much as I can — to equip them to become high-quality people, contributors to our species, and a benefit to existence itself.

And I had to face a harder truth right alongside it: I may not be here to walk them through every stage of growing up. So I created ICIDBYG to teach them how to think — what to weigh, what to consider — so they can build a whole, balanced, and prosperous life, and add more to society than they take out of it. Not just the answers, but the way of arriving at them, in case I'm not around to work through it with them myself.

This is where I'm gathering those lessons — the practical and the deeper, both. How to handle money and build a real work ethic. How to help people, and how to guard yourself and the ones you love when the moment calls for it. How to live with integrity, pursue art, and put a little beauty into an ordinary life.

And how to be a good steward of the world we borrow — not by shouting about the planet's problems while doing nothing to change how we actually live, but by living, day to day, in a way that leaves our species and this earth better than we found them. In the spirit of Tecumseh's old counsel: live so well and so fully that when death comes, it finds nothing left to take.

This is a start. More to come.