I have a lot of project ideas, and not as much time as I wish.

(I’m now 65 years old, and Kary & I just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary.)

Each time I start taking notes for a new project (web site, community service, article, book, video), I quickly recognize that it’s going to end up on the same pile as hundreds of other projects I’ve started over the past 50 years, as my attention is seized by other urgent matters.

As I’ve parsed through my journals and file folders from the past 50 years, I see many “old” project ideas that clearly were flawed and earned their demise. But I see some that still look promising today (one, from exactly 50 years ago, includes transcripts of a dozen interviews and some very rough drafts).

And the new ideas keep coming.

With my neurosarcoidosis apparently in remission, and my diabetes mostly under control, I hope to be around for at least another decade or two, but my intellectual stamina and follow-through continue to decline.

I find myself wondering what the estate of Isaac Asimov did with the notes and projects he surely had on hand when he passed away. He wrote hundreds of books across several disciplines, and of course I’ve seen new science-fiction works published following his death with him listed as co-author beside other famous science-fiction authors.

Since I’ve published zero books (so far), I don’t expect a line of literary folk to beg my survivors for the opportunity to finish any of my projects.

I’m sure that many of my peers (journalists who have reached the probable final decades of their lives) have had the same idea that keeps nagging me: might I shove all my research for a specific project into an AI-chatbot-agent system and ask what it might do with it? But, looking at the drivel published via Amazon with obvious AI authorship, this seems a very, very bad idea.

Worth noting: the topic of “Eugenics” stretches across a dozen projects, starting with a 1980 news article about Doris Buck, through an incredible article by Steven Jay Gould about Carrie Buck’s daughter, and all the way through Steven Miller in 2026. And of course, Asimov’s own Foundation series addresses this topic, also. I’m now reading Ibram X. Kendi’s Chain of Ideas, which is excellent.

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