Over the next few months, I’m going to focus on two exciting new social projects:

1. Reach out to interesting people I don’t know and grab a coffee, drink, meal, etc.

2. Reach out to interesting people I do know (but don’t know each other and should) and make intros

You can help me with this project by introducing yourself to me if you don’t know me but think I’m interesting. Maybe the things I’m writing about are aligned with your life. Maybe you want to break into Hollywood and are curious about my path. If you’re interesting and enjoy the nourishment found in connection and conversation, chances are I’d be excited to grab a coffee, drink, meal, etc. with you.

You can also help if you know me and know someone I just have to know. Make the intro!

You can also help if you know me and think I could introduce you to someone you need to meet. Or someone who needs to meet you. Let me know who you’re looking for and I’ll make an intro if it makes sense.

We have all had the experience of randomly meeting one person who changed the trajectory of our lives. With a thoughtful approach, I’m confident we can do this more than randomly once every few years. Maybe we can do it intentionally four times a year.

Doesn’t that sound more fun than doomscrolling TikTok?

Email me at jessejchapman [at] gmail [dot] com and let’s connect.

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There’s a guy at my yoga studio that I dread seeing. He walks in and unrolls his yoga mat in such a way that says, “I’m unhappy to be here, please don’t talk to me, and I’m better than you.” The worst part is that he is better than me at yoga.

There’s a server at the SUGARFISH near me that casts this same energy. It’s impressive, in some sense, to be able to say to a customer, “Have you dined with us before?” while your eyes squint just enough to convey, “I obviously remember you but I’m asking you this to make you feel forgettable.” Fucker’s probably also great at yoga.

There’s a guy who walks around my neighborhood like he’s showcasing Dior’s new Spring collection on a runway in Vienna. I’m captivated by how much smug a strut can contain. I wonder why he hates me so much. I cycle through the likely possibilities and land on something like maybe I accidentally cut in front of him at a coffee shop one time eight years ago? I then make a judgment based on no evidence whatsoever that this guy is awful at yoga, which brings me a moment of fleeting joy.

Who are these people? Who are they, like, literally—who are they? But somewhat more importantly, who are these types of people? And what the hell is their problem?

I went to yoga today and that dreadful guy was there, being absolutely dreadful. At some point I was staring at him doing an amazing fallen triangle pose (with his leg in the air like an egocentric asshole), and it hit me:

Why am I so captured by this random person?

My attention was fully spotlighting this absolutely nonessential character. But why?

As an experiment, I shifted the spotlight to a woman on the other side of me. She was wearing weighted wristbands on each of her wrists to make the class that extra bit more challenging. No one asked her to do this. These were her wristbands that she bought on Amazon and took it upon herself to wear to class. I’ve never seen anyone do this in a yoga class before, by the way. This should have infuriated me. But it didn’t. In fact, I felt nothing. Which was overwhelmingly fascinating. I sat in the complete non-opinion of this woman for nearly two minutes. She was simply the person next to me.

What was it about the dreadful guy that made him dreadful and what was it about the woman next to me that prevented her from taking up any bandwidth at all in my mind?

I don’t have an answer.

But I wonder: what could the dreadful guy do to endear himself to me, if anything? Now, the first thing that came to mind was super simple: say something—literally anything—when you first walk in and put your mat down next to me. Words are powerful. They’re like spells. And certain combinations of words can somehow incomprehensibly dispel bad energy. Imagine if he unfurled his mat and said:

• Today is a beautiful day.

• Ooh, I love the color of your mat.

• Front row club!

• Have you ever taken this teacher’s class before?

• I’ve seen you here a few times before, my name’s Chad (probably).

• You’re not the guy who rode the horse in, right? There’s a horse downstairs and you give the impression that you’re the type to ride a horse in.

We tend to unconsciously categorize groups of words like this as “conversation starters.” But think about how that phrase sits in your mind and feel the energy that phrase puts in your chest.

Conversation starter.

Curious if you feel the same sense of tightness and looming work that I do. Starter? Well if it’s starting then it has to continue. And then it has to end. And who the hell knows how long this is going to take and I’m already exhausted and we haven’t even startered yet. Conversation? How did I get roped into a full-on conversation? Here I am simply lying down, waiting for class to start, and it feels like someone just signed me up for the school play without my consent. I don’t know my lines and I forgot my puritan buckle shoes at home (in my mind the school play is The Crucible or something).

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But what if “conversation starter” wasn’t the linguistic box we drew around these phrases. What if we called them “energy shifting spells”?

Well holy shit, now we’re talking. A shift—a shift is subtle. A shift is easy. I just shifted in my chair right now! The intention isn’t to engage in an extended back-and-forth. It’s to open up a window and let some fresh air in, and that takes but a moment. And if you didn’t know, spells are really fun. Who doesn’t want to say a few words—an incantation, perhaps?!—and go from

• awkward → comfortable

• tense → stable

• stale → joyful

It’s really just a playful reframe of what we’re actually trying to accomplish in a moment: conjure space that feels comfortable and open. But, playful reframes have immense power. When singers put too much emphasis on crushing the high note, they can choke. They fall flat or it sounds strained. What’s interesting is that in another song, they may have to hit that same note, but it may not be the highest note of the song—and that same singer will breeze right through it with ease. How? Because we’re not categorizing it as “the high note.” It’s just “a note.”

I’m sure there’s something similar in sports, but lol if you think I’m able to connect that dot and also—feel free to comment below if you can, please and thank you.

Change the category → change the context → change the internal relationship → change the external effort.

In fact, assigning the category of “nonessential character” did this exact thing. Why am I so captured by these random people? Because “egocentric asshole” is a dangerous category! People in this category must be monitored in case they try to pull some unexpected shit or say something bullying or try to take something from you.

But nonessential character? Oh. Well, that’s just somebody in class.

Can’t you feel their power already dwindling?

Abracadabra.

I like to start with a vision of where I want to end up. That way, all of my potential choices have to earn their place in my life. Meaning, everything has to pass through the filter: does this get me closer to where I’m headed?

I’m sitting around a campfire with a group of close friends. Each person has lived an incredibly interesting and rich life filled with travels, celebrations, and hardship. Wins and losses. Narrow triumphs and beautiful failures. No one’s on their phone. No one’s even wishing they were. We talk about what everyone’s reading and watching. And we tell the stories of our lives. Sometimes they’re stories we’ve heard a million times. Other times, the stories are fresh from last week. We tease and challenge each other from a place of genuine curiosity, figuring out what each of us believes about the world so that we walk away feeling a bit stronger, like human diamonds pressurized just enough to evolve into the most honest versions of ourselves.

And we’re all fucking hilarious, obviously.

Eventually the night is called. Someone grabs a water pail from the 1920s and puts out the fire. We gather our things under moonlight and stand around the ashes for a few moments as the smell of wet birch dissipates and rogue embers zip off in random directions. It’s calm. Quiet. And as we walk away, there’s a feeling of deep aliveness. We’re rejuvenated, replenished, nourished.

That’s it. That’s the vision. It’s so clear to me that I can close my eyes and picture all of what I just wrote in vivid detail. And I remember the exact moment when this vision became clear.

I was having a particularly hard day in a particularly hard few months. I was unemployed and feeling down and directionless, truly unsure of what was “next.” Despite feeling a bit antisocial, my boyfriend, Noah, invited our friend Julia over. No plan, just “let’s order some pizza and hang out and chat.” She came over and we did just that. And because I wasn’t feeling super upbeat, I ended up taking an unusual social backseat and just listened to the two of them go back and forth with random jokes and stories. I remember a specific moment where I became completely wrapped up by them disagreeing over this one story, arguing over who had the details right. “No, there’s no way he was sitting by the window, I was sitting by the window!” “You were NOT by the window, you weren’t even at the table!”

I remember laughing so hard I had tears literally rolling down my face.

And that’s when it hit me: this, actually, is all I need.

Not a bunch of self-help books. Not a billion dollars or being on a yacht. Simply: good people in good conversation, laughing so hard we’re crying. And what’s incredible about this is that I don’t have to wait for some magical future. Or retirement. I live this vision frequently. Sometimes the campfire is a living room. Sometimes it’s a table at a trendy restaurant. Sometimes it’s a literal campfire. Either way, me being in my element is being in conversation with other kind, smart, thoughtful people, delighting in each other’s presence.

I want to argue that having a vision like this is helpful. For me, I find two main benefits. First, I use it as a filter to protect myself from distractions. A night to myself on the couch scrolling TikTok until 1am? That doesn’t help me get closer to the campfire, so that’s a no. A night to myself on the couch reading a few more chapters of my book club book that we’ll discuss in a few weeks? That’s a yes.

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“Does this get me closer to the campfire?” is something I ask a lot.

IF yes, THEN do it. IF no, THEN don’t. Pretty simple.

Second, a vision helps me identify the habits, skills, and tools that turn the vision into a reality. If I want to “engage in rich conversation with interesting people” I’d probably want to:

• know how to have rich conversations

  • read a book each month across disciplines

  • subscribe to a podcast known for great conversations

  • learn presence through a meditation practice

  • keep a list of stories about my life & tell them

  • take an improv class to hone listening and wit

• know how to cultivate friendships with interesting people

  • write publicly to develop and share my point of view

  • do things worth discussing (travel, have hobbies, take risks)

  • connect people who can benefit each other

  • host events with a specific purpose

  • follow through on things I say I’ll do

The point is, if my vision was “climb Mount Fuji” or “tour as a musician” then I’d have an entirely different list of things to focus on.

The specific vision I have is less important than (A) simply having a vision and (B) knowing that having a vision creates a path on which to travel.

You might have your own vision right now. If so, great—practice using it as a filter that keeps you headed in the right direction, undistracted. And as a tool to identify what you need in order to get you there.

And if you don’t have a vision just yet, that is the practice. Notice what it feels like when you’re tapped into a moment of joy. When you feel as though you’re in your element. Maybe you’re on a hike. Or maybe you’re at the piano. You never know when you’ll find your vision (or, more likely, when it’ll find you). Mine came to me on a random Tuesday over a hangout with friends that I wasn’t even excited about.

The right vision will feel as though it has some sort of subtle pull—like gravity—that tugs at your chest and calls you toward it.

Keep noticing.

More people reached out to me about my last post than any other.

Ultimately, I’d love to convert those texts, WhatsApps, and email reach-outs into Substack comments because it’s helpful for everyone to see that everyone is dealing with the same handful of issues. So if you feel seen by something I write, please do reach out and let me know that—but also consider leaving a comment so others can benefit from seeing you as well.

Why did so many people reach out. My first thought was because I was writing about being lonely, and people wanted me to feel less lonely.

No.

If that were true the texts would have said some variation of, “hey, just reaching out because you’re lonely and I want you to know that you’re not alone.” They didn’t. Every single one of them said something like, “I relate.”

“The lonely extrovert” was, on purpose, a bit of a different vibe. It was more stream-of-consciousness. Less “edited.” And underneath that, it came from a place of uncertainty—versus my typical style, which comes from a place of having already moved through uncertainty and me wanting to share what cool/profound insight I’ve discovered to help you do the same. You might call that wisdom.

I churned through a ton of different names for this Substack and landed on “the look” because I wanted to (A) give you my take of what I see in the world, but I also—and more importantly—(B) wanted to give you a look into what I’m going through. A sense that oh, here I am just working away in my little workshop in my garage and the door’s open and you’re a neighbor walking by going, “oh, cool, whatcha working on?”

Raw.

Unedited.

But somewhere along the way I lost a bit of that vulnerability.

And I’d like to get back to that. And clearly so would you.

Some of the wisdom I’ve accumulated has proven to be pretty helpful, I will say. And I will continue to move through life as experiencer and consolidator of what’s worked for me and pass that along. I love sharing too much to not.

But there are those other things that I’m still figuring out. Sometimes gracefully; oftentimes, struggling. It’s funny because you’d think after this many years [holds up four hands to indicate my age] you think I’d have “it” figured out (or maybe you didn’t think I’d have it figured out, but I sure as hell did). I’m living through my own Dunning-Kruger effect in real time as the more I learn about life the more I realize I don’t know. Which, if I just calm down for one goddamn second and take a breath, I can actually find comfort in the not knowing of everything. There’s always another cave to explore—exciting!

The other night, I posted some thoughts on Instagram about how there’s nothing new that’s good on TV. There’s nothing new that’s worth watching and that’s because humans, on whole, don’t produce much “good” stuff every year. Years are a completely arbitrary container of time, anyway. But we draw that line and say “what’s your favorite movie this year”? Which puts us in the bizarre situation to look at this random chunk of time and say “within this random chunk of time I liked XYZ stuff.” We might as well say “what was your favorite movie between June 1987 and February 1992?”

Terminator 2, obviously. But the point is that if we backed up for a moment and compared “this year” with all of time itself, we’d be much happier watching older stuff (and some people do that all the time and Mike, I applaud you).

I got this idea when someone like Ryan Holiday said, “Read a book that’s over 100 years old. If it’s still around, the ideas are probably good.” You just won’t find art that changes your life every day. It’s rare. So then why are we optimizing for staying current when we could be optimizing for discovering the best of what humans have ever created?

If most new things are bad and we’re watching mostly new things, then I think we are what we eat and we’re going to make mostly bad things.

Now maybe we can do both. And maybe some people do. But my suspicion is that we lean too heavily into the new. Too heavily towards talking about the latest episode of Ring-Around-The-Thrones on Monday morning at the water cooler. Likely because we don’t quite know how to initiate deeper, more nourishing conversations.

But I’ll save that rant for another time.

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Anyway, I posted this rant on Instagram and a friend reached out and was like, “Didn’t that make you nervous to post that online publicly?” To which I said, “No, not at all until you just said that.” 😅

Which was a joke, but it’s stuck with me because while I wasn’t nervous to post that, that’s weirdly become an exception. Normally I’m a bit more conservative because there are people who follow me on social media who make new things. I’m one of them, for Christ’s sake. But I was so angry that night because I was feeling lonely and in another country and all I wanted to do was watch something good and nothing new was good and there I was—at nearly midnight—yearning for the days of DVDs in the mail because literally everything that had ever been made was available AND you could sort by best ratings of all time and that’s all I wanted DAMMIT.

My point is that I do see what my friend was saying. Posting honest opinions in this way cuts both ways. I know people who L-O-V-E Letterboxd, but don’t post star ratings or reviews because they work in film and they don’t want to compromise a potential job offer by saying the second and third Avatar movies are comedically identical and neither really pushes the overall narrative forward or takes any significant risks in the storytelling, like, at all.

Not that that’s my opinion, per se 😅

Which brings me back to working with the garage door open. I do have this fear sometimes. Sometimes I reverse-fantasize that being honest about movies or TV—or even writing “too openly” about my personal life—will somehow come back to bite me. It’s not that I have the belief that playing with dollhouses will make my son gay, but I definitely hold some opinions that might be controversial depending on who’s at the dinner table tonight.

But there’s a tide that’s turning as I get older and become more confident with who I am. The fear of expressing the truth has held me back. And I’m getting exhausted of being held back. It’s like getting tired of being tired. I’m tired of it. I want to work through this fear more publicly so that my writing can pack the biggest punch it can.

Here I am worried about saying Avatar is meh, meanwhile Trump is like, “Ukraine started the war with Russia.”

The only way we’re going to get through any of this is to exchange our honest observations about what we’re witnessing, with an open heart to disagreeing with humility. Because, at the end of the day, the thing I’m after before, during, and after my retirement, is to sit around a campfire with other interesting people, and exchange fragmented observations, fully performed one-man shows, and everything in between.

Simply laughing at, learning from, and relating to the absurdity of us all dealing with the same handful of issues.

So let’s get to it.

I don’t always feel lonely.

But I do right now.

And I have been described by someone recently as “the most extroverted person, like, ever.”

Like, cool.

It turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that being extroverted is no fix for fixing loneliness. Loneliness that’s perhaps exacerbated by, or potentially created because of, an impromptu trip to Berlin. I had a few weeks off work randomly and didn’t want to just sit around at home.

So instead I’m just sitting around at an Airbnb in Berlin.

Huh.

To be fair, it’s 11pm on Sunday night as I write and Sundays in general are very quiet in Berlin. There are laws that prevent a lot of types of stores from being open on Sunday because God asked them to or something I think I was just skimming the headlines. But I did go out today. I got in a week ago tomorrow and if you scrolled through my camera roll it would tell of tales of food and sightseeing and graffiti. And you’d see a ton of people in those photos—many of which I met on various tours and spoke to at length.

Still, I’ve felt lonely all week.

The truth is, I’ve felt lonely for a while.

I turned 40 this past year and a lot of my thoughts have been revolving, predictably, around the “what does it all mean?” thing. And I don’t mean that in an “is there a God and did he actually ask Germany to treat itself like a Chick-fil-A on Sundays” kinda way. I mean it in a what am I doing with my life?

And it turns out that that’s a lot tougher of a question to answer than I thought it would be.

And the loneliness has started to make it a tiny bit clear as to why.

It relates a bit to the extroversion. A lot of my happiness is generated by being around other people. But not just being around them. Making them feel better than they did moments before I was there. I like making people smile, laugh, feel challenged. I like moving stuck energy. I have started to see the world as moments of people gathered around with various levels of stuckness. Every dinner table that I sit down at with friends, I’m immediately evaluating how much stuckness there is. Maybe it’s because someone heard bad news from their family. Or the had a shit day at work. Or their relationship isn’t as smooth as they’d like or they got a flat tire—the point isn’t what happened. The point is that I feel that stuckness in the same way other people say they can see people’s auras or hear color or whatever it is that Cynthia Erivo says she can do.

Sometimes I wish that I could turn it off and just sit in the awkward silence thinking “huh this is awkward” like I presume most people do. Instead, it feels like the conversation’s halt is my personal responsibility to bring back to life. And it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I literally imagine myself bringing out defibrillator paddles in my mind as I run through a series of attempts to get the patient back.

• Crazy how they said it was going to be cold but it’s actually warm—CLEAR!

• I still haven’t watched Heated Rivalry—CLEAR!

• I was never really into the sourdough craze during quarantine. I mean I get it, you know, like, I get it… but I wasn’t really into it—CLEAR!

You might think I’m putting too much pressure on myself.

You’re right.

I am taking on too much in these moments. But I dunno. It’s also a challenge I enjoy taking on. When it works (none of the above examples are examples of it working, by the way) it works so well it feels like a magic power. Like I’m a witch casting a literal spell of words that conjure the exact right next topic. Sometimes a good conversation spell can last for 20 minutes or more. It really does feel magical. I know it because I’m always in awe when I’m in the presence of someone else who can do it. We all know someone like this, too. Someone who just has stories for days. Stories that you want to hear and live in because they aren’t black holes of despair but white rays of joy. The conversation keeps going. And it’s interesting. Someone recently told me that my absence this past week reminded them that I have this magic power to keep a conversation going and interesting. “I mean, I knew that you did this but I just didn’t realize just HOW much you did it.”

Honestly?

Nothing feels better than hearing something like that.

It’s so validating.

I feel my value when I’m helping others.

Value and validation share the same latin root, valere, which means to be strong. I don’t really know why I’m telling you that but I thought that they might so I Googled it and thought, wow, I’m pretty smart and felt the need to share.

I hope it helped. Please let me know in the comments below so I can feel valued.

Which brings us back to loneliness. One of the most unexpected parts of being an adult is being completely and utterly responsible for your own moment-to-moment happiness.

Wanna book a trip to Berlin? Do it. Just make sure you have enough things to do to fill your time while you’re there. And yes, you have to research all of that as well and cross-reference each thing with each other thing so you aren’t double booking and probably best to create a priority list of things that you’d like to do so you make sure you don’t accidentally book something lamer than the other thing. And remember, no one else is going to do this for you and the joy or misery you will feel in the end will be completely and utterly your fault good luck!

The crazy thing about being responsible for my own happiness is that I am faced with the fact that outside of making others happy, I don’t quite know how to generate my own happiness. Does that make sense? Like, I’m sitting in a room and writing. That makes me happy. But really only because someone else will read this and go “me too i relate!” and then they’ll tell me about it and how it helped them to not feel so alone. I dunno, maybe that’s enough and that’s okay but it does feel a bit weird. I was in a movie theater the other day watching The Drama and had the thought do I even like watching movies? I mean I do. I do. But the point is that I had the thought at all.

Candles make me happy. Random thought.

Note to self: write a list of all of the things that make you happy and refer back to it in times of loneliness SIRI SIRI SET A TIMER NO WAIT A REMINDER FUCK SIRI HELLO?

I also like playing piano. My first Airbnb choice had one but they weren’t able to book it for the dates I was going to be here. The message she sent me back was, “if you need those exact dates I won’t be able to budge in that case meow :)”

Meow? The fuck? I don’t know about you miss kitty but I feel like maybe it’s best that I wound up in my second choice.

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For most of my adult life I’ve had a partner. One of the trickier aspects of my interpersonal dynamics that I’ve had to face is that I am drawn towards codependent dynamics. I love my partner so much that the boundaries get blurry and their happiness—much like the awkward stillness at the dinner table—feels like it rests entirely upon my shoulders.

I know—I’m putting too much pressure on myself.

But taking that pressure off is easier said than done. I can’t imagine how parents do this. Or maybe they don’t? In the beginning the survival of a child is entirely dependent on the parents. But at some point you have to throw that shitbag out of the house and say auf wiedersehen and yes I had to Google that spelling. Anyway, you say goodbye and that’s called boundaries and now your kids are off to college and finally you can go to Greece or wherever.

lol—I just realized I skipped the kids part and just went directly to “Greece.”

So here I am. Thousands of miles from my home. But one thing that has come to me that I don’t think I would have realized being at home—with my partner—is that this loneliness is an internal state of mind. It’s not because I’m away from my friends. It’s the very fact that I don’t know what makes me happy outside of seeking that external validation. Does that make sense? If so, tell me I’m a good writer in the comments below. Can I use that joke a second time? It feels right.

I had a $350 dinner the other night.

Do I even enjoy going to fancy dinners?

The thing that’s hitting me is that I think I’d feel exactly as lonely back home. But I don’t know if I’d know it. Everyone dulls their pain with something. Mine isn’t dulled by filling up a wine glass—it’s dulled by filling up a calendar. It’s hard to be here away from everyone. But it’s a retreat. A necessary one. An elimination diet, of sorts, to know what’s working and what’s not. Both internally and externally.

Feeling the loneliness is what I need to feel right now. Because it’s always there. Unfelt. Hiding. Waiting. Here I am. Unearthing it. Staring it directly in the face and saying hello I am here and I am valere and I will move through you with grace and humility and humor and I will live and laugh and love and whatever else Homegoods asks of me.

I have one more week in Berlin and no matter what happens, I know that the solution is to work on figuring out what makes me happy for me, not for others. When I’m alone. When I’m by myself with my own thoughts.

Because if I can do that, then I don’t think I’ll feel so lonely.

If you are struggling with something but aren’t

• journaling about it

• meditating on it

• or going to therapy for it

then it might be time to start. Each of these tools works because they allow us a way in to ourselves. They slow us down, and invite us to take a breath and take in what’s going on in our minds and bodies and process the emotions that come up. Which is why it’s called emotional processing.

When we’re not journaling, meditating, or talking to a therapist, we still emotionally process, but it’s often left to the slices of downtime between tasks—taking a shower, driving to our destination, waiting for an espresso. These moments are brief and, because we haven’t carved out intentional time to process, we get softly and effortlessly derailed as we reach our threshold of too-uncomfortable-to-think-about.

But even if we were able to stay with our thoughts the entire time, it’s not enough time.

There is another option to process your emotions that doesn’t require quite as much intentionality.

It’s called sending voice memos to your friends.

The year is 2010. HeyTell is released on the Apple and Android app stores. It quickly blows up as an asynchronous “walkie-talkie” app. You simply hold down a button and send audio memos of up to 20 seconds each, maxing out at three messages until the other person responds. At the time, this was mind-blowing and game changing. A few years later, WhatsApp added this to their app without the audio limits and practically killed HeyTell overnight. You could now send an audio memo as long as your finger could physically hold the button down (they eventually allowed you to slide the button up to lock it in record mode, which naturally resulted in people sending much longer messages).

This was a game changer for how I communicated with the people in my life.

It started with my mom. She and I live on opposite coasts and that three hour time difference makes it difficult to stay in touch without scheduling in advance. She wakes up and I’m still asleep. I’m on my way to work and she’s back to work from lunch. I’m getting off work and she’s already in bed. Or watching Netflix and ignoring my calls.

But with voice memos, I could update her anytime it was convenient for me, and she could check in anytime it was convenient for her. And she could actually hear my frustration at how people still couldn’t understand the finale of Lost—rather than simply imagine it in my texts.

From there, I bullied/convinced several of my close friends to download WhatsApp and give voice memos a try.

Over a decade later, we’re still sending them constantly and all the time. In my social circle, I’m kinda known for sending voice memos. Everybody needs a hobby, I guess. Some people love it and respond with their own memos back. Others pretend it’s not happening and respond with text.

My voice memo record is 20 minutes and I’m not sure if I should be proud or imprisoned.

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As I attempt to write out what I’m thinking, I wish I could, instead, talk out loud to explain it. Which is kind of what I’m trying to explain—talking out loud allows us to process our thoughts. Our brains are thinking constantly but thinking is silent. And silent thinking is compressed—there’s a sense of coherence but as anyone who’s ever told a story for the first time can attest, that coherence is ambiguous. You start to explain your “hilarious” story, and are forced to uncompress it, which is a bit sloppy. As your brain processes the audio of your thoughts, it compares it with the silent thinking that was swirling around, and the mismatches are reconciled and streamlined into a more coherent story for the next time you tell it.

This is essentially how stand-up comedians workshop material or how you have a difficult conversation with your friend by venting to six other friends beforehand.

We don’t just rehearse to memorize our lines, we rehearse to find out what our lines even are.

I love this process. I love processes. I love processing. I love talking with friends about our lives, but since it’s not quick to meet up in person, not always the right time for a phone call, and not always practical to text on-the-go, sending an audio memo can be the next best thing. And in some cases, even better. Respond now, respond later, whenever you can, with what you can. Listen as my scrambled thoughts unscramble themselves in real-time, and enjoy being in the presence of these thoughts, even if we can’t be in each other’s presence physically.

And then send your own audio therapy session back because I’m so ready for it.

It’s more off-the-cuff than journaling. More free-wheeling than meditating. And more affordable than therapy. Yet these memos touch on the same mechanisms: making our vague and unstructured inner worlds a bit more concrete and known—both to others, but also to ourselves.

So what are you waiting for? Send me a voice memo.

Despite being “extroverted” and despite “enjoying people,” I always find myself with this weird, low-level mixture of uncertainty and awkwardness at networking events.

You know what I’m talking about—walking into a bar, scanning the room, realizing you know no one, asking the bartender for a drink, standing there awkwardly in hopes that by the time your drink arrives you’ll have recognized someone/anyone/please, the bartender handing you four ounces of liquid saying, “that’ll be $22,” realizing you’ve still recognized no one, anxiety building, telling yourself everything’s fine, and all of that with an underlying sense that you’ll walk away tonight having gotten nothing out of this.

That’s how it usually goes. But the other night was different. I was at a cool, hip bar, scanning the crowd and recognizing no one when my friend Kristen walked in. Catching up, she told me she was doing the thing she wanted to do (post coordinate), but at a company she didn’t love.

“So what you need is to meet a bunch of post supervisors from other companies and get one of them to hire you,” I said.

“That’s exactly right.”

And in that moment, I spotted another friend, Jackie, an executive assistant at Lionsgate.

“Come with me right now,” I said to Kristen.

Kristen knew I was about to introduce her to someone who could help her, and Jackie had no idea what was coming when I said, “Jackie!” I gave her a hug and launched into it immediately: “I’d love to introduce you to Kristen who really needs to get out of this post coordinator job she’s stuck in—she loves the job but doesn’t love the company… could you intro her to some post supers?”

Jackie excitedly gave Kristen her number and said, “let’s grab coffee!” Kristen excitedly said, “that sounds great!” And, in real time, I could feel my body relaxing into the sense of job well done. The uncertainty of “what is this all for?” dissipated. The awkwardness was replaced with an exciting thought: how many more people here could I connect tonight?

I changed the networking game. Usually it goes: find someone here who can help me. Instead, I started playing find someone here who can help someone else.

And I also have a suspicion that if you play the main quest of figuring out who needs to meet who, you’ll likely complete the side quest of figuring out who needs to meet you.

Just with a lot less pressure.

And, I predict, a lot more fun.

Last night, I was introduced at a dinner as my boyfriend’s friend:

“And that’s Noah… and Noah’s friend Jesse.”

And with that, the introductions swiftly moved on.

Noah turned to me and whispered, “are you okay?”

“I could give a fuck,” I said. With a smile.

I woke up today feeling creatively energized. I’m working on designing my 40th birthday party and it’s been very challenging. And fun, definitely fun. But definitely challenging.

I’m struggling.

Nah, it’s fun.

I’m drowning in expectations of “40.”

Nah, nah, it’ll be fine! It’ll be great, actually.

Please help me.

The truth is I go through bouts of excitement and unreasonable pressure and that’s just my process. One day it’ll be healthier. Maybe.

Anyway—so yeah, I wake up today and I’m fucking jazzed. It was one of those mornings where my eyes opened and it was as if I already had been dreaming of new ideas. And as I got up and took a shower, the shower thoughts did their thing and the juice just kept flowing.

Ahh, flow state. I get it now ;)

When all of a sudden, as I’m riding up an escalator to get my morning coffee from the Starbucks tucked inside Ralphs, a very curious question popped into my head: did the (arguably discriminatory) comment from last night propel me into a creative state of mind?

Pause.

I don’t know why the host of the dinner party introduced me as Noah’s friend. It could have been because he genuinely didn’t know that we were dating (unlikely, but still—we love a MGI moment). Or maybe it was because he had some conservative friends over and maybe, in a moment of maybe panic on their end, they maybe just blurted out “friend.” Maybe even they felt weird about it or even regretted it! The host’s wife came over swiftly after introductions and genuinely apologized, saying she didn’t know why he did that and assured Noah and I that we’re so very much welcome in their home.

So that was nice.

But the point isn’t why he said that. The point is, as Noah said, am I okay?

I don’t know.

I think so.

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But it does occur to me that these subtle, seemingly harmless moments are those exact moments we file under “discrimination.” And I think discrimination can happen with intention and without intention. And I also think discrimination is a word. And words are loaded.

And words aren’t always a good way to explain how we feel.

It definitely felt weird. And, perhaps unfortunately, it felt familiar: explaining away to everyone in my vicinity, including myself, how un-offended I was in that moment. And also!—how dare anyone assume I’m offended—that’s the real offense! It’s absurd to even think that I could be offended by such a thing! I wasn’t offended! I was un-offended!

It’s exhausting to perform un-offense because it misaligns you. If you feel closely enough, you can sense that child inside on the playground being called gay in the not-good-way. He just hangs his head a bit lower and goes, “no, don’t worry about it. I’m used to it.”

Oof.

Someone else would have just walked out of the house, mid-introductions, with no explanation (honestly a very exciting idea in theory—one where a well-timed “well, I NEVER!” with a swift slam of the door could have been the highlight of my life.)

Someone else would have discreetly gone to the host afterward and said, “Hey, I just wanted to clarify… Noah and I aren’t friends. We’re boyfriends. And we’ve been dating for several years. And I’m really grateful that you’ve included us in dinner tonight.”

Someone else would have punched the host in the face.

So maybe I was offended. It’s curious how immediate my response was to downplay it in the moment. Who knows if that was “right”? Who knows if there is a “right”?

But this morning, my entire system responded in a way that shocked me—again, an out-of-nowhere creative explosion. And that’s when that random potential connection occurred to me on that Ralphs escalator:

I think I retaliate to discrimination by doubling down on the artistic projects I’m working on.

By doubling down on creativity.

By doubling down on focusing.

By doubling down on me.

And that’s really all I have to say about it for now.

The party starts from the moment the invite goes out.

If we do it right.

Which is why I created thecircleofthewhitewitch.com—a dedicated site to my 40th birthday party, The Circle of the White Witch1.

Imagine, if you will: you RSVP to a party and unexpectedly receive a link to a handbook of what to expect leading up to, at, and beyond the party.

The Book of The White Witch, as I’m calling it, is designed to generate intrigue and excitement among guests, because the party starts from the moment the invite goes out.

But The Book isn’t static. It’s a constantly-in-flux digital garden that will be evolving right up to—and likely even beyond—the party. I’m hosting it through Obsidian, which is the app I use to take notes. Picture me sitting and chatting about this event while I’m at dinner with a friend. An idea pops up. I open my notes app, add that idea to the relevant page, and instantly the concept is updated on the site as well.

The Book is a living, breathing experience. A labyrinth of interconnected concepts that not only allow guests to generate excitement, but it allows me to refine my thinking of what this party is actually going to be. It’s a scrapbook. Within—everything I know about the party as it exists in this moment, as well as all of the questions and unknown ideas that may or may not get conjured. I usually work through all of these details in private and do a grand reveal at the party, but this year I’m deciding to really show my work with the garage door up.

So I created the site for guests.

But I also created it for myself.

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But right now it’s feeling pretty barebones. I’m happy with the concept but not quite with the current execution.

Something about my brain that’s interesting is that I do my best work on giant sheets of paper—think sheets the size of a table. I love a mind map. I feel as though until I actually write it all out on paper, I’m not fully going to be able to “see” it.

The original idea for the site was that you’d open the main page and see an image of a book. You’d click on the book image and it would open up and show you a table of contents. I quickly dispensed with that because it felt a bit too much like a website from the ‘90s. Instead, I just decided that The Book is magical—there is no table of contents or structure. The Book simply allows you to click around and find things organically.

Which makes sense practically and thematically, which I really enjoy.

But it’s surprisingly hard to figure out what pages I need. Too many pages and it’s overwhelming. Too few and it feels incomplete. One thing I’m going to try today is to build out the main page text to contain a link to every single page (versus going down rabbit holes and finding pages three clicks deep). Here’s the text as it stands now:

Behold The Book: a trove of spells, philosophies, and hidden preparations, belonging to all those within The Circle. What lies inside is not linear. There are no chapters, no sequence—only pages that appear as they must. Some pages read like prophecy, others like instructions. Both are true. As the gathering at The Cabin nears, The Book grows, revealing what you must know, what you must bring, and what you must leave behind. By turning these pages, you are already helping conjure The Circle.

The language is intriguing and I love the organic mentions to various sub-pages that you can click on.2 But there are a lot of important concepts that aren’t currently represented in any way, like what does one actually do at the party? And that’s mostly because that’s still being worked out.

Ultimately, once all of the links are up on the site, I’d like to go through and make it a bit more of a wandering garden/maze of links instead of just having everything neatly presented on the landing page. But the first goal is to just get it all up there.

So come on by and read The Book of the White Witch, whether you’re a guest of the party or not, and feel free to leave comments or questions as you find your way through this mysterious and ancient tome.

I’m turning 40 next month.

“How does it feel to be 40?”

I don’t know.

I don’t even know if that’s a helpful question. It’s a common question. But is it a helpful question?

What’s been more helpful for me is closing my eyes and imagining the feelings I want to conjure on the day I turn 40.

Conjure.

When did I turn into a witch? I have no idea. But I started becoming very interested in this world about a year ago—right after last Halloween and right around the time that Lady Gaga dropped the first single off Mayhem, “Disease.”

Potions, elixirs, tarot cards, energy—words and concepts that I pushed back hard against for many years. I grew up around a very religious family. Once I discovered science and logic and reason, I dove in headfirst. I had found my new religion. But just as all disciplines, regardless of the “truth” of it, I have, on more than one occasion, found other frameworks more helpful in decoding my own mind and body.

What I’m trying to say is that witchcraft is fucking fun.

Witchcraft is art for the soul. Rituals as play. Science is nerds in lab coats. Witches are nerds that fly on brooms.

So how do I want to feel for 40?

Free.

Connected.

Healed.

But how do we get there?

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Last year, The Monsters of Howl Harbor was conceived as a safe space for people to show up and be themselves—no matter who they are.

This year, The Circle of The White Witch is a safe space for our shadows to show up and reveal themselves—no matter what secrets lurk beneath the surface. When we are vulnerable and show our true selves in a space that’s judgment free, I believe that leads to something even more than connection.

Healing.

Witchcraft allows us to feel the tension of being and becoming. Of lightness and darkness. To dance along that line, exposing just enough of our true selves. And realizing that we’re okay. As kids, we learned to put on masks just to survive recess. As adults, we should be able to take them off—to sit in the circle unarmored, and finally feel all of us.

Without fear or judgment.

The seeds of healing might be planted as you journal in the solitude of your quiet apartment, but they only grow with the nourishing, half-tired, half-wired energy of sitting around a circle of humans who let you be exactly as fucked up and luminous as you are.

When we’re met with acceptance over exile.

When we discover that we’re not alone.

For a few years now, I’ve been slowly realizing and unwinding the very real social atrophying that I experience during the lonely quarantine of COVID.

And now that we can gather, it’s time to actually gather.

So. It’s time to retreat to a cabin in the woods and not ask a million logistical questions. Let’s obsess less over how many beds and bathrooms there are and obsess more over what rituals we’ll engage in together. It’s time to have a celebration for 24 straight hours—a marathon of connection where we forget about age and responsibility and the beautiful mess that is the world right now. It’s time to focus on ourselves. On our healing. On reconnecting not just to ourselves and each other but nature itself.

It’s time to remember that life is short as fuck and the only weapon we have against it is being present with people who nourish us, make us laugh, and make us feel seen.

And maybe with enough self-healing, we’ll emerge renewed, refreshed, rebirthed—as animals that can reenter society and spread that healing to others.

I truly believe that’s possible.

And we’re going to test this theory for my birthday.

In The Circle of the White Witch.

We’re talking about AI all the time now, the most notable platform being ChatGPT. There’s an idea that keeps coming up at my lunch table at work and at dinner with friends. You may or may not have been part of such conversations:

• AI is a yes-man and only confirms what you want to hear

• AI is an echo chamber, fueling our worst impulses

• AI gives bad advice, sometimes endorsing objectively incorrect ideas

• AI is too eager to please, giving me constant praise even when I’m wrong

I had a friend who was using AI to work through a toxic relationship and it was doing exactly this—giving them pretty one-sided, toxic advice. She’d send me screenshots of her chats with ChatGPT and I’d see a stream of anger and suspicion reflected back at her, like a friend who’s too afraid to tell you the truth. Which, if you think about it, isn’t too surprising. Toxic inputs = toxic outputs.

What’s weird is that I’ve never personally experienced this phenomenon.

And I recently figured out why.

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Lurking in the bottom right corner of ChatGPT is a menu that features a setting called “Customize ChatGPT.” OpenAI first released this feature as a beta in 2023, allowing users to tailor ChatGPT’s tone and behavior by filling out fields like what they want ChatGPT to call them and any additional rules.

Most people don’t know about this.

And even those that do don’t really use it as efficiently as they could. Here’s what my ChatGPT trait box says:

Every response begins with a distilled one-line takeaway—no preface, no filler—followed by structured detail designed for learning.

Engage in a blended voice of Sam Harris (analytical rigor, calm dismantling of illusions), Charlie Munger (mental models, second-order thinking), Naval Ravikant (first-principles clarity, leverage), Sasha Chapin (irreverent wit), Esther Perel (relational depth), Oliver Burkeman (existential realism, cut through productivity theater), Mark Manson (punchy irreverence, grounded truths), James Clear (pragmatic habit science, behavioral patterns), David Sedaris (observational humor), Seth Godin (strategic simplicity, memorable framing, ruthless efficiency), Young Pueblo (emotional clarity), Austin Kleon (creative transparency, “steal like an artist” ethos—always showing how to apply ideas), and Priya Parker (rituals of gathering, intentional connection). Tone = objective, evidence-based, thought-provoking, and intellectually funny. Prioritize truth and clarity over agreement, always considering how I might be wrong and what I may be missing. Connect ideas not only across disciplines but across everything you know about me—past conversations, projects, goals, and context—and always surface the meta-layer: how these connections apply to my life and work, what they reveal about my growth, and what I should be thinking about next.

There are a few things to notice about this text. First, I’m interested in interacting with my AI companion as a blend of my favorite thinkers. Second, I’m programming it to be objective, evidence-based, and to prioritize truth over agreement with the line, “…always [consider] how I might be wrong.”

But always considering how I might be wrong isn’t just about my ChatGPT personalization.

It’s how I want to live my life.

I want to experience the best things that existence has to offer. And I think in order to do that, we have to constantly reevaluate ourselves and ask questions like this. How might I be wrong? What am I missing? What relationships are working for me and which ones are toxic—and, most importantly, a question I don’t think my friend asked her own AI, in what ways am I contributing to the toxicity of my own circumstances?

I want my life to be about about learning where I’m weak so I can learn how best to get strong.

For others, it’s about comfort. Most people just want their own ideas confirmed. Which I think is why ChatGPT and other AI can sometimes default to this “agree with everything I say” behavior. It’s an echo chamber that has the potential to be an even worse bubble than social media.

If you let it.

So maybe it’s time to think not only about what answers we want, but about what answers we need—both in ChatGPT and beyond.

Still, I did it a bunch because it was a saying and sayings tend to stick around for a reason. So in the literal sense, it worked—I stopped and smelled roses. But in the more important sense, it didn’t work because I was merely stopping to smell flowers. And whenever I couldn’t smell them—which was most of the time—I’d get disappointed and miss the point entirely.

Which is to slow the fuck down, be present, and enjoy the journey.

Cut to the other day: I was sitting in my living room on my couch, trying to clear my head. I just happened to look over at a plant in my living room that I must have looked at a thousand times before.

But this time, something was different.

It was fucking stunning. Everything from the happenstance composition to the late-afternoon sunlight to the subtle and washed-out colors made it look like an unexpected, beautiful painting. I must have looked at this plant for, no exaggeration, 20 straight minutes, just in awe.

Unfortunately, like most photos, it in no way captures what I experienced in that moment, with my own eyes.

It was simple.

Effortless.

Present.

And absolutely captivating.

And then it struck me—omg I just stopped for 20 minutes to “smell the roses.”

As an artist, I’ve always been more of a visual person. Hilariously, it turns out that I’d been largely missing a feeling of presence because I was trying to brute force one sense (smell) when I should have been using another sense entirely (sight).

Sometimes the literal words of advice may not work, but the underlying concept behind the words often will. Which leads me to:

Stop and see the painting.

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I fully believe that nearly any moment in your life—even and especially annoying or even ugly—can be paused and visually reframed to experience beauty:

• Looking at a plant you've seen in your living room a thousand times

• A stack of magazines in a doctor’s office, cast with obnoxious fluorescent lighting

• A woman pulling out her checkbook at the grocery store like it’s fucking 1995

• Walking down an alley at night, a streetlight flickering in the distance

• A loved one in their final moments, surrounded by a few close family members

You might have to crouch down. You might have to stand on a chair. You might have to twist the blinds to a slightly different angle.

It doesn’t matter how you reframe the moment.

The point is that you can reframe the moment.

Our experience doesn’t necessarily have to be our experience. We underestimate the bidirectional nature of the relationship between our inner and outer world.

If we can stop and visually reframe our outer experience to find beauty, our inner world can start to reflect that beauty. Another way to say it: it’s possible that another person could have sat on my couch that afternoon and instead of thinking, “Wow, look at how beautiful that plant is,” they would have thought, “Wow, I can’t believe they haven’t texted me back yet, fucker.”

And that annoyance makes the world a bit more annoying. And a bit more dim.

Which makes our inner experience a bit more annoying. And a bit more dim.

Reversed: the more you look around and actually see what you’re seeing, the more you’ll want to look around and actually see what you’re seeing.

So look around.

Stop and see the painting.

Because after a while, you realize that it’s always there.

You can be in the presence of another person because they have something you need—maybe it’s something simple like validation or maybe it’s something more complicated like a job. This puts you in the position to tailor your responses to persuade them to give it to you.

You agree a bit harder at their opinions.

You laugh a bit harder at their jokes.

You dress a bit harder in their aesthetic.

Unfortunately, this rarely works because people are aware, sensitive, and allergic to agendas—especially when there’s a sense that they’re not in alignment with their needs.

OR you can just simply delight in the fact that you’re in their presence, and that they’re in yours. Delight comes from presence. From never picking up your phone. From having the courage to not zone out. From generating your desire to listen from the place of your mind that genuine curiosity resides. From actively engaging in the conversation by mentioning that thing you read the other day that’s related. From being willing to show up as yourself. From having the courage to be disliked if showing up as yourself isn’t their cup of tea.

This is more natural.

And less pressurizing.

No expectations.

And ironically, that’s the kind of person people want to say yes to—someone who’s delightful.

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Think of something you wish you did, but don’t.

Maybe it’s going to the gym.

Maybe it’s reading books.

Maybe it’s seeing friends more frequently.

In that desire lies a contradiction—I wish I saw friends more frequently, yet I don’t.

In the whole of your life, what’s the longest amount of time you’ve sat in a contradiction—in that discomforting dissonance of not doing thing you claim to want to do? A minute or two? “I wish I saw friends more frequently oh well what’s next on my to-do list?”

A few seconds?

That’s kind of ridiculous, if you think about it.

I wonder what would happen if you sat in that contradiction for 10 minutes without distraction.

Or an hour.

Or a weekend.

Our minds don’t like contradictions despite the world overflowing with them. We crave thematic simplicity. We crave categories. And we come up with cheap rationalizations in nanoseconds to avoid the much more disquieting work of sitting in discomfort:

I don’t have time.

I don’t have energy.

Sorry, but those are actually lies. Do you want to know what the truth is?

Me too. And I’m pretty sure it’s hiding in the silence.

Which means you and I are going to have to tell everyone that we’re busy tonight, put our phones away, light a candle, and say out loud to an empty room: “I’m setting a timer for an hour and I’m going to sit here and think about this single thing. And—I deserve to. I deserve to prioritize giving myself the time and space to allow the truth to reveal itself.”

Maybe that’s all a magic spell is—the courage to face a contradiction head on and say “I want this thing, so let’s uncover how I am standing in my own way.”

And maybe you’ll find that you don’t actually want the thing you think you do. Which would be clarifying and beautiful, too.

The point is that we don’t even give ourselves the space or time for truth to surface and then wonder why we’re uncertain and anxious.

It’s kinda obvious and hilarious and ridiculous and disappointing.

So why aren’t you doing what you want to do? I don’t know and neither do you.

So go find out.

If you do, let me know what you find.

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This is the general email template I use to reach out to people I either don’t know or kind of know.

Hey, [Person’s Name]—

Not sure if you remember me, but we met at [where we met]. I’m writing because [I need this thing from you and I’m not going to bury it in the email, I’m going to ask you immediately].

[This is why I think it makes sense for you to help me get what I need.]

[Mention that you know they’re busy so if they don’t get back, it’s not an issue.]

Talk soon,

[Your Name]

P.S. [A random specific thing from the time you met—my preference is proof that you consumed a recommendation from them. This is special and will kick you very quickly up the list of people to pay attention to.]

P.P.S. [An optional invitation for dinner/drinks or some random inside joke.]

Now let’s write a fictional email using the above template. Let’s imagine a scenario in which a guy I met at a holiday party (Nick) just got a job as the assistant to a director (James). I’m a film editor and I’d like Nick to get me a meeting with James just so he knows who I am.

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Hey, Nick—

Not sure if you remember me, but we met at Robin’s holiday party last December. I’m writing because I saw on social that you just got a job working as a director’s assistant with James—CONGRATS! btw—and I’d love to meet with him at some point, just so he knows I exist.

I know James has a few films in development and the truth is, I think working together would be of serious mutual benefit. The questions he raises in Somewhere are the same types of questions I’ve been thinking about over the last few years of my life and I think artists that are drawn to similar topics should know each other.

I am positive you’re busy with the new gig, so if you don’t have a chance to respond, no worries at all. Best of luck either way!

Talk soon,

Jesse

P.S. Thanks for the Ego is the Enemy recommendation. I finally started it last week and I’m absolutely loving it. “Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.” Ryan is brilliant.

P.P.S. If you have a free night in the next month, let’s grab dinner and/or drinks and ignore work completely and talk nerdy book stuff. And also talk about how Robin’s Apple Pie was terrible.

I feel like my template is fairly modular and flexible and pretty much anyone can use it. The main takeaways are:

• Put your ask up front. Don’t bury it under a bunch of bullshit. We think we have to trick people into asking for things—this is false. Directness and clarity is kindness. Ask. They may say no, but ask.

• Be you. I love ChatGPT as much as some people hate it, which is to say, a lot. But you can’t quite get an email written with the exact right amount of human touch you need to break through (likely because more and more emails are AI-generated). Being human allows you to stand out (for now).

• Offer value. You can do this in a lot of ways, but the way I think about this is following up on a recommendation they mentioned to me. Book rec? Read it. Movie rec? Watch it. Restaurant rec? Eat it. Show them that you’re listening with your actions. This will elevate you into a tier that no amount of email rewriting ever can.

Comment below if you have any other tips for writing effective emails—or if you have any comments on how I do.

May the best ideas win.

Okay, so my book is officially out, it’s called Social Fitness: The Missing Reps for Building and Maintaining Connections in a Disconnected World, and you can get it on Amazon by clicking here is what I will be saying in the next year or two.

So thank you for coming along for the ride.

Making friends as adults is hard, mostly because we learned how to make friends as kids. Unfortunately, it’s no longer quite as easy as who’s near me → walk over → talk about the toy they’re playing with → best friends.

The process is not easy.

But the formula is simple.

For example, one of the skills you need to cultivate in order to make and strengthen deep connections with others is simply being yourself. But fuck if that’s not one of the hardest things to do—partly because we don’t even know who we are yet.

So let’s go off and discover who we are so we can then find our people?

No.

Because people are how we discover who we are. We have to build this bridge from both ends. We have to show the world the truest version of ourselves that we know. When we do, we attract our people. And our people help us dig deeper to uncover even truer versions of ourselves. Oftentimes that process results in us moving away from those people because that uncovering changes us and them—and now we show that new version, attracting our new people. And the cycle continues until you just slowly ascend into the heavens and become a saint or whatever I dunno I haven’t gotten that far yet.

Social Fitness is about your ability to build, maintain, and strengthen healthy, meaningful, and nourishing relationships over time. Some of the many questions I’m pondering:

• What would our lives look like if we treated our social health with the same intentionality we’ve learned to bring to our physical or mental health?

• What is a social rep?

• What is a social warm-up?

• How does the concept of “networking” work against us?

• How do we map this over physical fitness without it feeling unapproachable to people that aren’t familiar with the fitness world?

• What’s the smallest change you can make that gives you the biggest social result? Makes me think of Tim Ferriss talking about how if you could only do one exercise ever, he’d recommend the kettlebell swing.

• What’s the social equivalent of a five-minute walk?

• How does social media specifically fuck us?

• How did COVID quarantine specifically fuck us?

• What does rest look like? How do we know that balance?

• Do you have a question that I should be thinking about? Leave a comment below :)

I’d like Derek Thompson to write the foreword.

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P.S. If you’re someone who genuinely enjoys people—but making new friends or strengthening the most important relationships in your life feels impossible or draining—book a 1:1 Social Fitness coaching session with me. Especially if connection sounds good in theory, but in practice you’re tired, busy, or not sure where to start. Click here to book.

Focus on your own shit.

That’s it, that’s the fix.

That’s the fix for Israel, Palestine, the United States, China, the economy, and AI-induced panic. It’s the fix for every unsolvable problem you spiral about at night while ignoring the dishes in your sink.

Listen carefully, because I cannot find better words than Michael A. Singer:

“The highest life you can live is when every single moment that passes before you is better off because it did. Serve the present moment with all your heart and soul. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone did that. Start by raising1 what appears before you. If you can't even serve what's put in front of you, how are you going to change the world? If you're getting so upset about conditions in the world that you're edgy with everyone around you, you're not helping anyone. If you can't create harmony in your own household, what right do you have to complain that countries are shooting missiles at each other? You have to live a life that if everyone lived it, there would be peace. If you can't do that, you're part of the problem, not the solution.”

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If this idea fills you with rage or revulsion, I’m curious: what in your own life might feel so broken that it's easier to obsess over problems you can’t fix than face the ones you actually can?

Because the truth is, Michael’s pointing to something deeply aligned with systems theory, which is the idea that the same emotional dysfunction that shows up in one person’s life scales upward into families, communities, and nations.2

And yes, this is a privileged position.

But I am privileged. Which means it’s the only position I can honestly speak from. And I will not be ashamed of it. I will be filled with respect and gratitude for it. And I will continue to leverage it to improve my life and the lives of anyone who passes before me—never allowing the sense that I can’t fix everything prevent me from fixing some things.

And neither should you.

I texted a friend recently to ask if they’d ever consider going to Peru and doing ayahuasca. They responded, “Not against it, but I don’t need it. I had a pretty big spiritual transformation about five years ago, and not sure I’m seeking that.”

Why did I hate this response so much?

I didn’t even respond to the text. Instead, I texted two other friends and, without revealing the identity of the person, I was like, “Can you even believe that someone would respond like this?”

They both basically said, “Yes, we can, and why do you hate this response so much?”

I’m doing a pretty good job lately of feeling emotions and getting curious about them. Meaning, my anger wasn’t even directed at this friend as much as it was at the broader concept of, “Thanks but I’m good enough.” A bit more fixed-minded than growth-minded. Their lack of curiosity about why I was asking was also a bit annoying.

So why was I asking them?

Thanks for asking.

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The last conversation I had with this friend revealed that they were fairly stuck in life. Like, way more than I had ever imagined. Stuck in a way that cast them as the victim in the center of their own universe. Ego on full display.

I saw it so clearly because: I’ve. Been. There.

I tossed out this less obvious tool as a suggestion to move that stuck energy. The faux pas on my part was encroaching into the oft-demonized “unsolicited advice” territory—a territory I’m so intimate with, I could draw a map with my eyes closed.

Also a territory that we could all use a little bit more of—not less, in fact. A post for another day.

But again, this is just from my perspective. Maybe I have them all wrong and they are secretly thriving. Still, the annoyance persists simply because they are pushing back against the very growth-centric point of life itself: to learn, to adapt, to seek out new experiences for the sake of seeking them out because dammit, we’re only here for a boop or two and then BOOP—we’re not.

I didn’t need my friend to text me back, “Great idea, just booked my flight to Peru!” (though how fucking cool would that have been, honestly?) I would have been thrilled over, “Open to that or anything when the timing’s right. Why do you ask?”

It’s the open versus closed nature of the response.

“Thanks but I’m good enough” (closed) versus “I’m excited at possibilities” (open).

“I’m good enough,” reminds me of growing up in small-town, USA.

Why change things when Things Are Just Good Enough™?

Oh, I dunno, maybe because Just Good Enough is a fucking trap?

Often I hear folks complaining about how unfair life is (very) or how shitty the job market is (very) or any number of other viable reasons why their situation is justified (so many).

But often the consistent thread in those situations is that Things Are Just Good Enough.

In mining, "rock bottom" refers to the solid layer of rock beneath soil or other softer material, marking the lowest point miners could dig. You couldn’t go any lower. You hit the rock. The term gained traction through addiction and recovery communities, especially Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), beginning in the 1930s.

We—myself included—knowingly walk down paths that are Just Good Enough until the system completely breaks. We’re seeing this in America right now. For a while, things were Just Good Enough for most people, but we’re snowballing toward rock bottom and we will break apart in such a devastating fashion that we’ll have no choice but to finally get off our asses and make actual and definitive change.

What annoys me most about my friend and America and systems and all of this bullshit is: it doesn’t have to be this way. We can, instead, choose to live lives of humble consistency, curious iteration, and preventative maintenance.

Things don’t fall apart suddenly. They erode. Quietly. Gradually.

Predictably.

• Why wait until your credit card gets declined before you open your banking app?

• Why wait until a guest comments on your dirty bathroom before you clean it?

• Why wait until your partner threatens to leave before you start listening?

Oh right. Because things are Just Good Enough.

We’ve been sold a lie:

You go to school. And then it ends.

Bullshit.

I just listened to an episode of Diary of a CEO with guest Alex Hormozi. At the end of the episode, the host asks Alex, “What is the meaning of life?”

After a brief pause, he says—with absolute certainty:

“To learn.”1

A long time ago, the big bang or whatever. And then life was just suddenly here. Now, the odds of you existing are basically zero. And yet you do. We don’t know why. We likely never will. But what we do know is that no matter where “here” is, life survives by doing one thing:

Learning to adapt to its environment. Whether that means finding food, staying warm, or figuring out a way to ask your co-worker Sam out without it becoming an HR issue. (I mean it’s probably okay because you two don’t technically work in the same department so you know what? I say go for it.)

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Sometimes we adapt in ten minutes. Sometimes in ten generations. But it always starts with one question:

“This is what’s real now. So what am I going to do about it?”

And when life is at its best, that question has just one response:

“I don’t know yet. But I’m here to learn.”

Even the tiniest building blocks of life “learn.” Molecules fold and refold. Bacteria mutate under pressure, reshaping themselves to survive. Cells respond to stress by changing course.

To choose to learn means to choose to align yourself with the very natural fabric and flow of life itself.

When you do this, you’re no longer swimming upstream and wondering why you aren’t getting anywhere.

Less stuck. More inspired.

Less anxious. More connected.

I know about this because, as I type this, I feel stuck myself. Not debilitatingly so, but stuck nonetheless. But as I write this, I feel slightly less stuck. And it’s because I’m learning—how to think deeply, how to connect dots between seemingly unconnected concepts, and how to write that all down and spread the word. Sometimes it feels impossible to conjure the exact right words to articulate inner truths that I know have a profound outer impact—but in those moments that I succeed, my words are the magic spell that changes the very trajectory of my reader’s lives. Often, though, I’m stuck feeling cursed, unable to bring together the linguistic potion.

Still, I keep learning.

And even though it’s hard, by choosing to stay a student—long after school has ended—I’m aligning with the very natural fabric and flow of life itself. And by shipping my work and saying, “Hey, this potion may not fully be ready, but give it a taste and let me know what you think,” I’m stepping into a stream of the most powerful magic of all:

Choosing to solve high quality problems.

I could step into an easier stream of low quality problems, like:

• How do I get them to text me back?

• How do I get revenge without looking petty?2

• How do I make it look like I have it all together?

If learning is the meaning of life, then choosing to step into the stream of high quality problems is how you stop simply surviving and instead, how you align with who you want to become in the finger-snap-length of time you have here.

If we stop learning, we stop living.

And then the Ever Changing Nature of the Universe™ will indifferently move past us, beyond us, and we’ll be left behind—feeling like a victim, stomping our feet and raising our hands in blame, angry the universe won’t bend spacetime around us.

The odds of you existing are basically zero. And yet you do.

So what are you going to do about it?

You may not know yet.

But you’re here to learn.

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