There were big oak trees and the sun was poking in and out through them, the ground had that crunch to it like it was just waking up. Birds sang their songs and the squirrels were fast at work. Light danced off the glassy water and it was mid January, the time of year in Charleston where the wind finds its way deep inside your soul and leaves you shivering but today it was pleasant.

“I’m done training. I want to move close to the water but here is a parting gift.” Ellen said to me and handed me the familiar purple velvet bag with gold stitching.

“Don’t open it till you get home.”

I had been gifted these bags at least ten times. The bags came from her late husband, he collected the velvet when he picked up a little bottle of Crown. On birthday’s, Christmas and randomly they would be filled with fresh pitted cherries so I was happy and thankful for my bag of antioxidants and thought nothing more of it.

When I got home that day, it wasn’t cherries. It was an 1957 Omega Constellation with a beautiful patina.

Ellen had been training with me for years and I talked about my love for watches, her husband had run a pawn shop and this was one of his pieces. I now get to wear it and it is very special to me. The story is what makes it so.

When I go home to the middle of nowhere Belews Creek where my parents live, a trip to the garage is necessary.

Illuminated by low light from well placed lamps, the shadows on the old Daytona and Le Mans posters make it seem like a museum of cool. There is a map of the old world above the toolbox with countries like Burma, Yugoslavia, East and West Germany. I get lost for a bit. A photo of Dale Earnhardt perched on the pace car my dad was responsible for, deep in thought is framed. Baseballs I had given him, a no-hitter thrown on Father’s Day, a strikeout with some significance, photos of grandparents and relatives. Knick knacks from ancient times and memories that I can only leave to the imagination all eloquently placed.

The tools are always clean and laid out looking quite cool and at the ready. Ratchets, drills, wrenches, screwdrivers and pliers. Selfishly I look for what is new because I know the old ones are close by and with some negotiation I can have them.

Like an old rolling toolbox of his that he gave me. It’s special to me. I’ve lugged that son bitch up switchback stairs, ran to it in the middle of the night to get the tool that is just right to complete a midnight project.

Each time I see it, I think of him. I will never get rid of it.

I’ve watched all of Steve McQueen’s movies, even the bad ones. The King of Cool always dressed sharp but in a nonchalant Sprezzatura type of way. He wore a TAG Heuer on his wrist. Specifically the square shaped Monaco design.

To be honest I think that watch is particularly ugly. Yet I love the TAG Heuer brand, it’s relationship to sport and lifestyle. So I had talked ad nauseam to Meghan about the Carrera watch for ages.

“When I get a little bit of money I’m going to buy that watch” I’d say.

Forgetting my ass is cheap!

One day, a Sunday in July she came home with a three mile smile.

“Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Chrysler and Happy Anniversary” she said holding out a bag.

I hadn’t the slightest inclination of what was in said bag and when I saw that matte black box with the TAG crest I had to sit.

And there it was, looking stunning. The Carrera.

I teared up and kissed what at the time was my future wife. Your Rolex is great but to me this is better, don’t get me wrong I like your Black Bay, Speedmaster and your AP but fuck off this is mine.

I wore it the day of my wedding and if Meghan and I ever have a child it will go to them. I now truly understand when someone says “No amount of money can make me sell this”

Sometimes I open my watch case just to look at it. I’m not Steve McQueen but I’m ten feet tall when I have that watch on. I think of Meghan. I think of how she went and spent a small fortune for a bracelet that tells time just for me. That we should do things for the ones we love that make them happy, literally just because.

She’s very good at that.

Which brings me to the point of it all.

I think the stuff we have gets a bad rep. Everything is going minimalistic, get rid of everything. Yes, don’t hoard and don’t buy just to buy. Used things are just as good and sometimes better, new doesn’t make great and expensive can still lack taste.

Bring back meaning, what do your things represent and does the story they tell move you.

Maybe there is no story at all and it is time to let something go and maybe we should look deeper and appreciate what we have.

You don’t always know the lengths it took to get it to you.

-Jackson

The driveway up to Rocacorba Cycling of Can Campolier is tastefully decorated with horse shit. So much so that one gorgeous creature left about 10 pounds of it lying at the head of the driveway.

I had just left the beautiful 17th century estate all giddy, jet lag went by the wayside which proves it’s a made up condition. You leave the stone estate and are met with about 30 meters of gravely bit before the paved driveway starts. I admired the pile of turd as I took avoiding action to not spoil my tires. I was to do the Mieres route get my legs back under me, a punchy little 18 miles of Catalan beauty.

I forgot to mention the driveway is downhill and you go from standstill to over 20mph quickly. There are three turns to it, a sharp lefthander as you enter from the bottom, a fast little right and then uphill till your legs and lungs bleed into the nice little long left as you enter the estate.

The problem is when you click your little bike computer to start computing as soon as a SUV is coming around the quick right you are left a little blind and so is the SUV. He took avoiding action, I applied the brakes but my back tire on a skid went through some loose gravel and I lost the rear.

Next thing I know I’m skidding along the tarmac before parking up right in front of the bumper.

“Ah shit bruuuuuu, you ok?” a South African accent asks me

I had planned to be very angry at him, he didn’t honk coming around the corner but the accent made it seem more sincere. I took a look down at my knee and it was bleeding that deep almost black blood.

Shit. Flew 4,400 miles to crash out in the first 400 feet.

So yeah that’s how I met James.

We had known each other all of 6 minutes and the next thing I know is he is leaning over me in a pair of rubber gloves pulling rocks out of my knee.

Then another South African appeared, Carl, the co-owner of the hotel.

“Fuckin hell mate, you alright? Tough bastard. Get up, get up. To the showers we go.”

So Carl has me over his shoulder and dumps me in the shower, helmet and all.

“Shit these shower heads are dirty, I need to take them off and soak them in vinegar. What am I saying? You don’t care! Let’s get you cleaned up”

I proceeded to look at my knee and feel a bit sick so I laid down on the cold stone floor, then the other owner came in, Ashleigh, African Champion and Carl’s wife.

“Needs stitches” she says casually as she puts her bike up and grabs a drink.

“Lovely to meet you all” I say from the floor

“Oh likewise” everyone says while patching me up.

James then gives me many compliments along the lines of “Big tough fucker” but then I saw the skin flap on my knee and said I was going to throw up but just went to the bathroom and farted?

Fear fart.

Coca-Cola returned the color back to my face and I was feeling right as rain, complete with bright pink bandage wrap.

I called Meghan and she did the thing parents do when a kid falls. You know the thing when a kid takes a tumble and you know it hurts but you look at them and go “You’re ok, it’s ok”

So she did that to me and told me to get back on the horse and pedal away.

"And ultimately in the scheme of everything that's going on in the whole world, if you get overwhelmed by your small self-imposed difficulties, it's really pretty ridiculous, ya' know?” -Lachlan Morton

For me I do not believe nor disbelieve that there is a God. You won’t ever find me praying or having a problem with what others believe in. What does bring me solace is feeling like I’m where I should be and I felt that as I slowly made my way up these stunning hills.

Fuck me why can’t everything be this pretty I thought. Then you get a waft of the cows and their stank and it just made me think about the balance of opposites. The necessary trade off that keeps the world turning. A spiritual spin if you will and it was hard not to be romantic about life.

I thought about Meghan as I went through fields of sunflowers and views that would bring tears to your eyes. How she would love to be seeing this. That she knows that trips and moments like this are important to me and how she hid a note in my bag that says “You deserve to live” and that’s what this is. Living.

Now we are descending and I’m a rocket ship, I’m Valentino Rossi, shifting my weight leaning into the corners and switchbacks. A smile three miles long is on my face and the wind through my new aerodynamic buzzcut feels good.

My parents come to mind as the sun begins to wind down and hazy hour has commenced, I wish they could see this too and it makes me look forward to going to Italy with them in October.

Horses make me think of Murphy and Ralph, the horses play and run alongside you as you cycle by and their innocence in this world makes you want to hug your dog and try to pet your cat.

Back at the hotel there is an orange tree and a dog that takes advantage as they fall. He brings you the naranja and expects you to throw it like a ball, it lasts about three throws before it explodes and he is left looking quite betrayed. Don’t fret perro one will fall soon.

This repeated for three days and the simplicity of it is what I will remember.

Everyone there was either a pro, ex-pro or had something to do with cycling. No one cared how fast they went or what bike the other was riding. It was purely about getting on your bike and getting lost in the endless bombardment of quant.

“Go do the 10k climb, have a coffee at the top it’s great mate” Carl would say.

Several times on rides I’d ask myself how the hell I ended up here. That’s a great feeling to be honest, we need to chase that feeling a bit more.

It was tough to then walk around Barcelona on my last day there. Don’t get me wrong it is a beautiful city and vibrant, teeming with life. Yet I just wanted to be in the countryside on the bike.

Simple things truly are the best things.

-Jackson

The Circuit de Monaco is the shortest track on the F1 calendar, meaning the cars should be very close in lap time when it comes to qualifying. Usually it is and the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix was no different as Kimi Antonelli beat Max Verstappen to pole by 0.001 seconds.

You don’t need to know much about Formula One to know that this is impressive given that the Mercedes of Kimi is far quicker than the Red Bull of Max but Monaco is a different beast, yes the car matters but skill on the dangerous street circuit matters more, hence why Max almost won a pole he had no business winning.

Yet in 1988, the McLaren pair of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna was the superior machine than the rest of the field. Prost embarrassed the rest of the grid coming some 2.7 seconds faster than the quickest Ferrari. What happened next was the stuff of legend like Maradona’s “Hand of God” goal against the English in protest to the Falklands War, Michael Jordan’s game six with the flu, Babe Ruth calling his shot, Ayrton Senna circulated the circuit 1.427 seconds faster than Prost.

The lap was incredible, yes. It’s not why it’s remembered though. What makes it so mesmerizing and why it’s lore is because of how Senna described the lap.

"I suddenly realized that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by instinct, only I was in a different dimension. The circuit for me was a tunnel, which I was just going, going, going. And I realized I was well beyond my conscious understanding. I was way over the limit, but still able to find even more. It frightened me because I realized I was well beyond my conscious understanding."

-Ayrton Senna

He made you feel the lap. The danger was present in you as you hear the words, it becomes visceral and if it is beyond his comprehension to us it is otherworldly. This type of speech is romantic about life.

I wish we could bring it back.

We know the scene in Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams jumps atop a desk and urges the students to speak with conviction and prose about life:

“We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.”

Take business for example, we don’t even write the shit anymore we just run everything through Claude. Sending sweet nothings to Claude to get it to write a good follow up email for us when we could be writing letters to loved ones but that would be too much energy.

Then we complain that the world is not enough and makes us feel sad but we struggle when little Claude is taking too long "Working on a Complex Solution”

Speaking with passion and conviction is also why the opening scene from The Newsroom is so poignant.

Fed up with boring questions that elicit boring answers, truth came out and with it fervor. When you listen to vehement and honest speech it makes you believe in something, it makes you actually remember you have a pulse.

The World Cup Example:

Look at the pundits of the World Cup, two legends and Alexi Lalas.

Thierry Henry could not say a word and have the respect of the world, he brings presence. Then you have Zlatan who says whatever is on his mind. Most people don’t know he comes from an immigrant family of war torn Yugoslavia and was raised in violent neighborhoods and developed this attitude early on as a way of survival.

“I am not the best player in the world but there is nobody better than me”

For some reason when he says it, you accept it. Lalas has a different issue.

There is no doubt he was an incredible athlete, the first American to go play in Serie A in Italy, compared to the two lions he shares the screen with he is levels below but seriously a great player.

It’s how he speaks that people get bored and tired.

It’s corporate, it’s trying to please the masses. Please like me and think I am cool.

When you share the stage with people who speak with emotion and conviction it’s tough. I think that is why they have distanced him from the other two and he’s no longer in studio.

In Conclusion:

I don’t think we all need to become poets or writers but I do wish we could hold better conversations and speak with more fire for life.

We could eliminate the need to have TL;DR in emails or Slack messages. Send the meat and potatoes of the objective without the fluff and jargon as it is more honest.

I could just be grumpy.

-Jackson

One of the things that my wife truly dislikes about me but out of the generosity of her kind heart tolerates, is the fact that I’m a staunch believer that renting is better than owning at this current time.

The downside of that is, we be moving.

We’ve lived in three house over the past three and a half years. In one of them the floors caved in, the A/C went out in July in another. One had a chill landlord that occasionally asked me to shovel the shit out of his chicken coop but let me keep all the eggs, another told me that he should charge me more because “we work from home” and so far the current landlord is chill.

My clock to buy a home has officially started ticking if I want to remain married and my wife does deserve a space she can truly make her own, so eventually I’ll cave and make it happen for her. For the time being she is a trooper that deserves endless praise.

With each end of the lease we pack up the little house, try to cleanse ourselves from the shite we don’t want or need, buy newer shite that we do like and head off to the new gaff. Every time we move though, we begin to get the idea of what we would want in a home that we would buy.

Big closet, detached garage, natural light, big yard ideally fenced in, Porsche 911 GT3 and some woods for Murphy.

I’ve also learned that since this is the space we do spend the most time of our lives in, we must cultivate and curate a spot that is for us. Not make it into an aesthetic for people on the little screen but actually make it conducive to the life you want.

So I started with my office, since it is where I do the majority of my work. My old office in the last house, didn’t have sunlight, was so bright and was next to the litter box. I found myself slouching towards delirium in that room.

Selfishly I built it for myself. To combat the inevitable wave of mid day boredom and to not feel subdued and chained to the desk, there is a series of curated distractions. The chess board to my right and directly above it is a map of the world and on the table below an unsolved rubiks cube. In the closest my finest threads are there just in case I need to get Bond like in a matter of moments. Then I pan round the room and a stack of picture books await in case I’m hungry for eye candy. Also there’s a globe I can fidget with and it’s dated with country names I’ve never heard of. An old school leather chair that has seen some things and above it a picture of my grandfather after he jumped out of a perfectly operational airplane.

Next to it is a portal to another dimension, the ability to get lost in time and space and instantly transported to the African savanna or to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, experience the feeling of Game Seven of the World Series or take Eau Rouge flat to the floor at Spa. I know what is was like to play McEnroe in the semis at Wimbledon and read about the shits Bourdain got from a questionable food truck.

I’m talking about my bookcase and a cheeky 10-30 minute break to sit in the chair and tastefully ignore the fact that I’m being ghosted by a prospect or that I completely butchered the pitch, I’m at peace with my stories.

I can let the light in and not feel like a hamster on the wheel and it has drastically changed my output and production, I like to write letters now and I don’t care if they go unanswered. I am no longer tied to the feeling that I have failed if my cold call sucks and my emails bounce. In the old office it got to me, I’d have to walk things off but in a space that I enjoy being in I am able to differentiate.

So if there was ever a point to be made in this little letter it is this:

Don’t curate your home or space to what you think others may like or say about it. Make it quintessentially yours.

You’ll be happier and most likely it will look better than if you are trying to recreate someone else’s vibe.

Keep going,

-Jackson

One of the leagues I played in was sponsored by Motel 6. Which meant in every town we played in no matter how far from the ballpark we stayed in a Motel 6. Just like the towns they are in, they leave you feeling a bit sad.

The worst part of them though was not the meth, the police constantly doing wellness checks, the painted over bloodstains and the smell of people’s sick. It was the lack of the coveted Continental Breakfast.

Which is what led to the Curious Case of Garrett.

Most of us bemoaned the lack of a free breakfast buffet as we were paid precious little and the thought of using our greenbacks put us in dire strait. Collectively the team would bitch about having to go to Denny’s every morning except for Garrett. He never contributed to the team effort of shouting our hunger and disappointment in our breakfast options.

I’ll break down for you, we were paid about $400 a month in this league. We lived in the hotels which we were free of course but that leaves little to spend on proper nutrition. Yet Garrett seemed to be getting stronger.

He never went to Denny’s so we followed him one morning. First strange thing we noticed was instead of the usual style of dress for an athlete on the road which is a trucker hat, gym shorts with slides and a shirt that doesn’t smell. He donned khakis and a polo shirt with some Sperrys. Looking very much like a midwest banker he even threw on some reading glasses to complete his transition to “High Credit Score Individual”

"No mames!” Luciano said under his breath. “no lo sé papi” I answered.

Garrett then crossed the street to the nicer side of town to the Country Inn & Suites but hugged the perimeter of the building and was walking rather slowly trying to not be seen. He waited around the corner until a group of four people were approaching the door and followed in line directly behind them and then he vanished into the “Nice” hotel.

“Whaaat da fuuuc” Luciano now said in broken English this time, “I don’t know papi” I answered. So we decided to walk into the Country Inn to see what the deal was.

We didn’t get far as we were dressed our team shorts and slides, “Can I help you Gentlemen?” The person at the check in desk asked and as they asked we looked around the gaff and there was a man awkwardly holding a newspaper in front of his face sitting down in the buffet area.

It was Garrett.

As I stammered and fumble fucked some words to say to the desk Luciano had locked us with our lying and conniving teammate who mouthed to Luciano:

“Don’t you fuck this up for us”

US? What US?! He left us out on his secret we should blow his cover, but I got to thinking. We had a 12 day road trip coming up and there were even nicer hotels a little ways walk from the Motel 6 in these cities. We nodded in agreement to our Bandito and walked away.

Our next stop, Goodwill.

There we bought some cheap dress shirts and slacks and the con was on.

We robbed every city on the road trip. Sante Fe, New Mexico? Swindled the Comfort Inn for sausage links and seven bananas to take to the field. Tuscon, Arizona has great cranberry juice at the Marriot. In Kansas we found a Ramada that served real eggs not that powder shit. We dined like kings of the morning. Us three looking like businessmen in their father’s old clothes, laughing and drinking our coffee at rapid pace because we knew where the next one was coming.

But like Lazarus, we flew too close to the sun.

We tried it at in the hotel across from the Motel 6 in the town we were based, we didn’t know that the Country Inn & Suites had a Wanted Poster out for Garrett and set up a sting.

Dressed as used car salesmen we care free strolled over to the hotel and everything was peachy. We sat down, poured a coffee and the cream hadn’t even settled when the staff approached our table.

“Good morning gentlemen, room cards please.”

At that point we knew. Continental Breakfast was no longer ours for the taking.

When the feeblish attempt to lie as she didn’t believe that we all three simultaneously forgot our room keys, we were asked to leave with empty stomachs and crushed hearts.

We got caught on the road as well and we knew it was time to burn the disguises and go back to clean living. The life of a criminal had its weight and we could no longer shoulder the load, it was high time to back to the Grand Slams and unlimited pancakes of Denny’s. We walked back in as broken men, one Oklahoman in Garrett, one Dominican that we never understood but somehow he was the wisest of us all in Luciano and myself the failed thief.

The rest of our team was silently eating their slop, they looked up for a moment and made some room for us three drifters and we ate Dreaded Denny’s in a shared disdain and proceeded to go on a massive losing streak.

So never let a good Continental Breakfast go to waste.

Keep going.

-Jackson

There is a line from what I guess is our modern day Lord Byron. Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us where he says “Bear with me for a second, let me put y’all on game”

So that is what I’m here to do, the good the bad and the ugly on “Leveling Up”

Instagram, LinkedIn, to an extent Substack are really good at making people feel like they are terribly behind because most people either highlight the best parts of their life with some pomp and circumstance or are just projecting what they think success and hard work is.

Like the guy on LinkedIn yelling at you to get into Real Estate saying things like “Really all you need is to buy 17 houses and you’re set for life” Brother I still need that first one.

Back to the point: Leveling Up

I was driving to work one day when I realized something that almost made me put my car into the wall. I was making good money, at the height of my personal training career. Big leaguers, executives, pensioners and the one off pro bono passion project were my clientele. Meghan and I could go to Europe twice a year, not look at the bill at restaurants and we could feed our very spoiled golden retriever pulled chicken for breakfast and dinner each day.

Yet, I worked a job that if I wasn’t there physically, I didn’t get paid. No PTO, if I’m sick and on the shelf clients still want to get their work in and no matter how much they love you, they love themselves more so they will seek guidance elsewhere. That means 5am wakeups for the foreseeable future. No matter how tired you are, wake up and get the sleep out of your eyes, someone wants to lift before the rooster.

It was this day that I realized the stagnation I had been feeling wasn’t burnout, it was finally noticing I was fully pressed up against the ceiling of being a personal trainer.

Here are the few routes of becoming a very wealthy personal trainer:

1. Get big and build great relationships and open your own gym. My buddy beat me to this, can’t fault him for it. It’s an amazing spot and I’ll have to take what I learned from him and apply it elsewhere.

2. Luck up and become a celebrity personal trainer- follow them around the world get paid handsome six figures but your life really isn’t your own.

3. Influencer route- build up a YouTube, Instagram following and spend the next 10 years creating “content” you’ll make money but eventually fade away as the next crop of influencers come out.

4. Online programming- if you know your programs are good and you have a following, this is a natural progression if you want to stay in the fitness game. Saturated market but there are some case studies, Marcus Filly, Mat Fraser, Power Athlete

5. That’s about it.

Let’s break it down even further. Say as a trainer you want to make a salary of $100,000 before taxes.

We will keep it clean and have you at 30 training hours a week for an average of 6-8 clients a day, Monday to Friday. Most trainers don’t work just M-F but most trainers also don’t have consistent hours. Some days it’s 6 clients some just 4, maybe a huge day with 10.

Trainers act overworked in reality they are not, 30 training hours a week is actually quite the busy coach. Mind you there are unpaid admin hours, programming, waiting, etc. so if you get in 30 actual working hours you’ll still be at the gym 40-50 hours a week.

$100,000 pre tax and let’s say you take a total of 21 vacation days a year, being self-employed does have it’s perks. At 30 hours a week, you’ll spend about 1,434 hours training and need to charge on average $70 an hour. That seems doable.

Until you factor in what it would cost the client. Say you train them 3x a week, that’s $210 a week for them with an average of 4.35 weeks in a month that will cost Scrooge McDuck $913.50 for the month or $10,962.

“Know ya worth boo” I hear ya trust me, you better produce some results then.

You wanna clear a hundred grand post tax you better be charging upwards of $100 an hour. Which is fine and good but you need to be training either someone who is retired, got it like that or dumb with their money.

Rich people are usually cheap, they ain’t paying $150 an hour 4x a week for you to watch them squat.

Now that we are caught up, welcome to the crossroads that I stumbled upon at age 30.

Read more

To the people that see me in person who have asked “Where is the Levels Letter” I truly appreciate you reading. Life do be getting crazy sometimes and my spare time to sit and write my newsletters has drifted away. Yet I’ll always find the time to jot down a poor poem. It is my version of doodling, so here you are

Las Vegas Conference 8:47am :

A one legged monster with bulging lifeless eyes

Slowly rides through the cigarette haze

The room is the farthest thing from the sun

Beggars, beaters, the beaten and the battered

Patrolled up and down the once nice stained carpet

Men who you don’t think ever were boys

Smoke silently but not down to the filters

They save the stubs just in case they don’t hit a winner

Everyone in there must have got dressed in the dark

Style and elegance are forgotten luxuries

Even comfort seemed a distant fathom and league away

Past the man sleeping in the same weeklong shorts

Was the room full of people pretending to be alive

Saying things out of obligation

In that moment I knew why they host these things here

They make you walk past what you can become

I’ll put on my prettiest and most brave face

The gas bill will be high this winter.

Those things that she does:

Everyone always wants to know why

What exactly about them makes you tick

Maybe it is just the things that seem so ordinary

Seen behind locked doors in the small hours

That only you and you alone will understand

It’s a silk handkerchief tied to the drawer of the vanity

A smirk from across the room aimed just for me

Most likely it is the remnants of a half drunk coffee mug

The music coming from the bathtub

High notes hit with surprising smoothness

A bottle of prosecco that is now a covered in wax

It is the painting coming alive with a second life

Incense burning as she watches the Irish drama

For the ninth time and a tenth to follow

Old candlesticks, records that scratch

Smuggling 10 kilos of French butter in her purse

And saving a stray cat from Brooklyn

It’s those things she does

Those little things that women do

That keep the world turning

Read more

My senior year of college started with extreme promise. I had just come off a great summer season, playing on the best baseball team I’d ever been on. A team that had over 15 draft picks in the next year’s draft, a few future big leaguers and developmentally the best staff I’d ever been around.

Scouts liked my fastball and I was in shape, 6’2 and 235lbs, it was like standing next to a horse. I just put off heat. Then it all went pear shaped and too fast for my young mind to comprehend I was even in a spiral.

The poetry of Charles Bukowski always interested me, the titles of his works drew me in Love is a Dog from Hell, Slouching Towards Nirvana, How Water Music, Burning in Water Drowning in Flame. I read the books over and over and without knowing it, started to emulate that lifestyle. Whisky for breakfast, paint a shitty canvas at 2am, all the while trying to be a collegiate athlete.

Needless to say they didn’t mesh.

You know the story, had a shit senior year, didn’t get popped in the draft, working for a moving company in Wilmington, NC while all my boys are getting their assignments to go play ball.

I ended up becoming the Factotum that Bukowski wrote about, friends playing in front of 8,000 screaming fans and I’m driving a 26ft box truck up a mountain road with a grand piano strapped to it’s side.

I did what every loser does, blamed everyone but myself.

“Scouts don’t know shit man, they just want to play golf and pretend to know baseball.” I’d say to people who couldn’t care less in bars.

The correlation between your actions and the people you attract paramount. Want to be a loser? Surround yourself with them, in my case my behavior and actions meant I rolled around with a bad crowd.

The moving company didn’t necessarily attract the salt of the Earth, there were ex-cons, degenerates, downtrodden and manchildren in this platoon of misfits. Admittedly there was fun that was had, having beers at an extended lunch in between job sites, parties with the locals, there was a keg at the shop and you had unlimited Budweiser as you cleaned the trucks.

What I didn’t see was each day I was slowly drifting from the life, aspirations and ambitions I had always seen and set for myself. I was lying to myself that this was my way of living and seeing life how Bukowski, Hemingway and fictional Hank Moody from Californication saw it. There wasn’t any art or great literary works, I wasn’t surrounded by other great minds at a Parisian table talking about intellectual endeavors. No I was in a doublewide near the stench of Carolina Beach, NC doing Edward Forty Hands with low lifes.

Harden the body, Harden the mind:

Sounds cheesy, but it is true.

When you see athletes doing great things, defying gravity, speed, feats of immense strength, there is usually a common denominator they are sober. With the exception of baseball in the 70s and 80s.

So get off the drink.

Or limit it to social settings that will elicit great conversation, Aperitivo with great friends, pints after a long ride or wine with the Mrs. Moderate it to these situations and you’ll see the puffy drinkers face slowly go away, you’ll sleep through the night and won’t feel like a giant bag of dicks when you get out of bed.

The next step is physical.

Strength training is paramount, the body wants, needs and craves to be as strong as it’s capacity can allow.

The best place to start is to start.

Think of the 23 to 1 concept. Just because you worked out for that one hour of the day, there are still 23 hours, you can diminish that 1 hour quickly but you can also supplement it and multiply it’s benefits in those remaining hours.

Close your circle:

Be careful who you let in, who you trust, confide in and surround yourself with. Friends are different than partners or businesses, with those you only need to get it right once. With friends there will be the inevitable churn. People are in different stages at different times than others, choose friends wisely.

Be comfortable in your own company. Reflection and looking inwards tends to be best done in silence. Everyone doesn’t need to know your every thought, wins or losses, setbacks and hardships.

Start working towards something, begin to crave marginal gains and fall in love with process rather than quick wins and day one results.

Avoid:

People that call themselves experts, jail, Dubai and Las Vegas. Don’t read introductions to books, come up with your own thoughts. Don’t watch the news all day and stop eating so much fast food.

Don’t roll around with people that sit on bar stools and tell you what could have been.

Be ok with letting people go that don’t want to help themselves.

Don’t fish for appreciation and compliments from people and never tell people how much or how hard you work. If you really are doing that then knowing is enough.

Stand on the Shoulders of Giants:

Read, read some more and then keep reading.

Read real books though, stories of love, war, crime and punishment. Read autobiographies of those who have won and those who have lost. Don’t read about Warren Buffett’s daily routine, he’s 95. Read what he was saying when he was 32.

If you must read the new age self-help books, ask your friendly AI to give you a summary of them, often the central theme is revealed in the first few pages and then it’s 175 more pages of rambling, it’s that long to satisfy the production and print companies.

If you don’t like a book, put it down. If you love a book, reread it.

Life is Scalable:

If you are saying your current state of life is “As good as it’s ever going to be” you’ve lost the plot. The goal is to continually make it better. That doesn’t mean more money, it doesn’t mean winning the local competition or finally staying a week on Lake Como.

We have confused what optimization really is. Tricking ourselves into thinking it is improving our workflow so that we can maximize shareholder value whilst we are sleeping. No true optimization is getting everything out of the day you wanted to, true optimization is knowing some days won’t be as great as the others. That you’ll have to sink a bit before you can swim.

I have some friends that I can’t comprehend how much money they make, some it has made their lives better and they are happy, some are defined by it.

I have other friends that don’t make as much, some wish to make more and some are floating on a breeze.

There isn’t a special remedy or magic number that makes all issues and problems go away. There isn’t anyone coming to give you the blueprint to a perfect life either.

It all can seem a bit daunting can’t it?

What if there is no point?:

I used to train an English woman, she had been a CEO at multiple big companies. Made tons of money, traveled the world, been on many great adventures.

Been fired, been hired. Let go, promoted, the whole lot. She had many possessions, sold them off, bought new ones.

We talked at length about the point of life. Some days she argued that there may actually not be one, rather convincingly as well.

Ultimately she did come up with what she thought the point of life was “The point is to get as much done and have the most amount of fun along the way, actually get he most done while being as silly as you can”

She went on with saying getting things done applied to both work and leisure. Those things will be different for everyone.

In Conclusion:

You need a healthy mind and body. If you’re unhappy with where you are currently in the world, assess your health first. Getting healthy opens many doors.

You are what you eat, you become who you surround yourself with. You may have to have some tough conversations with friends, some friends might actually have to let you go, that can also be a wake up call.

Roll with those who only want the best for you. This gets harder and harder to find the older you get. They exist though.

Get in shape, sober up, use your imagination and keep working on different iterations of your final product.

Most importantly, keep going.

-Jackson

It is 9:03am and I’m in the airport lounge.

Well not really, I’m in a co-working space that feels like an airport lounge. The people I pass on the way to the coffee machine, they are there but they aren’t. Just little blobs of mass and nervous energy in my peripheral vision. I’m in a particularly foul mood inside these walls as they towed my car the previous week. I come here so little that I didn’t know they changed the parking policy.

It’s the same people in here every time. Shamelessly saying the world’s least funny jokes on their Teams calls. That’s when they actually seem like real people, I hear them speak and know they aren’t dead but as soon as the call is over the energy is zapped from them. Some are in pajama pants and they look right shit. Some people have put in some effort on themselves but everyone moves around like squirrels. Moving sporadically around the place past people on their way to fill up water cups but no words are every spoken. Wide eyes and soft smiles as if not only the floor is lava but if you speak the walls cave in.

The real reason why I think I dislike it so much is because I feel like it stifles creativity. The walls are so curated that I find them the least bit interesting, the focus on the aesthetic and clean lines has me irritated. Maybe that is the point, the distractions aren’t healthy, become so bored that you just work, work, work into oblivion.

Yet people often say “I love it there, I get so much done” But not me. Some need the organized chaos and the imperfection.

Wabi-Sabi: a traditional Japanese aesthetic philosophy centered on the beauty of imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness.

I found that this is more my style.

At my home office I have an old leather top bankers desk that I bought from a consignment shop, complete with old documents from the business it came from. There’s a black sand hourglass, some old books of my Grandfather’s, a picture of a Spanish sun kissed Meghan, a map of the world dominates the wall in front of me, there are racing magazines dogeared, superglue and watch tools, a cycling computer, at least seventeen half scribbled notebooks, books stacked neatly, books stacked poorly, the dog snoring, the cat climbing on it, good pens, a Rubik’s cube, boxing gloves and endless photos to daydream.

Highly conducive to creativity, deep work and healthy boredom that usually turns into production.

There are more distractions on that desk than the entirety of the co-working space, yet my output at home is 10x. I get it if you have children that you need peace and quiet from or have to meet up with someone in person.

It’s not just the co-working spaces, it’s the coffee shops, the restaurants, gyms and pretty much all third spaces are all just blending into one version of the other. The most popular coffee shop in town looks like a set from the Jetsons, white walls, white floors, odd bits of bright colors here and there.

Why are things becoming the same?

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The Copenhagen sun had decided to come out of its temporary hiatus which I welcomed with open arms. It had been “Fhack it’s cold” weather since we’d been there. The clothes I packed just simply lacked the minerals to keep me wee bones warm. Meghan and I already had to stock up on Uni Qlo long johns, which kept us warm enough when outside but inside our pants were quite literally on fire.

The previous day on a walk through the city I stumbled upon a sauna on the banks of the water with a little dipping hole. I asked the very nice Danish man if I could hop in, he kindly told me it was a private club but if I was around tomorrow morning at 9 I could reserve a slot, so I did. The morning sun bode well for me as I was already a nervous boy because if you know me I loathe the cold plunge. I did enough of them from my baseball days to last a lifetime. I think they should only be done when you actually need something to recover from. Apart from a brewery tour of Carlsberg I was tip top.

So as the clock approached nine I walked in the now slushy snow to the sauna, there were no locker rooms and people were stripping down to how they entered the world. No one batted an eye and dick jokes are understood in all languages and there were plenty being thrown around.

Reluctantly I dipped my lil toe in the water and got in the briny seawater. On my initial mad dash to the sauna, the door had locked itself and the volunteer working to make sure none of us plunged to our demise forgot the code to the door. Meghan giggled as I began to grow icicles, eventually the door opened and I was safely in the warmth.

Inside the sauna there were four Copenhagen firefighters, two young corporate office workers and an American couple. The firefighters were having a whale of a time, one of them from what little Dansk I speak lost a bet and had to go in the water and break up the ice. He did it no problem and started swimming around like an otter. The other three made another dick joke when he got back in. The two corporate boys asked me where I was from and then told me they hoped they didn’t get fired today as they would be late for work. One of them was named August and talked me into going fully under the icy water. The American couple sat as far away from everyone and sat hand in hand and I overheard them say things like “Let’s be very intentional” “Give the morning gratitude” yet they looked kinda miserable. They didn’t speak to any of the others and were the first to leave. It was a big example of what is going on a lot in America. As we enter further into our “Wellness Fanaticism” era. The Danes got in the water and when they got out they didn’t act like superheroes. No one came back in and talked about discipline or doing hard things and suffering. They talked amongst their friends, they asked me questions and we talked about life in Charleston and Copenhagen.

I respected that. The firemen went to work, the corporate boys put on their gilets (vests) and walked to the office and the American couple left without saying bye to anyone. They might have got in their gratitude and were intentional but they lost the plot, My G.

Well then what about the Professionals?

A couple Thursdays ago in the weight room there was combined 275 games pitched in the big leagues, 797 innings and 43 games won. And about $10m collectively in contracts. That is just at the big league level, there were several other minor leaguers there as well.

It was the last session before the final bullpens before everyone breaks for camp, some are headed to Florida and some are headed to Arizona. It had been a long offseason and this was the culmination of a deep body of work, this last bullpen was an important one. It’s going to set the tone for how they feel going into Spring Training, so needless to say this last day was going to be a serious and vital training session. I’ll break down the lift for you:

We played with a soccer ball for 45 minutes.

You read it right. The eight of us formed a circle and played keep me ups, the ball couldn’t touch the ground and if you messed up, you got a strike, this time two and you’re out. We did this till everyone was a sweaty mess. There was strategy, deliberate attacks on players to try to eliminate them early and proper banter. It was a healthy substitution for the original plan of tempo belt squats and landmine rotations. It all stemmed from when two of them said “I just really want my body to feel good so I can have a feel on the mound tomorrow”

Weird. Baseball players wanting to be good at baseball and not good at working out.

So I scrapped the workout plan, everyone got a good sweat and competition breeds culture so it was a fun day in the weight room. To the outsider it just looked like we fucked off in the weight room, yes but no.

I put the numbers at the beginning for a reason, you don’t get to that level without knowing your body and being self aware. A result of this is you know when, how and what to train. They have always politely reminded me that I am there for “Accountability and to make sure my forms not fucked”

These are athletes that are at the pinnacle of their sport, you literally cannot play baseball any higher than the MLB and yet they recognize some days you gotta just kick a ball around with the boys. One of the players is known for taking his paddle board out on the Potomac River before games, notably not on his third ice bath and breath work cycle of the hour.

Often my “regular” clients ask me what the baseball boys do for recovery. They are usually disappointed by my answer:

“They sleep”

Granted I know that they have earned that luxury, they don’t need to rise before the rooster to get in the weight room before work. Most people can’t do this if they want to get their daily exercise but it really sometimes is just that simple. Want to feel better and not burnt out? Sleep!

Sometimes it just really isn’t that deep.

I understand that not everything in black and white makes sense but also things don’t always have to be complicated, optimized, deliberate, impactful and profound.

Balance My G:

I don’t mean work life balance because “I think work-life balance – does that really exist? Or is it all life? I think if you’re miserable in your work and you need to balance and call the other thing life, for me, that kind of doesn’t work.” - Toto Wolff

I think the true meaning of this phrase is knowing when and where to come off the throttle. There will be times in everyones life when they need to put their nose to the grindstone and only come up for air to eat. There will be moments of down time when you just need to shut up and enjoy the silence.

I’m just telling you what I see as a trainer in a gym that has all walks of life. The compare and contrast culture of American fitness is getting to everyone’s brain. You simply cannot do and be everything at once. Just because someone you know is running a marathon doesn’t mean you have to, especially if you haven’t been running! There are 5k, 10k, halfs and free pieces of pavement you can trudge on to earn your stripes.

To those that are out there running, Hyroxing, plunging I do applaud you, you’re doing something. But it does not define you.

Just make sure you stop and smell the roses from time to time and have a little feel. Stop making fitness corporate America.

Work out to feel good, stop acting like professional athletes and heroes when you’re not. We can learn a ton from them, just like they can about us regular folk.

The fitness world, Substack to a degree, Tik Tok and Instagram are just a series of mediums telling people how to be people and it’s caused people to be less human. Let us all stop that.

Also the Kid Rock and RFK video was very strange, why work out in jeans? I digress.

Keep going people, the world is yours for the taking but you gotta go get it.

-Jackson

I used to have a boxing coach, he’s gone now.

He was a character, polarizing, challenging and sometimes quite rude. But very intelligent and it made for interesting conversation. We’d have discussions after sessions on the heavy bag. We would talk about the philosophy of Plato and Spinoza and most of the time I had no fucking clue what he was on about. He always spoke about “Truth with a capital T” Towards the end of his life I disagreed with a lot of what he said, one day before he passed he told me “You should disagree with me, don’t take everything I say as the gospel. How else will you find out on your own?”

That was the last conversation we had before he died. So I’m glad that is how we left it. Often our talks had to do with curiosity to get more out of life.

There is one conversation we had that will always stick with me.

I used to speak with him about Shackleton a lot and Livingstone, Jimmy Chin and his adventures. These expeditions people would go on, sailing around the world like Robin Knox-Johnson. In between rounds on the bag I’d ask him about France and Spain cause I was headed there for my first big adventure, a month abroad. I was telling him that it was going to be the first of many and a kickstarter for greater travel escapades in the future. He listened carefully and said:

“Or you will go there and realize that you aren’t the man who does things like that.”

It pissed me off when he said that. How does he know who I am? I am capable of great things! I have no limitations!

“But you will never know till you do it.” He added after a pause.

“There is nobility in each outcome, you go out there and find great adventure, you go out there and learn about yourself and come home realizing you’re not built for it.”

It has stuck with me. I shit myself all up and down Morocco on that trip and I remember more from the porcelain throne than I do the Medina. I was too broke to enjoy Paris and I’ve learned from that trip that I far more enjoy La Vita Lenta with my wife on the Med than I do roughing it across Europe.

So in the end he was right.

But it was curiosity that got me out there in the end. Curiosity gets a bad rep, maybe its from George absolutely destroying things at the hands of his curiousness. I do feel though as a society and people in my age group (28-35) we have become less and less curious.

We rush and rush just to get back to bed, often choosing just to stay at home and veg out instead of doing things. Then complaining of a life unfulfilled.

Curiosity doesn’t have to be grandiose or luxurious.

Next time you watch a movie, especially in period pieces just start Googlin. It will take you five hours to watch Dunkirk but you’ll learn some stuff.

For example if you Google “What was the mission called in WW2 when pleasure craft was sent to France to rescue soldiers?”

Click the first Wikipedia link, then just start clicking blue links on the Wiki page and next thing you know you’re twenty minutes in on a WW2 rabbit hole. Learning shit that you ignored in school.

Adulthood has made us all less curious. Dogs are curious, they will follow you anywhere, the bathroom, in the dark, they will even get tricked into going to the vet. Why? They are curious. Cats are curious creatures too, sometimes a little too much. Children get captivated by things out of curiosity as well, a lot of this comes down to novelty. The world is always coming up with new things for animals and children.

Adulthood seems like the same old song and dance.

Thomas Edison, inventor of a myriad of things once said “An idea without execution is just a hallucination”

We have been on hallucinogenics without even realizing it.

We somehow stopped exploring ideas, you go on Substack and articles and newsletters are kinda just telling people how to be people.

Do this, don’t do that, optimize this, eliminate that, work till you die, index funds and Hyrox.

Sir Edmund Hilary climbed Everest simply because “It was there”

We have hallucinated ourselves into paralysis by analysis, for better or for worse you gotta see an idea through.

I learned on my travels that I might not be as adventurous as I thought. There is a 99% chance I’d fail at mountaineering or traversing the Amazon with just my mental fortitude and a compass. I like Parisian Jazz Clubs and playing Padel in the Spanish Sunshine but I had to execute my original idea to find that out, I had to embrace my curiosity.

Fair warning I think curiosity can lead to enhanced ambition, successes, conversation, failure, rejection, elation, pleasure and performance.

I think we all do want a great big life. When it doesn’t just materialize no matter how many times we told people we are “manifesting” it is very easy to cash it in and lay on the couch and as my wife says “potato”

To my point that curiosity doesn’t have to be driving a Defender through a rainforest or sculpting David from stone, it could be using what you saw on your couch scrolls and testing it. For example my wife Meghan saw an art project online and dove in slowly to painting.

It led her going to the art supply store 2 times a week and I went with her once and who knew Charleston was home to a three level art store. My curiosity was going through the roof as she shopped for paints and I took the chance to mosey around.

She started small and played around a bit mixing and making colors and now we have a few of her works hanging in the house and they are pretty damn good. I’ll get a call from her and it will be “come outside I bought this big ass canvas” and it will in fact be a big ass canvas. This small curiosity has enabled her to use her left brain and forget all the Slack messages, RFPs, redlines and all that shite and just be.

Here are some good quotes that I’ve learned over time pertaining to Curiosity and being about that action:

1. If you’re not testing you’re just guessing

2. It’s better to shit in the sink than sink in the shit

3. Actions are louder than words

4. “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious”. Albert Einstein

5. Everybody wants to be a gangster till its time to do gangster shit

So if you feel less human and have read 14 Substacks that feel like they were just yelling at you to optimize your life, get a little curious about something.

Test it out, you might be terrible but now you got skin in the game.

Keep Going.

-Jackson

Sorry to bore all the ladies this week but this one is targeted for the dudes.

Particularly because I do feel like the fairer sex does a better job of who they look up to than us savages. Also this is out of general concern, I hear things working in the gym all day, on the weight room floor, most of the absurd comes when in the sauna.

“What it means to be a man” is brought up a lot and who they are referencing I just think, that dude is a loser. Pete Hegesth is one, that guy stinks. It is odd because it is the first generation of young men that I can remember that idolize politicians, over athletes, over their fathers, over their business mentors. I find it strange.

• “Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.” — Charles de Gaulle

• “A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.” — Texas Guinan

• “Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?” - Voltaire

That doesn’t really fire me up to take what you do and how you act as gospel.

I’ve written about this before but I think it’s evergreen, young men have got to stop painting themselves into a box. You don’t have to be one thing and have everything figured out by 25 or even 30.

You don’t have to be the nose taping guy who puts scripture on every Instagram post about doing something hard, when it’s a five mile run he voluntarily went on. You don’t have to be Tommy Shelby and send someone to the infirmary every time they look at you sideways, dress like him though.

The term Alpha Male is thrown around a lot but it is usually coming from deeply insecure men. In the animal kingdom the “Alpha Male” usually is a collaborative, highest ranking leader who the pack looks up to, both male and female members. Specifically speaking Alpha Wolves are not always the most physically strong of the pack yet are the ones that are brave enough to protect, break up inner pack fights and decide when and where to find food. Often displaying a great deal of empathy for other members of the wolf pack.

Yet the human “Alpha Male” is a bit different. The ones claiming to be are self proclaimed rather than earned. Men shouting into screens about how big, rich and how many women they get even though there are NEVER actually any women around.

The modern Alpha Male is someone displaying the very performative loud confidence, material display and manufactured dominance. When Pete Hegesth gathered the United States military leaders and tried to wow them with catchphrases and surface level warrior speak, they gave him a deadpan stare.

They live in that realm and he was role playing.

So I’ve compiled a list of dudes that I personally think are pretty cool and don’t go out of their way to try and impress you. They are good and what they do/did and performed it on the highest level without seeking out admiration. They embody stoicism and masculinity in a way that doesn’t feel performative or an act, so without further adieu here is my unsolicited list and personal opinion of cool dudes in 2026:

Roger Federer:

Starting off the list with pure class.

Sprezzatura: is an Italian term defined as a “studied carelessness,” representing a philosophy of effortless mastery and refined nonchalance.

It’s true, Big Fed does make everything look easy. King of the Grass is always dressed well but it doesn’t look over the top, very well spoken, can respond to a reporter or journalists criticism with a respectful witty joke. Great father and successful on the court but off as well. A good example to follow for the young man that is cleaning up his act, wants to be taken more seriously but doesn’t want to be a corporate stiff.

He has the utmost respect from the men and women of the tennis world, for not only his game but the class he showed during it. He speaks well on failure and the exhausting and unrewarding chase of perfection.

Chapeau, monsieur.

Beau Miles:

Ginger legend.

Here is an example of an extremely deep thinker who doesn’t have the ability to sit still. There is nothing glamorous about what he’s doing. It’s adventures like commuting to work via on the rivers and creeks of his native land of Australia. Cleaning up those rivers too. He embodies the idea of if you’re gonna preach something then it better be followed up with action. He’s travelled the world which has unearthed both the beauty and the flaws of where he is from, which is invaluable in life.

He can build stuff, he gets by running his marathon in hand me down gear and can put together a string of profound thoughts in his films. Top Lad.

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It’s that time of year again, the New Year. Some have voluntarily dried themselves up, per my last Letter. Some have unabashedly not gone gentle into that good night and have picked it up a gear, riding the month long holiday into oblivion. Some have even decided to “change”

If you’ve ventured into your local place of fitness, all creatures and species have come from beneath their rocks and holes and are grunting loudly, wearing pajama pants to lift and stealing your coveted parking space. All for those New Year’s resys. Most will be gone by the end of the month, the trial period will have ended, the thrill of waking up early has lost it’s novelty. There is only so many times you can post the time of you walking into the gym before you become a one trick pony and unfortunately become “that guy”

These people tried to change it all too quickly. They botched the rebrand. They are my beloved Jaguar, rushing to show the world a half baked thought with fancy filters. Don’t be Jaguar this year if you’re serious about implementing healthy change.

Step 1: Deciding when to Rebrand

In life you will periodically, like businesses go through rebrands. Sometimes it is to change things and sometimes it is to go back to how they were. My first rebrand was a little bit of both.

I was a volunteer assistant at a very small college and realized I wasn’t quite ready to stop playing baseball. Over beers I was discussing this with another one of the coaches. He told me about a strength and conditioning program he was cooking up but was skeptical to run me through it.

“Why?!”

“Dude I just watched you drain like eight beers, pro ball players don’t put bad shit in their body anymore”

Light bulb moment: an intentional moment to articulate what you really want and how you’ll measure it.

Step 2: Find Your Mentor

If you know anything about me, you know I won’t shut up about my favorite book, The Count of Monte Cristo which essentially is one giant thousand page book about how to go about a rebrand.

Tell me how you go from a scrawny teenage deck hand to a power wielding millionaire?

Prison.

That isn’t really the desired path for most but what he did find in those locked doors and closed walls was a mentor.

Enter Abbe Faria: Knowledge Amplifies Intent

In the book he’s got some bangers:

“You are intelligent, young man, but you do not yet know everything. Knowledge must be learned, not inherited.”

Intelligence must be trained into wisdom. It won’t just translate to everything, use that to your advantage when going about your own personal renaissance.

I’ve always said that we need to find better models. Ideas aren’t new anymore, meaning originality it as an all time low. Interpretations of ideas are always available on the other hand. One of the best starts of a rebrand is to begin articulating your own thoughts and patterns but you must be able to embrace debate on them. Mentors are good for this.

“Education is the weapon whose effect depends on the hand that wields it.”

Not all knowledge is power, not all knowledge is useful. Knowing and understanding are two different concepts, a successful rebrand means you understand, which leads me to the final step.

Step 3: No one needs to know you’re going through a Rebrand

At the 2004 US Open, Serena Williams came out to the court in the first of her long run of custom outfits. A lot of people gave her grief about it even though it was an homage and inspired by another American champion Andre Agassi. She didn’t tell people about it and did it because now what is a well known fact, she and her sister love fashion. Studying at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. It became part of her, a bit of self expression into the prim and proper tennis world at the time. It came as a surprise to everyone, but well calculated and executed by Williams.

Matthew McConaughey annoys me a bit to be honest because he just seems to be everywhere but I have to hand it to him for what he did in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Turning down romantic comedy scripts in silence and going off on his well known Walkabouts. He didn’t like where his career was going and rode that wave into a role in The Lincoln Lawyer that was a catalyst for his dramatic career. Maybe I don’t mind him because Georgia beats Texas every time he is on the sidelines.

Which leads me to the last image and brothaaaa ewwwww. Some Rebrands are so loud and jarring that they take away from the significance of them. It becomes less about who they are and what they stand for and becomes more about shock value. This is my own personal opinion and world’s smallest violin but Jaguar take notes from Lotus please.

So going on Instagram and announcing everything whilst having done nothing yet, is not the way to go about it.

Small changes done in silence make the difference.

Like I said in the beginning, we will all go through different personal rebrands in our lives. Sometimes it’s going back to how we were, what we did in the past, unlearning some things that made us deviate from the path. It’s all part of it.

You just gotta keep going.

-Jackson

Let’s compare two people walking into a party shall we?

Person A: Is going to the function to kick it with his/her frans and have a good time but they are doing clean old sober fun. Being a Teetotaler for the night. They are approached by their good friend.

“Hello him/her, how goes it fine civilian of the Earth? Would you like a drink?”

“Oh no, not drinking tonight. Taking some time off drinking entirely.”

“Oh really, what’s wrong? What made you want to do that? Is everything ok?”

Person B: Is also going to the function to kick it with his/her fellow humans. They have found themselves on the couch with a glass coffee table in the center. Someone has decided to do the booger sugar and it’s being offered to Person B

“Yo him/her would you like to do the cocaine?”

“No thanks”

“Good for you, shall we discuss Russian Literature now?

“Oh yes lets”

WHAT?!

Person A was made to seem like because of his/her abstinence they have a problem with Alcohol.

Person B was made to seem like a Saint because of theirs.

Which in the grand scheme of things makes sense, one is sold legally in every US state and in most countries around the world and the other is illegal almost everywhere. But deny alcohol as an adult, people think you were an addict. Deny the devil dust and people think you’re a enlightened one.

Why are we talking about alcohol anyway Jax?

Good question. As the theme of Dry January is prevalent amongst any adult friend group, we shall talk about it. The consensus around Dry Jan isn’t without controversy. Some think it’s a display of people on their moral high horse and others use it as a legitimate detox from the holidays. I’ll let you form your own opinion on the matter.

I have a weird relationship with alcohol.

I was a booze hound in college, cared too much about Budweiser than throwing strikes. Had potential on the mound but I enjoyed being the life of the party more.

After playing very low level pro ball, I stopped drinking completely. It was my Jaxconisance if you will. Fitness became a huge concern of mine and I knew the drinks got in the way. I didn’t have a drink for over 1500 days.

I felt that it was time and I had a beer. Found a couple of drinks I really liked, the Negroni, an ice cold Peroni and a silly lil Aperol Spritz. I kinda turned party mode back on a bit for a while.

Then I got a lil fat.

Huh? Maybe I’m not as untouchable as I once thought. So I want to limit how much I consume now. A rollercoaster of nothing to extreme, that’s how it goes.

Let’s break it down a bit further:

Jack Daniels, Budweiser, Miller Lite, Tito’s or anyone has never put out a commercial of a guy alone in his apartment drinking beers or cocktails in the dark by himself. It’s always well dressed people who are in shape having a good time socially.

The problem is, the former is sadly how a lot of alcohol is actually consumed, the latter is when alcohol can actually be a good social lubricant and get you having great times with great people.

Some people stay dry all of January just to blow it out again in February and lose all the progress they made. So here are a few tricks to keep in mind if you can’t fully commit to Dry January or becoming a Teetotaler:

1. Make a rule never to drink alone

2. Eliminate all the alcohol out of the house/ or keep just the hosting stuff on a barcart out of sight

3. Soda water and lime looks like a tequila soda. No one has to know

4. Tell people to mind their business

5. Good friends don’t need to drink with you to have a good time

6. Save drinking for fun times: Weddings, dinner parties, big life events

7. Have a physical fitness goal in mind: Why? Because you can’t do it drunk

8. ROMO: Relief of Missing Out. You don’t have to be at every event

9. You’re an adult. You know your limits so you should know when you’re over them

10. Don’t drink on weeknights. End of the week bottle of champs with the wife/husband, Bf/Gf is a little nicer when there is some novelty to it.

11. Every now and then you need a little debauchery, in a healthy way and safe setting: for example see below

    

    So with that, cheers. You know what to do

If you made it this far, alcohol can be quite elegant like so…

And very silly like so….

So with that keep going, don’t try to do everything at once. Sometimes we gain by subtraction.

Marginal gains you legends.

-Jackson

I’ll tell ya:

5:00am: The sound of a cartoon car honking is rattling around my brain, it’s the alarm telling me to rise. I sit on the edge of the bed and look back at Meghan, warm and SLEEPING but I don’t envy her I am just jealous. Murphy gives me a wag of the tail but quickly fades back into slumber the way dogs do. Ralph the cat does his series of calisthenics and follows me DEMANDING his feed as I fumble the Nespresso

5:02am: Stub my toe avoiding Ralph, say four letter words.

5:24am: I have discovered that if you listen to Brahms on the way to work it feels like you’re in a car chase scene. Or watching Fantasia

5:47am: Finishing setting up the weightlifting class and have the SAME conversation I’ve had with someone for the past SIX years. “Red Sox going to win it this year or WHUUUUAT?”

I do not know, I am not a wizard.

6:00am-7:56am: Proceed to be a terrible DJ and tell ridiculously unfunny jokes whilst giving squat form advice.

8:00am-9:00am: Run big league position player group through their workout. Learn who is a degenerate gambler on the flights home. One big leaguer was very eager to show us his breakfast after assault bike sprints. He’s ok, he made it.

9:00am-9:15am: I’m asked if my CRM hygiene is helping or hindering my “Workflow”

9:16-10:58am: Get verbally abused on cold calls.

Examples are:

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” “DO YOU REALLY THINK I NEED THIS RIGHT NOW” The classic “Buddy” the also ill warranted “Listen Kid” My personal favorite “Why don’t you just lose my number” to which I just listen with this face.

11:00am-12:00pm: Big league pitchers are run through their lift. We have a deep debate on potential walk up songs. I have to convince one on why you just simply can’t play golf every single day. We run football routes for conditioning, I’m all time QB (obviously) My arm hurts.

12:15pm-1pm: Return home to play Golf Ball with Meghan and Murphy. It is where we simply just hit objects into the bush with a seven iron and watch Murphy go get them. It brings all three of us an absurd amount of joy. Meghan tells me a horror story from her 10am meeting, I offer to whisk everyone away to Andulucia. She has a hair appointment so she takes a rain check.

1:01-3:30pm: I get asked how I’m leveraging AI. THRICE

This is wild daydream part of the day. I know that I have sent several emails and made many calls, yet somehow manage to find the time to daydream a terrace Negroni in Portofino in between asking people their annual shipping spend on small parcel. And managed to sneak in thoughts of an ice cold Cruzcampo in hazy Sevilllllla.

Unfunny slack message x 6

3:36pm: Completely unneeded coffee

3:40-4:30pm: Corporate weapon.

4:30pm-6:00pm: Back to gym for night time clients. Yawn 11 times, new PR. Learn about the corporate drudgeries from others in the shit.

6:27pm: Four letter words in honor of Charleston traffic.

6:30pm-9:09pm: 30 mins (17) on the bike trainer listening to Belgian SCHTAMP. We eat I drink an aggressive amount of La Croix. Watch videos on Meghan’s tik tok that she saved for me. Go outside with Murphy, he always has to poop right when I’m feeling the sleepiest.

9:30-10:15pm: Read seven pages of The Count of Monte Cristo before Meghan starts her nightly Tooth Brush dance recital. Murphy then gets the zoomies, I think I left the oven on and have to get out of bed to check it. Of course it’s off. Read one more page and it falls on my nose because I’ve drifted off.

10:16pm: Sleep like a dead man.

So there you have it. Why I haven’t been writing. There is nothing special and there are plenty of people doing far more than me, with more pressure on them. I’m the busiest I’ve ever been and the most tired but I feel good.

I stop to kiss my wife before I leave each day, enjoy the quiet of a walk and he music on the car rides between jobs.

Life can be completely ordinary sometimes but full of romance.

We just gotta recognize it’s there.

Keep going.

-Jackson

Share The Levels Letter

You’ve just been pinged on Slack, it’s a reminder about drafting an email to send to someone who will send it to someone who will then proceed to ignore it. You've got 42 tabs up on your screen but it’s 4:57pm so it looks like it’s a problem for tomorrow you. After jumping on meeting after meeting and then a meeting about having future meetings to discuss a meeting, you gotta hit the weights.

But you’re fuggin tired.

Welcome to the struggle club, where we are all kinda tired.

A new Levels merch drop has been long overdue but I didn’t want to make the same merch everyone is making these days. With a somewhat vague anecdotal message about doing one more rep. I wanted something honest. It’s been a wild journey for myself and Levels. Thinking back on the old Instagram posts where everything was deep and rooted in stoicism. I’d argue I’m more stoic now than back when I preached it, I’ve stopped on Social Media. Just using Substack as my outlet, it might not be the best marketing strategy but at least you guys will get the real version of me now, for better or for worse.

There is more to come as we get deeper into Fall, Levels is in it’s creative phase again. Stagnant for too long but we back baby with some exciting things in the oven.

Get your hats here

Keep going

-Jackson

Sometimes you find success in areas you’d never thought you would. I wanted to be a big leaguer but I COULDN’T THROW STRIKES, but I can help pitchers throw strikes?! It’s weird.

I wanted to build a cool brand and put out merch that spoke for the brand but I completely struck out and still have boxes of unsold shirts. They make for good dish rags, oil rags, napkins, emergency kit, please buy them.

There was one item I couldn’t restock fast enough and I hope your guess was right………. white socks.

I’m dipping my toes in the experimental waters of a merch drop. Beating on a different drum than days of Levels old.

I’m getting kind of tired of it all when it comes to the fitness world and I think you guys know and feel that. I’m still impressed with squat PR’s, monster deadlifts and human achievement. I’m just not impressed with making the gym our whole identity, it’s just become rather dull and lacking some personality. I miss the humor and fun there used to be in the fitness world. When we could laugh at ourselves a bit and not take ourselves too seriously, before we were all ice bathing with our mouths taped whilst listening to Joe Rogan interview someone on Ayahuasca and journaling about it. So with my next merch drop I decided to poke a little fun at us and say what we are actually thinking. So here is a little preview of what is coming this Fall.

Shirts, hats, crewnecks and of course the People’s Champ, Socks are back on the menu this Fall along with Fun.

Keep Going.

-Jackson

It strangely looks like North Carolina, I think to myself, but admittedly, that’s what I always say when I’m in a beautiful location. The rolling green hills with nice farm estates and freshly paved roads lined with long, beautiful, strong trees — the beauty is immense. The only problem is I’m crammed to the brim on a bendy bus; the maximum occupancy signs were water off a duck’s back to the driver. I knew the ride was going to be intense when I saw him take a long drag of his vape and swig a White Monster energy drink. He was drifting the bendy bus around corners on his way to the Ardennes. Finally, and mercifully, the bus came to a stop and there it was: Spa-Francorchamps, for the Belgian Grand Prix. Which brings me to the point of this Levels Letter: catalysts for adventure.

Jackson, why the frick are you in Belgium?

Blame Meghan.

Actually, we need to thank Meghan. She had to jet off to London for work a few weeks ago. Of course I was jealous not only because it’s my favorite city on Earth, but also because she was going to be there at such a magical time. The British Grand Prix was on, Wimbledon was heating up, and Regent’s Park was looking quite sexy, if I do say so myself. So naturally, I wanted to be there with her and experience those things, but I also recognized the necessity of adventure for her as well. Turns out her best friend was also in England, and as former tennis players, they decided to go to Wimbledon themselves. They earned it too, waiting seven hours in “The Queue” to finally be let in to one of the most gorgeous sporting venues on the planet.

I knew it was an insane life moment for Meghan — to be there, watch from the Hill, drink the Pimm’s Cups, and eat strawberries and cream. My initial jealousy turned into happiness for her, as you never know when that type of thing will happen again. Ya just neva know.

My next point I must express is the importance of picking a partner who wants you to have adventure as badly as you do yourself. One who urges you to get uncomfortable and do the things you really want to do in life. So I must say, the real catalyst for my random excursion to Belgium wasn’t the fact that Meghan got to go to Wimbledon and I didn’t, but the fact that she insisted I go and do something fun for myself. When you find someone who not only wants to do life with you but wants more life for you, hold on for dear life.

So, I booked my ticket to the Grand Prix and found the cheapest, though not necessarily the quickest, way to get there.

So fly into Luxembourg it is.

Since the Spa circuit is literally in the middle of a forest, the closest city is Liège, Belgium. Like so many “small” European cities, as the locals like to call them, it’s oriented around a river and doesn’t have a big airport. So I flew into Luxembourg a relatively unknown country to me. Exploring ensued.

You can eat weird things and not die:

“Now Jackson, that looks like raw ground beef?”

Well, dear reader — it is!

It looks questionable because it is!

“It looks like I’ll get sick, Jackson?”

Well, according to a lot of websites, you might!

What is it? Raw ground beef seasoned with spices and smeared on a bun. Guess what?

It fuggin’ slapped.

The Dutch, Belgians, and Luxemburgers (not what they’re actually called) go nuts for mayonnaise, so I got over my fear of it and accepted the white stuff.

Organically Explore a City:

Luxembourg had one of the prettiest parks I’d ever been in my life. It also made me yearn for a place to live with layers in the topography. Give me a lil hill here and there, a stream and somewhere to get out in the open with the amenities of life nearby. I had no expectations of what Luxembourg was going to be like because I wasn’t there for it, just a stop not a stay but for some reason it let me drift around aimlessly without the pressure of forcing myself to get something out of it. Which I should take that into consideration more often.

Off to Belgium:

I got to ride trains which don’t really exist outside of freight in most parts of the U.S. The ease of it makes me a bit jealous, though it also made me miss the freedom of just getting behind the wheel (apart from CHS the drivers suck).

I took the early train to Liège, then another train to the shuttle meet-up point, followed by a 45‑minute ride packed in like a sardine, and finally a three‑mile walk to eventually be let into….

This beauty.

Then it all became worth it, the long flight, the logistics, the tight shoulder from hauling a poorly packed bag, the beer (s), the fries with mayonnaise, the beer, the stress, the not knowing where to go to the bathroom, it all became worth it.

So if you happened to scroll to the bottom of the page here’s the synopsis:

1. Find a loving partner (obviously) who wants the life you want yourself

2. Travel alone every now and then

3. Eat what the locals eat

4. Drink the beer they drink, Euros know beer better than us we have to accept that.

5. Get a little uncomfortable

6. Have a day with zero expectations going into it

7. Mozy around the park, or walk by the river

8. Get active at least an hour of the day

9. Get a hotel room if you have a long layover, you’re not as tough as you thought you were

10. Book the trip.

So there you have it, a brief recap of my very brief Belgian excursion inspired by Meghan going to see the tennis. Keep going legends,

-Jackson

Share The Levels Letter

So picture this, it’s a summer Sunday and the sun is high and proud in the sky. You’re having a nice cold drink of something, that’s up to you and your Mr. or Mrs. is sitting on the lawn chair next to yours. You have absolutely nowhere to be and why would you? It’s the perfect time to open up a book and get lost in the words, transfix your brain on some otherwordly adventure or story all the while getting a nice bit of color about you.

If you want something freaky and weird:

Brave New World- Aldous Huxley

Henry Ford is God? Everyone is addicted to pills? Babies are made in labs, the only real people left are in New Mexico? Savages, sex, Soma and surprises. It’s written in the 1930s and yet the problems that seemed so far fetched and dystopian when the book was written seem wildly prevalent today.

Length: 2-3 days if focused

Readability: Old use of some words, not too bad, open mind is needed at some points.

Storyline: Moving parts, jumps around with a few key characters to follow.

If you’re in the mood for poetic adventure:

A time of Gifts- Patrick Leigh Fermor

Ever just want to go for a walk? What about a walk from The Netherlands to Turkey? That’s what this bloke did and it’s in the posh boy poetic prose that makes you think every interaction you have in life should be beautiful. Written in the buildup of World War Two he accounts as he walks through Germany is quite chilling as the writing was clearly displayed on the wall.

Length: Well he did walk a shit ton of distance so each day is a few pages, the book is actually broken into a few volumes. This one covers up to Hungary. So you’ll need some time.

Readability: A few pages at a time. He uses big language and prose to describe things

Storyline: He can ramble but it evokes daydreams.

Laugh at Old Money and High Class folks:

Tender is the Night- F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Razor’s Edge- W. Somerset Maugham

Drinking was a way of life in the 1930s I reckon. Both are set in European countries, both have a quirky cast of characters. Forbidden love is a central theme, universal love is a theme of one man who seems to be loved by the universe in one book. Seeking fame and fortune can lead to a lonely existence, all that jazz.

Length: A weekend

Readability: It’s easy to gloss over and have to read a few sentences again. I found one to be quite better than the other but I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one.

Storyline: One is straightforward, the other will have you thinking you skipped pages

Want some education:

Prisoners of Geography- Tim Marshall

Apparently Russia can just cut the heat off in half of Europes countries if they wanted to. The United States is safe (ish) because it’s so far away from the rest of the world.

Length: Read a chapter a day so you can retain and think about it

Readability- The author does a great job of explaining it to you as if you were six.

Storyline: One chapter is one map or country so you can go to where you want to learn about.

Sports Book:

Open- Andre Agassi

Summer and tennis are synonymous, you have the French Open at the beginning of summer and The US Open to close summer out, so why not read from one it’s greats. This book is one of the most honest things I’ve ever read. A domineering father, a great athlete who actually hates tennis and the brutal lessons along the way.

Length: 3-5 days

Readability: Flows nicely

Storyline: Weaves in and out, almost dreamlike as he plays his last match and the past life he led.

There you have it folks, go grab a book.

Keep going,

-Jackson

In 1969 a sailing race looked to be coming to an end, Bernard Moitessier was past all the tough obstacles, the roaring 40s, Cape Horn, seasickness, the competition. He was cruising her on in first and fastest to do it. He left for England the year prior and as he came over the horizon to Angleterre his home country of France was preparing a heroes welcome. They said it was a Voyage for Mad Men but he proved everyone wrong and his vessel Joshua was coming to journeys end.

He wasn’t a stranger to winning things and setting records. He had written books and was famous in France and was worried what all this might do to his head and he decided he wouldn’t have it. If he was to call himself a sailor then by gawd he was going to sail, so he kept going. Roaring past the “finish” line, he kept it pushing headed towards the Indian Ocean. He came into Cape Town a few weeks later and most people thought he was just at half distance, eventually he stopped in Southeast Asia. Why? Because his wife told him to come home, so he did.

“I am really fed up with false gods, always lying in wait, spiderlike, eating our liver, sucking our marrow”

He offered up this Promethean message in his logbooks. He claimed he was no hero, he was just a sailor, sailing.

“Television looks to be an absolute godsend for a human subspecies that loves to watch people but hates to be watched itself. For the television screen affords access only one-way. A psychic ball-check valve. We can see Them; They can’t see Us. We can relax, unobserved, as we ogle.”

David Foster Wallace wrote this about television back in the 90s. In his easy to roll off the tongue A Supposedly Fun Thing that I’ll Never do Again book of essays and rants. The second essay of the book is him basically going off on people for watching up to six hours of TV per day.

It was controversial at the time as was most of his stuff. There wasn’t the science there is today, no podcasts with Harvard professors, no health gurus on Diary of A CEO telling you you’re wasting away and brainrot had not been coined yet. People were more like “What gives David” or “Chill out big Dave, shut up and watch Friends” His ominous message was ahead of it’s time.

A study conducted by Reviews.org revealed that Americans in 2024 checked their phones 205 times day, averaging out to roughly every five minutes they were awake. This is up from 144 times a day in the same study Reviews.org conducted in 2023. In the study it was seen that almost 90% of people will check their phones within the first 10 minutes they are awake. These numbers are shocking but doesn’t even tackle the real beast in this battle.

Social Media.

I’ll give my own backstory into the wild world of social media. I used it, then I didn’t for a while and I was happy. Then I started Levels and swore I’d only have a business account, then I missed posting on my personal account, next thing ya know is I’m spending three hours a day on Instagram.

Like Moitessier I used to do things just for the adventure sake of it. I remember being in New Mexico and someone told me there was a mountain where hundreds of Rattlesnakes bask in the sun and before he finished his story I was off. I hiked the mountain and was given a private symphony of rattlesnakes tails. Stupid, yes. Memorable, yes.

Unlike Moitessier I noticed I started to seek out adventure for the post that came after it. I’d be in a city like Paris and instead of surrounding myself into the Parisian way of life, all I could think about is what would make a good post. Or in England watching a Premier League match and being angry my story wouldn’t upload because I was in a crowd of 60,000. When I could have just taken it all in.

The Influencer Dilemma:

Meghan and I used to follow this couple on the Gram. They did cool things, it seemed every other week they jetset off to the Med. They were fit, young and healthy, drove cool cars and genuinely seemed like cool people. So much so, one of them launched a little company and we bought some merch.

Then it just happens we are in Portofino, Italy. On a quiet beach. Just Meghan and I and another couple who looked pretty familiar. Turns out it was our favorite pair of influencers and for better or for worse Meghan was wearing the hat from his company.

Contact was unavoidable, as you have the shimmy your way across some wet rocks to get to the beach. Yet they just stared at us and said nothing, even after we said hello! Now if I saw someone in Levels merch I’d shake your hand and say thanks because chances are you helped me eat and pay the light bill. They turned their noses up and promptly left the beach. Maybe they thought we were super fans or following them, it’d be quite far fetched and diabolical to you know, take off work spend a few G to see them on the Italian Rivera?! So we made a joke of it and laughed it off and enjoyed our holiday. The problem was we kept running into them in town, almost to the point where I thought they were following us. Then I realized people aren’t as cool and as good as they seem online.

The alternative is: just do cool shit and be nice to people in real life. So lately I have been trying this approach and here is what I think about it:

I logged off with a brief appearance to announce my engagement. Now don’t get me wrong there was a period of growth for the Levels brand that I must attribute to social media but at 31 I think there is a shelf life on social media to be honest. There are just things that concern me way more than logging onto Instagram here is a few:

1. Paying for A WEDDING DUDE?! Like yo! It’s pizzas how are they that much?! I digress.

2. I’d rather search for a riding lawnmower than see you post about Hyrox, again.

3. Google Flights is way cooler than Instagram.

4. Literally have work to do

5. Googling what happens if my dog eats a snake

6. Paying attention when Meghan speaks

7. Writing Substacks rather than scrolling

I thought at first that I wouldn’t be caught up on what was happening in the world. Or that I would miss some spicy gossip about the world of Formula 1. Then I realized that I was an adult human.

The crazy thing is that life is more obtainable than people think it is. But we replace it with the path of least resistance which usually results in doing nothing. We give in to our own self loathing and lack of results and feel less than so we start comparing. Not just our lives, fitness, finances but our environments. At the end of the day there is an insurmountable amount of bad in the world, that is evident every time you click on the news. For some glutton for punishment sinister reason, humans are attracted to bad news. It’s easy to doomscroll, easy to shut the brain completely off and be at the mercy of your algorithm. It’s also easy to shut it off, it’s not smoking, it’s not trying to come off the drink it’s the act of just putting the phone down.

. Here is my unsolicited breakdown of the little things that benefit from it:

1. My reading retention has gone through the roof since then.

2. I am now genuinely surprised when someone tells me big life news

3. I can pay attention to the small details of movies

4. Safely drive my car

5. Avoid Virtue signaling, humble brags, 10k PR’s,

6. Hyrox, I don’t see it.

7. Unsolicited opinions on things

8. Meghan can take advantage and roast me on socials

9. Meghan can also take advantage of viral pranks and perform them on me

   The Negative Side: I can’t show you guys the insane edits I’ve made

   

   That’s really me on the rocks.

   

   So I have to post them here.

So get your Remote Programming now! And as always keep going.

-Jackson