Second Landings

A first landing is the life you planned — the career, the title, the identity that came with it. For a long time, that was enough to organize a life around.

That ground is shifting. AI and robotics are about to untether millions from the work they built themselves on. And on the far side of the disruption — past the noise, past even abundance — a quieter question waits. The one that doesn't care how much you have: what is a life actually for?

Second Landings is where I work on that question in the open, and invite you to work on yours.

I'm Dan. I spent about twenty-five years in tech — Microsoft, Google, and finally Qualtrics, where I led product across hundreds of engineers and owned the company's AI. By most measures, I won the first landing. It also left the rest of my life out of balance.

So I'm doing the second one on purpose, and out loud. These days that looks less like a roadmap and more like rebuilding a 1997 Defender by hand, growing a tea garden, and asking — seriously — what's worth dedicating a life to. I had a head start on the question. I'd rather share the map than spend it alone.