Unfortunately, in life, we haven’t figured out a way to “undo” things. National Start Over Day is meant to encourage people to embrace fresh starts, shake off past mistakes, and tackle new goals.
Back in 1997, I decided I wanted to become a professor of geography. It became my dream and passion thanks to Estonian professor Matti Kaups. In his Cultural Geography class, he regularly showed Kodak slides he had taken from the decks of icebreakers north of the Arctic Circle.
The most memorable of these slides were of polar bears tearing apart seals just a few meters below the professor, just off the shores of Spitzbergen — i.e., Svalbard. Matti’s courses, along with several other very influential ones, propelled me onward toward my goal until…
I became a professor. At which point, I suddenly realized…
It really is all about the pursuit.
It was quite anticlimactic. The thought of earning tenure and essentially being locked down to one place for an entire career terrified me. I like to switch jobs and geographies frequently. 😉
So this has me thinking…
I think an argument can be made that not achieving one’s pursuits, or never quite getting to the end, is not only okay, but in many cases more exciting. Satisfaction, for me at least, lies in the experience along the path toward the dream. The excitement of going to a concert, attending a sporting event, or seeing where one of my harebrained ideas might end up almost always outweighs the excitement of its achievement.
Case in point: does anyone complete uni because they are excited to attend the arduous graduation ceremony at the end?
Is that what graduates have worked so hard for? To spend three hours in insufferable heat, elbow-to-elbow with strangers whose surnames happen to be close to yours, wearing a silly robe and hat, listening to self-important people drivel on about clichés like “life is the pursuit, not the capture,” only to have your name muddled over a loudspeaker as you cross a stage? An experience during which many of us spend most of our time trying not to trip over microphone cords and PA equipment, while also making sure we shake everyone’s hand we’re supposed to and smile for a robed mug shot?
Alas… this blog post is starting to drone on like the graduation speeches I just dissed.
I do apologize. It’s difficult not to wax on and on when the day we are celebrating is National Start Over Day.
In honor of the day, I took a fresh approach to how I create these daily maps. Today, I wrote a prompt and ran it through three paid-for LLM subscriptions to compare and contrast what they produced. The prompt asked each model to create a heavily edited map showing the parallel between map iteration and creation, and life choices and fresh starts.
Just as there is no perfect or final map — until your boss says it’s time to wrap it up — there is no perfect route or way to experience life, either. At least not until our time is up.
Here is what each of the models came up with. Choose your favorite. Or better yet, create your own.
No matter what, try not to get too frustrated. As the philosopher Billie Joe Armstrong once noted: “Always move forward; going straight will get you nowhere.”
RESULTS
[please insert drumroll sound effect here]
ChatGPT 5.5 Image Creator
This is my favorite by far. But perhaps I’m biased. Same exact schema and prompt as was given to paid Gemini and paid Claude versions. This one feels most like what I wanted.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Thinking)
This one was heading the right direction but… Claude being Claude, likes to code things. So it attempted to create it using SVG output. As a huge fan of vector-based design, I am not opposed to this. But then it basically gave up and thought good enough, I feel like. It also said I could try again if I like. Not bad for SVG output, but not a winning first-draft either.
Google Gemini 3.1 Pro
Nice looking base map, but everything else is and/or feels a bit off. :-/
PROMPT SCHEMA USED (created by Ian with help from ChatGPT)
Title: “Revision Is Not Failure: It Is Cartography”
Core Concept
Create a static, poster-style map for National Start Over Day, a day about accepting past failures, learning from them, and beginning again. The map should use the visual language of cartographic revision: erased routes, crossed-out labels, ghosted linework, pencil marks, corrected legends, redrawn paths, marginal notes, and replacement symbols.
The central metaphor is that maps are not born perfect. They are drafted, corrected, revised, and improved. Human lives work the same way. Starting over is not erasing the past; it is redrawing the route with better information.
Intended Emotional Effect
The map should feel reflective, warm, intelligent, and quietly encouraging. It should not feel cheesy, motivational-poster-ish, corporate, religious, or therapy-branded. It should feel like a thoughtful cartographer made a poetic field map about resilience.