ok so listen because this is crazy - tomorrow i am doing a live session called MAKE COMPUTERS FUN AGAIN with my besties over at aka and .

there are, at the time of this writing, 757 people registered.

WHAT THE FELL (fuck+hell)

i cannot imagine that Zoom can handle that many people.

i’ve reached out to Zoom to see what they plan on doing tomorrow and have not heard back.

that silence speaks volumes.

if you have a zoom meeting scheduled tomorrow, i’d reschedule it because zoom WILL NOT work.

i’m not just a random guy saying this - i’m the one hosting the session all about cool tech.

it’s at 12p est AND they’ll give you a recording but you’ll wanna come in person because i’ve got some good stuff planned.

no but for real

tomorrow is really a showcase of all the cool weird stuff i’ve been obsessed iwth and building over the last year. it’s also what i’ve been teaching other people to build with code for creatives.

here’s the description of the event:

​Alex Dobrenko grew up with coder parents, making dumb things on the computer. Claude Code has made him feel like a kid again.

​He’s built a creative HQ that remembers his work, knows his clients, and can act across files and projects. Once he realized he could build almost anything, he started building everything.

​He taught Claude his visual taste so it can help him design websites that don’t suck; built interactive pages where he can review and respond to his AI’s work from anywhere; built a one-click pipeline that published drafts from Obsidian straight to his blog; created custom portals, dashboards, and tools around the peculiar needs of individual clients; and even a tool to analyze his squat reps frame by frame to improve his form.

​In this live session, Alex will take us inside the creative HQ he has built for himself, share his philosophy of serious unseriousness, and help you imagine one built around your own mind, work, and quirks. So you can automate the boring and protect the weird.™

bring the BAT

i really do need the BATheads in the audience, tho as i said i think zoom can hold like 12 ppl max. everyone else will prob be put in a standing room only breakout room or something idk.

there’s a lot more i wanna share about all this stuff. i have 50 half-written essays that soon will come. but for now, just this.

enjoy. i hope to see you there, and if not, i hope you’re good.

i love you all.

- alex

1

Growing up, I’d make my parents say sorry to each other whenever they were fighting.

Then I’d check to confirm they’d done it.

“Did you say sorry?” I’d ask.

“Yes.”

“Did Dad say sorry?”

“Yes.”

“Are you guys still fighting?”

Sometimes they’d tell me the truth - “yes, we are.” Other times they’d lie. I wonder how all of that must have been for them. Did my blunt negotiation tactics help?

I’m not sure if my blunt negotiator schtick actually helped, but I needed to do it. Like a compulsion. Like picking at a scab. My biggest fear was that they’d get divorced and this was the only way to make sure it didn’t happen. Well, that and also asking them about it all the time.

“Are you going to get divorced?”

“No,” they’d always say.

“Really?” I’d ask.

“Yes.”

I’d also ask them if they were happy, which was a test. If they replied with “happy happy,” I knew they were actually happy. But if they replied with just “yes” or “happy,” I knew they were lying.

2

There’s this online essay from way back called ‘things you’re allowed to do.’

It’s full of things like “Say ‘I don’t know’” and “buy goods/services from your friends.”

The list is so powerful because the ideas are obvious, yet we forget we can, in fact, just do them.

Anyway, I started writing my own list the other day.

a list of things you’re allowed to do

1. take a nap

2. power through and not take a nap

3. power through and not take a nap but then realize you do, in fact, need to take a nap

4. tell someone you’re sorry

That was as far as I got before, you guessed it, taking a nap. Waking up, I had no recollection of writing that last part. Who did I need to say sorry to? I say sorry all the time.

Sorry.

3

What does it even mean to say sorry? What is required? First, you gotta have something to say sorry for.

Maybe, but not always. Wilder, my 5yo, says sorry all the time but it doesn’t really mean “please forgive me for the wrong I’ve done.” More so he knows we’re upset and that a sorry might help. Or he’s annoyed and the sorry is “okaaaay, I’m sorry, stop bugging me.”

He speedruns it all too, like right after hitting his sister he’ll say “sorry” so that, when we’re explaining why he shouldn’t do that, he’s already deep into the “I said sorry!” alibi.

Saying sorry does always mean believing you’re worthy of forgiveness. Not that Wilder would have any idea of that being true, but he doesn’t need to. It’s a given. Assumed true until proven otherwise.

Or sometimes he’ll just say “okay” when I tell him not to do something.

“Stop saying okay,” I’ll say.

“Okay.”

4

The closest thing I have to a place of worship is the YMCA sauna. There, amongst my brothers in sweat, in the middle of a conversation about making amends with the people in your life, someone asked, “but how do you forgive people who don’t think they’ve done anything wrong?”

An older man with a scraggly face and a resting scowl, perched up in the far corner of the heat-box, said, “my father was a real son of a bitch. Only once he was gone could I really forgive him. So either you wait, or you do it now.”

I was the one who asked the question, by the way.

Lately I’ve felt the need to forgive my parents. Like whatever gunk and scar tissue there exists between us would all be erased if only I could forgive them.

But how could I do that if they don’t believe they’ve done anything wrong?

The first ten years of therapy is spent arriving at this point. That your parents are incredible, that they did the best they could, and that there might have been things you needed that you didn’t really get in the exact way you needed them. Even writing that out scares me. Because I don’t want my parents to think that they did anything wrong. They didn’t. And yet, here I am.

My parents didn’t make it easy. One time, during a fight, they said and very much meant: “we are perfect parents.” But maybe it actually made it easier, because it’s so obviously not true. No one is perfect. - and yet it also is, because maybe that perfection includes the ability to be wrong. Maybe the whole thing is a loss in immigrant translation.

5

On the other side of saying sorry, there’s forgiveness. The scratch and the itch.

I wonder if forgiving others is just the scenic route toward forgiving yourself.

I can’t just say sorry to myself.

Except wait - look at the list. I can say sorry. Let’s try:

Alex, I’m sorry.

(no response back)

Do you forgive me?

…for what?

I don’t know.

How can I forgive you if I don’t know what I’m forgiving you for?

Even if I accepted your forgiveness, would I buy it? Would it mean anything? Or is this one of those fake-it-till-you-make-it situations - forgive until you believe?

Forgiveness is the antidote to self-hate.

And doctor, I need the cure. I’m so full of it that I forget it’s even a thing. That there’s any other way to be. The scab exists so you can pick it.

But looking at my kids, I know there is another way. They do not hate themselves, which gives me hope that I could not hate myself too. And sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I forget about myself entirely. But

6

Wilder has said sorry for real, though. Like the other morning, when he woke up after a particularly hard night of fighting about no more TV. He walked up to me, we did our huggy, and he said “sorry.” And I said, oh, thanks for saying that, it’s okay, I really appreciate it.

“Okay,” he said. “You weren’t good either.” Or really what he said was: “you weren’t a good dada either.”

“What?” I said.

He said, no, remember? You said sorry about how you weren’t being a good dada.

And I remembered. I had apologized to him the other day for getting too upset, for not letting things go. And also to show him that I have faults, that I’m fallible, that I’m nowhere near perfect. I probably say sorry too much, to model it, and also because I am. We all say sorry to each other more. How could we not?

But hearing him say it still hurt. Still stung. And it’s okay that it hurt. The hurt is good because the hurt is real, and the hurt reminds me that it’s true: I’m not perfect, but I can own it.

7

The thought of forgiving my parents makes me want to throw up. Because it means admitting there’s something to forgive them for, which means admitting they weren’t perfect, which means admitting they weren’t correct. And that they weren’t the gods I once thought them to be.

This becomes easier when I realize that I’m not a god either - even if Wilder might see me as one. No one is. But we need them nonetheless: our parents, our leaders, our gods themselves. For in them there is safety. And in that safety, there is freedom. And in that freedom, we can be little idiots, goofing around. Asking our parents if they’re fighting, or if they’re going to get a divorce, or if they’re happy.

There’s something here that I’m almost able to touch. But not yet.

Maybe you don’t ever really touch it. Maybe you accept that you can and can’t touch it all at once. That your parents aren’t perfect, and thus they are. That you can forgive them nothing unless you forgive them everything, because nothing is everything. If nothing is true, then anything can be.

And really, neither matters. What matters is accepting how you feel and forgiving yourself. Forgiving yourself. Letting yourself off the hook. Because just like my parents refuse to accept that anything could be wrong, I refuse to accept that anything can be right. They say: we are perfect parents. I say: I’m a perfect piece of shit. We live in absolutes, because the nuance of truth is too scary. Too hard. Too messy.

You are not perfect. And I’m not a piece of shit. And somehow all of that is perfect. It has to be. Because it is.

And the truth is that it’s fine. It’s okay. We can own it, and we live in it, because we already do.

You can just do that. You’re allowed to just do that.

I’m doing it now. I’m trying it now. And I can.

Okay?

Okay.

And I guess what I’d really want to say to them is: I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for holding back, for holding grudges, for wishing things were different than they could possibly be. I’m sorry for being so angry. I’m sorry for wanting the impossible. I’m sorry for how that hurt you. I’m also sorry for how it hurt me.

I’m sorry, but I don’t wish it were any different. And I don’t take any of it back, because I don’t think we could possibly get here, where we are right now, without it.

And for that I am grateful.

And for that I am happy-happy.

And I hope you are too.

Alex Dobrenko
Aug 7, 2026
Homeroom 213

ONE- not wanting things to be so polished anymore

i feel like everything has become too polished online? like when i think about publishing something on substack, i am immediately and without even realizing it already thinking about how it’ll perform - the shape of it as an experience for the audience. there is little gestation or creative shaping of a thing before it is seen from the POV of the audience that shall receive it.

1. but not anyone specific in the audience, rather ‘the audience’ as a whole - a unit, a mass, a hoard, an algorithmic representation of humans representing ‘audience’ which is itself a stand-in for ‘money’ or the possibility thereof

2. this is, based on my scientific research of my own brain, fucking bad news.

1. i am of course not saying one should not write for an audience - i don’t think one can help it, but i do think that the stakes get so high - or FEEL so high - that the scales tip in the favor of audience capture and business and away from the good time goofs that you ever did any of this for in the first place

this, then, is perhaps one attempt to veer myself back the other direction. change course. turn the wheel (of Fortuna, Dunceheads where you at??), and say fuck it, let’s be dumb again.

TWO- it’s the people, stupid

you know that whole ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ thing? its from the olden days when government was real. i think james carville said it but maybe it was someone else. if only there was a way to check.

but anyways, i think the truth is that really, when you boil down to it, it’s the people, stupid. always has been meme.

people, people, people. i love em. no not ‘em’ - YOU. the readers. the batheads. i have missed you and i fear that i don’t really even know who many of you are anymore.

there are a lot of you here, but who are you?

i want to know.
i want you to know me too.
so let’s do that.

THREE- this is a request for proof of life.

please comment with any, all, or none of the below:

1. a question you have for me

2. a question you have for everyone

3. a request for me to ask you a question

4. a request for anyone to ask you a question

Leave a comment

So all of that really was a voice note and so is this also I wanted to share this post because I’ve been wondering what the hell the point of Substack even is anymore? Like obviously writing long ass essays is no longer in Vogue. It has become pastiche or Kitch or or or I don’t know but I think you do

So then, maybe the point is just to be around other people? Maybe that was always the point I don’t know, but I do find myself craving right now. Connection with the both are true universe by which I mean, you and you and yes, even you mike “sowden”

Anyways, please comment with proof of life. Maybe you have a question you wanna ask me or maybe you want me to ask you a question either way just comment and say hi. I think we all need this maybe not like we need water or food or even air but almost like that.

Comment

i have a confession: I’ve been using ai a lot. Maybe this isn’t even a confession since i kind of talked about it already and also because i’ve literally already written a post with a header titled ‘confession pt 2’, but still.

it feels like i’ve been keeping a secret.

like you’ll judge me, like y’all will hate me (more than, of course, you already do, since that’s all an audience who tells you that they love your stuff actually does - hate you).

these are logic things! just like ai!

but ya know what? i’d rather be hated for who i am than ALEX NO

what the hell is happening? the ai discourse is discoursting. it’s odd and even and most of all it’s COMPLETED. people have made their calls and chosen their sides and now, we fight.

one might even say the whole thing is a heated rivalry. that’s what the show was about, right? a russian guy who loved ai but couldn’t admit it? hockey, too, but that was just a metaphor? i am not a tv critic but i know the truth when i hear about it from my friends who loved that show.

we digress!

and isn’t that the joy behar of it all? digression!? i started this post as a list of all the weird shit i’ve been building with ai, because baby, lemme tell ya, i’ve been building stuff.

not the optimize-yourself-out-of-a-job or make-millions-while-you-sleep kind of stuff, but dumb stuff. weird stuff. stuff that makes me feel like i did when I first started building on the internet in middle school.

is the stuff any good? no!

is it useful? a little!

i even started teaching other people how to do it with something called Code for Creatives, where I help non-coders make the weird stuff in their brains. It’s fun. We’ve done three cohorts now and there’s a fourth coming soon (oh softest of launches).

i’ve probably written like 30 essays about all of this, trying to explain how - ok no that’s a lie, i’ve half written four essays but still !

that’s a lot. that’s two full essays. 2!

i don’t know what to make of all this, but here’s a quick builder report of one thing i tried to make and the results therein1!!

how many ways can you skin a cat?

i’ve just always been obsessed with the origins of phrases, like where do certain phrases come from? what are their origins?

why do we say “there’s more than one way to skin a cat?”

were there rival schools of thought on how to best skin a cat? did those people argue so much that other people, often, had to remind the group that there was no right way but, in fact, a lot of different ways could work?

or does the original phrase actually have more to do with the absurdity of the topic itself, like was the phrase meant to convey that there isn’t ANY right way to skin a cat, because obviously that’s inhumane, so this entire discussion is moot and void and we should all shut the fuck up about it and just do the thing we’re supposed to do, which is not skin a cat?

i’m gonna look up the answer now ALEX NO not yet, let me actually just keep explaining what i was trying to do, which is make a game.

a game! about idioms!

i wanted to make a game where people could try to guess the origin of an idiom, and I wanted to use AI to help me make it.

here’s what I put into claude code, word for word:

I want to create a game based on idioms where I think you guess what an idiom means. I’m not sure exactly and I wanna run a grill me to figure it out. The things I like are the idea of something sort of uniform like Wordle but also this game where you guess a word and based on whatever you guess it tells you how close or far you are conceptually from the right word. Help me figure this out.

Claude gave me some options and then we did the grill me.

what the hell is ‘the grill me’

did y’all notice me just saying ‘we did the grill me’ like its a normal thing to say?? it isn’t! none of this is!

basically grill me is just a really simple skill I use all the time inside claude code that helps clarify what it is i’m trying to do before the ai goes and does it.

here’s an abridged play by play of what happened next (if you prefer to read the whole convo i’ve got it as text here)

the end!

that was fast!! i literally answered one question and then got bored haha.

and i haven’t really touched it since writing about it here.

why? because it hasn’t popped back up into my mind, which I treat as the main signal of whether i need to keep working on an idea: does it keep bubbling up? is it nagging? is it demanding my attention? in this case, it did not.

but here’s the real question: was this effort a success?

and maybe even more so: was this the right way to do it?

and perhaps even more importantly: would I do anything differently next time?

a post mort ‘em

obviously the fact that it didn’t turn into anything real does not, itself, mean that it was a failure. most stuff fails. the trying is the move, and i’m glad i tried.

i said yes to my own idea enough so that i invested time and energy into exploring it. the first ten or so years of my illustrative career as an artist were spent battling my inability to say yes to anything.

this, they say, in progress studies, is progress.

but did I actually explore, or did I offload the hard exploration work to the ai such that it let me off the hook?

and because I didn’t get a quick win, did the idea fizzle prematurely (am i right ladies?), whereas the idea might very well have thrived and prospered if i’d given it some more analog time and love before tossing it into the SPEED EM UP AND GET ER DONE machine??

might i have kept working on it, exploring the idea without the sped-up help of Claude?

maybe that would have helped me protect the love I had of the idea?

or perhaps all of that is bullshit? perhaps it was the speedy prototyping that helped me realize, quickly and without waste, there wasn’t much there?

here’s what i know: tossing the idea into cluade code means putting it up to the test and seeing how strong it is when battle tested. but once i made that decision, it became less interesting to tend or even find that initial fire, that spark, that special something, because by then, i’d shot my shot.

however and much to the contrary, here we are.

i’m writing about the idea and lemme tell ya: writing about skinning the cat got me excited! not bc of the skinning or the cat but because of the idea.

i got that tickle of fun and play that i do believe are my north star (N).

these weren’t really about building a game but about the weird truths that might be at the other end of something we now take for granted inside of our language.

which maybe was the whole thing I was interested in from the start? who knows? who cares?

counter factuals aren’t worth the fax they’re sent on, not here, in the lands of creativity and crass. lets have a laugh, a think, a peek, a gas. who knows, who cares, except of course, me and also you.

to close the loop

i’m gonna look up what skinning a cat actually means...

okay yea, it’s pretty rough.

most etymology nerds find the earliest origin of the phrase in “The Money Diggers,” an 1840 essay in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine (edited by one Edgar A. Poe???):

“There are more ways than one to skin a cat, so are there more ways than one of digging for money.”

others think it has to do with preparing catfish in the south, while others say it’s about a move kids did on the playground.

most people though agree that it did have to do with actually skinning a cat for its fur, which at the time was used for lady garments.

so there you have it folks!

the answer to not just one riddle, but two!

beyond the somewhat haunting truths of a time that really was not that long ago when you think about it for even half a second (separate essay, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how we treat the time of the dinasours and the time of the nazis both as ancient history), my realization is this:

what i like is the riddle itself! playing with it, and exploring it, and havin a gas with it. The result is fun too, sure, but not nearly as much so as all that comes before

sure fine yes, the journey not the destination way to go plato you really got it now, but what does that mean for...anything? No idea!

well, one: maybe i’ll have a recurring newsletter that’s just me exploring the origins of phrases? i was thinking it’d be fun to just post a phrase and have people guess, and then i’d reveal it the next time. obviously people could look it up but I bet they wouldn’t.

maybe i’ll try that. maybe i won’t.

maybe the next time i have an idea like this, i’ll stay analog with it for a bit longer, or write about it, before tossing it into the claudechine and seeing what comes out the other side. there is, after all, more than one way to skin a ALEX NO.

Wake up babies, it’s go time!

No, I don’t know what that means, but i think you do…
don’t you?

We know
so much more
than we know,
ya know?

a story

“You guys know how to drive this thing, right?”

“YEA” my kids scream, pudgy hands gripping tightly the two count em two steering wheels of the…shopping cart? car cart? car. This is a car and YEA they know how to drive, so with a guttural bub bub bubububububbbbbbbbvvvvvvvvvvv, the car is on and we are off, into the orange fog of lamps and lumber.

The Home Depot,
where a man can be a dad.

“Who is driving this thing” i say with panic as we SCREEECH swerve hard left, heading right into the giant slab of marble that i am fairly sure is a shower TURN LEFT screams Emma June the two year old who is usually the careful one but not today, today she is bedlam and flame and giggles galore as I turn us SWOOSH back into center, asking again, “seriously guys are you sure you can drive this thing???” to which Wilder the five year old screams YEA DUDE even though clearly he cannot as we SKRRRT swerve into the gifts for dad $20 center popups TURN RIGHT screams EJ and we do, barely avoid destruction, again and again and again and again and again, here in the aisles of home and hearth, where a man can be a dad and a dad can be a car and that car can be STOP!! Wilder screams, and we do.

Pringles. Can he have them?

No. Why? Because.

“I promise these are the last chips I’ll ever eat ever.”

No.
Still.
But what a pitch!

Reminds me of the “life bets” my friends and I used to make in our twenties. These were normal bets except the stakes were life long, like the time I lost a life bet and had to - still have to - pronounce the word “bread” as “briad.”

I don’t want that for him, a whole life without Pringles, the chip that also lost a life bet with the FDA and now legally cannot call itself a chip. It is a crisp, made as it is from dehydrated potato flakes and starches rather than sliced whole potatoes.

“Can we go to the garden area??” Wilder asks and to this, I say, with a SKRRRRRR stop of the vehicle, “Yes.”

Through the sliding doors, we’re outside. The land of lawn and patio, where a man who can be a dad, can be a car, can have a pit stop and say, like Kurt Vonnegut’s uncle would often say, when things were good, “if this isn’t nice, what is?”

“Can we run??” Wilder asks as I extract him and his sister from the car cart.

Yes, I say, though they’re already gone, but not for long.

She speedtrots behind him, like a stampeding hippo horse, losing and finding her brother, again and again and again, cackling each time with glee, as the light hits the two of them ever just so, because all is well, here in the depot where, somehow, for now, nothing bad really happens.

Which feels weird, because you’d think that something bad would happen, right? Like you know when something’s about to fall or break and your face winces? That’s how my whole body feels, all the time. Pre-winced, bracing for the impact that must soon come. Because it will, right?

Except it doesn’t. Not right now. Right now they’re running and I send Lauren a video of them running. And now it’s time to go and they’re sad but not too sad because nothing bad is really happening.

And now, heading back through the aisles, toward the checkout.

“WHOA look at that light” Wilder screams, pointing at the neon, here in the same aisle where two weeks ago I stood with my dad, waiting for Carl, an employee described by the entrance greeter as “the nicest guy we’ve got.”

We were there for replacement halogen bulbs, my dad and I, for the new house, where a basement can be an office and an office can be a place I spend most of early morning hours. I’d found the right light, according to my research, by which I mean Claude, but my dad wanted help, which makes sense:

This was Home Depot,

where a man could be a dad,

and a dad could be a help.

So we waited for Carl, glasses, open-mouthed, scared and curious all at once, except Carl was helping someone else, a shady guy with long hair and a loud British voice, by the wires against the very back wall.

When Carl finally got to us he picked up our bulb and scanned it with his scanner and started reading off the scanner exactly the same words we saw on the package. Yes, we know that, my dad said, but do you think it’s the right one? Honestly, Carl said, this isn’t my department. And they just kept talking, back and forth, saying things meaning nothing, and I stood genuinely befuddled. What was this? No one meant anything. Two people communicating with nothing ever being said.

Finally Carl said, you know what, I’ll be honest with you, the guy who can help you is the guy I was just helping.

“The customer?”

“Oh yea he knew his stuff.”

And my dad was off, not running but close, searching through the aisles for the customer who could maybe help him with a lamp I already knew was the right one.

He did not find that customer.

We paid for our lamp knowing less about it and the world than ever before, at the self-checkout, the one closest to the exit, right next to the sodas and Pringles, where two weeks later I stand with my two kids, explaining again to my son that he cannot buy the Pringles so that he can enjoy them for the rest of his days.

My dad’s not here now at the Home Depot, except he is, always, the way dads are. I wonder how he’d handle Wilder, hemming and hawing while his sister dances and dawdles. I’m outside with the two of them now, putting the car cart away, when Wilder asks to run again and I say no but he’s already gone, through the grills and sit-down lawnmowers, heading toward the other entrance, running parallel with the road

WILDER STOP i scream but he doesn’t stop WILDER STOP I SAID but he doesn’t stop EMMA JUNE COME HERE PLEASE WILDER STOP but he doesn’t stop and he’s all the way to the other entrance now and I’m speeding toward him fast with EJ in tow and he’s sprinting back toward me just like before with the freedom and the hair except i don’t see any of that. I see red and danger and when we meet, amidst the mowers, I kneel down and say

“That was NOT ok you cannot do that wilder if i say no, look at me, Wilder you cannot do that bud look at me please” but he can’t, not for long, and says “sorry I didn’t hear” but i know he did and now I’m even more mad and now he’s running again past me and he’s saying ok and i say stop saying ok, just actually listen, and he says ok and i say stop saying okay and he says okay and I say STOP and he does and I tell him to hold my hand and Emma June to hold my other hand but she doesn’t want to hold my hand, she wants to hold his hand, but he doesn’t want that but I say “Wilder please hold her hand” and I think he does.

and nothing bad happens. but it could have. it always can, even though it almost never does.

We’re driving home and i explain to him that i need to protect him, that its my job, and that if i say stop he needs to stop because i’m not just saying it for giggles. he says he understands but then tries to defend it, just like i probably did, and so I look back and give his knee a squeeze and say i love you and he says i love you too and now i feel bad. i feel really bad, like an inverted version of the way i feel after i get mad at my dad for just wanting to help, for wanting to talk to Carl even though Carl doesn’t know jack shit about lights. and i’m frustrated because i’m a man too and i know what i’m doing, why can’t he listen to me, why doesn’t he trust me, even though he does.

These are the terms of our life bet. The son rebels. The father protects. The son doesn’t understand. The father protects anyways. The son will be mad, and strap in folks, we’re just getting started, here in this world of idiots talking to each other about nothing, screaming even though nothing bad really happens, making no sense, running around looking for help, looking for something, looking for certainty, looking for proof, looking for safety.

These are the terms of our life bet. We did not agree to it but must adhere to its rules nonetheless. At least for now,
at least for then,
because now is now, and now we’re driving and dancing. Bleachers. I find one song and we bop and wiggle and I’m feeling it and so is Wilder, doing his night at the roxbury lip bite head bob, arms up and hands out like two geese, frozen, sort of, and there’s EJ through the rearview, bopping but real subtle, like its all happening inside her, deep, she feels the groove, and i can’t help but laugh and she laughs a little and he laughs a lot and I know if my dad was here he’d laugh too.

And we’re home now and we are dancing. Watch out for the couch corners Wilder, you slammed your head there during the last dance party and you said we’d never dance again, but we’re dancing now. And Emma June, be careful of the stones as you twirl, because now she’s twirling like a free love girlie in her dressie, arms out at her sides. I’m always struck at how deeply she seems to feel the music, like it’s really doing something in there, and Wilder is running catty corner back and forth through the room doing jumps and ‘moves’ and I say WOW and he says your turn so I do the move and he gives me a note and we repeat and the banana briad is cooking and it smells good and we are dancing and it’s a little dry now, the banana briad, but that’s nothing and so nothing bad has happened, at least for now.

We all stop, at the same moment, for a breath.

“Emma June do you know everything in the world?” Wilder asks.
Wise beyond time and space, she does not answer.
He asks her again.
Ever the sage, she again speaks not.

“Do you think I know everything in the world?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“...no. Not everything. “
“You know what I know?” I ask him.
“what?”
“I know how much I don’t know.”
He smiles because he knows.

A country is like a family is like a butthole - everybody’s got one and they all stink and we’d be shit out of luck without em.

And much like our own family butthole, we know much too much about our own. Its ins and outs and darks and farts.

We love to complain when they’re not working right, which is always, except, of course, most of the time, in most of the ways.

“You have no idea how good it is here,” my parents tell me. They’re right. We moved from Ukraine when I was seven and now I take it all for granted.

Except it’s not all granted. Not for long. So we must, as with our family and our butthole, forgive it.

But not just that. We must get mad and scream and work. Accept and except but never let it off the hook. How this applies to your butthole is between you and your maker, but still, if must be done.

But still, it is terrible. Full of bad stuff and darkness. Whose family butthole isn’t? Ours though, it’s especially bad.

Our country’s the worst in the world.

Except, of course, all the rest.

What has been most surprising about it all, being a dad, is the failing.

The flailing.

The stammering when my brain lacks the words a three year old would understand so it produces instead no words at all. “Coffee is for adults because - you can’t - no. No coffee. Me coffee you no coffee.” 

These woes of inadequacy are not the exception nor are they exceptional; they are the norm. The rule. The constant and the mundane, the beauty and the horror.

The space between what is and what ought to be. 

The expectation and it’s far flung cry, reality. 

It’s bedtime — that’s an expectation. The reality is that Wilder our 3 year old doesn’t want to sleep until he’s run through the house naked screaming “this is not my hat,” an activity that, importantly, has no end. 

We don’t throw stuff at your little sister - expectation. Reality: he hucks cars and blocks and more at his little sister and says he’s sharing. 

Expectation: we make the buttery bread without the crust exactly to specification. Reality: he does not eat it nor does he eat anything else for nine straight days before eating one Dunkin’ Donut’s rainbow sprinkles donut with pink glaze that will somehow sustain him not just for this year but truly for all the years to come. 

That seismic gap between expectation and reality is, itself, a tragedy.

It is also, by definition, comedy, though we are hard pressed to see it that way. We are not taught as kids to feel okay in the wide expanse between what we want to happen and what happens because the bigger that gap, the bigger the failure. 

And life, we are taught, is not about failure. It is about success, which we define as bridging the gap between your expectation (I want to be a ______) and your reality (I studied for a while and now I am a ______). 

Which works, sort of, for the stuff that we are told we can be when we grow up. 

Fireman.

Doctor. 

Astronaut. 

Not that we end up becoming these things. No one is actually a marine biologist.

And according to the answers we give as kids to the question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?”, no one grows up to be a dad.

Which is weird given that ‘dad,’ more than any other thing, is what most boys become. 

But how could ‘dad’ be a job when all you do is fail at it? Like, my grade as a father would be an F. And not a high F that borders on the D, a low F - 5%? 10% on a great day? The glimmers of success are there - 10% is not 0% - but even those feel sort of like happy accidents - broken clock is right twice a day situations - not really my doing. 

If I was a doctor who ended up blowing it with 90% of his patients - telling most of them they were fine when they were sick and assuring the sick ones that they were fine - this would not be okay. It would be, as my dad says now to customer service representatives with whom he disagrees, ‘the U word,’ which means, of course, Unacceptable. 

color or country 

Freshman year of college, in the dorm-room next to mine, lived a lanky kid named Ryan. Ryan wore track pants and ran around the green catching leaves. He’d chase them down with a sincerity that bordered on the cosmic. It was hilarious, too, though he was not doing it for laughs.

He was a computer science kid, and one night he shared with us a game he and his CS buddies had invented called ‘color or country.’ 

The rules were simple - the two players go back and forth saying either a color or a country. If you say a color, the game continues. If you say a country, you lose.

Let’s just try one, Ryan says, he’ll start: Pink. 

My turn: Black. 

His turn: Pink. 

Wait - you can say the same color twice? 

Yep, he says. Pink. 

Ok…um, red. 

Nice, he says, then: Spain, the color. 

That’s a country, I say.

No, he says, I said it was a color so it’s a color. 

The rules make no sense while also making the most sense in the world.

Our friend Dan and Ryan play for over an hour. Dan employs the Strong Blue strategy, which Ryan says he’s seen before. 

Blue, Dan says.

Orange.

Blue.

Canada - the color.

Blue. 

“Teal - the country” - the color. 

It’s 10pm and there’s some party so Dan throws in the towel: France. 

Everyone screams like it’s the game winning run of the World Series and Ryan leaps into the air his body unable to contain his glee. 

Good game, Dan says.

Good game - the color, Ryan says back.  

In school, we learn about a life of logic and order and merit and skill. Games of chess and War and victory like those I learned as a 5 year old in Ukraine before moving to the US when I was six.

But parenting feels like one giant game of color or country, an absurd game with rules that make no sense - feats of strength and decades long battles of endurance whose purpose and perhaps maybe even joy come largely from our ridiculous commitment to it. 

Why do I keep failing, I ask myself, not realizing that I’m simply playing the wrong game. 

Blue, I say to Wilder, knowing full well I am right. Put your shoes on. Blue.  

Red, he says back, throwing his shoes into the dishwasher. 

Blue, I repeat. 

Cheese - the color, he says. 

Blue, I say.

Rainbow, he says.

Blue, I say.

Cacoola, he says.

Green, I say, enraged.  

Dada is a butt - the color, he says.

Despite myself, I laugh in the color orange.

Blue, he giggles back.

Unacceptable, I say trying to regain composure.

Acceptable - the color, he says.

Unacceptable, I say.

Acceptable - the color, he says.

Marine biologist, I say.

Dad, he says.

Ukraine, I say.

USA, he says.

USSR, I say.

USA, he says.

Papa, I say.

Dad, he says.

Dad, I say.

Marine biologist, he says.

Blue, I say.

Blooooooooooooooo, he says.

Blue, I say.

Blue, he says.

Blue, I say.

Blue, he says.

I love blue, I say.

I love blue, he says.

I love you - the color, I say.

I love you - the country, he says.

If you love Both Are True and have the means to do so, consider becoming a paid subscriber today.

i'd love to support both are true

rare is this feeling when tears come like water
from the stream
and i feel them so much that even my judgement of them means nothing

“so much”
i say in my daughter’s voice

“ i love them so much” she says, about everything
her purple pants
her babies
her bear
her kitty cat

we moved two days ago
a new house
a fresh start
though the tightness started earlier
months?
years?

always
except the brief and forever seconds of freedom
when we laugh
or the weird creepy light above the kitchen sink flickers
and everyone screams
or right now
when
for some reason,
or no reason, it finally lets go
and i can breathe
and remember
that there’s no bomb about to go off
unless i make everything perfect

i am as far from perfect as you can get
like you
like all of us
which is fine
good
inevitable

the problem comes when we forget that truth
and think it must be otherwise
like dogs in thunder
who forget there’s ever been anything else

1

i have a fear of i know not what

not a fear of not knowing, though i have that too, obviously,

but of starting to write,
of finishing,
publishing,
doing the thing because of what may come.

it’s weird to admit this, given how much time i have spent acting oppositely, sometimes even believing it.

2

one thing i will miss and that i want to cherish, now, forever, is how my 4yo son has no concept of personal space and thus is okay with my face 0.1 mm away from his, staring at him as he finds junebug on every page of richard scarry’s book.

i marvel how he doesn’t realize i’m staring, doesn’t find it annoying, doesn’t feel the shame yet of being seen like i do, like we all do, this supreme discomfort of feeling known

2

then there’s our 2yo daughter emma june

i want to save every little word she says and how she says it into a voice recorder. Naahcee. Sowwy dada, she says, too often, like her parents

or how after eating she’ll say yahmee

yahmee in my tahmee

all these words that feel hebrew,
like ancient ways of saying god

3

Last night Lauren was out so i handled both of the kids’ bedtimes, and afterwards i started panicking that they weren’t breathing so i went into each room to check and put my hand up to their tahmees and it struck me how small they both were.

especially emma june. She is a presence. She is the room and so is he and together they are the universe.

but there sleeping, face turned away, a dumpling in her dark blue sleep suit, I remember that she’s a dollop. A smidge. A nug if i’ve ever seen one.

Him too., though he bucks the trend daily, sitting there on his little spot in the corner of the couch and dominates it with his frame, the body that cries out for more bread NO NOT THAT BREAD THE BAGEL NO NOT THAT BAGEL THE OTHER ONE WITH THE CRUST AND BUTTER

PLEASE

I will miss all this, yet I will sleep good knowing I have not missed it. I’m here, face too close, taking in the big breaths of the little people who fill the space of my world.

4

i don’t want to forget the things my parents say either
their little what-have-yous

like how my dad says ‘army strong’ because he heard it once in a commercial

or my mom, after suggesting i do something super obvious like take tylenol, which I KNOW MOM, how in response to that she’ll raise her shoulders and look at my dad and say “Ok? I didn’t know that’s why i said it”

or how, when they offer help, they’ll both say in their thick beautiful russian accents, “shoulder to shoulder”

4

the other day i asked for help
from someone i’d admired
an internet friend

hey, i texted, can you help me?
i didn’t say that exactly, but that’s what i meant

all good if you can’t.
i’m honestly not sure why i asked
sorry
if you want we can pretend i never asked and i’ll throw my phone in the river

yes, the person said, i can help
and so we talked
and they listened
and i hated it
because i didn’t want to sit there in it

why? they asked, with silent kindness, not letting me tazman devil
my way out
with my jokes and ideas

i don’t know

they kept looking at me
and i kept not looking back

i thought i was past all this, i said

you have no idea how often i hear that, they said

and perhaps this is why
it is so hard to stand so close to one another
cheek to cheek

because we have tried
and failed
inevitably, not getting exactly what we needed
because how could we

yet still
we ask
and
still
sometimes
we receive

becoming for each other the words for god
we’ve long forgot that we’ve forgotten

i don’t have to throw my phone into the river
i’m already there
with my brood
shoulder to shoulder
cheek to cheek

—

comments

1. how are you? i miss y’all

Leave a comment

that’s how it goes with toddlers.

you do one thing and...that’s it.

that’s it, forever.

you will never do anything else because don’t you see, dada, this is what we’re doing now.

this is all there is.

like right now, we’ve got the labelmaker out. Emma June calls it a phone. Hello dada?

Yes Hi?

Bye dada.

Oh bye.

Toddlers love a process and we’ve got this one dialed in:

1. emma june tells me a name

2. i type it out on the Nokia-style keyboard with little buttons for each letter

3. she smushes the white Print button with her sausage fingers and here it comes, VRRR out the side.

4. we push the cut button together on three - 1, 2, 3, SNIP and

5. we’ve got it now, the little label that says EMMA JUNIE - that’s what her older brother Wilder called her once, and now it’s stuck like a label except you don’t have to spend 10 minutes clawing at it with your nails to figure out how to actually make it stick but

6. eventually we do, we figure it out, by folding the label long ways like a hot dog bun, revealing the two long halves of the adhesive.

7. i take one half off, then the other, and i hand it to her, ready to stick. She takes it to the door and slaps it on there, diagonal and off and perfect.

Good work all around. What’s next?

“Wilder” she says, so I type WILDER - that’s her 4yo big brother who loves her because she’s insane just like he is, and they seem to be the only two people alive who don’t yet spend their entire lives trying to convince the world otherwise.

I print and snip and peel and she takes the label and demands I stay there, by the label maker, in case maybe she has an idea for a new label while she’s away.

But i don’t stay there. I walk back to the computer which is a good three feet away from the couch and two feet from the door (the three things make a right triangle if you can believe it).

I’m by the computer because I want to write this down - this essay right here - because i can feel it happening, this story, in real time, which happens sometimes, except usually I get scared and anxious when that happens like ‘oh shit here we go’. Usually, I panic because I know the story is worth sharing and I won’t do it justice. How could I? And I’m ashamed that I’m not in it fully, that i’m already outside of it, looking in like a sweaty archeologist of my most precious little moments because i’m there at the scene way too early, the dinosaurs are still alive, chomping down on grass and looking at me like “huh,” but there i am, waiting for their fossilized remains, grubby pawed and mustached.

But not today. Today I’m good, somehow, typing out the next name - LUCA - Wilder’s best friend. Emma June hits the print button and we push together, 1, 2, 3, snip and peel and she’s off to the door so i have three seconds to write until we’re back for

PENNY - Luca’s 9yo sister and Emma June’s best friend - snip, peel and

DADA - snip, peel, and

MAMA - snip, peel, and

EMMA JUNE this time, not JUNIE - snip peel and here’s Wilder exploding through the door, all purpose and sleep eyes.

“Mama said check your texts.”

I go to the computer and follow the blue dot: two new messages from Lauren:

Breakfast menu options:
Avocado toast
Oatmeal
Eggs
Sticks

and

Your waiter will
Be with you shortly

“Are you the waiter?” I ask and then remember Wilder likes to be called The Bringer.

“Are you the bringer?”

“For pretend,” he tells me, “so what do you want?”

“I want...what do you want?” I ask.

“Oatmeal”

“Then I want oatmeal too Emma June do you want oatmeal”

“Yesh”

“Oatmeal for everyone” I say and he looks pleased, like his work here is done. “Do you wanna go tell mama” I say.

“Ya” he says and loiters, led by his limbs, touching stuff, pushing things, kicking.

Back over my shoulder, I see Emma June with several new MAMA labels in her hands. How?

VRRRR comes another one as she turns the label maker on its side to get more leverage and pushes with all her weight down onto the button and CLIP and yep:

I was no longer needed. All of parenting, boiled down to this one moment, with MAMA labels scattered across the couch.

“Wilder wait,” I say and print out a new label: “This says OATMEAL, go bring it back in to Mama as our order.”

He’s gone and Emma June says “Hyelp Dada” like she’s in a soviet melodrama. Everything she does, we’ve realized, is quite soviet - the lost for words sadness, the overjoy at sharing food with everyone, the need to be needed, all just like her dad.

And I am. I am needed, still, for the adhesive part of the process, and so I liberate the MAMA stickers and hand them each to her, one by one, as she takes each to the door and sticks it on before returning to VRRR and SNIP more OATMEAL ones for me to work on.

“Can I play with you guys” Wilder says, back now.

“Sure, what do you want to print?” I ask, handing him the label maker and noticing, over his shoulder, how almost all of the labels are on the doorknob, each atop the last.

He thinks as Emma June grabs the label maker.

“Mine!” she screams.

“No it’s wilder’s turn,” i tell her and somehow she’s fine? The dual plights of second siblinghood and patriarchy already wearing her down?

“What do you want it to say Wilder?”

“I love everybody and I set everything out.”

Come on. I mean...what the hell. I love everybody and I set everything out? Everything they say feels like poetry but this is beyond.

I type and print it - “I LOVE EVERYBODY AND I SET EVERYTHING OUT” which takes a long while like a fax machine with a timeless missive from the ancient past, the most meaningful and beautiful thing anyone’s ever said.

I hand it to him without undoing the adhesive, so he can bring it inside, and Emma June’s grabbing at the label maker phone and Wilder is growling.

That’s his new thing - growling like he’s got satan in him.

My new thing is screaming time out like I’m a really bad coach who lost the respect of his team years ago:

“Time out!!”

Nothing.

“Time out guys time out”

GRRRRR
MINE
GRRRR
VRRRR
TIME
OUT
GRRRRR
VRRRRR

Nothing stops it, but it does stop, briefly, as Wilder relents. “You’re a poopie head and never going to do this again” he says.

“Mama” Emma June says and so I print MAMA.

“Wilder” Wilder says, and I let him print it:

W
I
L
D
E
R
R
R
R
R

WILDERRRR

And then they’re back to screaming and crying and shrieking and there’s a VRRRR in my brain now because I am no longer enjoying the magic of living inside the story, not even a little bit.

I’m mad. Rolling my eyes for some reason. Wishing this would end even though I know I’ll one day miss it (allegedly).

Emma June requests we print her name and so I do - EMMA JUNE.

Wilder requests we print his name and so I do - WILDER.

Emma June requests we print her name and so I do - EMMA JUN - the label maker stops. There’s no more tape. It’s done.

More growling now and wailing, the shrieking of banshees that rise with the morning sun hey look at that I bet breakfast is ready let’s go get that breakfast!!

Emma June’s already at the door. She’s trying to open it, but she can’t because it is covered in labels. Besides the two she’d stuck originally to the door, every single label is right there on the doorknob, one on top of the other, this glob of white labels with all caps black text. How had I missed that?

Wilder tries to help her, but she pushes him away.

“HEEEYYY” he wails and we’re about to rinse and repeat except I scream “GUYS I GOT IT.”

They both stop and look at me, like “coach? is that you?”

Let’s all do it together, I say, inside the story and aware of it, the archeologist and the dinosaur, not extinct, not yet.

I put my hand on Emma June’s hand and Wilder puts his hand on mine, one glob of sausage fingers covering the globe of MAMA upon DADA upon EMMA JUN upon WILDERRRR upon OATMEAL upon OATMEAL upon OATMEAL and it’s 1, 2, 3 - SNIP - and we’re out.

share this

Share

lets talk about it?

1. thoughts?

2. labels?

3. reactions?

5. how are you ?

6. what’s your go to toddler breakfast (answer whether or not you have kids)

8. how are things since #5?

Leave a comment

My, how the turns have tabled.

It is the year of our lady 2026 and have not, kindly nor otherwise, shut the fuck up about AI.

Far from it.

As Usher once said, this is my confession Pt 2.

confession pt 2

I’ve been afraid to admit this to you.

You being my both are true readers. The BATheads.

What’s the opposite of a parasocial relationship? Sarapocial? Yes. Sarapocial.

I’m in a sarapocial relationship with you all and am worried, nay, terrified, about what you’d think.

That you’ll judge. That it’s bad or cheating or ruining the planet.

I don’t use it for my writing. Not really. Whenever I try, I end up feeling gross and weird and end up rewriting it. Or when I don’t, when I keep the fully AI-written stuff, I feel gross after the way one does after watching porn.

Yes, i orgasmed, but at what cost?

I use it for everything but the creative stuff. Like how what’s his name said “make your life ordinary so your art can be insane”?

Flaubert. That’s who said it.

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

–Gustave Flaubert

Well, my brain makes my whole life feel insane and violent, especially the boring and mundane parts like scheduling and keeping track of ideas and obligations and 100 other things that ADHD + OCD make impossible.

The past year and especially the past few months, Claude Code has made all of that stuff...easy? Manageable? Fun? Regular, sort of, but not exactly* there’s a lot of dopamine happening. It’s addictive. It’s an addiction loop, many are saying. )

so what do you do with ai?

Yesterday a friend asked me what I do with AI.

“Websites,” I told her. “I make websites. For everything.”

Like for bits and dumb ideas and also for sharing stuff with and for clients. The first thing I made with it was a website for my friend’s bachelor party that was fake and dumb and full of jokes about cocaine. We spent all weekend sitting around talking about our feelings and didn’t follow the google doc I wrote up even a little bit which included, I must share because i am proud of these jokes:

• Fri night - Watch documentaries about strip clubs

• Sat night - Watch documentaries about the future and business opportunities there in

• Sun night - Call a sex hotline and each talk for 5 min about our deepest fears
  

my ‘chief-of-staff’ (actually gets crazy useful)

I built a Chief of Staff to manage my life - all my clients and deadlines and ideas. It updates in real time as I give it updates and it remembers everything I do. And perhaps most importantly, I built it to do things in alignment with my values, which it also remembers lol. Here are the values I put in there:

Every morning, I run the ‘chief-of-staff’ and get a big list of all the shit I gotta do.

Sometimes I can look at it and feel good. Other times, it overwhelms the bajeebus outta me, so I ask Claude Code to show me everything in an HTML web view where I can click little buttons to decide on what the next action is for each thing.

It’s not hooked up into anything - just a view on my local computer - but when I’m done, I copy all of the updates (which are just text) back to Claude (i had it put in a button that let me do that) and then Claude Code updates the files accordingly.

It’s pretty sweet:

my ‘ai thesis’

Ever since I was 9 years old scrolling through WWF forums and googling “big boobs big pictures cars”, I’ve felt a strange oneness with computers.

My favorite and best subject in school was math, especially geometry and especially proofs. If x, then y. If 0, not 1. Boolean as a cube, baby.

I built forums and created weird online games including Survivor: Ukraine, an internet version of the TV show Survivor in which strangers from the internet who somehow found my game were split into two tribes, competed in weekly online challenges, and voted each other off.

I’d code little websites. Run forums. Nerd shit.

And most importantly, I could search. I knew, before most, how to Google.

Not just use it, but use it well. How to filter for certain results, limit the results to certain date ranges or file types or whatever.

This, I believed back then and continue believing now, is why everyone thought I was “smart.”

I think we’re in that moment again, but with AI. Being good at it WHILE MAINTAINING AND ACTUALLY STRENGTHENING YOUR VALUES AND SOUL gives you a leg up, both in the world but also inside that very soul of yours that you must protect at all costs.

For me, that means using AI to help me manage my life so I can be an absolute psycho in my work. And for me it means using it in a way that makes sense to my brain, that’s creative, dumb, and full of bits galore.

and it seems like other people agree

I posted about the chief-of-staff setup on Twitter and it went viral.

I then decided I’d see if other people wanted to learn about this stuff and launched a cohort called Code For Creatives (built the whole website with claude code too).

$500 for 5 weeks of me teaching everything I know.

It sold out.

I then realized that there wasn’t a single time that worked for everyone, so I added a 2nd weekly slot (same material) and it sold out again.

We’re in week four now and I’m having a blast teaching it. Not just because I genuinely nerd out on this stuff, but because I get to wrestle in real time with the hardest questions that surround all this:

1. what do we do when the ai can do everything?

2. is this cheating? if not, why the fuck not?

3. what are the ethics around telling other people when you do and don’t use ai?

4. where do you draw the line? or do you have the ai draw it for you? it does good straight lines

5. what do you build when you can build anything? and why is the answer annoyingly, always, ‘taste.’

6. Is the obsessive building a coping mechanism for the terror of a brave new world run by muskbot lobsters?

7. are we human, or are we daincers

cohort 2 starts march 2nd

If you’re interested, the next cohort starts the week of March 2nd.

We’ve got 4 slots left now for $650. Once those sell out, I’ll start selling cohort 3 spots at $750. If you wanna grab one, click here and apply or just reply to this email.

sign me up maybe!

So...what does any of this mean?

I have no idea. But I’m trying hard not to shame myself about enjoying something that I can make money doing. Big ups to Existential Kink tyvm.

I want to hear from you but first some FAQs:

i want to sign up but i have questions - lots of em!

There’s a bunch of info on the website here AND yes plz just reply to this or email me for answers.

where do i follow more of this??

I’m gonna write a lot more about this stuff, especially the ways I’m using it, at a different substack I made called codeforcreatives - you can sign up for that here:

code for creatives

you can build stuff, i'll show you how

By Alex Dobrenko`

I also send emails directly about it because I’m learning how to run things outside of Substack. If you wanna get those instead, or in addition, you can just sign up on the website at the bottom

is this goodbye?

what the hell are you out of your mind?! NO. This is hello, world.

I’m sorry. I had to.

But fr, this is me hopefully writing you a lot more and mostly not about this AI stuff lol. It’s me sharing the truth that sat atop the other truths and wasn’t giving them room to breathe.

I’ve got like five half finished essays about the kids. One about Helene. And like 100 more that I forget entirely. Hopefully Claude can remind me about those.

are you (alex) worried?

Yes, but I’ve always been worried.

are you (alex) more worried than normal?

Not really. But that’s because I’m excited. And as fritz something said, fear is excitement without the breath.

what if i just want the ‘chief-of-staff’ setup?

I’m in the middle of building that out into a standalone product that I’ll sell or give away, and then offer a 1:1 call thing where I set it all up for you and provide support etc. If you’re interested in that, let me know here.

why?

Prob the biggest question that requires a bigger answer. But in short:

1. I enjoy it

2. I enjoy helping others with it

3. I perhaps most enjoy not begging people for $8 subscriptions for Both Are True as much.

your turn - COMMENTS TIME

ok i wanna hear from you for real.

1. do you hate me?

2. do you hate ai?

3. where are you at with all this? how are you making sense of it?

4. are you sick of people talking about ai so much? do you wish they’d stfu about it? what do you wanna talk about instead let’s do it

What if you secretly love all the hard things in your life?

That’s the core idea of Carolyn Elliott’s Existential Kink, a book recommended after a 3AM WhatsApp chat in which I complained about stuff in a way that proves the entire thesis of the book:

Love all the terrible stuff? That makes no sense! But neither do the holy trinity of beliefs that currently make up my personal religion:

1. I hate myself regardless of what happens.

2. I refuse to accept that I might be good at anything

3. Being happy generally speaking is lame and pathetic!

And lemme tell ya, these things not making any sense does not in any way stop me from believing them!

having is evidence of wanting

That’s the first big truth Elliot suggests you try on: having is evidence of wanting.

So If you’re experiencing something like self-loathing, and you’ve been experiencing it forever, there’s a good chance some weird demented lil part of you wants it to be so.

I’ve come across this idea before. Alfred Adler (whose work I’ve found most accessible via The Courage To Be Disliked), says that we secretly crave these negative states and thus create the conditions to keep experiencing them:

”You did not fly into a rage and then start shouting. It is solely that you got angry so that you could shout. In order to fulfil the goal of shouting, **you created the emotion of anger**.”

I remember reading that and going ‘what the hell? no.’ Because its insane. Why would i ever do that?

But with Elliot’s kink framing, it no longer needs to make sense. It’s an axiom - something “that’s assumed without proof for the sake of studying the consequences that follow.”

That’s the key: I don’t need to understand it. I just need to see what happens when I accept that, despite how batshit insane it is, there’s a part of me that loves it.

so i tried it

“Ugh, I’m awake too early” became “oooh I love getting up this early!” because obviously some big part of me does! Honestly, most of me does, but I wasn’t letting myself feel any of it because Shaemus The Shame had decided it was a Bad Thing to do.

“Ugh I hate that the kids are watching TV” became “what if I secretly love the feeling of being upset?” Because some part of me does! The self-righteousness, the indignance, the “everyone else is wrong but me and if only they’d figure it out, they’d be like me!”

Now with that one, it’s funny because thinking it through makes me realize that it’s obviously insane, BUT that doesn’t change the fact that some part of it.

I don’t need to understand why (even tho I keep wanting to lol). Simply trying on the fact that I might be wanting it dissolves the shame I’d normally feel about it and makes me realize I don’t actually care all that much about them watching some TV.

The hardest one so far has also been about the kids and is just more broadly about how I can get so overwhelmed when they’re screaming and crying and trying to end one another’s lives like a bunch of rabid wolf monkeys.

But what if part of me loves that feeling of overwhelm? Because it makes me feel like a good parent or simply because it feels good to be totally obliterated by forces of nature more powerful than I could ever be. Because then, I don’t have to do anything or strive or anything else. But admitting that would be insane, so instead I get mad about it. And the getting mad feels good too.

Maybe? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter!

What matters is how different these experiences have been. Instead of shame, I feel curious, playful, and goofy.

And it’s the shame - that second arrow that follows whatever we first feel - that kills you.

With existential kink, shame’s second arrow becomes a hug.

my kink

My biggest kink is feeling like a failure. I love that shit. Complaining about it and how much I wish I could be successful if only I didn’t get in my own way. But what if I secretly love getting in my own way. What if part of me wants to stay a failure forever?

What if I enjoy people saying, “Oh no buddy, you’re so great. Why don’t you see that?” Maybe I love how much people care and want, how much attention I get that way. And how maybe I love that kind of attention, that, “Oh, but don’t you see what we see? Don’t you see how great you are?”

It’s hard to admit that I love that. I worry that I’m a manipulative psycho. And maybe some part of me is! We all are!

But again, I’m falling into the trap of justification. I don’t have to prove it or justify it or apologize for it. It’s just a weird thing that maybe I like.

And I definitely don’t need to change it. Because usually I’d be like, “Oh okay, maybe that is true. Well then I guess I got to change everything.”

No, just enjoy it. Savor it. Just admit for a little bit that you like it. You love it.

And that’s I think the core thing: by admitting you like it, you allow it to come out of the shadows and paradoxically no longer need to take up so much airspace in your mind.

fear is excitement without the breath

I’ve felt lighter this week. Excited.

Excited! And aware of my excitement AND willing to share that with you.

That’s new.

I never feel excited, and when I do, I don’t dare actually admit it. What is this, chicken soup for the soul? I’m a hardened emo sad guy creative genius who’ll never be seen by the world for the true generational talent he really is.

“Fear is excitement without the breath” - Fritz Perls

Elliot quotes Dr. Perls in the book and I gotta say, it makes a lot of sense. I’m afraid all the time and I suck at breathing!

Because - say it with me - part of me maybe likes it! To stay small, afraid, what have you? I don’t know and I don’t need to. For now I’m gonna keep skipping the But Why Loop and ya know what, that feels pretty damn sexy.

Even that word: sexy. I never say that without 19 layers of irony around it. Earnestness is hard and sexy too. I fear it and yes, part of me loves that fear.

So what do I do now? Am I supposed to just...love everything? Accept it all? Like a psycho? It makes no sense, which means it might just be the kinkiest move of all.

let’s hear em!

1. what are some of your existential kinks?

Leave a comment

please don’t pay for both are true

This essay is part of the Sum Flux v.2 zine - check out the whole thing here.

I was driving when I noticed it, this feeling, exploding through my body like the shards of ice we'd yesterday broken across the frozen lake. The crackle sparkle of each tiny piece gliding across the surface, tshhhhhhh in all directions.

My parents were visiting for Emma June's first birthday and the weather had finally warmed up to a scorching 45°F, so we'd gone for a walk around the still very much frozen lake.

Inspired by the band of ten-year-old boys throwing blocks of ice bigger than their heads off the dock, three-year-old Wilder and I started throwing ice too.

Lauren joined in.

Tshhhhhh.

My parents, both bundled up in all black like Soviet penguins, stayed back about twelve feet with Emma June.

It’s a magical thing, to watch a brick of ice shatter and glide across a perfectly sleek sheet of frozen lake. Like ASMR for your soul, it feelsounds perfect, though I couldn’t enjoy it much with Wilder having his little shitfits about the sticks not being strong enough to crack the ice. True tantrums, stomping and jumping in rage before melting into a defeated puddle.

Looking up at my parents, I was pissed at them too. Why didn't they want to come closer, I felt my little self scream, stomping and jumping in rage inside my skull. I wanted them with us, hurling cold cold ice across the frozen surface, laughing, being silly lil guys.

They are not risk takers – living in Ukraine for most of their lives was risk enough. Here, in America, they play it safe. Once they find something they love, they do not stray. Democracy, Toyota Priuses, and their most revered of holy places, Whole Foods.

Every morning of their visit, before coming to see us, they'd first visit Temple Whole Food to pay their respects and buy salmon. On the second day, when they couldn't find salmon, my dad asked the guy working the hot food counter why they couldn't just cook some of the fresh salmon they had in the fish department?

"No we can't do that. The salmon for us comes pre-cut. We can't cut it ourselves," the guy said. Pointless bureaucracy, it turns out, knows no borders.

This injustice left my dad no choice but to use his "O" word.

"O word??" I asked.

"Outrageous," he said.

This wasn’t the first letter in his growing Alphabet of Grievances. On an earlier visit, also at Whole Foods, in response to something to do with their cheese, my dad told me he was forced to use the U word ("Unacceptable").

A history of passionate discussions

My parents and I have a history of fights, or as my dad calls them, "passionate discussions in which all sides try to convince the other of their point."

About seven years back, in the heat of one of these "discussions," I distinctly remember my dad using the P word.

Perfect.

"We are perfect parents!" he said, not a shred of awareness at how insane of a thing to say that was.

All of our fights back then, in my pre-Covid early-thirties, were about the same thing. They were worried about my career as an actor/writer in LA and wanted me to consider finding a Plan B (B is for Plan B).

This enraged me. For one, I had a full time job on top of all my creative pursuits, and for two, why couldn’t they just believe in me??

As an artist who could make it. As a man who was in control of his own life.

Anything they did, however neutral, became further proof that they thought I sucked and I’d pounce on it, hearing in their words my worst fears come true:

They'd say, "you need a more stable career," I'd hear "you don't have the talent to make it."

I'd say "why can't you just believe in me," and they'd hear "Wanna see me destroy my life hehehahao."

Them: "We are the way we are." (We don't understand this world.)

Me: "So am I!" (I don't understand this world either.)

Them: "Why can’t you accept us as we are." (We cannot accept you as you are.)

Me: "Because you won’t accept me as I am!" (I will not accept you as you are.)

Different versions of this same fight built atop one another until, one cold night, I got more mad than I’d ever gotten before. A thirty year old man, I had a full blown tantrum of screaming before declaring that I was done. I was leaving.

I went upstairs, packed my stuff, and told them I’d walk to the hotel nearby.

“Wait!” my mom screamed.

I turned around - an apology? A realization?

“Take the cereal I made you.”

She handed me a freezer-size ziploc bag of her specialty cereal - baked oats with honey and raisins and craisins. It’s super good and of course I took it, and then huffed and puffed my way out. Goodbye, and thank you for the cereal.

do you remember?

The day after my parents flew home from this last visit, I called them and asked if they remembered using the P word in that fight years ago.

"We never said that," they said.

"You definitely did."

"When," my dad asks.

"I don't know seven years ago?"

"I need to check my journal, I don't remember us saying that," he says, the closest thing to an admission of guilt I'll ever see.

"Don't write anything bad about us," my mom said.

"I'll send you guys a draft of whatever I am going to publish," I told them. That's our system - I can write about whatever but I send it to them first.

They kept thinking out loud, talking to each other while on the phone with me, about what perfect meant. “In ice skating,” my mom says, “there’s perfect. 10 out of 10.”

“Yes but life isn’t ice skating.”

then what is it (life)?

I think for so long I needed my parents to be the bad guys so I had something to rage against. I'd wield lines they said ("we are perfect") like cudgels to show that I was the victim. Here, your honor, is why my life is fucked.

Soon after that incident, my anger stopped boiling over, freezing instead into an icy sheet of resentment through which I saw them everything they did, self-fulfilling prophecy style, as further proof that they believed that I sucked.

But ice can only stay frozen for so long.

something is changing though

When my parents first got there on the trip, and my mom was in the kitchen laying out the Whole Foods purchases for the day (cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pita), I distinctly remember feeling that I was really glad they were there. I even said that to my mom as I gave her a hug and kissed her head: “I'm really glad you guys are here.”

And that feeling I noticed while driving home after they’d left from this last visit - the tshhhhhh of cracking ice - it was my icy sheet of resentment finally thawing into something else.

Sadness, pure and unadorned. Tender sorrows for the time lost to anger, sadness for their struggles, sadness for my own. But mixed with that sadness was something else:

Love. For the cereal, for the grievances, for the chance to throw ice into a lake in the USA with my son while they watched, just feet away and not any closer.

We are each of us little nations full of pointless bureaucracy full of an entire alphabet of grievances we have no idea what to do with.

But what is a grievance, if not a stop on the road to grieving.

It’s right there, inside each word:

Right there in Outrageous is the word ‘rage.’

And there inside the U-Word, Unacceptable, is the big one. The mother of all feelings: accept.

Acceptance is the hardest thing, and the most essential. Acceptance of what is and what isn’t, what might be and what never will. That nothing is perfect so, in a way, everything can be.

We become who we are in response to not only who our parents are, but who they’re not.

The glass doors of the hotel tshhhhhhhed open. “I’d like a room for one night,” I said, my suitcase dragging behind me.

“Sorry, we don’t have any rooms.”

Well fuck.

Too tired to walk, I called my dad. “Can you come pick me up?”

We drove home in silence.

I walked upstairs, dejected only the way a person who has been given everything can be, and went to sleep, the freezer bag’s worth of cereal still in my bag.

Subscribe

The months I spent on this essay are made possible because of readers’ support. If you’re loving what you read here, consider becoming a paid subscriber today.

Become a patron of the BAT

Comment

1. Have you heard that noise ice makes when it breaks on ice?

2. Do you or have you ever had parents? Discuss.

4. Any good stories of fights you’ve had with family that in hindsight were hilarious like the cereal incident?

5. idk i’m really tired from this one so maybe lets all just chat in the comments? I’ll be around

6. love u

   Leave a comment

We’ve got this detached office in the backyard. It’s like a shed that feels like a sauna because of the wood paneling. Is it called paneling?

There are so many words that all basically just mean ‘wall’. Recently I learned the outside of a house is called ‘siding’ when Lauren kept talking about what color we’d paint the siding in our new home (soft launch btw: we finally closed on a home).

“What is siding?” I finally asked.

“The outside of the house everywhere except the ‘trim.’”

Whoever’s in charge of houses sure did a good job rebranding every little part of them so they could charge more for them. No wonder houses are so expensive - you’re not paying for walls, you’re paying for SIDING and TRIM like you’re in a fuckin dr. suess book.

but anyways

I’m in a shed with wood panels that feels like a sauna except for one key detail: it’s cold as shit, especially in the hour of fourAM when I go back there.

Today, at 4:11am, it was a whopping 14 degrees.

I dread going back here to start the day. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it, making the ten foot walk. It haunts and taunts me. I won’t make it. I’ll crumble.

Now, at 507am, it’s skyrocketed to, I don’t know, 40? 45 degrees maybe? Actually I have a meat thermometer inside let me go check.

Ok it’s officially 15.6 degrees outside. I stood out and waited to see what it’d be until it got down that low.

Watching it drop, smoke from my breath emerging only from my phone’s flashlight like the phone was a dragon, breathing heavy, watching this red balloon of a thermometer, down to 15.3, then 15.6. Cold.

I stuck it into the dirt then, only a few inches, and it spiked up to 34.1, more than double, more than freezing. Warm.

Inside now, in my cold sauna, it’s hot as hell - 55.9 and rising, all because of this little wall heater, good and strong, that you turn on with this dial on the top of it, nestled underneath its ‘heat panel’ which I’m sure has its own fancy name.

Every morning I spin it up to the MAX - that’s the number, it goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 MAX (like a dial that goes to 11).

It took about an hour today to get this warm, and soon it’ll probably get too warm and I’ll turn it down to a 2 or 1 because I’m walking on this treadmill and I’m getting sweaty and soon I’ll have to take my sweatshirt off and then I’m just in my sweaty undershirt like an idiot animal guy walking and writing and making trips back and forth between here and the house which is actually the thing I wanted to talk to you about:

the thing i wanted to talk to you about

I’ve noticed that once I’m warm, I don’t mind the trips between here and the house. I barely feel them. Maybe that’s the coffee in me or the big thoughts or just the body heat - who knows (the scientists have no idea don’t even ask them) - but regardless my body is cooked up enough with energy that I sort of enjoy being out there, like when I standing out there earlier watching the meat thermometer. It felt fine. Good even, like a cold plunge at a bath house which I’m quite good at, by the way, lasting a full 4 minutes in the freezing water last time I went with Lauren, much to her dismay.

She watched me from across the long room of Sauna House making big motions with her hands of “get out of there” but I didn’t, instead doing one of those tongue to the side, eyes to the other side moves that the kids do. Then I got out and my whole body shivered for a good five minutes as I sat next to her and we discussed the trim and the siding and the other words for walls.

But wait I keep getting distracted.

it’s a metaphor

The thing I wanted to say is this: it’s a metaphor, this whole cold room that gets warm thing, for a creative life.

Lemme see if I can make this make sense.

Going out to share your work into the world, into nature, it can feel very cold. Indifferent, as Werner Herzog might say, to you and your magic and heart and warmth, dead to it, uncaring.

Unless you’ve got the warm place, the cozy home that your body remembers and knows you’ll soon return to.

Then, the cold stops being cold. It feels fine. Good even.

So the question becomes: what’s the warm cozy sauna of a creative life?

I’m not sure but also I am: it’s people. Other people. Community. Camaraderie.

We are each other’s heaters.

Otherwise I’ll run out into the cold and try to warm myself real fast with the things that look like love but aren’t - the online markers of connection - that, it should be said, aren’t fake, exactly, because they do mean something, but maybe only if and when you’re warm already, good inside, whole. When you’re good whether or not they exist.

Because the cold is a fear and the warmth is the truth we can return to, I think, I hope, I believe, even and especially when it’s freezing.

It was warm in the womb, then we came out and it got cold, so we cried and the people who made us were there, bundling us up and keeping us safe until we could go out into the cold again, no jacket needed, no i’m not cold mom i told you, i’m fine, except i’m not. I’m freezing, sometimes, until i feel safe enough to say so, because what else is love if not the ability to say we need it? And in that honesty, because of it, the walls come down and we’re warm again, cozy, safe, if only for a little while.

the only thing the spiral wants is to keep spiraling.

the contents of your spiraling - the job thing, the text, the family squabble, whatever - it’s all simply fuel for the spiral.

the other day i was gifted the rare treat of spiraling about essentially nothing. The contents of my spiral were non-existent, and yet I spiraled nonetheless, down, down, and all around until I realized, after having a somewhat manic episode inside of a groupchat full of kind humans, what had befallen me.

this is that story.

the only thing the spiral wants is more spiral

It is a winter day, as they all are, when you spiral.

I’ve been building this little tool inside Claude Code, which is this AI coding thing I along with most of the Twitter.com world have been obsessed with. Man, I feel a lot of shame sharing this, like I’m betraying my writer brothers and sisters?

I call it Vibe Coach, or Ship the Vibe, idk, I keep going back and forth on the name. The whole idea is that all these people, myself included, keep coming up with ideas and getting manic and spending money and then not finishing anything. So this tool helps you finish.

I even use it to help me finish making it because I am nothing if not an ironic little guy full of whimsy and war.

And I do. I finish it. Put it on Gumroad for $99, which seems insane but I’m like “ya know what, people are paying $100 to $200 a month on Claude Pro Max plans and not finishing diddly, this could help and ‘add value’ so why not!”

Then I post it to this small subreddit called Vibe Coder Nest (shame intensifies) and I drop a link in WhatsApp chat for his Pathless Path community.

Then I get in the car to head home so we can all go see this art exhibit in the woods near UNC Asheville called BATLAND.

BATLAND!

It’s this art exhibit where you follow a hand-drawn map to find these hand-drawn bats hidden in the woods. It’s also a protest against the plans to turn those woods into a soccer stadium.

And I’m driving home, manic, anxious, full of worry about whether anything’s ‘happened’ with this thing I just launched.

Checking the WhatsApp chat to see who read my message. Nobody reacted.

Checking my email to see if any sales came through. Nothing.

Checking Reddit and - yep, my post was deleted. Removed for self-promotion, even though that’s what everybody on that subreddit does.

It’s a failure, I tell myself, and I need it not to be, even though it’s been six minutes and only six people in the world have probably ever even seen it. So there I go, spiraling and freaking out, and that’s when the blanket of self-loathing emerges: Embarrassed. Stupid. Ashamed. Fucking idiot, thinking this would work, rushing everything, shitbag moron, this is why everything fails.

“Dada look!!” Wilder screams as we find a bat in the distance, fifty feet up on a tree, staring down at us. “WHAT” I scream and we run toward it.

Lauren asks if I’m okay, says I seem like I’m somewhere else. I try to explain but don’t even know how to bring it up because it all seems so stupid.

I’m embarrassed to even tell her.

“Do you know what vibe coding is?” And she says no. And I think god what the hell am i doing.

The kids fight over the laminated map of the bats and Emma June NEEDS to be held but NOT by me, so Lauren doesn’t really have time to respond. Which I understand intellectually:

this is not about me.

But it still hurts a lot even though its not a big deal, like a gentle punch to the tummy that levels me, like the physics of reality have been broken, which makes sense: feelings are not physics, they are waves exploding, full of particles, both and all.

We cross the threshold from general toddler mayhem to meltdown mayhem and I’m getting snappy and short, so Laur says we need to go, “dada is getting hangry.”

And I say “I’m not hangry. I told you why I was upset and you ignored it.”

In the car now, having wrestled the kids into their buckles and straps, we sit, spent.

Lauren says sorry and i get more mad at myself because there’s nothing at all for her to apologize for. I’m not mad at her, I explain. Intellectually I get that its not at all her fault but still I just feel hurt? Ignored? Ashamed again for my insane illogic.

We get home. The night is hard but the kids fall asleep. We watch Pluribus together, which feels good. Too good, like I don’t deserve it. Because I’ve been a piece of shit all day.

And for what? The failure wasn’t real. No one had even seen the thing I’d put out into the world.

That’s the gift, actually, because it’s helped me realize: the spiral doesn’t care about the details - it is pure and hungry to feed on anything that makes itself make sense.

The spiral doesn’t care about reality. The spiral just wants the spiral.

post spiral post script (PS PS)

The next day, I spiral again in the WhatsApp chat and change the price from $99 to $0 and put it out for free. That leads to a few people reaching out to meet, some conversations that lead to me sharing more about what I’ve been building, which leads to Paul suggesting I tweet about it, which leads to this viral as hell tweet:

It’s funny because I almost didn’t include this part - the success - like it didn’t matter, because my mind doesn’t process good things as good but simply as nothings. That’s part of the spiral too. It’s selective as hell.

But reality does matter. Physics - matter - matters.

enter…the noodle

Instead of spiraling, perhaps I can simply noodle.

A noodle is a more calm version of a spiral. You’re just noodling, what’s the big deal!

Except of course a noodle can easily become a spiral.

And regardless of its velocity, the truth holds: all the noodle wants is to do more noodling.

So what’s the answer?

—

I’ve been waking up lately in the hour of four, high noon for the noodle and prime time for the spiral.

Noticing them both - awareness, annoyingly, helps.

I say annoyingly because part of me obviously likes the noodle. Loves the spiral.

Maybe the difference is simply in orientation. Noodles and spirals are active things. Verbs of movement. To notice feels more passive, observant - an experience more than a race. In one, there’s an end state, a goal of winning. In the other, you’re simply observing. Finite versus infinite.

Who knows?

Can you see it happening right here? My noticing is becoming a noodle. I’m looking again for an answer about how we shouldn’t look for answers. But then I noticed it, stepped back, and here we are, in the woods, amongst the bats.

We came back the next morning, the fam and I, to find the rest of the bats, except this time, we didn’t take a map.

comments, notes, updates

1. are you spiraling? plz check in

2. i feel like i should say: i don’t have claude code write my stuff. it helps me with copy editing a little bit and i’m playing with how else it can help but the words and ideas and thought and spirals are all mine

3. a lot of ppl seem interested in learning what i’m doing with claude code - if that’s you, add ur email here and i’ll holler soon with whatever i end up doing (workshop, a separate newsletter, etc)

4. unfortunately the rat bastards at city hall (or somewhere?) took down the bats which, as RustyNail put so well below, is a ‘load of manure’

   

   The biggest thing you can do to help is sign this petition - they have a goal of 25,600 signatures and are 9,644 away.

5. what about now? are you spiraling? they can sneak up on you. share if you want:

6. what about ai - how are you doing with it? should we do a live zoom event to just chat about it all? happy to if ppl want just lmk

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

This is of course how owls greet each other.

Which is of course why the popular british band The Who created a song called ‘who are you’ and made this frankly insane “promo video”

which, quick aside here, includes absolutely fucking epic music faces including:

and

but here’s the question

Today, on the 5th day of 2024, I am here to ask you all - who are you (hoo hoo)?

what do i mean by this?

i mean exactly what i say you absolute gooses (silly).

i used to do this, back in the old days of Substack when a post was a post, yearly subscriptions cost $50, and the very concepts of a “feed” or Substack Notes were mere spermazoas in the minds of Substack’s eliterati.

It was a simpler time.

But just because our little neighborhood has now become New York Frikkin City (Times Square), that doesn’t mean we can’t still be neighbors and say hi.

In fact, it’s much more important now than ever.

Which is why I am selling an eight week course NO

did that one get ya? did you start to hurl? there was a new word for hurl i learned the other day but i can’t remember what it was. bark? garf? squirrel? i’m not gonna look it up because i’m boycotting searching for answers this year

answers are out
questions are in

brands are out
humans are in

in is out
out is in

belly buttons of all types are still in

out lists are out
in lists are out

who cares is in
who are you is in
why are you is hot and in

boy this post got away from me a little bit
boy blank is out
girl blank is in

girl how are you?
girl who are you?

girl this post got away from me a lotta bit but here it is
and here you are

on the first monday of 2024
a year we’ll never forget

both are true is a place for me to find the others and lose myself
to dance in the rain of meows and ruffs
blabs and bluffs

so whatever you’ve got,
be it strikes
gutters
horseshoes
hand grenades

share it
wear it
but don’t you dare prepare it
for it is already there

in you
of you
waiting
for you

to give it a little time to whine and shine
pine
cosign

wait what?

great question glad you asked!!

I want everyone to say hi and connect in the comments!

Leave a comment

so please comment below and say hi and introduce yourself, say what’s on your mind, a question you have or an idea you want to tell everyone

Leave a comment

even if you’re someone who never comments
or comments always

Leave a comment

this is 2024
everything is new
life is a crying baby

Leave a comment

and for the BATHEADS of many years, you come say hi too, i miss y’all and wanna know what’s up and down and all around

Leave a comment

thanks for being here

Leave a comment

let’s make this one a year to dismember

Leave a comment

Leave a comment

Leave a comment

Leave a comment

I loved the book and strongly urge / gently demand that you pre-order it now, ahead of the release, because that matters a lot when it comes to best seller lists which HUMOR ME definitely deserves to be on.

buy the book right now

Chris has long been a friend and loyal BAThead that readers may remember from this essay: "love myself? knowing what i know?”. He’s also the writer of and the host of the TED podcast How to Be a Better Human.

And hey look at all these nice things people are saying about the book:

“Warning: this book may cause repeated smiling. It’s a delightful read about how we can bring more levity into our lives.”
— , #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again, and host of the podcast Re:Thinking

“Practical ways to giggle more every day? Without enabling my crippling laughing gas addiction? Yes, please!”
—Bowen Yang, Emmy-nominated actor, comedian, and Saturday Night Live cast member

“Chris Duffy is the kind of writer who makes me angry. Not only is he hilarious, but he is able to do something almost no humorist can: Research. I came away from this book happier, full of information I can’t WAIT to bring up casually in conversation, and with a newfound appreciation of elementary school lunch reviews.”
— , Emmy-nominated comedy writer and bestselling author of Nobody Will Tell You This But Me and Buffalo Fluffalo

“I missed my deadline for sending the publisher a blurb, because I kept re-reading passages, taking notes, and telling my wife my favorite parts of this book. Luckily, I got an extension so that I could write the following: What a wonderful book! Funny, wise, inspiring, practical, and many other positive adjectives. Thank you for writing it, Chris. ”
— , New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically

“Humor Me is, of course, a very fun read. But it’s much more — a master class in using humor as a powerful tool to build a more vibrant and more connected life.”
—Robert Waldinger, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and New York Times bestselling author of The Good Life

two highlights from our chat + a question for you all

We talked about a lot of stuff so just listen / watch you goofballs, but two things in particular I wanted to flag:

the ymca is listening

We talked about the elaborate tricks people (myself not included, legally speaking) employ in order to make the YMCA Men’s Sauna in Asheville hotter.

That was yesterday.

Today, I walk into the sauna to find THIS:

Now if that ain’t comedy, I don’t know what is.

humor isn’t about ‘being funny’

Comedy is about who’s funny. Humor is about who’s laughing, and they’re not the same thing!!

We tend to equate “a good sense of humor” with being the person at the center of attention—the one telling the story, landing the punchline, commanding the room. But that’s a narrow, performance-oriented definition.

Chris shared research showing that when people say they want a partner with a good sense of humor, they usually mean someone they can laugh with, not someone auditioning for a Netflix special. (Hetero men, apparently, are more likely to misinterpret this as “someone who laughs at my jokes,” which - come on fellas, let’s get it together here!!!)

The people with the best sense of humor aren’t always the ones making the jokes. They’re the ones creating conditions where laughter happens. They notice things. They’re generous with amusement. They’re willing to look a little foolish.

I find this hard, but I am working on it.

Alrighty, that’s it - go listen to the convo and buy the book.

buy the book right now

buy the book right now

buy the book right now

buy the book right now

what makes you laugh every time??

Wait! One big thing we talked about was making a list of the things that always make you laugh. Chris shared his top choice, this video:

My favs include this absolute classic:

and my fav comedy video of all time, Broomshakala:

question for you all

What’s a video or joke or concept or whatever that always makes you laugh?

Leave a comment

Remember when we used to write dates down on paper and the new year meant putting the wrong year on everything? What were we even writing down? Checks? Journal entries?

Can people change? Or is it all the same as it ever was?

Both, of course, you silly goose. We change like we always have, forgetting that we can. The tide waxes, the moon wanes, and the snake sheds its skin — what’s old is new, but what’s new with you?

Me, I’m reading The Four Agreements. The first agreement, which the author Don Miguel Ruiz says is the most important one by far, is “be impeccable with your word.”

We were talking about it last night at dinner. “I’m terrible at that,” I told Lauren, “always saying stuff I don’t end up doing, being late.”

This, she tried explaining to me, wasn’t really what it meant. But I didn’t listen because I was and, in this new year, continue to be, an idiot.

According to the book, being impeccable with your word means acting and believing that you are good and loved. The word is the truth, and the truth is simple: you’re a good little guy, lovable, whole, regardless of...everything.

The word is magic and being impeccable means harnessing its awesome power correctly.

Still lost? Same! Basically I think he means speaking and thinking from a place of love. Love for yourself first, then love for others, because that’s the fundamental truth of things.

Which means that every time you speak against yourself, you cast a dark curse spell on yourself. I do that all the time, like just now when saying that about myself.

This morning I woke up with Emma June and realized I hadn’t grabbed the iPad from the living room earlier so she could watch Gabbycat. For this error I said to myself, in my brain, “God, you piece of shit.”

Which I really did say. I clocked it in my head and then thought, man, that’s not good. That’s being “peccable” with my word, which according to the book, is Latin for “sin.”

Makes sense - my two pecs are absolute sins given how powerful they are. You guys should see me bench 155lb eight times, baby. All natural. No roids at all there in case anyone was wondering.

But that little “God you piece of shit” whisper is a dark spell I cast on myself, again and again, until it gets loud and proud and makes me rage with the fire of self-hatred: how could I be this way. No one cares. I’m a failure and no matter how hard I try, I’ll always suck.

---

Audre Lorde wrote something that feels like the counter-spell:

“Nothing I accept about myself can be used to diminish me.”

When you speak truth about yourself—real acceptance—the words lose their power to curse you. You take back the magic.

I used to think people can’t change. I still do, but maybe what we can’t change is our ability to change. Maybe change is the fundamental word, and acceptance is the move.

But what happens when I get angry and bitter and livid? I don’t know, but Joe Hudson on his podcast says acceptance is everything. Let it all in like you would your own child. See it inside of love, the only word that’s true.

A few years ago I wrote in my journal that I felt stuck in “awareness without acceptance.”

I’m still there, but less often. Acceptance creeps in, like a sliver of hope, delivered in the dark of night to remind me that I know more than I let on.

---

I’ve been thinking about year in review posts. Everyone’s doing them. Here’s what I learned, here’s what I accomplished, here’s my word for the year. Yuck.

Forget resolutions. That word — re-solution — implies we need solutions. But what if there weren’t any problems? What if, as Carl Rogers says, the only way to change is by first accepting yourself exactly as you are?

Or as Shunryu Suzuki put it: “Each of you is perfect the way you are... and you could use a little improvement.”

Both. Always both.

Maybe the most impeccable thing you can say about a year is this:

If you’re alive, you did it.

That’s the whole review.

---

So. New year. Same me. Awareness and acceptance when I can muster it, love and grace when I can’t, remembering always that I’m a good little guy, lovable, whole, regardless of everything.

The tide wanes, the moon waxes, a snake that eats itself only to realize it was just eating its old skin. Shedded. Shredded. Peccable as hell.

Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

i love y’all - come say hi in the comments

Where are you at as we kick off 2024?

Leave a comment