From a tweet I tweeted to twitter (and I won’t call it ‘X’);

“line of the day – so far
“accidentally helpful” “

It was a podcast meeting, Friday afternoon, November 13, 2026. It was outdoors, which was one accidental way to make the meeting more concise. As we started walking our separate ways, a parting comment was thanks for being helpful over the previous months. In an honest moment, I deflected the compliment by saying I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I was accidentally helpful. Maybe that’s not so bad.

It is far too easy to overthink things. At least that’s the case for me. Blame my background as a ‘rocket scientist’. (Really just an aerospace engineering, but I gave that up in 1998.) Those familiar with enough of my posts know that lately I’ve focused on four trends: AI, social injustice, politics, climate change. By one estimate, AI can be 8 times as intelligent as it was a year ago. I try to keep up, but I’m not in the race; I’m just a spectator. Social injustice may, may, may be making progress, but all I do is live my life and vote. Politics changed so radically recently that pundits are hitting ‘refresh’ continually, and underestimating the change. Climate change is so chaotic that it is an existential guessing game.

Overthinking any one of those things is easy – and the source of many posts, not just mine.

Keeping up is hard enough. Controlling anything beyond my life seems to be limited to that proportionally insignificant slice called a vote. (Of course, with enough votes, significant things can happen.)

And then there’s a comment and a compliment for something I didn’t consciously do.

It is hard to take credit for such things, but the appropriate response is probably a variant of ‘Thank you. You’re welcome.’

I’ve had this happen enough times that I’m not going to get into boring details.

Thank you. You’re welcome.

A similar thing happened because of my writing.

A reader sent me an email thanking me. They specifically prefaced it by mentioning that I am not solely responsible, but they wanted to give me some credit for helping them become a multi-millionaire. Hey, all I did was write something. There was no way to know that it would help someone. That’s the goal, but not the expectation.

I’ve had similar compliments happen often enough that I accept that my role in this life may not be something I am conscious of. That’s good, I guess. I don’t know. Have I heard the only comments that there were, or am I having a larger effect than I suspect?

Are you have a larger effect than you suspect?

Next month is December, time for my semi-annual portfolio review. I try to concisely describe each of my investments, the ups and downs and those in the middle. I post them on this blog, which also contains links to discussion boards and such. I like chronicling my thoughts, but I don’t expect them to benefit anyone else. If they do, then great ! If not, it doesn’t matter because its existence provides me with an outlet and maybe some insights.

December is the gift-giving season. Maybe this blog post is a bit premature, but only in terms of any optimization routine for maximizing my social reach. Give the holidays a break. Do good stuff whenever. Don’t wait.

You may already be doing it.