Dottie was ninety three, in the later stages of alzheimer’s, but not bedridden yet. So my parents, aunts, uncles and grandfather spent every waking minute with her while she was in home hospice. Finding various projects to occupy their time and keep her engaged.

And every other great grand kid in our family got their own set of blocks, so my son was no exception.

First, grandpa cut the blocks in his wood shop. Also built a handy little toy box to store them in.

Viki, my aunt the painter, drew a picture of an animal or object on each one. Which started with the first letter on the block. D for dinosaur. P for princess. Z for zebra. And so on.

Dottie then used permanent markers to color and design the other sides of the blocks. She put a single black dot on each block. That was her artist’s signature.

Such a fun, collaborative, meaningful project. Definitely my favorite toy in our son’s room.

It’s funny, I remember watching a great holiday movie as a kid in the eighties. One scene in particular stood out.

Santa’s elves were working tirelessly in his workshop. Building classic, old fashioned wooden toys. Dolls, toy soldiers, cars, trucks, blocks, animals and the like. All painted with bright, primary colors.

The toys were chunky, simplified and plain. Which I guess was the movie’s point about preindustrial, handcrafted aesthetic. But I was too young to realize that.

So every time I watched that scene, I thought to myself, dude, what kid likes these lame ass toys? Who asks santa for a wooden sailboat?

Now, to be fair, the same year that movie came out, so did nintendo. So my brain had already started to rot. There was no going back. Wood blocks were pretty damn square in comparison. Quite literally.

Fast forward to forty years later. I was a parent with a one year old. My grandparents build my son a box of wood blocks. From scratch. With their hands.

And he loved them.

Wood blocks deliver exactly the kind of input a child looks for.

First, there’s clear cause and effect. Stacking, knocking over, banging together. Immediate results. Click clack!

Second, wood blocks are the perfect level of difficulty. Just challenging enough to make the kid work and get a little frustrated. But enough to feel victorious when the stack grows tall. The highest we got was fourteen. Almost as tall as him. Click clack!

There’s also the sensory motor richness. Wood has weight. Texture. And temperature.

When the blocks hit each other, the click clack sound is sharp and satisfying. Kind of hurts dad’s ears after an hour, but my kid loves it.

Lastly, there’s the safety piece. Can’t overlook that. Blocks are big enough to avoid choking risk. Have no detachable parts. Non toxic finishes. Blunt edges. No electronics. And are super durable.

Almost too durable.

I remember the first time I stepped on one of those little buggers in the dark while my kid was sleeping.

Not the flat side.

Not the forgiving side.

The corner.

The exact corner that feels like it was designed in a lab to concentrate all hundred and ninety pounds of me into one microscopic point of contact.

I felt this violent surge of electricity shooting up my leg, while my brain scrambled to decide whether I was allowed to scream.

I grabbed the crib for balance, gripping it like I was trying to steady the entire house.

My mouth opened, but nothing came out. Silent film performance. Full body anguish with zero audio.

I hovered there, half crouched, one foot off the ground, trying to not to yell out, fuuuuuuuuck!

Of course the block didn’t move.

Still exactly where it was.

Calm. Solid. Indestructible.

This same object that, ten minutes ago, was a source of pure joy. Stack it. Knock it down. Put it in your mouth. Repeat forever.

Now it had become a weapon.

Thanks grandpa.

Maybe it’s karma for all the pain I caused my family when I was a kid. But almost every parent has some version of this story.

Dark room, scattered toys, bare feet, sudden pain.

This the suffering we chose.

So the irony is not lost on me. Creation and consequence, love and pain, all stacked into one step.

All this time, I thought the wood blocks were just for my son.

Nope.

Dottie painted those for me too.

Because a big part of life is absorbing impact without disrupting something more important.

That’s what it means to be an adult.

You step on one of those chunky cubes and try not to lose it.

Maybe the wood block manufacturers should include a parent notice on the outside of the box.

These wooden blocks are designed for early learning, safe handling, and long term durability. They are extremely sturdy.

They do not compress under weight.

If stepped on, especially in low light, they can cause sudden and intense foot pain.

For best results, avoid barefoot navigation in rooms with active toy zones.

Remember, these are built for children, and survived by parents.

Proceed at your own risk.

Click clack!

P.S. Here’s a song I wrote about it:

The meal only lasts about five minutes. My kid takes a few bites, chugs some milk, repeats the word “down,” and then slowly inches out of his high chair to go back to playing.

At the end of this nightly ritual, the area under the table is splattered with a combination of food, drinks, and probably body fluids.

At which point, my dog materializes like a cleanup crew summoned by war. Lily dutifully handles the mess. Excellent maintenance coordinator. Employee of the year at our house.

My favorite part of dinner is the utensils. When my kid was still in the baby high chair, his fork was clipped onto his bib. We bought this dropless spoon and fork tether attachment. Genius invention. Perfect add on for messy mealtimes. You clip one end to the side of the plate and loop the other around the utensil. Say goodbye to bending down to pick up tossed spoons. Comes in four bold colors. Dishwasher safe.

Once my kid turned two, he graduated to the toddler fork, which he’s getting better and better at using. But it’s tough. It takes a lot of coordination for a two year old. We try to offer foods that are easy to stab, soft fruits, cooked vegetables, meatballs, pasta. But inevitably, most of the rice, beans, eggs, spinach, and chicken end up on the floor. Along with the utensil itself. Dean launches that thing across the room.

So I’ve renamed it from fork to floork. Feels like a more appropriate name. It’s honest, fun to say, and sounds like something Dr. Seuss would have coined in the sixties. Floork.

Toddlers love experimenting with gravity. Dropping objects demonstrates cause and effect. Asking, why did that fall, encourages logical thinking. Floork works because it shifts the definition of success. We’re not going for consumption, not really. He eats plenty at school. Coordination is the bigger win.

Did he get a few bites from the plate, onto the fork, into his mouth, and actually swallow them? Great. That counts.

It kind of reminds me of the five second rule. Remember that one as a kid? It’s the idea that food is still safe to eat if you pick it up quickly after dropping it.

Turns out, there’s a lot of research on this. It’s not scientifically valid. Bacteria can transfer almost instantly. Risk depends more on the surface, the moisture of the food, and the material involved than on time. The rule survives because it makes us feel better, not because it’s true.

Which proves one thing. Floork is an amazing word. There’s no record of it being used in this context anywhere. It’s intuitive, descriptive, and instantly communicates what’s happening. It fits the same pattern as words like spork, so it feels familiar even though it’s new. I’m taking credit for it. Thank you very much.

Now imagine a smart floork with drop analytics. A sensor embedded handle that tracks drop frequency, angle, and duration of successful holds, synced to an app. Parents get metrics like time above tray and successful bites. Parents already use smart bassinets. Why not extend that to the dinner table?

The ad campaign writes itself.

Of course, child advocacy groups will hate it. They’ll say the only metric that matters is whether anyone at the table is actually enjoying themselves. They’ll worry about the long term effects of tracking behavior this early.

Maybe they’re right.

But floork is harmless. More than that, it’s just fun to say.

Come on. Sing it with me. I already wrote the theme song:

It was so fun. These huge pads down the street had open houses on weekends, so we’d go to check them out.

And I honestly don’t remember if my parents were looking to buy, or just looking to kill time. But I remember those outings fondly.

There was one home in our neighborhood that got selected to be featured in a major motion picture. So cool!

That was back in the late eighties. Long time ago.

The reason that memory came to mind is, I recently learned a new term.

Zillow surfing. Browsing houses for fun. This is a popular form of escapism and entertainment that offers a way to dream about future homes, explore unique interior designs. Psychologists call it aspirational consumerism. People browse homes the same way they browse luxury goods they don’t intend to buy, like window shopping at a fancy store.

Turns out, the brain partially processes imagined ownership similarly to real ownership, which produces emotional reward without commitment.

What’s not to like? Zillow uses the same variable reward mechanics as all social media. Each listing is a new hit of novelty. Who needs porn and celebrity gossip when you can scroll through pictures of four bedroom yurt with a saltwater jacuzzi?

Snl did an amazing commercial parody about this trend.

The amount of truth in that parody is unsettling.

Zillow surfing is the new window shopping. I am both joyful and shocked at this entire trend.

Part of me loves how much pleasure people get from this activity. I am so happy for them! Because I get it. I can almost hear the nine year old version of me yelling down to my mom from the balcony of a display home, dude, this place has two staircases! One for going up, and one for going down!

On the other hand, I also can’t believe this is a thing. Never once in my adult life has it occurred to me to use a real estate website to unwind. I don’t relieve stress by imagining a different life. My current house is great. I hope I die here as an old man. Sure, the bathroom is small, we have a mice problem every spring, and the heater mysteriously stops working when it’s negative ten outside. But I don’t want to move. I don’t even want to think about moving. Evaluating options of any kind is exhausting to me.

It’s like the show house hunters. It’s basically entitlement theater. There’s always some couple with unrealistic expectations, inflated budgets for what they think they deserve, and constant dissatisfaction.

Every episode is parade of people who are hard to please, and lack gratitude or perspective. And there’s always a pathetic undercurrent of, this new home will change everything for me.

No it won’t. Whatever problems you’re running away from, they’re going to move into that beachfront villa with you.

I know your milfy real estate agent slash reality tv star has convinced you that living the pura vida lifestyle will melt your worries away like a piece of ice on a hot pavement.

But two weeks after relocating to your newly purchased four bedroom coastal villa with panoramic ocean views, all of your underlying emotional patterns, unresolved tensions, and baseline dissatisfaction will return.

Zillow surfing is the same thing. Casually browsing listings for a larger home with more outdoor space might be fun, but it’s never going to provide the sense of clarity and fulfillment that has so far remained just out of reach.

Hey, this gives me an idea for a new reality show:

Every episode begins the same way traditional home shows do:

A couple believes something is off. They feel cramped, stuck, restless, dissatisfied. In any other show, the solution would be a new zip code, a bigger kitchen with a viking range, or a lifestyle upgrade to a country whose name they can’t pronounce.

Instead, they stay exactly where they are and undergo a structured, evidence based process of improving their mental, emotional, relational, and behavioral environment.

With the help of a cognitive behavioral psychologist, our show helps reframes the idea of home improvement from physical space to psychological space.

Best series on television, hands down. Now people could spend twenty two minutes watching people get their existential house in order.

And at the end when the credits roll, we revisit the couple, mirroring the exact timeline where most post move disillusionment happens in traditional shows.

Except this time, stress levels are down, satisfaction is up and no square footage has changed.

And they’re all great. Each one offers its own set of tools to improve productivity.

But it’s funny, because so much of that literature, well researched and strategically sound as it may be, could be summarized with a single insight.

There are people with excellent time management skills, and there are people who sleep in.

Forgive me for oversimplifying the issue, but that’s the reality. Ninety percent of time management is waking up early.

Consider two businesspeople.

1. Sarah gets up early, starts before the noise, and by noon she’s already handled the important stuff. The rest of the day is just maintenance.

2. Tess starts late and spends the morning catching up. By the time she gets momentum, everything urgent has already piled up. She stays late just trying to break even.

These two people theoretically work the same number of hours, but only one of them is truly productive.

Why? Because she doesn’t sleep in.

This gives me an idea for a new personal development book, inspired by my friend Drew, who shared this theory with me.

The book is three hundred pages, and every one of them contains a single sentence.

Just wake up earlier.

But this book is not a joke. I know it sounds like I’m trying to be clever, but I legitimately think time management that simple. So many of people’s problems would be wiped away if they slept in less.

We could even break it down mathematically to add more credibility to the theory.

See, different hours have different expected value.

• Early hours have high leverage and low interruption. Their weight is, say, two units.

• Midday hours are moderately productivity, so their weight is one unit.

• But late afternoon or evening hours are fragmented and tired, so their weight is a half a unit.

Let’s go back to our two use cases.

Sarah gets out of bed at six, so she has three early hours and five normal hours, giving her a total of eleven units. She has a front loaded day.

Tess sleeps in, which means she has eight reactive hours, which only totals six units. She has a back foot day.

Same time, different output. Same hours, different trajectory.

This is what people don’t understand about productivity. Early time doesn’t just produce output, it shapes the rest of the day. Mathematicians call this path dependence. Early inputs change the trajectory of the system.

Here’s a visual to explain it:

Reminds me of the term, “wake up naturally.”

I love it when millionaires, tech founders and other super successful people use their no alarm clock routine as a status symbol. They’re so independent and in control of their time. They wake up whenever, get out of bed and do whatever, and order their day however.

Good for them. I’m so happy that nobody owns their morning.

Wake up naturally. Bunch of smug pricks.

Unfortunately, ninety seven percent of the world doesn’t have that luxury. I’m not saying people who sleep in are the problem, but let’s have a little empathy here. Let’s stop pretending that strategy is universally accessible.

Look, if you worked your ass off for many years to get to the place where you can wake up naturally, congrats. You beat the system. Enjoy your bed.

For the rest of us, we need to adopt the front load back foot model.

My wife and I got a dog during the pandemic. At that time, I was still sleeping in on weekends. But my dog was on a different schedule. She was up early, ready to eat breakfast, in need of scratchies and pets, had to pee and poop, and was excited to get to the park to see her friends.

This led to her waking me up in one of two ways.

1. Jump on the bed, step on my crotch, jolt me awake and lick my face until I get up and took care of her.

2. Stare at me from my bedside, thump her tail on the carpet, and paw the comforter until I feel her presence and get up to take care of her.

Neither of these were viable options. Both caused a spike in cortisol and make the first few minutes of my day stressful.

And so, after that first week of dog ownership, I made a conscious decision.

I don’t sleep in anymore. It’s over. I’m a front loader now. I wake up before everyone. My wife, my dog, my kid, I go first. Nobody gets a head start on me anymore. I start the day before the day starts.

This strategy is simple and selfish, but it’s also a form of service. Front loading gives me a wider margin to show up for my family. Starting early gives me more capacity for the people who depend on me. I’ve learned that my energy runs better this way.

When my son was an infant, I took the night shift. He would wake up at midnight for bottle feedings, so I spent six months sleeping on the couch, using what my friend Drew calls, the baby alarm.

It was fucking brutal. Exhaustion, disorientation, nightmares, cortisol spikes, back problems, you name it. Every parent has been there.

Eventually my son got sleep trained, moved into his own room, and our schedules normalized a little. The second six months were still hard and tiring, but not quite as devastating to my system.

Whew. Thank god. What a journey. Sure felt good to be on the other side of that.

Point being, the baby alarm sucks. I don’t ever want to go back to that.

Now, obviously there are sleep regressions, growth spurts, illnesses, daylight savings, jet lag from time changes, and other disruptions that throw us all off. There’s no avoiding that.

But in general, I wake up before everyone. I go first. Nobody gets a head start on me anymore. I start the day before the day starts.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my dog is staring at me. Breakfast time!

They use this expression to describe two or more things that are functionally similar or look alike, but possess minor, subtle, or significant differences.

I remember shopping at souvenir shops, and seeing items that looked identical to high end products, but were very clearly the cheaper version.

Jordans for twenty bucks? Take my money. Nobody back home will ever notice.

Same, same, but different. Just like the tshirts and bumper stickers say.

Culturally, this catchphrase signifies their approach to life.

Avoid confrontation, reduce stress, brush off awkwardness and don't worry about it. Why fret too much over whether that purse at the night market is authentic? Settle on the fact that it's presumably close enough, and move on.

So I was thinking about same, same, but different this morning, as my son is about to turn two.

That's a big birthday. Because now we have three years of data.

• Year zero, which revolves around trying to conceive and pregnancy.

• Year one, which revolves around trying not to die.

• Year two, which revolves around corralling what I can only describe as a baby dinosaur running loose in your apartment.

Point being, there are a lot of changes during those three years. Both big and small.

Seinfeld did an interview recently where the host asked him, so how did having children impact your life? Jerry smiled and said

“You don't have kids, do you? Because only someone who doesn't have kids would ask a question like that. How did it impact my life? What does it feel like to just be a spirit sparking through the galaxy and then you took the form of humanity, how did that change you?”

Jerry makes good point. To say that having kids changes you is the understatement of all the time. From your brain to your sleep to your diet to your schedule to your clothes to your willingness to look like an idiot most of the day, it's safe to say you're a different person.

Although something surprising is, I found the other extreme to be true as well.

For every aspect of me that changed, there's another aspect that didn't.

Same, same, but different.

I can't speak for other dads out there, but I feel more like myself than ever. I am really me these days.

For example, the other day I wrote a song about sneezing.

It's ridiculous and I love it. So does my family.

But that's exactly the kind of thing me would do.

If you time traveled and told the ten year old, twenty year old, and thirty year old version of me that, in my forties, I would become a dad and compose a tune called achoo, all three of those me's would say, yeah, that sounds about right.

Maisel writes about this in his psychology books. He says everyone has three personalities. Original, formed, and available.

1. Original personality is the inborn temperament and emotional orientation you arrive with at birth. It's very real, but permanently unknowable in both its nature and intended development.

2. Formed personality is the relatively stable self you have become through the interaction of your original disposition with life experience, culture, relationships, and choices.

3. Available personality, which is the amount of awareness, courage, and flexibility you access right now to make value aligned choices and create meaning. Original, formed, and available.

Super cool.

Take the sneezing song as a use case.

My original personality is artistic and silly. Inherited those traits from my parents and grandparents. That part of me wrote that song.

But my formed personality is also disciplined and organized, which I learned through practicing music, playing football and writing books. That part of me wrote the song too.

And with availability personalty, I chose to frame the composition of that song as a meaning making activity. One that uses modern technology for music production, but also helps me feel aligned with my values, and therefore, fulfilled.

So all three personalities are writing the song.

Same, same, but different.

What's the biggest way you've changed in the past three years? In what ways are you still the same person?

I find this approach to growth healthy, adaptive and joyful. Because it preserves continuity without denying change.

The good news is that growth doesn't have to be a betrayal of the past. It's simply an iteration.

You don't have to disown yourself.

But you do have to trust yourself.

Gosh, maybe that's why it's so bloody hard. That whole, comfort with the mystery thing. Blech. Who wants that?

I wonder about that sometimes.

What percent of people trust themselves? I mean really, truly trust who they are? Twenty percent? Ten percent?

And just so we're clear, when I say trust yourself, I'm not talking about confidence or competence or esteem. It's more about believing your internal signals are legitimate. Letting yourself choose without excessive external validation.

I think the vast majority of us, myself included, were trained out of self trust pretty early. Schooling, peers, parenting, workplaces, culture, you learn very early that being right matters less than being approved.

I remember doing a weekly men's support group for about a year. Fantastic experience. Learned so much about myself and others.

One exercise we revisited regularly was the mission statement. Each brother's mantra was to be framed with, I am, followed by an aspirational condition. The mission statement I chose for myself was, I trust my choices.

Seemed like a useful affirmation for my growth in my mid thirties.

Part of the exercise was standing up, saying your mission statement out loud, and then you had to keep repeating it until everyone in the room believed you. The leader of the group would challenge members by saying things like, say it from your balls!

Which I thought was kind of funny, but I understood his point. Damn right. Speak with complete, unapologetic conviction, authenticity, and confidence. No neediness or people pleasing. I trust my choices.

So that was my mission statement for most of the year.

Eventually I decided that my involvement with the group was up. I got what I needed during my stint, but spending three hours sitting in a room with eleven hairy, sweaty strangers, complaining about our wives, was no longer a prudent use of my time.

So I announced to the men that I was leaving. Many members protested. Several group leaders said I had to go through the proper rituals to disengage.

No I don't. I am a grown ass man. I'm just gonna go. This has been lovely and now it's time for me to move on.

Remember my mission statement? I trust my choices. This is me doing just that. Peace out.

Ultimately, trusting yourself means that the one who stays and the one who leaves are the same person.

Same, same, but different.

This is a line from The Green Mile, a movie that I found to be profoundly spiritual.

This scene popped into my head this morning as I was thinking about forgiveness. What a concept.

Now, according to major monotheistic traditions, god in heaven forgives all sins, no matter how severe, if one turns to him in sincere repentance and faith.

• Jews say god forgives sins when a person sincerely repents, makes amends, and turns back toward righteous action.

• Christians claim god forgives all sins through grace of the savior’s redemptive role.

• Muslims believe god forgives any sin if a person turns back to the lord with sincere repentance, remorse, and a commitment to change.

• Hindus suggest forgiveness comes through divine grace when one repents, performs corrective action, and aligns with dharma.

• Buddhists don’t even believe in a divine judge, but still believe forgiveness comes through insight, ethical living, and letting go of harmful actions.

So clearly this is a thing. Always has been.

But recently I was wondering:

Why does god have to do all the work? Isn’t he busy? Maybe we should be the ones learning how to forgive god.

Now that sounds like an interesting idea. Even if we’re not religious and don’t believe in god itself. Substitute that word for, the universe, the big electron, mother nature, higher power, whatever. I quite like the idea of humans folding our hands together in prayer position, closing our eyes, and announcing, I forgive reality for being what it is.

I know god is perfect and omnipotent and everything, but considering the number of rejections and failures we incur on a daily basis, it seems like a healthy practice.

Because maybe god ain’t so innocent. Maybe he’s flawed just like us. After all, forgiveness means resuming the relationship after disappointment, and if we can do that, we can do anything.

Lewis wrote in his book on grief:

“Where is god? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing him, you may be turned away with a merry laugh, but go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.”

I mean, what’s the alternative? Shaking our fists at the sky for not giving into our demands? What a colossal waste of energy.

I don’t personally know if there is a god, but if there was, and if I decided that I believed in him, I think I’d try to give the guy a break. It’s a tough job.

Bruce Almighty dealt with this. A down on his luck television reporter complains to god that he is not doing his job correctly, so he is offered the chance to try being god himself for one week.

Bruce, now in control of outcomes, watches reality collapse into chaos. The fantasy god that he was angry at turns out to be incoherent. He’s like, wow, this job sucks. Never mind. I’ll go back to being human. You go deal with three million five hundred and twenty seven thousand unread prayers. Yes to all. Now everybody’s happy.

That email scene is my favorite. Because all of us need that kind of compassion. We need to put ourselves in god’s shoes and think, yeah, I bet if it were me up there, I’d be disappointing humanity too.

This would make a wonderful children’s book. It’s called, I Forgive The Sky Today.

Today was a hard day.

My toast burned. My shoe got stuck. The bus splashed me with muck.
My favorite crayon snapped right in two. My dog ate a pile of poop.

And when I waved at the sky, it did not wave back.

I crossed my arms and frowned.
This is not how today was supposed to go down.

But when things go wrong, it doesn’t mean someone is being a jerk.
It just means, that’s how days work.

Even the sky gets busy too. So I forgive it for being blue.

So instead of being mad, I took a deep breath.

I put my hands together and prayed.
I forgive you, sky, for being what you are today.

Because if it were me, who had your job.
I’d probably mess up and sob.

My children’s book would either become an instant award winner, or spark nationwide fury and book burnings.

Blasphemy! God is not capable of imperfection! This devil text tells children that god might be busy. Next thing you know, kids will be forgiving gravity and traffic lights!

I Forgive The Sky Today would soon be banned from all school libraries. Administrators across the country would say:

This book encourages students to emotionally process adversity without first escalating to an adult. We can’t have that. Our job as educators is to teach kids how to blame, file reports and demand corrective action. Forgiveness is not part of the core curriculum. Children are not ready for empathy.

Parents would be outraged too. If kids start forgiving reality, what leverage do they have left?

Supporters of the ban praised schools for taking swift action to protect students from emotional resilience, calling the book a gateway to self regulation and other unapproved coping mechanisms.

Well, looks like my work is done here.

Someone’s gotta solve these big problems, and apparently I’ve been appointed.

I know my approach is unconventional, and it’s going to piss off a lot of people in power, but maybe god will find a way to forgive me.

He said it for everything, as a marker of finality and satisfaction.

• Trade show was closed, that's the package.

• Paid the check at dinner, that's the package.

• After the football game was over, that's the package.

• Thanksgiving karaoke wrapped up for the night, that's the package.

• Sank our final putts into the eighteenth hole, that's the package.

• Contractors just finished painting the garage, that's the package.

I don't know anyone else who says this phrase. Our family likes to repeat it a lot to pay homage to grandpa, but I can honestly say I've never heard another person use the expression in the same way he does.

There are many variations.

Well, that's that. Guess we're done here. That's all she wrote. End of story. Done and done. Call it a day. That'll do, donkey. Ship it. Case closed. Let's bounce. Put a bow on it. And that's the end of that chapter.

All of those pale in comparison to, that's the package.

The idiom itself usually means, those are all the components. Like an infomercial. Quality, innovation, and sustainability. That's the package you get when you choose to work with us!

My grandpa ran our family closeout business for over forty years, so I assume the phrase goes back to some kind of literal package.

I picture him on a warehouse floor in the seventies, cigarette dangling, clipboard tucked under his arm, telling a buyer:

Sure, these mugs are ugly, the handles are chipped, the glaze might poison your kids, and they absolutely will explode in the microwave. But you’re getting a hundred thousand of these mugs for twenty cents apiece. Jimmy, this is a homerun. No returns. No complaints. No follow up calls. That’s the package.

Although growing up, my reference for the expression was always more figurative. Because that's the package is more than just finishing something, it's about accepting the whole situation. Positive and negative aspects as an inseparable whole. Certain difficulties are an inherent part of something they value, like a relationship or a personal challenge.

Fine. That's the package.

I used to joke with my family that on my grandpa's tombstone, it's simply going to read, that's the package. In fact, when he's in the hospital taking his dying breath, looking at his family surrounding him, he'll probably just say to the nurse, that's the package. Then it's lights out.

That's not morbid to me. I can't think of a more fitting way to go out. I may never have a catchphrase that good for the rest of my life. Once you say, that's the package, you've stopped negotiating with reality. Good.

Think how much of our suffering comes from trying to call bullshit on what is. Stupid, stupid, stupid. We need finality and satisfaction in this life. It's the only way to make it out alive. You have to celebrate the fact that things are done, without clinging. Without expecting them to exist in perpetuity until the rest of time.

That’s the package is like, we did it. Esko, esko!

# # #

I recently made a film about this very phrase.

My latest project is 75 years in the making.

Lost Korean War footage. Shot by my grandfather Frank Ginsberg in the early 1950s. Digitized decades later. Narrated by him and my grandmother. Edited and scored with original music by me.

This film is unexpectedly funny, human, and full of young soldiers choosing joy as a survival strategy.

Here’s the press release, here’s the album on Spotify, and here’s the full movie:

Even the most enjoyable, casual, risk free activity can suddenly go south.

One minute you're cracking up, the next minute something dangerous or painful happens. You hit a turning point where everyone's like, okay guys, game over.

As our parents used to warn us, it's all fun and games until someone cracks their head open.

My cousins and I would do this all the time when we were kids. We'd play the stupidest games that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Once we had the brilliant thought to do a trust fall off the basement stairs. Five kids under the age of ten. Terrible idea.

Colin, my younger cousin, fell smack on his head. The rest of us just ran away. We abandoned him like a wounded soldier in a field.

Our parents rushed over to help him up, and we felt terrible. I don't remember what happened after that. Maybe he suffered a mild concussion. But hey, this was the eighties. Safety wasn't exactly high on people's priorities.

Colin still gives us shit about that night forty years later. As he should. Boy was that dumb. Perfect example of, it's all fun until it's not.

This phenomenon is universal. Behavioral psychologists call this the threshold model of harm. Many systems tolerate stress up to a point, and then fail suddenly. Ain't no warning curve. No slow escalation. One more unit of force, speed, height, or stupidity, and the system breaks.

And the problem is, the boundary is only visible after someone crosses it. Like with my cousin. It's just, snap! Oh crap. Joy and fear switch almost instantly. Nothing feels wrong until everything is.

Guess that's just what humans do. We push until the snap, instead of pausing earlier.

I think about this a lot with my toddler in public. Whether it's the playground, the bookstore, the library, or some other adventure, I try to preempt the “it's fun until it's not” moment.

Usually when we've been there for a while and things are going well, but I have an instinct that they might go south any minute. I'll whisper to my wife, let's quit while we're ahead.

Doesn't always work. Sometimes my kid's meltdown beats me to the punch. He gets tired or hungry or scared and starts making those pterodactyl noises.

Skreeeeee-awk! Kraaaah kraaaah!

Crap. We should have left ten minutes ago. I end up carrying a flailing dinosaur upside down out of the park.

Although we do get lucky from time to time. We sneak through the door right before it closes. Get the boy in the stroller, get him a cracker and some milk, and pray to god he passes out by the time we get home.

It's fun until it's not.

Anchorman's gang fight scene is the perfect manifestation of this. The news team gets them lost in a shady part of town. Confronted by their main competitor, they're challenged them to a fight. When several other news teams converge onsite, a full on melee battle ensues, only broken up by police sirens that cause them to flee.

Afterwards Burgundy comments:

Well that escalated quickly. I mean that really got out of hand fast. It jumped up a notch, didn't it? Yeah I stabbed a man in the heart. Brick killed a guy. Did you throw a trident? Yeah there were horses and a man on fire and I killed a guy. I've been meaning to talk to you about that. You should find yourself a safe house or a relative close by lay low for a while because you're probably wanted for murder.

It's fun until it's not.

There's also a larger manifestation of this threshold principle. Polarization, corruption and inequality, none of this shit comes out of nowhere. Feels that way, but only because stress was being quietly tolerated for long periods. As the great rap song goes:

It was all good just a second ago. I was pop, lock dropping it, now I'm popping tylenol.

Welp, I guess this is where we are now.

I'm not even taking a side here politically, merely describing the mechanism. Now I look back and connect the dots and think, yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense now. I don't like it and I don't agree with it, but I am willing to deal with reality on reality's terms.

Hey, this gives me an idea for a new invention.

A sound reactive digital display that lights up based on shrieking frequency.

Perfect for kid friendly events. Here's how it works.

The machine analyzes acoustic characteristics that strongly correlate with kid meltdown energy. Specifically sound pressure level, volume over time, frequency bands associated with high pitched shrieks, density of shrieks per minute, and sudden spikes versus sustained noise.

Pterodactyl has three to five directional microphones mounted on poles around the crowd perimeter. Each mic feeds into a local edge processor. No audio is recorded or stored, only live frequency and amplitude data.

And there are three state thresholds.

Green: Human children.
Yellow: Borderline dinosaur.
Red: Full jurassic park.

At red, the sign does not alarm. It simply displays.

You should have left ten minutes ago.

Remember kids, it's fun until it's not.

It’s one of my favorite days of the year.

Now, everyone has their own special connection to it.

The pregame show, the commercials, the drama, the cheerleaders, the betting pools, the national anthem, the plays, the snacks, the parties, the halftime performance, or the gatorade being dumped on the winning coach’s head.

All good things.

But for me, the best part about the superbowl is, it means football season is finally over. Oh thank you jesus, it’s done. Give me my life back.

Did you know that across one football season, professional and college combined, americans watch eleven billion hours of television?

I’m not exaggerating. I’ve done the math.

If you take the average regular season game audience, multiplied by total regular season games, times average game length, plus the playoffs, it adds up to a staggering number. And that’s not even including your highlight shows, pregame talks, fantasy football, and social media consumption.

Eleven billion hours. That’s one million years of human attention every season.

Once that clock zeros out and the big game is over, people can finally reclaim their lives. It’s liberating.

I have a friend who is religious about to the sport, and he says he gets what’s called the end of season scaries. It’s similar to the sunday scaries, except instead of anxiety about work, it’s anxiety about the gigantic void in your life once football is over. People get sad when they realize how much time they’ve spent watching football for the past seven months, and wonder how they’re going to fill all that time.

Good. I’m glad they’re sad. Because football shouldn’t be this important to anyone.

Also, football season is incredibly unfair to those of us who don’t care about football. Weekends, holidays, vacations, and family gatherings become scheduled around kickoff windows. If you are the odd one out, you are not just declining a pastime, you are declining the default social ritual.

Thanksgiving would be so much better if it didn’t involve sitting on the couch eating fried bread for four hours a day.

And what about public spaces? Restaurants, bars, airports, break rooms, living rooms, social media feeds, news outlets, even breakfast tables on vacation, screens and the conversations drift toward football games. You can choose not to watch, you cannot always choose not to be surrounded by it.

I love when that’s gone.

There’s also the social penalty for opting out. In football heavy regions, not caring can trigger subtle othering. You become the buzzkill, the difficult one, the person who doesn’t get it even when you are just trying to have a normal conversation.

Look, I played football for four years when I was a teenager. I did two a day camp every summer and nearly killed myself. I’m good. Time to move on to more meaningful pursuits.

Akeem had the best line about football from one of my favorite movies.

There, I said it. Somebody had to. Football season is over, and I’m so happy about it.

Eleven million hours, folks. It’s not a sport, it’s not a religion, it’s time occupying system. An attention absorption mechanism.

I’m laughing because I recently found a study confirming just how little actual football there is in a football game. Every contest is a three hour product whose live action totals much lower, with the majority dominated by setup, transitions, stoppages, and advertising.

In the end, it’s eleven minutes of action.

So here’s my idea. I’ve devised a way to satiate the hardcore fans, while not alienating those who opt out.

Every sunday, americans watch eleven minutes of football. Then they move on with their lives.

No more hostage living rooms. No more holidays paused at third and seven. No more conversations frozen until the drive ends. Condensed football would be brutal, elegant, and intense. Every snap matters. No filler. No waiting. Pure drama.

This would be the most efficient cultural compromise in our nation’s history. Eleven minutes of action per week, before peacefully resuming normal human activity.

Talk about making this country great again.

People would emerge from their living rooms at 1:18pm carrying an empty bowl of chips and a look of spiritual closure. Proving that peace is possible once again.

My condensed football program will single handedly solve our country’s most expensive, urgent and pervasive problems.

From the chronic time scarcity that plagues people’s minds, to rampant family resentment, to attention fragmentation, to gambling addiction, to obesity and diabetes, to alcohol abuse, all of these issues are quietly solved by limited our national football consumption to eleven minutes per week. We can preserve joy without monopolizing the entire weekend.

Trump has signed two hundred and twenty executive orders so far, but he’s never thought of this. If I ran this country, my first order of business would be instituting the eleven minutes of action standard for national football observance.

The purpose of this order would be to restore proportionality, domestic harmony, and basic weekend functionality by aligning football consumption with its empirically measured duration of actual play, which multiple studies have established at approximately eleven minutes per game.

And this executive order would remain in force until citizens collectively admit that they did not need three and a half hours in the first place.

Now, I understand this announcement would come as a shock to millions. People will call it fascist, authoritarian, nanny state, anti fun, elitist and unamerican.

They’re not wrong. It’s all of those things.

But look, our country’s not at war. There’s no draft, breadlines or sugar rationing. So let’s all be good citizens, take one for the team, and do our part to make this a country worth living in again.

America is increasingly the butt of jokes around the world, and I think we could reclaim our reputation as a great nation if we embraced condensed football.

Eleven minutes of action. That’s the play our team needs to call. Ready, break!

It was a most ripping victory!

Flannery wrote those words in the early fifties. They’re sad and dark, but also very accurate.

Especially that third part. Where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.

That was my life for a long time. Especially professionally. I was always doing things, so that I could do other things. Everything was a vehicle for something else.

Personified by the mantra, what I really want to get into is ______.

I don’t think that holding pattern mindset served me.

I don’t mean to shit on aspiration or anything. I’m all for stepping stones and ladders and catapults. I think it’s healthy to want new things. But the perpetual notenoughness of where you are is a recipe for unhappiness. You don’t want to live your life trying to get away from things.

• In high school, I just wanted to have my own apartment.

• In college, I just wanted to be out of college.

• Working my first job as a furniture salesman, I just wanted to be writing books.

• Then when I started giving speeches, I just wanted to do consulting.

• And when I started working at an ad agency, I just wanted to be at a startup.

Then I turned forty. And then my attitude changed. Flannery’s words swung back.

In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.

I was like, no, this is it. I’m done getting away from things. Where I am is good. It’s very good. Not perfect, but I’m not a perfectionist, so what do I care?

Stoic philosophers called this instrumental living, where nothing is allowed to be enough on its own. Everything must justify itself by leading somewhere else.

Makes sense. There’s a juicy psychological reward. The anticipation releases more dopamine than arrival. Wanting makes us feel so alive.

As my mentor used to say, restless right on schedule.

The problem is that our society excuses dissatisfaction as ambition. We romanticize people who do this. We love seeing interviews about artists who are never satisfied. After all, nobody wants to watch a biopic about some rockstar who is at peace with where they are. We like stories about people trying to get away from things.

Again, I am not dissing growth. It all depends on the operating system that fuels it.

So here is the question worth asking.

Are you growing out of dissatisfaction, or out of sufficiency?

Consider the distinction.

1. When growth comes from notenoughness, it’s compensatory. It is trying to escape, justify, prove, or fix something. The work carries urgency, fragility, and a quiet threat. If this does not work, oh fuck, I am in trouble.

2. When growth comes from genuine enoughness, it’s expressive. Nothing is wrong. Nothing needs to be redeemed. Creation becomes play, curiosity, contribution, or love in motion. If this does not work, nothing collapses. I simply move on.

I believe that’s the reason my creative output got dramatically higher after age forty. Because my work was no longer a vehicle, simply an extension. Artifacts of the person I was becoming, rather than products to take me where I thought I was going.

Frankl’s work on existential philosophy explored this distinction. He suggested when life becomes pure postponement, the mind decays into emptiness; but when life becomes participation, even pain can be metabolized into meaning.

Victor wrote:

If we were immortal, we could postpone every action indefinitely. Only in the face of death are we compelled to make use of our lifetime.

Don’t you love that? Postponement or participation. What a fascinating way to filter your experience. Which one best describes your life right now?

Now, typically this would be the moment I come up with some convoluted app to help people overcome this obstacle. But let’s not overcomplicate things. What we’re talking about here is a meaning orientation tool. Assuming there are two modes, postponement and participation, the smartest move is to figure out which way you’ve toggled the switch.

So which is it? Postponement or participation? Vehicle or expression?

No guilt, not judgment, just name the mode. That’s a powerful first step that can shift your perspective.

See, apps are good at habits and metrics, but this is an issue of orientation, not behavior. It’s ontological in nature.

So maybe it’s just a physical object that interrupts instrumental living. A single, durable card you keep on your desk or in your wallet. On the front is says postponement mode, on the back it says participation mode. Turn it accordingly.

I think this card would work because tactile interruption beats digital reminders. And I could foresee people using this tool and achieving one of two results.

• Either they feel oddly calm and suspiciously fine for the first time in years.

• Or they see that nothing leads anywhere and try to burn it all down.

Half the people will stop trying to optimize things and see their lives magically get better. The other half will go into existential free fall, and wind up lying on the carpet and staring at the ceiling until they understand relativity.

Both are valid.

In a world of stepping stones and ladders and catapults, this new tool might just do the trick.

Not only is love not rational, but love should not be rationed.

Less affection is not the answer. Anytime humans are the carriers of love, it's a net gain for the world.

Catholics are often accused of this. Scholars write about how that particular religion goes too far with their devotion to the virgin mary. They praise her, not god. Their devotion is idolatry. And she becomes an obstacle to pure worship.

So dial it down, folks, lest you slip into idolatry.

I've even seen entire memoirs with full chapters dedicated to the author overcoming their attachment to the virgin mary. Like they were weaning off cocaine or something.

I wasn't raised religious, so this is a new concept to me. But my thought is, guys, love is not a scarce resource. The more of it we give, the more of it we own. We can love as many things and people as we want.

Now, it's true that the human heart has limits. There's only so much energy each person has. So we cannot care about everything. And that's a healthy boundary to practice.

Although if the devil is real, then he's definitely going to try to convince us to love less. That seems like page one of his playbook.

Get people to pinch pennies with their hearts. Make them ration their compassion.

I think that's why polarization is so pointless to me. I understand the tribal instinct is powerful, and that culture incentivizes taking sides. But we need to err on the side of abundance.

My question is, does withholding love make people feel proud? Do they enjoy parsing out their affection only to those who deserve it?

Maybe they're getting something I'm missing. I just don't see the upside to putting your heart on a budget.

Seinfeld once gave a commencement address at a top university. He told the graduates:

Fall in love. I suggest falling in love with anything and everything. Every chance you get. Fall in love with your coffee, your sneakers, your blue zone parking space. I've had a lot of fun in life falling in love with stupid, meaningless physical objects. Find something where you love the good parts and don't mind the bad parts too much.

Jerry's point is well taken. What I appreciate about the process of falling in love with objects is, they can't love you back. It's a one way transaction.

Now, obviously that's not the same as loving another person, who can reciprocate your affection. There's more risk when you open your heart to another human. Although loving objects is interesting, because the value comes from generating affection, not receiving anything in return.

So you're strengthening that muscle. It's good preparation for loving well.

Who are you telling to dial down their love? What if you didn't treat affection as a scarce resource?

Here's an exercise you can try.

Think about a group of people you're not supposed to love. Liberals, conservatives, gays, rich people, academic elites, religious fundamentalists, transgender athletes, whatever.

Next time you're in a conversation where someone is criticizing, challenge yourself to complete the following sentence.

What I love about them is _________.

It's so refreshing. Doesn't mean you agree or approve with that group's beliefs. You're simply saying there's a facet of who they are that resonates with your heart. Doesn't make you a traitor or a hypocrite or a bad guy by association. Simply a human.

Here, I'll go first.

You know what I love about gun enthusiasts? How imaginative they get with their accessories. My friend sent me a link to a website that sells conceal and carry bags for women. You've heard of the term, gun toting, right?

Well now there's a cottage industry of literal gun totes. As it says on the website:

Distressed vintage tanned full grain buffalo leather, chrome gold plate hardware, slash resistant crossbody slings that rest naturally across the chest and stay put while you walk, bend, or chase kids.

These gun totes give you freedom of movement without the constant readjustment that comes with traditional purses. Now busy mamas can draw their firearms quickly, predictably, and smoothly. These stylish packs swivel to the front with one motion and the gun compartment unzips cleanly with one hand.

That pathway removes hesitation. It supports a fast response during a moment when speed matters.

See, how hard was that? Are people so constrained with their affection that they can't simply express their love for groups like that? Without being ironic, facetious or making disclaimers?

Say it with me.

You know what I love about?

Six words that change everything.

Listen, if we're going to ration something, let's ration hate. Let's treat that emotion as a scarce resource. Let's doll it out less and less each year, and maybe it will eventually die from lack of oxygen.

Now, I'm sure some abhorrence will always exist, since we are, after all, human.

But maybe being more promiscuous with our love is a better use of our energy.

Here’s a song I wrote about this:

Their cards were dealt early. Core traits they operate with were already visible long before adulthood.

Doesn't mean people don't change and evolve and grow, but it's interesting to connect the dots on what drives people over the course of their lives.

When I consider the person I am today, and compare it to who I was when I was five, ten, twenty years old, the delta isn't that significant. So much of my identity engine was installed long before I even knew how to use it.

Here are a few snapshots.

• When I was in third grade, I would draw mazes and turn them into my teacher. Not for homework assignments. Not for extra credit. Apparently I liked making art and giving it to people. I vividly remember my folks coming home from parent teacher conferences at night, and the feedback they got from my teacher was, well, your son draws these mazes and just leaves them on my desk. Scott doesn't even want feedback on them. He's already onto the next one. That sounds like me. Same guy I am forty years later.

• When I was in sixth grade, the entire class was watching charlotte's web. At the end of the story when the spider lays her eggs, dies, and all her babies fly away to leave the pig all alone, I was sobbing. And some kid next to me started making fun of me for crying. One of my friends came to my rescue. She told him I had seasonal allergies and to leave me alone. Once again, that's me to a t. My allergies are mostly gone now, but I still cry at movies, shows and commercials all the time. Especially if the characters are animals.

• I played football for four years. I wasn't fast, I wasn't big, I wasn't strong, I wasn't competitive, and I wasn't mean. But I loved the discipline of practice. I liked running and conditioning and camaraderie. I liked the suffering. I liked that it was hard. Whether our team won or lost, I could give a shit. Just being there was enough. Eventually I quit the team because our coach made all the players sign a waiver that they wouldn't drink, do drugs or have sex during football season. Mind you, I was never going to do any of those things anyway, but I quit just out of principle. Today I would do the same thing.

• I was a senior in college when nine eleven happened. The day of the attacks, we basically sat in front of the television for ten straight hours. I remember it being a very scary, confusing and traumatic day. The following morning, since classes were cancelled, I woke up early and went for a run to clear my head. One of those cheesy, patriotic country songs came on the radio that totally jacked me up. I ran like the wind that day. Cruising down that two lane highway in the middle of the rural midwest, felt like I was in a movie. By the time I came back, I felt fantastic. Twenty five years later, I still use music and exercise in the same meditative, therapeutic way. Only difference is, now the country songs I listen to are written by me, and they're about how fucked up our country is.

All in all, despite my many revolutions and evolutions, my cards were dealt early.

What about your identity engine? What drove you as a child, teen and young adult that still drives you today?

The research on this phenomenon is massive.

1. There's temperament stability. Kagan’s longitudinal research shows that early patterns like inhibition or sensitivity remain predictive of adult behavior.

2. There's also early identity coherence. Olson’s research indicates that the foundations of narrative identity emerge in childhood and maintain continuity across the lifespan.

3. Also emotional regulation continuity. Eisenberg’s developmental studies show that children adopt emotion regulation strategies early and tend to use similar strategies as adults.

Ultimately, identity is not a blank slate, but a story that begins early and expands.

My recommendation is, study your childhood patterns to understand your present behavior.

The core traits that drive you now were already visible back then, and still offer clues for how to navigate your life today.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go draw another maze.

P.S. I wrote a song about this. Enjoy!

However, what I lack in technical proficiency I make up in experience and energy.

I’ve writen 65 books, recorded 30 albums, produced five films and done hundreds of other creative projects in my career. Working as the creative director with numerous highly talented designers and visual artists has taught me more than I ever could have dreamed.

And yet, despite my inability to draw a straight line, it’s reasonable to say my design sensibility is still better than average. My skills on all the major software programs are serviceable. My feedback on design elements like layout, flow, positioning and composition tend to be useful.

Point being, just because you’re not a professional trained whatever doesn’t mean you can’t do that thing. If you have enough experience and basic foundational design chops, plus a positive attitude along the way, you can do work that’s good enough, fool the world into thinking it’s fancier than it really is, and get surprisingly far.

Here’s an example.

Years ago I started designing covers for my own books. Historically, I’ve worked with my art director, who has been a tremendous partner and a good friend for over twenty years.

But as an experiment in good enoughness, I challenged myself to execute the book covers myself. Not to save money, increase speed or reinforce my control freak tendencies. More out of curiosity to see if I could do it.

It’s not easy, but it can’t be that hard, right?

Here are the results of this experiment.

First, designing wasn’t as hard as I had initially thought. Turns out, whatever you need to make, you’re never really starting from scratch. Somewhere there are shoes into which we can step. Everything has already been done by everybody everywhere, so once you locate that source of inspiration, the rest is just another process. Plus, we have ai tools that will do the execution for you.

Second, whatever shows up as barrier is simply a necessary next step. Book cover design turned out to be easier, more enjoyable and less stressful that it appeared. Combine that with the fact that nobody is even paying attention, much less reading my books in the first place, it’s not like there’s any kind of pressure to do legendary art work. Enough was as good as a feast.

Interestingly enough, one of my other designer friends saw my covers for several of my upcoming books, and he loved the artwork.

When I told him I designed them all myself, he laughed and said, well, you could have fooled me!

That’s what the vast majority of people don’t understand about talent. You don’t have to be the best, you simply have to find the best combination. Each of us can turn our modest collection of gifts and experiences into opportunities, as long as we think about our talent stack strategically.

It’s funny, one of my favorite questions to ask people in regards to their talent is?

What are you so good at that you make look easy?

But in light of my design example, perhaps there’s a question at the other end of the spectrum worth asking.

What are you good enough at that would fool most people? Which of your talents are passable enough that the people you work with wouldn’t even know the difference?

This is not about cheating, lying, being apathetic or delivering low quality work.

It’s about making the most of what you are.
It’s about using what you already have to get what you need.
It’s about trusting your resources to get the job done.
It’s about forgiving yourself for your imperfections and having compassion for your weaknesses.

And it’s about remembering that most of the world won’t even notice anyway, so you may as well see what you can get away with.

It’s deeply fulfilling. If a client or coworker asks you to do something that isn’t your primary skillset, and you say to yourself, ah what the hell, let’s give it a go, and then that person is blown away by the result, that changes your perception of yourself. It expands how you think about your talents.

Ultimately, what you lack in technical proficiency, you can make up in experience and energy. You don’t have to be the best, you simply have to find the best combination.

Even if you’re color blind and can’t draw a straight line, run an experiment in good enoughness, and you might even surprise yourself.

Their youthful charisma and beauty doesn’t evolve into a dignified gravitas. Mostly it’s just gravity.

Like the matinee idol from the nineties who used to be a heartthrob, and now just appears used and old.

Dicaprio, I’m looking at you. You are one of my favorite actors of all time. God bless you for the work you’ve done. But let’s be honest. Titanic was your peak, and now you’re just the iceberg.

I read a description of his appearance that summed it up perfectly.

Leo’s eyes are sinking into his flat pancake face like raisins in rice pudding, and now he looks like a cross between a homeless terrorist and a bulldog.

Ouch! Harsh words.

Although forget about celebrities for a sec. Let’s transition from idols to ideas.

Because many ideas don’t age well either. Despite the noble intentions, gravity eventually has its way with them.

Free speech is the perfect example. Great idea. British law originated the legislation back in the sixteen hundreds, and our nation adopted it a century later. Freedom of speech gave everyone a voice. It enabled constructive criticism of government, prevented tyranny and fostered accountability.

What’s not to like? Free speech was the matinee idol of its day.

Of course, that was three centuries ago. Back when people were still reasonable. Back when the worst insult you could say to another man’s face was, good day, sir!

Society was a slower, smaller, more scrupulous place.

Free speech worked because people had no choice but to be reasonable. But that reasonableness is no longer a feature of modern society. Rational discourse has left the building. Ain’t no shared baseline reality round these parts anymore. Today’s fractured media ecosystem allows for infinite realities, which makes reasonableness feel optional. We no longer live in a culture where restraint and responsibility are treated as personal virtues and civic duties.

In short, free speech peaked in seventeen seventy six, and now it’s just bloated and hard to look at. It’s the fifty one year old actor who staggers around shirtless, shouting conspiracy theories and getting shitfaced on yachts with billionaires.

I’m the king of the world!

New rule. We need to stop pretending every old idea is still young and sexy. The question we should ask about free speech, or any idea for that matter, goes like this.

Is this still a tool, or just a relic?

Because it may no longer be useful under today’s conditions. Human beings often make the mistake of treating ideas as untouchable goods, long after their context has changed. It’s a mix of cultural inertia, identity attachment and status quo bias. We’ve come this far with this idea as an untouchable good, and we can’t just throw it away now.

So we just assume free speech still works.

Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe all of our debates on free speech being taken away and platforms censoring us and the death of the first amendment are the wrong questions. People panic about whether free speech is gone, but maybe we should ask whether it’s still useful in the first place.

Again, here’s the question.

Is this still a tool, or just a relic?

Here, let’s do an exercise.

I’m going to list five headlines that are fictional, but could be true.

• One man’s fake tweet now responsible for national pediatric meltdown.

• Podcaster doubles audience after calling the former president a nazi.

• Women shares opinion, immediately becomes full time target practice for five hundred strangers.

• Deepfake confession video swings presidential election, fact check arrives just in time for nobody to care.

• Veteran scientist and conspiracy theory bro post opposite claims, internet decides both equally true.

Any of these headlines could be real. Maybe in a few years they will be. This is what happens when reasonableness is off the table.

Listen, free speech didn’t die, it simply aged out. What once protected civic debate now fuels chaos, misinformation, and harassment. My fake headlines may as well be real.

Frankly, I’m exhausted by the whole thing. Every morning when I open my news feed, there’s a dozen stories of someone who speaks freely, and in turn, destroys their own life. And sometimes the lives of others.

We need a new solution. Here’s my proposal.

Treat free speech like a driver’s license. Broad access, but subject to suspension if abused. If you consistently spread demonstrable harm, you lose privileges until you prove competence again.

We launch the department of civic licensing, a new agency tasked with managing speech rights like the dmv manages driving rights. Every citizen receives their speech license at age sixteen, granting them full public discourse rights. Minors can speak freely within private or educational contexts, but public amplification on online platforms requires guardian approval.

Here’s how my program works.

Just like traffic tickets, harmful speech accrues civic demerit points.

• If you publish a post of fake news about a cabal of nazi child molester who live under the airport, that’s two points against your license.

• If you heckle the comedian who comes to campus for his atheist views, ruining the night for the other students just trying to laugh, that’s three points against you.

• If you have a guest on your podcast who claims school shootings are staged by crisis actors, that’s an automatic suspension of your speech license pending review.

Accumulated points lead to warnings, fines, mandatory training, or suspension of speech license.

And just like driving, speech licenses must be renewed every ten years with a basic competency test.

If you don’t know the difference between a fact and a feeling, your license gets revoked, until you get your shit together.

Look, the authors of our country’s constitution couldn’t have imagined a world where one tweet could destabilize a democracy.

So my speech license program will help us all acknowledge that speech, just like driving, is powerful and useful; but also dangerous and requires training and accountability.

You keep crashing it into people, we’re taking away your keys. You talk some stupid ass shit and abuse your privileges, then the department of civic licensing is coming for you.

The bottom line, just like everyone doesn’t deserve a participation trophy, everyone doesn’t deserve a megaphone. You have to earn it.

Thanksgiving holiday will be the most peaceful it’s been in years. News feeds will focus on reporting uplifting, meaningful stories. Our nation’s collective blood pressure will go down forty percent.

People will say my program is literally fascism, and that’s fine. If they have a speech license, they can say whatever the fuck they want.

Just remember, some ideas don’t age well. Human beings often make the mistake of treating things as untouchable goods, long after their context has changed.

But democracy needs to update its software to match the hardware of modern life.

Since we can longer count on people being reasonable, I believe my licensing program is our best hope.

I’m king of the world!

I say it almost every day, in all kinds of contexts.

My friend says they have a date tonight, ooh! My kid sticks his hand in a jar of peanut butter, ooh! My dog rolls around in the snow and chews some ice, ooh! My wife tells me about a new series she’s streaming starring a hot gay french dude, ooh!

As if to say, I see what you see, and I am not shutting this down.

And it’s not only interpersonal. I say it for myself, too. I discover a new technology that saves me hours of work, ooh! I uncover an insight about human behavior that helps me understand my crazy neighbor, ooh! Even political stuff I disagree with, like some uber conservative initiative to curb porn use in red states, ooh!

I’m just trying to join the moment. To step into a future experience.

Ooh is a signal of anticipation.

I love the energy of ooh. It’s affirmative, delightful, and inclusive. There’s a sense of curiosity and possibility packed into that one sound. We need more of that in this world.

People are so dang aversive. Anything that doesn’t match their worldview or reinforce their identity gets instantly killed on contact. They want nothing to do with it. It feels too threatening.

Sorry guys, we need a stronger sense of self than that.

We need to learn how to say ooh to more things. The more joy we can find in life’s unfolding moments, whether they’re ours or someone else’s, the better. Certainty dies the moment ooh enters the room, and that’s a good thing.

And this isn’t woo woo positive vibe mumbo jumbo. There’s actual research behind ooh. Neuroscience studies on nonverbal vocal bursts show that brief sounds like ooh reliably encode positive, approach oriented affect rather than threat or avoidance. Vocalizations like this communicate interest, pleasure, and desire.

So here’s a real question.

How open are you to being pleasantly surprised?
Which curiosities do you refuse to allow into your life?

Ooh has a lot of opposites. Think about all the expressions people use to shut things down.

Nah.
Nope.
Ew.
Ick.
Ugh.
Crap.
Yikes.
Whatever.
Meh.
Stupid.
Wrong.
Obviously.
Figures.
Typical.
Been there.
Old news.
Don’t care.
Seen it before.

So negative. So constrictive. So judgmental.

And I’m guilty of every single one. I love how morally superior it feels to comment on life with cynical, all knowing reactions. That’s why saying ooh is such an important meditation.

When we encounter ideas, individuals, or experiences that are unexpected, counterintuitive, or even disturbing, ooh marks the moment. We notice something meaningful without moralizing it. We treat it as information, not intrusion.

My wife and I have a number of friends who are therapists, psychologists, and mental health professionals, and they are all big ooh people. One thing we’ve learned from our clinician friends is that curious vocalizations help regulate the nervous system of the person speaking.

Ooh functions as a soft signal of safety and attention.

Patients need that kind of therapeutic wonderment in order to gain insight.

The good news is, you don’t need a psychology degree to practice this. All of us can do a little ooh. We can add energy and momentum to the moment, if we choose.

No need to argue. No need to prove. Just say ooh.

You’ll never lose.

It even sounds like a nursery rhyme to me.

No two oohs sound quite the same, each one has a different name.
From tiny whispers to big surprise, every ooh has wondering eyes.

We could even build a cool app around this. The app would log ooh moments instead of steps. It would be for people who want to track curiosity, not productivity.

Your phone, watch, or ring listens only for a narrow acoustic signature, short rounded vowel bursts like ooh. It does not record conversations. It does not analyze content. It does not sell your data to the Chinese Communist Party.

When the system detects an ooh in your voice, it silently logs a timestamped curiosity event. No transcripts. No surveillance theater.

Over time, the app shows you when curiosity naturally arises. You begin to see which environments invite openness and which suppress it.

Think of it as a personal curiosity seismograph. Your own voice becomes data about when life still feels worth leaning toward.

I get that curiosity can feel like betrayal, especially for people who are cynical, ideologically captured, or stuck in perpetual crisis mode.

Oohster. Cock your curiosity before the world shuts it down.

And it’s important to mark that evolution. To add a new column to your personal cv that reflects the new change.

I remember when I tapered my antidepressant medication and eventually discontinued the drug. My doctor prescribed a six week hypnosis program to use during the taper, which he said helped some patients transition better.

I did the mediations twice a day. They were terrific. And I have to say, after twenty years of taking that drug, I honestly thought that the withdrawal would be worse. I expected collapse, but observed steadiness instead. There were some mild symptoms for about a week, but after that, smooth sailing.

Now, it’s hard to know how much of my success could be attributed to the hypnosis, versus other factors. Probably a combination of both.

All I know is, after about five days, my body acclimated, and I’ve never felt better. So now I’m updating my resume:

I can tolerate stress with holistic support. My baseline is strong. I regulate pressure through practiced skills. I trust my ability to notice early signals and respond appropriately. My nervous system is capable of recalibration. I can observe intrusive thoughts without treating them as commands.

I have direct evidence that I can do hard things consistently. My history now includes sustained success under challenge. I am an active participant in my mental health. And I possess multiple effective regulation tools and I know when to use each one.

Give that man a corner office!

Are you revising your identity story based on new data? What if your past necessity doesn’t dictate your future identity?

It's a powerful exercise. One that fuels you with the kind of pride that isn't sinful, but strengthening. I know pride is one of the seven deadly sins, and it comes before the fall and all, but shit, if updating my internal resume is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Trust me, if there's a god, he'll be okay with this. I've read the bible cover to cover multiple times. It actually does affirm human capacity, effort, and responsibility without constant divine intervention.

Better one slow to anger than a mighty warrior, and one who rules his spirit than one who captures a city. That's worth having pride in. Not like, ego display pride. Quiet confidence pride. Trusting yourself pride.

My mentor, who is preacher, used to say that humility doesn't mean self erasure, it means alignment with reality. That's what the internal resume exercise is all about. You look in the mirror and say, wow, I'm not perfect. I have a long way to go. I still do some dumb ass shit. But the data is in. I'm better than I used to be. Good for me. I accept my newfound strength and skills.

This gives me an idea for a new app.

Papertrail a competence discovery engine that scans your own digital exhaust to surface moments where your behavior contradicted your doubt.

No sentiment, just evidence. Papertrail does pattern detection across time, pressure and follow through.

Here are several use cases.

Activity logs show you stopped doomscrolling after eight o'clock and no longer used your phone in bed. Well done! Resume update generated.

Your affirmation is, I create conditions for high quality sleep through deliberate choices.

What about this one?

Your inbox contains forty percent more emails where you said no, rescheduled, or renegotiated scope. Solid boundaries, bro. Resume update generated.

Your affirmation is, I protect my capacity and preserve momentum.

Another use case is health data. Biometrics show improved heart rate variability, even when interacting with your narcissistic in laws during holiday periods. Boom. Seasoned pro! Resume update generated.

Your affirmation is, I maintain emotional and operational regulation during sustained pressure.

Papertrail could revolutionize the entire personal development. The best part is, you don't have to monitor or record anything. No need to keep an identity ledger of all your changes. Being human is hard enough. Let the app do the accounting, and then simply tell you how much better you've become.

Over time, the app becomes a forensic record of disproven fragility and confirmed competence. That's the kind of pride even god could get behind. Papertrail could put out a press released written by the lord almighty himself.

I have to admit, I did not expect to like this app as much as I do. When humans talk about pride, things usually go sideways. Inflated claims. Imaginary strengths. Bids to run for president. I've seen that move before. It never ends well. But this app is different. Papertrail doesn't declare greatness, it just notices reality. People aren't puffing themselves up. Simply reading their own receipts.

Scott over here successfully fixed fourteen appliances in his apartment this year without starting a house fire. That's unbelievable. He's completely changed the story he tells himself about his mechanical identity. Scott is so much kinder to his competence now. I mean, within reason. Obviously nothing electric, gas powered or plumbing related. But this guy disassembled a twenty year old box spring, carried it down the stairs, wrapped it in a mattress bag, and the trash guys actually took it from the curb.

And he only lacerated his ankle twice. If anyone deserves a little shot of pride, it's this guy. Papertrail made growth visible. I am fine with that.

Hey, if remembering what you survived makes you stand a little straighter, then by all means, remember it.

It's an expensive and exhausting enterprise. Anytime you create anything, you compete with everything. There's no guarantee anyone will care. And with the exception of the one percent of authors who sell millions of copies, the odds are not good that you will be rich. Or even paid at all.

Twice a year I get a royalty statement from my publisher, and every single time the invoice reads, zero dollars, zero cents. My book’s earnings still haven’t surpassed my author's advance. Makes me laugh out loud every time I get that biannual email.

I may never see a single penny from that title, which is fine with me.

The good news, I have discovered a conceptual strategy that gives me eighty percent of the joy with one percent of the effort. I call it short circuiting the artifact.

This idea first came to me years ago when I created a series of films. The first was a concert documentary, second was a motivational masterclass, third was an animated folk rock opera, and the final was a silent gothic western.

Each film project was enjoyable and challenging in its own way. I grew by leaps and bounds as an artist during the process. I'm so glad I made those movies.

Although my favorite part of the project was making the movie poster. That was the artifact I could always use as a reminder of the experience. Kind of like a book cover. Here’s the frame in my library with all four artifacts. So cool:

It's amazing how much totemic power objects like that can have.

And so, at a certain point, I thought to myself:

Wait a minute. Why the hell am I still grinding through an expensive and exhausting production and promotion process, when I can get the emotional payoff for next to nothing? What if I could extract the value at the idea stage by creating a polished artifact that satisfies my creative drive?

Fuck it. Doesn't cost me anything. If I have a concept for something, I can use my favorite artificial intelligence app to mock up a book cover, movie poster, product shot, or prototype of my idea.

I can still make the thing if I want, but I also don't need to kill myself for two years. I can get the trophy piece that scratches my itch, right now. Which gives me a sense of completion without the burden of distribution.

It's magic. Truly a game changer.

Because at this point in my career, what do I need to prove anymore? That I can write a book, make a movie or record an album? I've done that a hundred times already. I'm good. My interest is solely in creation, not sales or readers or fame or impact.

Now all I really want is the artifact. A personal library of imaginative totems that capture the essence without the labor. That gives me all the catharsis I need.

Look, I understand people have validation hunger. They need an eternal response to feel complete. Good. That's a strong motivator. I used to have that hunger myself, and I’m glad people are out there hustling.

But as I said, I'm not in the book business anymore. Or the movie business. Or the music business. I’m not in any business, come to think of it. I just like making things.

This isn't my livelihood, where commercial seriousness matters. So I short circuit the artifact. I scratch the itch the very moment the ideas appear, without waiting years for production to resolve.

And it doesn't feel like cheating. Or not finishing. Or doing partial effort. I got what I needed and let go of the rest. That's wisdom. Economically speaking, I'm creating a form of scalability that traditional approaches could never allow.

For example, my next five books are done. Each one is 300,000 words. They’re monsters. I worked hard on them, and feel proud that I’ve finished that work.

But I have no intention of publishing them. Not a single inhabitant of planet earth would ever read them anyway. So I just made the artifacts and moved on:

One of my friends is about to publish a book that he's been writing for fifteen years. Fifteen years. I'm so proud of him. I can't wait to give him my money and read my copy. He should be proud of himself.

That's not how I work anymore. My process is completely internal. My scale is bounded only by my willingness and ability to create. That's exciting to me.

So here's the tool, to reiterate.

SHORTCUT THE ARTIFACT: The practice of skipping the exhausting middle steps of production and going straight to a polished token that captures the essence of an idea, giving you the emotional payoff without the grind.

You can use this tool for many things beyond just art.

Start by identifying your core desire. What do you really want from this project?

Because often, it's not the full execution, but the feeling of completion, progress and growth you really seek. Great.

Next is to choose a symbolic representation. Pick an artifact that can stand in for the whole.

Could be a digital image, a physical object, whatever fires inspiration into your body when you behold it.

Step three is to create the shortcut version. Use digital tools to create an artifact that looks and feels real enough to trigger the emotional payoff.

Lastly, anchor that feeling. Display, print out, mock up or even share the artifact. Let it give you the sense of closure, accomplishment or validation you were chasing.

See if that's enough for you. See if you can get eighty percent of the way there. Then let go of the rest. Trust that you've already harvested the value you needed, and move onto the next one.

Remember, there are some projects worth executing to completion. That will always be a valuable process.

I still stand by the title of my tenth book, ideas are free execution is priceless.

But just know, your life can scale in joy without scaling in exhaustion. You can extract meaning, motivation and satisfaction from the artifact itself.

Just don't tell others to do it.

It's helpful to use that expression with your own behavior. But as an interpersonal directive, it's wildly ineffective.

And it's funny, because I've always enjoyed telling people to let things go. Makes me feel spiritual, wise and unbothered. Like I am the only sane, rational adult in the room. Some zen sage delivering this three word koan that's going to lead people down the path of enlightenment.

But it recently occurred to me that this phrase is a subtle form of control. Let it go is code for, your feelings and making me uncomfortable, and I'd like you to stop.

It's an invalidation of people's vulnerability.

Recently my single friend was spiraling about a cryptic text from a guy she's dating. She was obsessing over punctuation, word choice, typos, time stamps, even the emojis.

Now, my instinct was to tell her, just delete the message and move on with your life. This rando from tinder wasn’t worth your time and energy.

Because that's what I would do if I were spiraling. Life's too short to obsess over digital grammar.

On the other hand, nobody should tell anyone what to do with their pain. How insulting. That's an assumption that we know how their nervous system should behave.

Truth is, many people cannot simply stop feeling something on command. Frozen be damned, but they will not let it go. Their emotions don't work like that.

Besides, what do we know about what people need?

So if I could go back in time, instead of invalidating my friend's concerns about that text message, I would have told her to double down.

You know what? Don't let it go, squeeze it tighter. Devour and digest these feelings until you have broken them down and metabolized it into something else. Swallow the poison and turn into fertilizer. Grow something out of it.

That's the only true way to release anything. Help it move through you at its own pace and finish its cycle. Doesn’t that seem like better advice than telling someone to let it go?

I think the real problem is, we’re allergic to complexity. Intolerant of unresolved tension. The moment we catch a whiff of that sulfurous stench, our instinct is to tell people to let it go. It’s the last refuge of the emotionally exhausted.

We may as well just say, leave it god’s hands.

No. It’s not our job to decide that for people. Any work we do around letting go needs to relate to our own behavior, not someone else’s. That important work only gets done if it’s compelled, not commanded.

Whose unresolved tension do you not tolerate? Are you assuming you know how their nervous system should behave?

I’m reminded of the children’s book, Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus.

If you’re not familiar with this literary atrocity, here’s the plot.

When a bus driver takes a break from his route, an unlikely volunteer springs up to take his place. A pigeon. Who is an asshole. He’s whiny, manipulative, rude and immature. The entire book is just one incessant plea after another, for this feathery sociopath to drive the bus.

Spoiler alert, he never gets to drive the bus.

But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe the only way to get this rodent to learn his lesson is to hand him the keys.

Just once I would love to read a page where the driver says:

He straps in, slams the door, gives the horn toot, cranks up some death metal and floors that motherfucker. Thirty seconds later, he runs a stoplight, sideswipes an old lady in a wheelchair, jumps the curb and plows straight into an orphanage. Suffering a broken beak, a severe concussion, and causing millions of dollars in structural damage, he is arrested for involuntary manslaughter. And now he’s doing twenty years in bird prison, being some crow’s bitch.

That’s what happens when you give control to someone who isn’t ready to drive. Life teaches them a lesson.

So next time someone tells you to let it go, remember the pigeon. The only way out is through.

Tell them not to drop the feeling, but wreck the bus and learn how to rebuild it yourself.

Here’s a little song I wrote about this:

Because they don’t have all the time in the world. Locals figure they could always just tale the tour later. Tourists don’t have that luxury. It’s like, okay kids, we have two days to see everything, let’s go!

So what residents lack is activation energy. Chemists use this term to describe the minimum amount of energy required to initiate a chemical reaction, but psychologists have adopted this term to describe the motivation required to begin a task.

When something requires more activation energy than we’re willing or able to expend at the moment, we don’t do it. So we reject viable paths to relief or joy.

It’s perfectly human. I get it.

You ever had a craving for a very specific food item, only to get to the bakery and see a line around the block? Screw this, I don’t need a rainbow bagel that much. I’m not waiting in a long ass line for that. I think there’s a pop tart at the bottom of my backpack somewhere.

That’s activation energy.

What’s interesting to me is the emotional component. Because some people treat optional effort as oppression. They accept their solvable discomfort as fate. And become angry at reality for not arranging itself to match their exact tolerance window.

I thought about this the other day when buying a new phone. I walked about five minutes to the store, waited about fifteen minutes in line, only to discover I couldn’t register my new phone without my four digit pin, which I left at home.

God damn it.

I asked if there was any way to get a temporary pin right there at the store, so I didn’t have to go home and come back. But store policy said otherwise. Sorry sir.

Now, this was an important moment. Because it’s where a lot of people would fall off. They’d get pissed and impatient and blame the phone carrier, the manufacturer, the store owner, or the universe in general.

All of which are reasonable reactions. I get it. Why do companies make it so hard to give them money? Jesus almighty. I just want my new phone so I can go home a watch snl clips while I take a shit.

Anyway, rather than treating optional effort as oppression, I walked five minutes my apartment, grabbed my pin number, returned to the store, filled out the form, got my phone, and moved on with my life.

That’s activation energy.

And it’s really hard for some people.

They abandon their goals entirely the moment they come up against a barrier. If they can’t have exactly what they want, their favorite special thing, then they’re done. It’s over. Screw you guys, I’m going home.

This is childish behavior. It’s petulant and lacks resilience. People allow the continuation of pain from a self imposed narrowing of acceptable solutions. They reject viable paths to relief.

Here’s another example. You have a sore shoulder and you really want a massage. So you go to a spa, but there are no therapists available. You wait ten minutes, get frustrated, and leave. There are four other massage places nearby, each less than a ten minute walk, but you decide they are too far away. So you go home, take a nap, and wake up still in pain.

Have you ever done a version of that before? I know I have.

Inconvenience becomes impossibility. This is what kids do. They’re super hungry and excited for pizza, but once they arrive and find out the parlor is closed, suddenly they’re not hungry anymore. Now they’re just grumpy. Life’s unfairness ruined their day.

Adults do this all the time. We say things like:

It’s too far.
It’s not worth it.
That would take forever.
Too much work.
I have standards.
Never mind.
I’m not in the mood anymore.
It’s not happening today.
The window has passed.

No it hasn’t!

Have the regulatory capacity to say, well, I am still hungry, I just need a different solution.

Don’t shut down. Don’t throw your hands up and say, well then I guess this whole thing’s off! No. Reroute your energy. There’s like seven other pizza places in the neighborhood. Try another one.

Same goes for massages. Walk ten minutes and I guarantee you’ll pass another parlor. The place on seventh avenue is great. Pretty sure it’s front for human trafficking or dope running, but whatever. They use hot stones on your taint.

Activation energy, folks. It’s a mind game. You have to expect friction, and accept that reality doesn’t owe you convenience, and take matters into your own hands. You have to get comfortable with partial wins and imperfect gains.

Ellis wrote about this extensively in his books on rational emotive behavioral therapy. A famous line of us his was, people take strong preferences and elevate them into absolute musts. It’s called musturbation. Someone thinks, conditions must give me what I want, and if they do not, the world is awful.

Albert’s idea always resonated with me. Because must is everywhere. And it will eat you from the inside out. I’m no behavioral scientist, but it seems like the biggest behavior to activation energy there is.

So when you’re unhappy, annoyed and in pain, ask yourself musty questions.

What must I get in order to feel whole?
What must happen for things to go perfectly?
What must be in place for me to get what I want?

Figure that out, and you’re one step closer to a pizza and a massage.

Maybe I should just open a store that offers both.

Holy shit. No way is this really happening.

The day that puzzle was published, over a dozen friends, strangers and readers took pictures and screen shots of the game and sent them to me with my first name filled in the blank.

They all joined me with gasps of joy and astonishment.

Did you see this? Did you even know they were going run this? This is amazing! I mean, what other name could it possibly be? Scott is the most logical answer for this one very clue.

Sadly, we learned that the crossword was actually looking for a corporation, not an individual. The correct five letter answer was the global office supply company specializing in the design and manufacture of a wide variety of labeling materials.

Avery was the final word, not my name.

God damn it. I was legitimately devastated. How dare those hacks not recognize my foremost expertise. I almost considered making a phone call to the newspaper, or even marching right down there to confront the editor in chief herself.

But saner heads prevailed.

Besides, victory was mine from a cultural standpoint anyway. Because the fact that multiple strangers assumed that the answer was my name, and even told me that they wrote down my name in protest, that’s a win in my book. I felt so loved. Nametag truly is my word. Nobody owns it more than me. Google will back that up any day.

Anyway, this is merely one of the million chapters in the quirky story of my sticky life. But there’s also an interesting lesson in marketing and linguistics and identity.

See, nametag has become my word to the extent that most people now include the term before my actual title when referring to me. Not my immediate family members, but most friends, coworkers, colleagues, neighbors and readers will do it.

For the past twenty plus years, people have associated this unique trademark with it who I am as a person. It’s hard to talk about me without the word nametag entering into the conversation.

And the thing about a word like nametag is, it’s not generic descriptor like tall, funny, sweaty or lawyer, which could apply to virtually anybody with my first name. Nametag is an easily recognizable, specific, uncrowded search engine expression that only applies to my unique nature. It’s this strange phenomenon of identity that also makes sense from a cognitive and sociological standpoint.

Matter of fact, I recently checked out the current census research, and learned that there are currently over nine hundred thousand people in this country with my first name.

Scott is statistically the fiftieth most popular first name in the nation. Not bad for a country with three hundred and thirty million people.

What’s exciting is, there’s only one person who has the word nametag in front of his name. Yay for me.

And for the record, my entire personhood isn’t wrapped up in this single moniker. Nametag identifies me, but it doesn’t define me. I’ve reached the point in my life where I don’t need to feel as special as I used to.

But I do enjoy it being associated with me, because from a linguistic standpoint, it makes things so much easier. It’s a social accelerator. Using the word nametag helps people, myself included, differentiate me from the other nine hundred thousand others with the same name.

That is why, when I apply for jobs, fill out online forms, or create social media profiles, I always remember to include the word nametag in front of my first name. This makes me easier to identify from a seo perspective, and it’s also good personal branding.

But there’s an unexpected fringe benefit of using this moniker publicly. It helps me to identify and filter out automated messages.

You know the ones. Everyone receives them. Bots attempting to personalize their sales outreach sequence by using your first name in the subject line?

Most of us find it annoying, but it’s such a fun game for me. Because when I receive emails, texts, direct messages and other forms of spam from, who I assume are robots, their algorithm alerts them that I go by the designation, nametag.

The machine assumes that’s my given birth title. Which is both hilarious and useful. Let me share a collection of some recent inbound messages from my actual spam folder.

• Nametag, do you like build mutual backlinks between our blog articles, boosting our domain ratings?

• Nametag, spending some time in transportation myself, our platform really looks to be simplifying the entry point for other carriers to get competitive!

• Nametag, what are you wearing to bed tonight?

• Nametag, if you’re considering raising capital this year, we can help line up highest quality institutional and angel investors.

• Nametag, this week we already paid out one hundred thousand in commissions to referral partners like yourself.

• Nametag, hope all is well in your world, let's set up some time to chat next week if it makes sense.

Nice try, spambots. You’re gonna have to do better than that to fool me. I think I’ll wait until the robot apocalypse before believing your attempts to disguise your activities as coming from a real user.

How do you use personal branding to simply your daily life? Is there an easily recognizable, specific, uncrowded search term that most people associate with your name?

Sociologists talk about a phenomenon called identity capital in this regard. If you read the premiere study on the topic, the concept of identity capital denotes what individuals invest in who they are.

Researchers say that our investments potentially reap future dividends in the identity markets of late modern communities. To be a player in such markets, a person must first establish a stable sense of self which is bolstered social and technical skills in a variety of areas, effective behavioral repertoires, psychosocial development to advanced levels and associations in key social and occupational networks.

In short, identity capital is the wherewithal individuals use to engage in transactions as they attempt to negotiate the tricky passages created by the obstacles of society. For me, having the word nametag immediately associated with me helps builds my identity capital.

Now, that was not my intention when I first slapped the sticker on my chest over twenty five years ago. But here we are.

I never thought people would mistake my name for a crossword clue, but here we are.

And I embrace it all. Moments like these keep life interesting. They make me feel special, teach me powerful lessons about human behavior, and help me identify which robots are trying to sell me things.

How much name equity do you have?