Three days after I turned 40, a good friend of mine joined me on this side of the hill, and when I welcomed him to the club, he asked:

“Any wisdom to bestow in the few days you’ve spent at 40?”

I mulled it over and told him:

“Live your life however the fuck you want, ain’t no time to waste.”

That could be the best advice I’ve ever given.

The writer David Foster Wallace once said: you’ll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.

The truth is no one cares how you live your life. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how much you care about the way others live theirs. If they’re not bothering you or harming you, I’m guessing the answer is not much. (And if you do, probably worth examining why someone’s benign lifestyle choices get you so excited).

To put it simply, you care more about you than anyone. Everyone else is busy with themselves. So if what other people think has ever held you back from living your own way, forget about em. Because . . .

You will be forgotten

We are all the stars of our own show, the narrators of our own story, the center of our own universe. Sometimes I tell my kids the world does not revolve around them—full well knowing I ought to take it to heart—as if this were some kind of fault. Yet this is simply a feature of being human. The key is how to make the most of this condition, for the sake of ourselves and something greater.

I was originally going to call this essay We Will All Be Forgotten because when everyone else is a supporting actor, we forget about them on a regular basis, even those we love. Meaning people hardly remember what you do because they’re preoccupied with number one.

The malicious among us often take this as a free pass to be selfish, but I see it as a mandate to be exactly the opposite: selfless. The very fact that we will not be remembered as individuals ironically makes our lives not our own but a smaller part in the reputation of all human beings. In the dissolution of the individual forgotten we find a certain responsibility to act on behalf of the whole, because even though we might be forgotten our impact isn’t. This is not about me, but the we . . . the greater good.

Consider the famous notion of the Iroquois that with every decision one should consider the impact on the next seven generations. The core of this belief is that we are merely borrowing the present world from our descendants.

Through that lens, when the child in 50 years asks: why didn’t they do something about climate change? “Maximizing shareholder profit” sounds pretty fucking weak.

Let me introduce another word here: legacy. If we accept that we’ll be forgotten in the present tense, legacy asks what happens in the future?

, professor at Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, has said: “Too many people spend their lives being dutiful descendants instead of good ancestors. The responsibility of each generation is not to please their predecessors. It’s to improve things for their offspring. It’s more important to make your children proud than your parents proud.”

Now how to leave a lasting legacy may be in question, yet one thing is for certain . . .

We’re all gonna die, man

This summer I drove through Ketchum, Idaho, the place where Ernest Hemingway lived out the last of his days. As a writer I had to pay my respects, and it was something to see pens and bottles of booze scattered over his headstone, offerings to the man (or at least the idea of him). Perhaps most striking of all, however, was the contrast of the worn path to his grave and the desolation of all the others.

Nothing diminishes our puffed-up ideas of personal legacy like walking through a cemetery. Who are these people? I mean four generations back and even our own families are strangers.

We are obsessed with legacy. But real legacy isn’t about being remembered as an individual.

Consider this: 117 billion humans have been born on this planet. Chances are slim that you’ll make it into the history books. And even if you do, what’s that worth? A kid I grew up with had traced his family tree back to Pocahontas. That’s cool for him; I don’t think she cares too much.

I’m pretty sure no one will care about my book after I stop talking about it (but you can buy it HERE, lol)—that’s fine by me—my goal is to simply help a few people think differently. If some of these ideas carry on without me, mission accomplished.

Because real legacy is an intangible force, like gravity, and we individuals can merely alter what gets pulled into the future.

There’s a principle in the world of outdoor recreation called Leave No Trace: the idea the we should leave the campsite (and the environment, writ large) better than we found it. In these places I may not know who picked up the trash, but I appreciate that litter is not strewn about.

I’d say this idea applies to legacy just as well. But what an ego-killer! Leave No Trace is about removing signs of our existence, and believing we’ll be forgotten as individuals does the same exact thing. Yet living life for ourselves can make us anonymously immortal.

Improve yourself, Improve the world

The comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell once wrote: “We’re not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that, you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”

So how to be a vital person?

I’ve written before that being weird is normal . . . normal people are the weird ones. If you want to be vital, you’ve got to live your own way—that means being weird, in the best kind of way—and when everyone else is busy worrying about themselves, who cares? They’re not thinking about you anyway.

Maybe in the end we’ll all be forgotten, but that doesn’t mean we can’t live on, maybe make the world a little better for all those yet to come. All it takes is living your life however the fuck you want.

And there ain’t no time to waste.

I also published a book of essays about staying human in our world of distraction, which Michael Mohr called “honest, authentic and smart.” BUY IT HERE.

The ambulance screamed past Marvin Slade’s pickup and disappeared into a scene of flashing lights at the intersection. Slade pulled down on the bill of his old hat.

His dashboard clock hit 8:00. Slade was late. He turned across the yellow lines and went the other way, as a cop emerged grimly in the rearview, directing the stalled morning commute around this open slice of daydream.

With his shift ended that afternoon, Slade returned to the intersection, homebound, his tires crawling uncomfortably over the asphalt. As he passed, something caught the corner of his eye, a small red heart, tucked beside the curb like a package fallen off the mail truck. He stared until the traffic pushed him onward.

Slade drank whiskey that night, the television loud, trying to drown his own memories of loss. He fell asleep in the recliner and awoke groggy. Dousing his face in cold water he dragged himself back to work.

Passing the intersection once more, Slade had to rub his eyes. For now the hearts had spread, scattered like wildflowers in a vacant lot, and with it an old familiar ache settled into his chest.

He took more breaks than usual that day. Slade could hardly drive a nail straight. When he finally left for home, he approached the intersection from low in his seat.

The sight before him made Slade pull onto the gravel shoulder. He sat with both hands on the wheel, sucking the ins of his cheeks between his teeth. He turned off the engine and stepped out.

From corner to corner, in all four directions, hearts blanketed the intersection. Not a single inch of asphalt broke through.

And in the center of the crossroads, in this bed of hearts, lay the chalky outline of a man, one hand outstretched above his head, and the brightest heart of them all painted on his chest.

One by one the evening commuters rushed past. Without paying them any mind, Marvin Slade lifted his own hand, too.

I wrote this story eight years ago, having witnessed the aftermath of an accident involving a cyclist and a car. Earlier this week, I saw the aftermath of another. Stay safe out there.

Last year I published a book of essays about staying human in our world of distraction, which Michael Mohr called “honest, authentic and smart.” BUY IT HERE.

As much as I love to write, it’s sharing the ideas that matters most of all. I’ve been thinking speaking might be a good way to reach more people.

Back in June I traveled to Atlanta to give this talk. The video just came out and I wanted to share it with you first.

I don’t say it often enough—but thank you for reading my stuff and supporting my work. I especially want to thank everyone who’s become a paid subscriber. It means a lot.

Just a reminder, if you decide to become a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a signed copy of my book in appreciation. Either way, thanks for being here.

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There is something magnificent about someone who is truly themselves. You’ve seen this person . . . at a party, on the street, walking their own way, dressing their own way, seeming not to care for what others think of them. They’ve got style.

Having carved themselves out of mediocrity, this person is a piece of art. And it’s hard not to stare.

But what is it that draws us in? Do we see ourselves in there? Perhaps a version of ourselves we dream on, a life entirely our own. It’s a beautiful thing. And that’s why I call this art. Creating art from life.

Artist or not, a masterpiece is in there for all of us. We just need to carve our true selves out.

ACQUIRING THE HAMMER & CHISEL

Most art is made through addition: paint on the canvas, words on the page, performers on a stage. Layer upon layer you fill the empty space. There are only two artforms which arrive through subtraction: sculpting stone and Life.

See, as opposed to the painter who must keep adding more paint to create their vision, the stone sculptor works with the premise that the perfect form already exists within. It simply must be revealed, chipped out with hammer and chisel.

You might think that life is an art of addition, layering experience to build up wisdom, but I think the wisdom to live our truest life is already in us, and each experience merely exposes it.

On that basis, where do we find the tools for the art of living?

The hammer is our life itself, the drive and ambition to live true to ourselves. As for the chisel, there are many to choose from—relationships, education, travel, hobbies—and all reveal this truth. But I’ve come to believe one stands out in a way the others cannot: our jobs. Because how we make money is survival in the most primal sense. And it cuts deep.

Now I’ve had many jobs over the years, but a certain period of work carries a particularly sharp blade. As soon as school ends, whenever that is, a world of possibility opens up. It’s time to make something of ourselves.

Considering the options at this point in life is not unlike a sculptor staring at a raw block of stone. And eventually you must pick up the hammer and chisel.

When I reached this point in life, I decided to pursue my dream of being a musician.

REVEALING THE MASTERPIECE

At twenty-three, I’d been passionate about playing music for over a decade. Freshly graduated from college, I moved to Denver to give it an honest go. I hustled, playing shows nearly every weekend both solo and with multiple bands, but I quickly realized free beers and $25 coffee shop gigs weren’t gonna pay the bills.

So after a brief stint as an ice cream man, I took a day job as a barista, all in service of the dream . . . and I lasted nine months.

Truth was I didn’t want all the other things that came with being a musician—jockeying for gigs, endlessly hauling gear, wrangling flaky bandmates—and, more importantly, I realized it wasn’t the music I loved so much as writing the songs, the lyrics, the stories inside of them. (Cue the beginnings of becoming a writer.)

For a long time I felt shame around the fact that I’d held so much conviction in wanting to be a musician and failed. Discovering that what I thought I wanted wasn’t actually what I wanted brought a certain sadness into me.

I no longer dreamed about being a musician.

I’ve written before that you’ve got to kill your dreams. Only taking action will make your dreams realized, and sometimes they aren’t as good as you’d hoped. But with every dream turned into reality, a bit more truth about who we are surfaces. This is the gift.

In these moments of discovery, the person we thought we were comes off in the equivalent of a chip of stone, eventually creating a whole pile of people we used to be lying at our feet. Yet they are not waste. It’d be a mistake to discard them. The trick is to appreciate these people who were once us.

HOW TO APPRECIATE OUR PAST

Appreciating who we used to be isn’t always easy. Even that magnificent person who seems to be 100% themselves has a pile of used-to-bes beneath them. Because that’s what it means to be human.

It’s dangerous to project perfection on someone else, especially those we admire, as if they arrived fully formed. In his newsletter, has talked about the selective editing we perform on people who have achieved our goals, glossing over the struggle they’ve gone through to get there, and how it does us a disservice thinking that way. That kind of storytelling only adds confusion and doubt and falsehood to our sense of self when that’s what we need to remove.

So we must be careful when looking at others, yes, but this also applies when looking at ourselves, all those people we used to be.

Every version of ourselves is an earlier iteration of a truth we once lived. To disregard any of them cuts off the path that got us here. And anyway, we cannot disappear who we used to be. We must accept and love and make peace with all of them. Or else.

As Joan Didion wrote in Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

. . . I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

Perhaps this is only possible to see in retrospect, this continual and sometimes-invisible growth.

Let me again return to art.

Years ago I went to see an exhibit on Claude Monet at the Denver Art Museum, featuring paintings from his teens through to his eighties, spanning his entire career. His style directly reflected the stages of his life: the formality while coming up, the iconic impressionism of his prime, and the almost psychedelic brushstrokes of his later years.

This is how we appreciate an artist’s body of work, in the evolution.

Artist or not, life follows the same path: trying to figure things out early by following others’ lead; hitting our stride in midlife and making an impact; and finally reducing life to its very essence in the eccentricity of the end.

However, I often think that what we call eccentricity in our elders is simply the wisdom of a truth finally revealed, of knowing what matters, a letting go of all the stuff the rest of us still cling to: social status, material goods, all that bullshit. This is simplicity on the other side of complexity, closer and closer to the essence of ourselves, the perfect form within finally coming through.

DON’T ABANDON THE ARTWORK

As Leonardo da Vinci said: art is never finished, only abandoned. This artwork called life is one of endless chipping and shaping. I like to think that so long as we’re alive—truly living, that is—this art project cannot be abandoned. So pick up your chisel, keep swinging the hammer, and soon the magnificent person you’re staring at might be yourself.

I also published a book of essays about staying human in our world of distraction, which Michael Mohr called “honest, authentic and smart.” BUY IT HERE.

Here’s the next installment . . . American Expatriates.

Fifteen years ago I lived in a shitty rental house with some great friends. We were all single and had a standing question of who would get a girlfriend first. Within a month of each other, my buddy Ryan starting dating his now-wife, Kate, and I started dating my now-coparent, Haley.

After moving out, Ryan and Kate moved up to a cabin in the mountains, beginning a decade of hopscotching to various locations throughout the United States—and now their present residence in Uvita, Costa Rica.

In that time, we all had kids; Haley and I got divorced; yet, seeing as we had rendezvoused again and again over the years, we didn’t want that change in our circumstance to derail the collective friendship. Kate said: “We definitely have the same mentality where, like, we’re all black sheep here, riding a different wave than most of society.” I think that has something to do with our friendship sticking for all these years.

So, six weeks ago, Haley and I and our kids flew down to see Ryan and Kate and the family in Costa Rica. Good timing because they’re about to move again, this time to New Zealand.

I wanted to hear more about their travelling life, so the last night of the trip we sat down for an interview. If you’ve ever thought about living abroad, here’s some insider information . . .

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“They call it surviving the dip down here. If you can survive the dip, you're probably pretty good.”

What do you think binds expat communities?

Kate: I feel like everyone that we’ve met, what we all have in common is that we don’t fit in where we’re from. And that alone creates its own subculture.

Ryan: We’re all seeking something. And maybe there’s a difficulty finding contentment with what we have. It’s about the search.

How does leaving your homeland play into that? Is it like you need to go elsewhere to get a different perspective on where you came from?

Ryan: Well, I think it’s very important to leave a place to appreciate it. But whatever it is that I’m seeking I hadn’t found it in the U.S., which is why we’re here.

And how many places in the US have you lived?

Kate: Oh, let’s see. I’ve lived in six states. And we’ve driven cross country many times.

Ryan: My parents were military brats, both of them moved around a lot, so there was never a sense of rootedness. Everywhere we’d go, it was like: Okay, this is just the next leg of the journey.

So the place itself was almost like a temporary aspect of life.

Ryan: Yeah, and the beautiful thing about the United States is that there are no real borders within the country. From state to state, it’s so vastly different. And I will say I think we’ve done a really good job of trying each of those cultures out for a period of time. Not necessarily with the intention of living there, but at least visiting and trying to understand them. And there were a couple times I felt like we were close to finding our people. But the minute we’d feel settled, it was like: This was nice. What’s next?

Are you searching for a place to settle, or are you just searching for that next chapter?

Kate: I’m looking for somewhere to settle, and I don’t feel that we ever found our tribe. And that’s what you need to settle. I mean, I think we found people that we probably could have had as friends forever here in Costa Rica, but it didn’t check all the boxes in terms of someplace to raise our kids. That’s something I know more about than when we started this journey.

What do you want your kids to get out of this experience of living abroad, being a part of a totally separate culture?

Ryan: It’s that global citizen mindset. I want them to be able to meet anybody in the world and see them with and open heart, you know? Just to be able to engage with people. Obviously we all have our biases, but I want our kids to just see the humanness.

What does it take to get yourself rooted in a place mentally—like come down to Costa Rica and carve out a sense of home?

Kate: It’s hard. I don’t know that it felt like home until, One) we had really nested, and Two) we found people that I deeply enjoyed spending time with. Only when those two kind of collided was I able to see this as a long term situation. Now I forget that I’m an ex-pat sometimes because I’m just here living my life.

What does it take to adapt to a new culture?

Ryan: It takes being comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone. And that can take a long time. I still don’t think I’ve adapted entirely. I’ve habituated to it in some ways, but I’m still caught off guard all the time. I’m often still uncomfortable.

Kate: There’s a romantic period that happens when you move somewhere. And it’s like: oh, this place that feels so tropical and vibey and whatever. And then you get this deep discomfort that happens when you’re really trying to get to know a country and a different language and everything is really hard. Maybe you get robbed, which happened to me, or maybe it’s something else and it can really cause a lot of turmoil. But if you stay with it, allow yourself to be okay being uncomfortable, then you have this growth period and you’re able to go back to a neutral state again.

Ryan: They call it surviving the dip down here. If you can survive the dip, you’re probably pretty good. Like, okay, you’re gonna be around for a little bit.

Seems like the only way to get a lifestyle that’s yours, not someone else’s path, is to go through periods of perhaps extreme discomfort to get there.

Ryan: Yeah, because it’s not easy to turn your back on what you know, what’s familiar. We could very easily move to the suburbs in the U.S. and live a conventional life. But we don’t really want easy. There’s value in the struggle.

Kate: I also don’t think that’s easy, a more conventional life. I found it very challenging to actually try to conform. When we lived in the suburbs I was so much more deeply sad and depressed. I don’t have any of those feelings anymore. I was never a depressed person. It was the environment.

What do your families think?

Kate: I think sometimes it’s hard for our families to understand us. That’s probably one of the hardest things to do with this explaining ourselves and why we’re moving again and why this seems good to our family.

What does the relationship between expats and the local population look like?

Ryan: In our little barrio there’s plentiful opportunity to connect with Ticos and Ticas, the locals. And I’m grateful for that.

Kate: Our kids’ school helps with that, too, because there are locals going there. That’s created a beautiful connection that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. But there’s a barrier there right off the bat, and you have to break through it for the locals to want to get to know you.

Ryan: Yeah, since expats are relatively transitory, it’s like why invest emotionally in these relationships if I don’t think you’re gonna stick around.

I think it was Paul Theroux, the travel writer, who said: “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.”

Do you think there’s a difference between a tourist and a traveler, or an expat, for that matter? Or are those just arbitrary distinctions?

Kate: There’s a big difference. Yeah, tourists are someone who’s stopping through, an expat is someone molding themselves into another culture. You’re not just on the external layer anymore.

You guys are soon moving to New Zealand. What will you take from your two years in Costa Rica?

Ryan: I’ve learned that as a family, we can do hard things. And I don’t want to shy away from that. If anything, I’m kind of gluttonous for more experiences.

Kate: We’re definitely all better for it. In the U.S. everything is just so readily available. It’s really hard to get things here, and I think Costa Rica has given me the chance to rethink, like, recycling and reusing the products I have. I’ve had to make a lot of things from scratch, because otherwise I’m not gonna get them. It has created a real sense of fulfillment.

I mean, we brought you cabinet hinges because you couldn’t get them in town. Speak a little bit of how hard it is to get stuff down here.

Kate: Yeah, we have to carry stuff in if we really need it. And then otherwise, it’s just food that we’re buying here. But that has been so good for the family. We are not bombarded by an excessive amount of toys, for instance, because there’s no excess.

You’re each taking one suitcase to New Zealand. Do you think that’s gonna help with letting go of things, too?

Ryan: Yeah, but I’ll be honest, I’m nervous about returning to a culture where everything is readily available again. Because we went without it for so long, and I feel like that was precious. And, like, I’m still a hungry ghost . . . like, I’ll get there, and I’ll see, and I’ll want, and I’ll consume.

Kate: But now I know firsthand that I can make something from scratch, and I don’t need to just go pay double for it at grocery store anymore. That itself is freedom.

Is there anything that you’re worried about moving to New Zealand?

Ryan: I’m going from that working remote, running the beach in the morning and barefoot in the jungle, to a full time job in what, to me, is a city. Yeah. I’m gonna have culture shock. I am gonna be uncomfortable again. Which is good, but I don’t want to rely on the conveniences that I know aren’t healthy for me. Because this has been a period of health. And healing.

Kate: I also think that we’re intentionally moving to somewhere that living still means being outside, being active, and being in nature. Therefore, I think we wouldn’t be moving if we’d be sliding backwards. We’re moving somewhere that fits us as people.

Ryan: And here’s the traveler versus the tourist . . . if it doesn’t fit, we’ll fucking move. Onto the next.

After we returned to the States, Ryan texted me and added: “I recognize that we come from a place of privilege.” And to that I say, sure, but more than anything it’s a privilege of mindset. The belief that anything is possible. A poverty of possibility is the worst kind of poor.

Whether that means moving your family abroad, quitting a miserable job, travelling post-divorce, whatever it may be, anything is possible. But the path to greater comfort requires trudging through some discomfort first. And if you can survive the dip you’re probably pretty good.

Until next time . . .

Martin

If you are interested in reading more of my work, I recently published a book of essays about staying human in the algorithmic age, which called “honest, authentic and smart.” BUY IT HERE.

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I have this recurring fantasy whenever I’m feeling down, imagining myself doing the most menial tasks. Instead of dreaming about what I want, everything I think life could look like, I wallow in self-pity. And I do this by looking at other people, imagining their lives are terrible.

I look at the garbage man and I think maybe I should just start doing that for a living. Of course, that makes me an asshole—the garbage man is just living his life, doing his best, and I really appreciate the garbage man.

Maybe this is some deranged way of staying comfortable with what I already have, convincing myself I don’t deserve anything more. I think this is how people stay in bad relationships, bad jobs, bad situations altogether.

Wrap your current life in the prospects of a worse life and suddenly things start looking pretty good. And then that dream life stays up in the clouds, untarnished by the realities of actual life. I guess that’s one way to happiness.

But I think I’ve got it all backwards.

Instead of punching down on a life I see as worse off (sorry, garbage man), I should take aim at those dreams in the sky.

It’s time to kill my dreams.

I don’t mean kill them off as if they never existed. I mean killing them from the dreamworld, in order to make them real. Because a dream out there in fantasy land is nothing but an idea, like this fortune cookie says . . .

I always dreamed of writing a novel. Then one day I stared down the blank page and started writing. Three years later, after more late nights than I can count and hundreds of pages thrown out, the dream is dead because I killed it. Now it’s no longer some dream but reality. And I know what it feels like to write a novel.

Killing our dreams takes work. I’ve been watching this survival show with my kids called Alone. These people survive up in the Arctic, living off the land, and in one episode a guy kills a bull moose. It’s standing there in the meadow, majestic, wild and beautiful, before he shoots it with an arrow, cuts it up and smokes the meat, which gets him through a long hard winter.

This is what our dreams do, if we let them. If we successfully hunt our dreams, they will sustain us.

Of course, killing our dreams means having to do something with them. The messy act of gutting them, quartering them, processing them into sustenance. But if our dreams are to nourish us, this is what it takes.

As for the life coach who killed mine . . . all I can say is thanks.

In his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig talks about Mark Twain’s experience becoming a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, how after he had mastered the knowledge to navigate the waters “all the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river,” Twain wrote.

But at the same time, and just as important, something else was gained in the process, an intimate understanding of the river that carried its own entirely different kind of beauty. Because it’s not that understanding replaces beauty so much as it transforms it.

I’ve got no clue if going for my dreams will look as beautiful as the fantasies in my head. But I know there’s only one way to find out.

Bang bang.

If you are interested in reading more of my work, I recently published a book of essays about staying human in the algorithmic age. You can buy it HERE.

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In this series of interviews, entitled Wholesome People, we’ll explore perspectives not often heard in mainstream conversation. The hope is to find commonality between people who may at first appear wholly different, in the interest of bringing us closer together.

Now, please open your mind . . . and enjoy.

We are told from an early age that education is the key to success. Stay in school, right? Since the time of Plato’s Academy, society has valued a life of learning. But does this come from an education in the traditional sense?

After all, there is much to be learned at the school of hard knocks. And with a four-year degree approaching mid-six figures in this country, this seems like a worthwhile line of inquiry.

While families discuss these questions at the dinner table, and scholars debate them in their ivory towers, let’s hear from someone who has taken an unconventional approach to education: my friend, Evan Lam.

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Tell me when you dropped out of high school.

11th grade.

What were your thoughts on school at the time.

It was just boring to me. I didn’t feel challenged. I would ace tests but never had the discipline to sit there all day, let alone do homework. Give me the choice to go ride my skateboard or sit in my room and do more school, and I’m going to choose my skateboard every time. And my parents, good or bad, didn’t give me any ultimatums.

Do you think it was an authority issue?

I just refused to play by the rules, you couldn’t put me in a box. I remember when I was seven or eight, my mom asked what I wanted to do when I grew up and I said: “I just want to play all day and make money.” So the idea of being told I had to go to school, had to do all these things rather than go outside and play with my friends or just play by myself, I didn’t like that.

What was the relationship like with your parents?

My mom’s a flight attendant, so she was traveling five days a week. And my dad is an entrepreneur, so he had his own business and was hyper-focused on that. That left tons of freedom for me and my sister. And, yeah, I got into plenty of trouble with that freedom, but became very independent and very self-sufficient, as well.

Were they supporting you at all financially at that point?

I think I was living at their house. But, no.

Would you change how your parents dealt with you as a kid?

I think it would have been nice if my parents were more involved in my life. You know, it’s hard to say because I love the life I have now, I love my relationship with my family now. But if I took any lessons from how my parents’ parented me versus how I might parent kids if I had them for myself, I think I would try to be more involved with whatever they were doing.

Did you find yourself seeking out mentors and other people to help guide you along the way?

I had older friends from a very young age and I followed their path. Interestingly enough, most of those friends didn’t graduate high school either. Then, later in life, my uncle played a big role in who I am today. He had rental properties in the Bay Area. He was a real estate agent and a firefighter. And I thought: Well, I want what he has, so I’m gonna do what he did. So he guided me. I mean, we were doing monthly net worth statements when I was 17.

How old were you when you started working?

I started helping my dad in his machine shop when I was 14 or 15 years old, sweeping and making parts and doing assembly. I started working full-time when I was 16 for a different company, right before I dropped out of school.

What was the correlation between working full time and dropping out of school?

The company I worked for was called Flextronics International. They made computer data systems, these big hard drive banks, and at the time you could work as much as you wanted. So I figured, well, if we go to school to get jobs and make money, and I already have a job, why go to school?

What has your job path been since you decided to focus on work?

It’s been all over the place, honestly. I worked at grocery stores. I washed cars. I worked for Flextronics until they moved their company overseas. I worked at Discount Tire for a long time. I worked at a kitchen catering company. I did odd jobs, worked for friends, painted houses, construction.

What do you do for work now?

I own a real estate agency, helping people buy and sell houses. And I’m a real estate investor. So I own rental properties.

What would you tell people who wanted to follow your path?

I once had a niece and nephew graduate from high school and I asked them: “So, are you guys are going to go to college?” And they said, “Well, we like the lifestyle you have. What did you do?” I can’t recommend that to anybody. Because it’s not an easy path. It takes a lot of drive, it takes a lot of dedication, perseverance, and a lot of flexibility in what you get. I can’t just go to most places, even now, and get a job. Because somebody asks for my resume and they’re like, “What’s your education? What’s your experience?” And I don’t have any, you know?

You never got your GED?

No.

What do you think about the status quo path in America? Graduate high school, go to college, and that’s the way into a lucrative career.

I think it’s still the truth for many, for the masses. Because it takes a certain kind of person, I think, to go a different path . . . an unconventional person that’s willing to make sacrifices, that’s willing to live a certain way before they get what they want.

So from your perspective as having taken a fairly unconventional path, what are the benefits and drawbacks are of seeking convention in life?

The benefit of seeking convention is security.

Is this real security or the illusion of security?

It’s the illusion of security. None of us are secure. Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow? But most people need the illusion. I think that’s what drives people to have jobs. That’s what drives people to be religious. That’s what drives people to have families. They want the security of having people around them. They want the security of a paycheck. They want the security of knowing where they’re going to go when they die.

Is it really about security or, perhaps, control?

It’s a very interesting to think about the differences between security and control. But, in general, people want to be in control, for sure. They want to be in control and they want to be secure and, I mean, not that I don’t want to be in control, but I do find that the most memorable moments in my life were when I’ve been flirting with the edge of control.

What does success mean to you?

Being able to take care of yourself and be happy with the decisions that you’ve made and where you are in the moment.

Do you think people would view your life from the outside and I see it as successful?

I think most people think I’m successful. Because I have some of the things successful people have.

What do you have?

Well, I work very little and I make pretty good money. I’ve got five rental properties. I own my own house. I don’t have any debt. So in that sense I think most people would say that I’m successful.

You said earlier that when you were eight, you told your mom you just wanted to play all day and make money. Have you achieved that goal?

100%. And that makes me really proud, honestly. Because I do really just get to do whatever I want most of the time. I mean, to an extent, right? I’m not a billionaire. So I can’t just go like jump on a plane and go where I want and spend a bunch of money. But I wake up with the sun. I don’t have an alarm. I don’t have a bedtime. I don’t have very many responsibilities. I don’t have to worry about it too much, and it’s really nice.

What are people’s reactions when they find out that you didn’t finish high school?

Most people are very surprised. That’s the number one reaction. Most people think it’s incredible.

Incredible how?

I think it’s their perception of a high school dropout, and because—not to toot my own horn or anything—I don’t fit that. I feel like I know a lot of things. And if you’re not going to follow the conventional path, another key requirement is that you have to be hungry for information. You have to be a self-learner. And I am 100% a self-learner. I want to learn about everything, how everything works, how to fix everything, how to do everything, how to communicate different ways. I just eat up that information. I’m not always reading informational books, but I’m always curious.

So this is about staying curious?

Yes. Curiosity has gotten me everything I have. Curiosity is my driving force, really. When I was young, I asked myself what would happen if I walked out of school and went skateboarding? Nothing happened. What would happen if I dropped out of school and just worked full time? I did that, and it worked out just fine. What would happen if I don’t go to college? What would happen if I took these drugs, drank this alcohol? What would happen if I quit? I’m a super curious person and I want to know about all walks of life and how everybody does what they do and how they got what they have.

I’d much rather, for example, try to fix my car myself than just pay somebody else to do it. Sure, I want to save the money, but when it breaks I want to be able to fix it, too. And I think that’s also another big independence thing. I don’t want to have to rely on anybody to get me out of wherever I need to go.

It seems like there’s the less conventional you are, the more self-reliant you need to be.

I don’t have a plan B. That’s why I feel I’ve been successful in real estate. If I don’t make money, I’ve got to go back and work at Discount Tire, or go put roofs on houses, or go do some other job that I don’t want to do. And when I look at other people in the world that are successful, they all have the same trait. Single mothers are some of the most successful people in the world, because they don’t have a choice. Feed my baby or die, you know? No plan B. I gotta do it. It has to be done.

Difficult circumstances are pretty motivating.

A lot of people think if you don’t go to school, if you’re a drop out, if you’re a drug addict, if you’re any of these things, then you can’t achieve anything in life. And that’s completely false. Some of the most financially successful people I know are recovering drug addicts.

You’re a recovering addict. Do you think that addictive personality is something has something to do with it?

100%. Tons of drive. Yeah. You just replace the drugs with something productive.

How long how long have you been clean and sober?

I’ve been clean and sober for 11 years.

How has sobriety changed your life?

It has changed it in every way possible. I wouldn’t be financially independent. I wouldn’t be wealthy, if somebody would call me that. I wouldn’t be able to do whatever I want to do. I wouldn’t have achieved this dream of playing all day and making money. I don’t think I’d have anything. I would probably be dead.

How have you stayed clean and sober?

Well, it’s either about choosing or changing. And most people, I find, choose. For me it’s too hard to choose to be sober. Because if I have to choose then sometimes I might choose the wrong way. You either have to be an active recovery or be a changed person. I don’t make the choice to not drink or do drugs. I’m just a person who doesn’t drink or do drugs. I changed who I am.

So every year I celebrate my years of sobriety and I go to back to the rooms of NA. And people ask how did you do it? How did you get this much time? And my answer always goes back to curiosity. I’m curious what’s gonna happen if I just stay clean and sober one more day. What will happen? If I do drugs, I know what. I know the outcome of that. I did that for eighteen years. And I know how it ends. But I don’t know what happens if I don’t do drugs another day.

Do you have a philosophy that you live by?

Something that I heard a long time ago is that it doesn’t matter whether you come from privilege or you come from education or you come from nothing, if you help enough people get what they want, you can have everything you want. And another: do the best with what you have.

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If you’re anything like me, some of these ideas are challenging to consider. But I’ve long thought that the beauty of hearing things which challenge current belief comes from the possibility that: one, you discover ways to expand your perspective, or, two, you find even more strength in your own convictions. Either way, it seems beneficial.

So, I hope you find either new perspective or deeper conviction in these words.

Until next time . . .

Martin

If you are interested in reading more of my work, I recently published a book of essays about staying human in the algorithmic age. You can buy it HERE.

- BUY IT NOW -

I don’t normally talk politics. But I can’t keep quiet about this. Everyone has to pick their battles . . . this is mine.

Last month, the U.S. House passed H.J.Res. 140, a resolution that strips federal protections from the land surrounding the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota.

Beneath the BWCA, the most visited wilderness area in the United States, lies one of the world’s largest untapped deposits of copper and nickel. This bill opens the door for an international mining conglomerate to operate in its watershed.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because this is the plot of Avatar.

You may not have heard of the BWCA. You may not even recreate on public land. But here’s why this vote matters:

Using a little-known law called the Congressional Review Act, H.J.Res. 140 doesn’t just undo this protection . . . it creates a mechanism to overturn many others across the country. If you’re a hunter, fisherman, hiker, climber, birdwatcher, or one of a thousand other things, the public land you love could be next.

I could wax poetic about the Boundary Waters, a place with water so pure you can drink it right out of the lakes without filtering, a place I’ve spent hundreds of days paddling a canoe—yet I also understand the world needs copper (especially for all our increased electrification).

This is about balancing private extraction with public good. And we need uncontaminated land that serves the public. As Sigurd Olson once wrote: “Wilderness to the people of America is a spiritual necessity, an antidote to the high pressure of modern life, a means of regaining serenity and equilibrium.”

So here’s my larger take on the environment: it is the basis for all society. Every civilization that has collapsed has done so, in part, because it degraded the land that sustained it.

That may sound dramatic, considering the bill in question here, but the precedent this sets paves the way for such degradation.

But I don’t want to get all doomsday. Instead I’d rather share a few photos I’ve taken over the years of the Boundary Waters, so you might see why this place is so special.

I’ve had my heart in this particular issue for the last decade, having called senators and reps, handwritten letters, and donated year after year to the nonprofit organizations fighting to protect the Boundary Waters.

This is it. The culmination of all the effort . . . it comes down to this vote in the Senate.

Here’s my ask:

Click below and send an email to your senators. It will take literally one minute.

EMAIL YOUR SENATOR

If you want an in-depth look at the greater implications, has an excellent piece HERE.

To read more about H.J.Res. 140, visit the official page. Here’s the official summary:

This joint resolution nullifies Public Land Order 7917, which withdrew approximately 225,504 acres of National Forest System lands in Cook, Lake, and Saint Louis Counties, Minnesota, from mineral and geothermal leasing for 20 years. In 2023, the Bureau of Land Management issued the order to protect and preserve the Rainy River Watershed, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Mining Protection Area, and the 1854 Ceded Territory of the Lake Superior Chippewa from the potential adverse effects of mineral and geothermal exploration and development. The joint resolution removes such protections and allows such land to be leased for the exploration and development of minerals and geothermal energy.

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In this series of interviews, entitled Wholesome People, we’ll explore perspectives not often heard in mainstream conversation. The hope is to find commonality between people who may at first appear wholly different, in the interest of bringing us all closer together.

Now, please open your mind . . . and enjoy.

It feels fitting to start this journey with a woman who works in the oldest profession, as they say: sex work. I met her through a friend of a friend. We talked over chips and salsa at a popular Mexican restaurant in downtown Boulder, Colorado. For obvious reasons, I’ll keep her identity anonymous, and be warned that this interview contains adult themes. Beyond that, let’s have her tell her own story . . .

How did you get into this work?

I met a guy on Tinder who paid me to kick him in the balls. That was a fun thing, I guess. And it just grew from there. I’ve always been a very hypersexual person. Nobody was shocked when I told them, which was weird . . .

How would you describe your job?

I’ve always struggled with that. I generally say that I have sugar daddies because I am more in that sector of sex work. Compared to, like, escorting, having sugar daddies is a lot more about creating a relationship with these guys beyond the sex. It feels like we’re dating, but then I leave and we don’t talk and they get the perks of dating someone without having to take care of a relationship or caring about another person’s life too much. You get a girlfriend when you want it, which I think is very nice for people.

Why do you think people seek out your services?

Like I said, I think some people want that connection with someone without having to maintain a relationship. A lot of people work from home nowadays and that makes it hard to meet people. I can be there. Other people are really socially awkward and might find this easier than dating. And then some people are just really busy. That’s a common thing. Sometimes this kind of thing can just work well for people in their life.

So, it’s about more than sex?

It depends on the dynamics. Some people just want to hang out, watch a movie, or get dinner and go on dates and it feels more like fulfilling that crave for real connection. When I first started, I was more escorty than sugary and that was always just about the sex. We would meet in a hotel room, have sex for an hour, and then go our separate ways and just meet up again whenever. With sugar dating, I think it is more about the emotional connection than just the sex, but the sex is also a big part of it.

How emotionally invested are you?

Okay, so I used to work at Dutch Bros. Coffee and a big thing they always talked about was, like, your job is to brighten someone’s day, be the bright spot of someone’s day. So I would really connect with these people who I would see for two minutes every day. I got really good at building connections that felt really deep for the other person. But I also have a certain level of just, like, love for people. I really do care about people a lot.

I would imagine doing this you have to want to please people.

Totally, big people pleaser. It is genuine, but not so much that I’m bent out of shape if we stop seeing each other tomorrow.

I like the idea that it’s genuine even if the emotional investment is, perhaps, asymmetrical.

From stories I’ve heard, it’s very common for guys to fall in love, you know, because you’re basically pretending to be in love. Like that’s the dynamic. But I like to think that I’m pretty good about setting those boundaries early on, and maintaining them, and being set in what I actually want.

What kind of people do you see?

At the beginning I really wanted to have sex with older guys, so I’ve been with people in their late 60s and even their early 80s, but generally I’d say people are in their 40s. Most of the men I see are married or in a relationship of some sort. I think the biggest reason people come to me is because they’re unhappy in their marriage and not getting any intimacy, but still want to stay for whatever reason. And I think it can be good for these guys because someone like me isn’t really going to be in their life—I guess I’m the safest person to cheat with.

Then some people I see just don’t really know much about sex at all, like how to do it or what to do, because they haven’t had much experience. So I’ve definitely had people learn through our interactions. I try to create a very open space for people. Like, I don’t react too much when people tell me things, because I want them to be able to just keep talking and not feel like I’m judging them.

Expand upon that idea of the kind of space you try to create. What does it mean to be a good sex worker?

I just try to create a safe space, a comfortable space, and fill the role that they’re looking for. And I think that comes from when we talk initially, because that’s the purpose of the interaction. Then creating a space where they feel loved and making sure they feel cared about afterwards and don’t feel like I’m judging them for anything, because there is definitely space to judge, you know?

In those scenarios, an intimate situation in a hotel room or someone’s house, you’ve got to keep your wits about you. Have you ever been in a situation that felt a little dicey?

For sure. As much as it sucks, I think that’s a big part of sex work. If you are wanting to get into it, you have to know that’s a risk. Because when you’re around men in their most primal—sometimes their worst setting—they aren’t always viewing you as much of a person, you know? And you can definitely be put into some pretty uncomfortable or even dangerous situations.

But I have enough people who I talk to frequently throughout the day that I feel like it would be noticeable if something happened. So I’m careful. People have my location and I’ll text them when I’m safely there, and then as soon as I get to my car. And if I don’t then there’s something wrong. And I heavily check people out online. It’s so easy to find out a lot about people.

I would imagine after two years your radar is pretty dialed.

Yeah, when someone’s just regular weird or, like, too weird, I feel like I can gauge that. But sometimes you think people are going to be really weird and then they’re so sweet, just a little strange. I feel like the weirdest people I’ve met are the ones who seem the most normal at first.

This is your full-time work?

Yeah. It has been for a while.

Is it pretty lucrative? How much money do you make?

I’ve heard of people making up to $10,000 per month.

And, for you, you also get these other perks, like people flying you all over the world.

Yeah, I’ve gone a ton of places. Iceland and London, Italy, and Amsterdam . . . Vegas a couple times. New York a couple times. LA a couple times. It’s been awesome. But most of that travel was with someone who I was seeing consistently.

How do you balance the positives and negatives of this work for yourself?

I’m really struggling with this question, because I always thought I had a good handle on it. I’ve always tried to focus on the positives, but I recently had a negative experience that has made me reconsider my ability to balance it all. I apologize for this story, but a couple of months ago I went on a trip with someone who I trusted, who I’d been seeing for around a year and half, and while on this trip he totally took advantage of me. I completely shut down when I got home and just the thought of sex repulsed me. I had always been a very sexual person and now I’m not. This sort of work can be life changing and glamorous but sometimes that’s not enough to balance the negatives and the risks that come along with it. At least I don’t know if I can balance them anymore.

So, all this said, what would you tell a girl who came to you with the intention of getting into this work?

I would tell her to be careful, to not get swooned by the quick money. You can definitely get stuck in this kind of work and it’s important to be cautious that you don’t. I think it’s important to know the risks, and the impact this sort of work will likely have on your view on relationships and people in general.

I’ve seen so much cheating and, unfortunately, been a part of it so many times that the concept of marriage and having one partner forever seems impossible to me now. Which, maybe it always did, but this work definitely confirmed it. The money is charming but it doesn’t always feel worth it.

One final question. If you had the opportunity to clarify something people have all wrong about what you do for a living, how would you set the record straight?

I’ve always viewed sex work as a good thing, for the most part. Because people need connection and I think you can’t really hate on how someone’s going to find it. Everyone deserves to feel cared for, and I can provide that. It’s just a service, like any other service, you know?

Absolutely. That’s a great final note.

If you’re anything like me, some of these ideas are challenging to consider. But I’ve long thought that the beauty of hearing things which challenge current belief comes from the possibility that: one, you discover ways to expand your perspective, or, two, you find even more strength in your own convictions. Either way, it seems beneficial.

So, I hope you find either new perspective or deeper conviction in these words.

Until next time . . .

Martin

If you are interested in reading more of my work, I recently published a book of essays about staying human in the algorithmic age. You can buy it HERE.

After calling myself a writer for the last decade, I’ve increasingly wanted to put a book of my own up on the shelf.

While pondering this desire, I wrote essays on Substack, enjoying the immediacy of connecting with readers in real time. Sixty essays in, I realized the book I had imagined existed right in front of me . . . I just needed to turn it into one.

In my experience as a writer, traditional publishing has always been pitched as “the way.” However, I’ve always been curious about self-publishing. Perhaps the DIY attitude attracted me.

As the poet Charles Bukowski once wrote: “I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen but as the years wasted on nothing ever did unless I caused it.” I figured it was time to cause something.

So, with plenty of material to work with from what I’d already posted on Substack, I set out to turn it into a book. Now to figure out what I was doing. I’ll break this down into three parts:

1. Manuscript

2. Book Design

3. Publishing Platform.

1. MANUSCRIPT

First things first, getting the manuscript in order. I printed off every essay direct from Substack itself, with the pictures and comments and everything else, and assigned each a grade, culling the ones that didn’t cut it.

Then I created an Excel spreadsheet with all the titles to figure out the best order, which turned out to be a challenge: for one, the overarching thematic organization of the collection took some time to understand. I ultimately broke them into three categories, based upon an essay which became the introduction, then reread the essays and tentatively put them in place, taking a close look at the beginning and end of each piece to make sure the transitions flowed from essay to essay.

Then I read everything again as a single manuscript, line-editing along the way, adjusting the order, and revising the original online formatting to make sense in print. Then I did it again. And again. Overall, I read the whole book about six times, and it probably would have been more had I not already proofread the essays multiple times before originally posting them on Substack.

Legal Advice

I decided to engage a copyright attorney during this process, as well. I quote a lot of different people in my essays and wanted to make sure I was not violating any copyrights by including them. I came to understand the concept of Fair Use, a nuanced legal term if there ever was one, and sought permission for a couple of quotes that fell beyond that provision. (I’ll break down the costs at the end of the essay.)

2. BOOK DESIGN

I am a writer, not a book designer. I knew to pull this thing off to the standard I imagined, I’d want to work with someone who sees design as their craft. I spent around 600 hours crafting these essays and figured they deserved to be complemented by a carefully considered design.

I’d been following the book designer on Substack for over a year and have always found a lot to love in his work. So I sent him an email and in response Nathaniel asked me a bunch of questions about the aesthetic I was going for, the inspiration for it, and some of the deeper motivations behind publishing a book.

One of the beautiful aspects of self-publishing is that you have full creative control of the artistic vision, no compromises. I had originally wanted a propaganda-like color scheme (red, black, white) but it looked a little harsh, so Nathaniel warmed it up and changed the font. I’ve always loved the album art for the Grateful Dead’s Skeletons from the Closet and we riffed on that for the title.

Nathaniel nailed it. There is something very exciting about seeing the front cover of your book. You can almost imagine it on the shelf. Very motivating for getting the rest of it to the finish line.

As far as the back cover, I knew I wanted to go old-school, using my author portrait for the whole thing. I’m lucky to have some really talented friends and a good buddy who is a professional photographer took some shots for me in his garage studio.

On another note: I get annoyed when a book has blurbs and other superfluous text all over it. The only time a blurb convinced me to buy a book, I read one chapter and quit, so I don’t trust them at all. I figured a clean front and back cover is relatively timeless (I hope)—I mean, you don’t see all that marketing bullshit on Penguin Classics, right?

Interior Design

Now, the final piece, formatting the interior. I wasn’t interested in messing around with this myself—again, not a book designer—but Nathaniel offered this service, as well, so I sent him the finalized manuscript and he got to work.

One consideration was whether to leave line breaks between paragraphs with no indentations, as it had been formatted online, or go with indented paragraphs and no line breaks like most print books. In a kind of homage to the essays’ digital origin, I decided on the line breaks with no indentations.

That said, I find it interesting that what seemed like a good length for online reading (< 2,000 words) is really short in print (3-4 pages). However, one of my goals as a writer is to get people who don’t consider themselves “readers” to become interested in books, so I see these shorter print essays as more accessible to anyone who might otherwise be intimidated by twenty-five-page chapters.

Petty Thief Press

As far as the “press” goes—Petty Thief Press—I’ve owned the URL for years, thinking it was a cool name. That same photographer friend of mine sketched up a quick logo and I used it mainly to add some aesthetic to the title page and spine—although I do believe it adds some trad pub legitimacy to the whole thing (I guess I couldn’t escape that desire entirely).

Artificial Intelligence

I feel the need to address the use of AI, of which I did, strictly as a tool. ChatGPT helped me confirm the sources of my many quotes, categorize my book and come up with keywords for Amazon, and template the copy for the sales landing page—and that’s it. If you want to use it to design your cover, my feeling is that you’d be better served paying an actual person and engaging in some real creative collaboration. Let it be known, if you use AI to write your actual words, we can’t be friends.

With the cover and the interior formatted into PDFs, I was ready to get the physical proof.

3. PUBLISHING PLATFORM

Which platform to use to self-publish your book is a rabbit hole of its own. Ultimately, I published through bothAmazon KDP and IngramSpark. My friend has a good breakdown of the differences between the two HERE. I won’t get into the details because this is a deep conversation in its own right, but there are plenty of good resources out there. When it comes to understanding the nuances of self-publishing, is a great place to start.

I uploaded everything onto Amazon KDP and in a few days got an author proof sent to my house. Getting that package was the first time I’d ever held my work on anything other than printer paper. What a feeling!

I read through the whole book again, identifying any formatting issues and a couple of missed typos. Nathaniel made the modifications, I reuploaded, got another proof and then, finally . . . officially hit publish. My book was in the world.

POST-PUBLICATION

Of course, I could talk about the announcements I made prior to publication, the marketing plans I’ve been enacting, and all that. But I’m certainly no expert and it pretty much comes down to four words: SELL THE DAMN THING!

So far that’s meant mustering up the courage to be shameless in my promotions, calling bookstores to stock it (easier than you might think if the book’s on Ingram with a wholesale discount), and figuring out how to generally get people reading more books.

I also decided to send a signed copy to all my paid subscribers here on Substack, new and existing. And it’s been so nice to connect on a personal level to people who have made a tangible difference in my writing career.

PRICING BREAKDOWN

• Book design (cover + interior): $1,800

• Copyright Attorney: $630

• Copyright permissions: $150

• ISBN numbers (pack of 10): $295

• Author copies (Qty: 40): $182

• Shipping signed books: $174

• Royalties (first two months): $577

I’ve still got a ways to go before breaking even, but as we writers know, it’s not about the money.

Anyway . . .

Feel free to leave any questions in the comments. I’ll do my best to answer.

And if you want to check out my book, you can do that RIGHT HERE. It’s a collection of essays about staying human in the algorithmic age.

- BUY IT HERE -

Thanks for reading.

Martin

If you’ve enjoyed my writing over the past few years, I’ve got some good news . . . it’s now a book.

To me there’s no better reading experience than holding an actual book in your hands. The paper, the feel, the tangibility! And at this point, I’d rather not stare at a screen any longer than I have to.

If I’ve done my job, the essays and stories in this collection will stay relevant for years to come—and to keep them from getting buried in 1s and 0s on the internet, I decided to rescue them on some old-school paper.

So now it exists. Hold it in your hands below.

- BUY THE BOOK -

A couple of notes:

1. If you’re already a paid subscriber to my Substack, don’t worry about buying one—I’ll be sending you a signed copy in the mail (follow up to come).

2. If you’d like a signed copy, upgrade to a paid subscription and I’ll send one your way.

3. If you can’t swing the cost, let me know. You reading it matters more than the few bucks I make on each sale.

Above all, many thanks for reading over these three years! More to come.

-Martin

My wife and I had barely touched each other for six months. Our small house never let us forget it, either, keeping us in close enough proximity to confirm our desire for one another had almost completed its disappearing act.

The marriage was thoroughly sexless by that point, yet it wasn’t the sex I missed so much as the lack of any physical contact at all. Trying to salvage the relationship, we saw a couples’ therapist who encouraged us to express our desires.

“Touch me,” I said.

The next day, sitting at the kitchen table on my laptop, my wife casually leaned on my shoulders and asked what I was working on. The shock of her hands felt so intrusive that I immediately questioned everything I’d asked for.

After twelve years of slowly numbing my desires, I realized I had no idea what I wanted anymore.

We settled on divorce and I found a place of my own. Trying to get out of my head, I dusted off the bike I’d purchased during the pandemic and explored the country roads north of town. One afternoon a buddy joined me, bringing along a woman he’d met online.

She had left a sexless marriage the year before and as we rode side-by-side, I felt a comfort in hearing her stories. Then during a rest break my friend casually asked, “So, how was that sex party you went to?”

“Oh . . .” She paused. “It was incredible.”

For the next ten minutes she detailed the local kink parties she’d been attending. “I didn’t realize I was into any of this stuff,” she said. “But as you walk around and see the kink, all these different things happening—domination, bondage, orgies—you get these body hits, this intuition of wanting to experience something new.”

I noticed my leg bouncing. I’d been telling people for months I wanted to push beyond the edge of my comfort zone. It seemed the moment had arrived.

“Can anyone go to these parties?” I asked.

“If you fill out an application,” she said.

That night, with my new condo in darkness, I scrolled through the questions on my phone. Amongst a request for a full-body photo, nude not required, and my thoughts on consent, they asked what I hoped to get from the experience.

I explained my divorce, the wholesale lack of intimacy in my life, an entire preamble to why I was interested. Then I deleted everything and wrote instead: to awaken my desire.

I pushed submit.

A week later, the text came through. My application had been accepted.

Walking up the dimly lit driveway, I entered a sprawling mansion cleared of its furniture in preparation for the hundred-fifty kinksters now arriving. It had also been redecorated.

Two naked women lay on the kitchen island, their bodies adorned with miniature cupcakes; in the corner of the living room, a St. Andrew’s cross had been erected for flogging; and beside the stairwell, a trio of costumed bartenders served an assortment of aphrodisiac elixirs.

The host encouraged us to wander the house while the remaining guests showed up.

The rooms had been labeled and outfitted for their evening’s purpose. Pillows and candles in the Tantra Room, massage tables in the Erotic Blueprint station, slim mattresses spread throughout the Orgy Dungeon. New arrivals—some in their twenties, some in their seventies, all in varying states of undress—poked their heads in. No touching, we were told, until the opening circle.

The host, a professional dominatrix in a black lace corset, called us to attention where she laid the ground rules. These included: complete sobriety, consent, safe words, and the importance of naming your desires.

“If you desire something,” she said, “ask for it with honesty and clear communication. Then accept the answer you receive, whatever it may be.”

“Creepiness,” she added, “is the refusal to own your desires. So don’t be a creep.”

To maintain a space where people could explore their desires and find their edge without fear, a team of “desire angels” staffed the party whose job was ensuring guests got the experience they had hoped for. These desire angels made themselves known and one of them, a raven-haired woman with a playful smile, caught my eye from across the room.

With that, the dominatrix cranked the music and declared, “Let’s play!”

Within minutes, a woman gripping a leash drug a man on all fours through the crowd. A few feet away, electrified chains zapped a man’s bare back. And a woman now tied to the cross began receiving a howler of a flogging.

It had seemed perfectly reasonable, leading up to this moment, to break the spell of a sexless marriage by attending a fully-liberated kink party. Zero to one-hundred, I had joked with friends who knew of my plans. Now, in the middle of it, and flirting with an out-of-body experience, the only word I could muster was overwhelmed.

Unsure what to do, I made a lap through the mansion, watching those better versed in the scene take action—myself stuck as an observer, unable to engage.

Perhaps noticing my uncertainty, a blonde desire angel in white lingerie appeared by my side.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Tell me your desires?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked into my eyes. “Breathe into your cock. What does it tell you?”

I tried breathing into my cock. It wasn’t speaking.

“Come with me.” She took my hand, guiding me to the Tantra room where calm music played and a few others cuddled amongst the pillows and candles. She sat me down in an oversized chair. “I want to get you into your body, and out of your head.”

She asked again for my desires.

“I think I’d like to touch you,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “You can touch me anywhere except my genitals, and no kissing. These are my boundaries. Now, be quiet and let me worship you.”

She mounted the chair and for ten minutes whispered all kinds of sweet nothings into my ear. The noise in my head seemed to quiet down. When she finished, I thanked her and said I was ready to get back out there.

Knowing everyone at this party was a potential lover, though, inverted the monogamous mindset I’d lived for years. I still couldn’t bring myself to ask anyone for anything.

Am I broken? I asked myself, descending into the orgy dungeon.

Two dozen partygoers filled the mattresses in a tangle of flesh, legs in the air, heads bobbing, guttural noises punctuating the house music. I voyeured for a minute, feeling no closer to understanding my desires, and then noticed a small nook in the room where another desire angel sat beside a floor lamp.

“But how do you know if it’s desire you’re feeling?” I asked her. “What if it’s something else?”

“Imagine a time you were completely excited. Embody that,” she said. “That’s the feeling of desire.” I closed my eyes, manifesting the feeling.

“Now, try the opposite. Embody the feeling of repulsion,” she continued. “These are the ends of the spectrum. Everything you feel moves one way or the other. You need to tap into this to know which way you’re going.”

As I tapped in, a man began screaming behind me at regular intervals. My curiosity turned me around where I found him, nearly-naked, on his knees, one woman whipping him and another squeezing his testicles. The women and I exchanged glances.

I might not know what I want, I thought, but I don’t think I want that.

They had used a phrase at the opening circle: don’t yuck my yum. Despite not understanding my own desires, I sought comfort in not judging others as they explored theirs and resigned myself to not figuring out anything that night.

Then I went into the one room I hadn’t yet visited: the Erotic Blueprint. I’d heard earlier from the man wielding the flog that this was a must.

The Erotic Blueprint is like the five love languages for arousal, the way we are uniquely turned on as individuals.

I lay on a massage table in my underwear and for the next ten minutes, as the practitioner explained, he would do a series of two touches, asking which of them I preferred. Some touches were light, some firm. Some with silk, some with pointed implements. I got whipped a few times. Regular A/B testing.

I soon learned that I have an energetic and sensual arousal pattern, meaning it’s the anticipation of intimacy that turns me on most of all. The taboo nature of kink is an arousal pattern in itself, the lowest on my list, which explained in part why I hadn’t been drawn into much of the party.

Desire was in me, I realized. It simply hadn’t been called out.

I would have been satisfied if the party had ended then. But with half an hour left, I returned to the Tantra room. As far as energy was concerned, this space had the mellow kind I wanted. I sat against the wall, breathing, taking it in.

Then the door to the room opened and the raven-haired desire angel I’d noticed at the beginning of the night walked in. She came straight over and asked if she could join me. I said yes and, now side-by-side, she asked the question of the night once more. “What are your desires?”

I thought for a moment: considering what I’d seen tonight at the party, the edge of my comfort zone long gone in the rearview, my broken marriage, my new life at hand. Then I stopped thinking.

I looked at this woman, earnestly asking what I wanted, waiting to have a real conversation about desire. And for the first time that night, I actually felt it.

“Touch me,” I said.

This essay originally appeared in Hobart magazine.

If you liked this one, try another . . .

If you want to read my stuff in tangible form, I recently published a book of essays about staying human in the algorithmic age, which called “honest, authentic and smart.” BUY IT HERE.

- BUY IT NOW -

I expected carnies. This is my idea of the county fair—carnival showmen, slightly punkish, Barnum and Bailey’s with a touch of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!—and we got a six-foot, bean pole of a man blowing up balloons for the dart throw, the bucktoothed bald man shagging ping-pong balls at the win-a-goldfish game, and some incredible handlebar mustaches. Yet, oddly enough, the ride jockeys operating the Ferris wheel and Tilt-a-Whirl were clean-cut Mexicans in company polo shirts . . . corporate carnies, who would have thought?

Thankfully, the crowds more than made up for any deficit in interesting people. Young and old, urban and rural, white, black, brown, carnies, cowboys, hippies: a real cultural convention, a true taste of America.

Of course, the carnival is only one part of the county fair. Beside the funnel cakes and turkey legs stood an exhibit hall and livestock pens full of prize-winning chickens, rabbits, goats and pigs, and a handful of beaming kids from the 4-H club who raised them. While on the other end of the fairgrounds, posting for juxtaposition, roared the demolition derby.

Demolition derby . . . possibly the most American thing. Imagine its conception! “Hey, buddy, let’s smash these old cars together until the last one’s standing. Yeeewwww!!!” The derby kicked off with a sequined cowgirl slamming a sledge hammer onto a contestant’s hood, before a team of Mad Max vehicles charged into one another, fire, smoke, and engine fluid leaking across the dirt arena. Pure entertainment. You can draw a throughline straight from the gladiators in the Coliseum to this spectacle, the type of thing that has gotten people excited for millennia.

A juxtaposition, indeed. Because for all the over-produced, buffed-and-polished entertainment served up these days, the county fair still hangs onto a certain downhome charm: the DIY attitude, quintessentially American, has kept it an annual staple in towns across this county for over a century. It’s a feeling more than anything. The derby, the livestock show, and every carnival game has it, this allure of the chance for recognition, unconventional as it may be. And I must ask: is that so different from the American dream?

“You’d be the youngest in history,” the carnie told my eight-year-old son who insisted on trying the milk bottle toss. He lost his $10 in thirty-seconds. Sullen, he seemed to understand as I explained the grift—that they make it look easy, though it’s damn near impossible—so when we reached the basketball toss at the next booth, he naturally begged me to try that one, too. But I was out of cash.

You could tell which stuffed animal prizes had been hanging around longest from the dust coating their fur. The carnies had a habit of slapping them clean on a knee before rewarding the lucky winners, which had people lining up to try their hand. Appropriately enough, the grandest prize of all was a giant stuffed corndog—though it would have taken a Powerball-worthy string of luck to take that home.

As the night settled in and the lot dust caught the rainbow lights of the rides overhead, I watched all these different people enjoying the midsummer evening and couldn’t help thinking how wholesome it felt. Such a contrast to the big circus peddled to us these days, on the news and damn near everywhere else.

Too much. It’s all a bit too much. Ah, but maybe the county fair provides a chance for relief from such woes.

There’s an upstart print newspaper out there, conceived during the isolation of the pandemic, called County Highway. I’ll put it out there, say it features the most interesting American writing happening today. As they put it, the county is “a chunk of earth big enough to allow for a variety of human types, but small enough to get to know a decent number of your neighbors, where they come from, what they’re proud of, what they fear, what they smoke, what they drink, and what they love. Counties are the right-sized places for telling stories.”

Based on what I saw walking around the county fair, that feels right.

Here’s a hot take: I don’t think we’re supposed to be so connected. Endless notifications, barrages of emails and texts, every product new and used at our fingertips, even the self-evident convenience of FaceTiming halfway around the world—these things, situated within the context of globalization, have been sold to us as some kind of utopia, but what if they are actually making everything worse?

The writer argues societies based on a smaller scale is where we are headed in our social evolution, that globalization has peaked and we are contracting to something more manageable.

“It’s the municipality. Cities aren’t just smaller versions of countries. They’re fundamentally different coordination systems. They’re big enough to matter but small enough to change (with a little conscious, concerted effort and a roadmap). They map to natural boundaries. They operate at human scale.”

Maybe that looks like people focusing on what’s in front of them—not on a screen—communities becoming more self-sufficient, relying more on local goods and services, local agriculture, supporting small business. If not entirely sustainable, it seems like a good start.

For one example: the last few years I’ve bought into a farm share and, for the length of the growing season, pick up a weekly box of vegetables from this young farming couple a few miles from my house. Who knows if that makes a tangible difference in the world, but there’s something special about knowing the people who grow your food.

Share Routed by Martin Brodsky

So, perhaps the future looks much like the past: reveling in simple pleasures. Maybe as a culture we’re approaching the simplicity on the other side of complexity. I’ll only say that when I see a few thousand people of all different stripes enjoying a summer night at the county fair, well, I can’t help thinking we might be doing alright.

Of course, much progress remains to be done. Always. But let’s celebrate the wins, too.

With that in mind, allow me to quote one of the most fervently patriotic Americans that ever lived, the conservationist Edward Abbey, who once said: “It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.”

Agreed. And maybe—just maybe—you can do both at once at the county fair.

Peace ✌️

Martin

On another note, I’ve been compiling the last two-and-a-half years of essays into a book . . . an actual real life book. Reading on the internet is fine, but I believe holding a book in your hands is even better. The plan is to release it around Halloween, Oct. 31.

If you’re a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a signed copy in the mail. Take that as incentive to go paid, if you like. Or you can just buy it like a normal person—although being normal is kinda weird.

Mabry Morris walked through the front door and smelled the fresh basil and fish sauce. She remembered it was Thai night.

“Good timing,” her husband said from the edge of the couch. Rice and noodles steamed from the Styrofoam containers on the coffee table.

Mabry fell onto the cushion next to him and pulled the rubber band from her cropped ponytail. “I’m starving,” she said, peeling open the sweet and sour sauce. “How was your day?” She dipped an eggroll and took a bite, catching the flakes of shell with her other hand.

“Ah, nothing special.” He cracked a beer and took a sip. “Actually,” he remembered, “some guy brought in a Maserati.”

Mabry wiped her mouth. “Did you drive it?”

“No, I was in the pit all day.”

“Oh, right. It’s Tuesday.”

“Yeah,” he leaned back into the couch. “You should see my coveralls.”

“Greasy?”

He nodded with the beer at his lips. Mabry put the last bite of eggroll in her mouth and pointed to a black spot on her scrubs. “If it makes you feel better, I’m pretty sure that’s blood.”

He stared at it. “Gross.”

“Please.” She stuck her chopsticks into the noodles. “We’re both a couple of filthy children.”

He chuckled and put his hand on her thigh, covering the spot. “I guess there are worse things we could be.”

Mabry laughed but it faded all too fast.

“What?” he asked.

She held the noodles midair and shook off the thought. “It’s nothing.”

“Come on. What?”

“You know the kid from the motorcycle accident?”

“Yeah.”

“He died today.”

Her husband’s face softened. He rubbed her leg with his broad hand. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I hate those things. Promise me you’ll never get one.”

Her husband scratched at his beard. “Hadn’t planned on it.”

“Good.” Mabry took the beer from his hands and drank some. “You know what?”

“What?”

“I think I like the other Thai place better.”

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.” Neil Gaiman said that. Sometimes I write short stories (instead of essays). It’s nice to forget the facts once in a while, you know?

If you liked this one, try another . . .

This starts with the terrible noise of an alarm clock—and by that I mean my phone—jolting me awake each morning, into consciousness and an already-endless stream of notifications. And like that, I’m in it . . . the digital shitstorm that is modern life.

Eventually, however, having suffered this enough, I purchase a clock, an actual clock, an analog clock with nice music instead of that rasping alarm. Not to be hyperbolic or anything, but it honestly changed my life.

Turns out the artist who designed the clock, Jamie Kripke, lives in Boulder, as well, and he invited me to his studio where he explained the whole reason he made the thing was to get away from this kind of digital intrusion. And as we sat around talking, it almost felt, dare I say, subversive.

It might seem absurd to call a clock subversive, but when opting out of the internet is considered counterculture, having a clock that is simply, well, a clock goes against the current of society.

Perhaps this is a case for simplification, a stand against multitasking. Even if a device can do multiple things well, maybe it’s still preferable to have a device that does only one thing. Why?

I’ll answer with a story.

When I got divorced, the first thing I took were my vinyl records. One night my brother called and asked about my plans that evening.

“Listening to a record,” I said. “That’s it?” he asked. “That’s it,” I said.

Call me old fashioned but that constituted a solid evening. With no notifications pulling me elsewhere, I could just be there. The turntable spinning like a dharma wheel, right into the now. This is the beauty of disconnecting.

Share Routed by Martin Brodsky

Physical media keeps the door closed to outside intrusions, which in a way means going off the grid, although that makes me think about disappearing into some cabin in the woods and this is something more universal. (Nevertheless, I love this quote from Edward Abbey: “High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks—chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring.”)

Because sometimes disconnecting happens right in the living room: the phone somewhere else on silent, a record playing, good food cooking in the cast iron pan. You’re there.

The author and poet Gertrude Stein once wrote about her hometown: there is no there there. Meaning her childhood memories still existed in her mind, yet the place that produced them had long since disappeared. The opposite of this is true, as well, and perhaps even more relevant, as we often long for something that never existed in the first place. We feel the there of a memory as if it had been real, but in fact it’s merely a figment of our imagination—fantasies created from snips and snaps of vicariously lived experiences, compounded evermore by our digital lives, courtesy of shared photos and videos and texts and DMs. This is the false promise of a digital utopia.

Because the only real there is here . . . here. For the digital world, by definition, is always elsewhere. Watching someone absentmindedly walking down the street while staring at their phone, you know this. You know it, too, because the instant your own screen goes dark, it’s like you’ve been transported back to the present from another dimension. What happened to that last hour?

This is part of why I like building houses for a living. One of my favorite things is rolling up to the jobsite and hearing the stonemasons tinking away with their chisels. It’s a sound humans have been making for thousands of years. I feel quite confident saying the digital realm and AI will never touch that occupation.

But this sense of return to earlier times is widely felt. and refer to it as the New Romanticism—a cultural pushback against an omnipresent technological reality. Consider the rise of #cottagecore: baking bread, crafting, homesteading, the popularity of Ballerina farm. It speaks to something I think we’re all craving in this modern world: tangibility.

Allow me to return again to records. I once found a trunk of old 78 rpm records in my grandfather’s basement, a time capsule that even included recordings of him and his brothers and sisters from the 1950s. Do you think a Spotify playlist will last that long? calls this the Legacy of Vinyl, the idea that “your story will still be there, on the surface of your records, buried underneath the grooves, blended with the stories of many others.”

In this digital world, where everything gets buried in the 1s and 0s after existing for ten minutes, staying analog means taking up a different kind of space—a space that leaves us vulnerable to the kind of imperfection that fundamentally makes us human.

For all the potential of digital connection, it still feels cheap compared to the real, sometimes awkward, in-person interactions. The emotions produced in these tangible spaces linger long after the moment leaves. Can we really say the same about those connections mediated through a screen?

Clothing designer , talking about Japanese aesthetics, says: “Perfect things are really unappealing; if something is uniform and perfect, it doesn’t encourage you to participate in it because you’ll have a very human anxiety that you’ll mess it up.”

This reminds me of those old Bob Dylan records, laid down live in the studio and hardly touched up post production. They’re imperfect in so many ways, and that’s exactly why they’re perfect. When you listen to them—really listen to them—you hear all that humanity.

Which brings me back to records for the final time. Jamie Kripke, the clock-designing artist, also hosts “listening parties” where he spins vinyl and everyone simply listens, no conversations, no distractions. It’s an exercise in being there and nowhere else.

“That’s it?” you might ask. “Yeah, that’s it,” I say.

I attended one last month. In preparation for the evening, the first thing everyone did was put their phones into a wicker basket. The music was great, but that might have been my favorite moment of the night.

Here’s to keeping it analog.

-Martin

p.s. What could be better than Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash singing together . . .

p.p.s. If you’re still here, can I make an ask? Please forward this to one person you think would enjoy it. I'd love to spread the word. Many thanks.

One of my earliest memories of my uncle, the artist, isn’t about art at all—but that he kept a Harley Davidson motorcycle in his bedroom. Why did he do that?

“Because it was cool,” he told me. And it was cool. He is cool.

Having lived on his own terms long before I was born, my uncle, the artist, seems to approach life itself like he’s making a piece of art. With his long pony tail, wild glasses, his uncompromisingly loud style, jewelry slung around his wrists and neck, you only have to take one look at the guy to know Scott Brandt not your typical fellow.

But being different, on its own, doesn’t make a person cool.

What is cool?

In the opening pages of The Art Spirit, his seminal book on the artist’s life, Robert Henri writes: when the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people.

Interesting to other people: I think that’s a good start as to why so many artists are cool. They have a way of drawing you in, a kind of questing personality that cannot be contained but must be expressed, which in turn expresses something in us, the audience. In other words, artists have this innate ability to take an idea and pursue it, and perhaps we can’t help but live vicariously through them.

Yet this speaks to a thing artists have when it might actually be something they don’t have which draws us in. says it best in her essay Cool Self: People who are “cool” are, in the ideal state, free from something others are not.

What is this thing she refers to? Convention.

My uncle would be the first to admit—and celebrate—that he has not led a conventional life. It took him a long time to settle down and even then a restless spirit kept him travelling the world, seeing new places, meeting new people, bringing back fresh fodder for his work.

Being cool is unconventional, by definition, and artists are unconventional people. It stands to reason that, since unconventional and conventional are mutually exclusive, the cooler you are the less conventional you are.

But a cool life isn’t an easy life. Giving up convention means giving up convenience—the two words share their Latin roots—and so, in this modern world where convenience is synonymous with ease, the cool person gives up the easy life exactly because they are cool.

It's not convenient to be cool, nor is it cool to be convenient. And in this way, coolness and success, in the traditionally American sense (picket fence and all that), have a strange relationship.

(Un)Conventionality

In 1983, at twenty-three years old, my uncle took a job at an interior design firm but got fired after he and the receptionist started dating. After that, he enrolled in art school and hasn’t worked for anyone else since.

Though uncompromising in his art, he also recognized the hard truth of making ends meet. As he said:

As a visual artist, putting out what you want without caring what others think doesn’t always mean it will be sellable. If you can’t make a living selling what you produce, then you’ll have to take a job doing what you would rather not. Or you live a lifestyle whereby you become your own boss.

My uncle has always loved classic and exotic cars and motorcycles (see the opening paragraph). So he built a successful business selling them. In addition to making art, he’s being doing this for 40 years.

The starving artist cliché exists for a reason; but there’s nothing inherently cool about destitution, just as there’s nothing inherently uncool about success. In the end, they exist in tension against one another, something that the English poet Robert Graves captured perfectly: There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.

This tension is a cultural phenomenon and the best question might be: wouldn’t both poetry and money be better off, if our culture cared more about art?

Building a Culture to Support Cool

In the 90s my uncle lived in both Paris and Florence.

“Both thriving cities for the arts,” he said. “Both forward-thinking cities that allowed artists to express themselves fully, and gravitational for artist for at least the last 1,500 years. If it weren't for the Medici family, the Renaissance and the world as we know it would be a very different place. They welcomed free thinkers and opposing viewpoints, in order to excel in almost every field. They were also very accepting of people. Let's face it, both Leonardo and Michelangelo were gay in a time where anywhere else in the world they would have been condemned, jailed and killed. Yet, in Florence they were allowed to shine like a beacon in spite of their sexual preference, which had nothing to do with their abilities. Unfortunately, it’s hard to do that in today’s America.”

The Medici family made their fortune in banking, but were more importantly great patrons of the arts, financing among many others: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael (yes, that’s all four of the teenage mutant ninja turtles).

Every culture goes through periods of expansion and contraction. If you care for etymology, this is baked into the very names of our dueling modern political philosophies of progressivism and conservatism: to progress is to expand, to conserve is to contract.

It should be no surprise that the present situation is one of contraction. argues the 21^st century has so far been culturally stagnant. Erik Rittenberry, who writes a great column called , calls ours an “unpoetic era.”

And where are the modern-day Medicis? Of course, we all have to pay the bills but I wonder if the next Michelangelo is out there driving Ubers because rent is due and no one’s buying his works of genius shoved beside the water heater in his walk-up apartment.

The cynic in me would say no one cares about art anymore. Plenty of people have written essays about it (if you want to read them, look up Elle Griffin, but I won’t link it). Because I think that’s bullshit. People do care about art—if anything, they just don’t realize it. I could cite statistics of record-breaking concert attendance, but I’d rather share the video below:

This is hands-down my favorite thing the internet has ever produced. Look at how the people feel it! I mean, I still feel it and I’ve probably watched it fifty times. Interestingly, a bank sponsored the performance, which some people take issue with. But in our corporatocracy, what’s the difference between Sabadell and the Medici family—they were bankers, after all.

Perhaps the patrons will come. Maybe we band together and crowdsource patronage for each other—and now is when I pitch you to upgrade to a paid subscription (just kidding, the link is at the end of the article).

But the truth is nobody is going to save our culture except us. You and me. And ultimately, finding something you believe in and fighting for it is the coolest thing a person can do, artist or not.

Life as Art

My uncle has always been fond of the Alexander Hamilton quote: If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

We might not all identify as artists, but the thing that makes artists cool—coming up with ideas and acting on them, holding enough curiosity to question the way things are, how they could be better, more beautiful—this is within us all. And, ironically, that makes us artists.

My uncle, the artist, is cool not so much because he makes art, but that he is art. Some people are like that. I’ve referenced before the suffragette Gertrude Nelson Andrews who wrote: “A man at eighty should be a masterpiece.”

Well, couple that with Leonardo Da Vinci who said: Art is never finished, only abandoned. And all I can say is what is life but a work of art that is never finished?

Your art is your art, even if it’s only living life the best you can. But it’s never too late to be cool.

-Martin

If you liked this one, here’s another you might like . . .

Well, I just got back from hanging with 12,000 other writers (and writing-related people) at the annual AWP writers’ conference. Here’s a run down of the adventure because: 1) it was kinda wild, and 2) I’d love to share with you these other writers doing really cool things.

So, click on a link or two and see what they’re up to. You won’t regret it.

Wednesday

Nothing says adventure like time to kill. I got into the city a day before the conference began and spent the afternoon walking around Silver Lake and Echo Park.

Here are a few pics to set the scene . . .

Somehow I walked seven miles and Los Angeles is pretty hilly, so I was kind of beat, but my hotel was right next to the old-school movie house Quentin Tarantino refurbished: so I wandered into a 1978 Sam Shepard / Richard Gere flick playing on 35mm film, complete with a Looney Tunes short before the feature. The place was packed.

Thursday

One of the best parts about the AWP conference is the off-site readings that various presses and magazines put on at bars and venues throughout the city. Normally that happens at night, but ’s Little Engines kicked off the whole thing at 9:30am with a reading called, naturally, “Morning, Fuckers.”

It happened in the basement of a liquor store. I didn’t take any pictures. But the first guy I met was holding a loaf of challah and we broke bread together. Seemed an appropriate way to start.

Highlights included reading from her debut novel The Burden of Joy and ’s fully-committed performance of a short story from his debut collection Hey You Assholes.

Spent the afternoon wandering the book fair floor, meeting a bunch of folks running indie presses—Lanternfish Press, Rose Books, Transit Books, and CLASH books among many, many others.

That night hit up a reading put on by Rejection Letters and House of Vlad Press, featuring the likes of , and (who publishes HAD and Short Story, Long). It was hilarious.

Wrapped up the night at some German Biergarten with a half-liter of Warsteiner and a gigantic pretzel in front of me. Time to call it.

Friday

I think it’s safe to say that writers, generally speaking, are pretty introverted people. Get enough of them together and, sure, it leads to party time; however, there were plenty of moments throughout the conference when I just wanted to go back to the hotel and take a nap.

But I have to say pushing through that discomfort led to some of the best conversations and connections I made over the weekend. If that’s the one thing I learned from this trip, I’ll take it.

Anyway . . . the party continued.

That night went to an amazing old synagogue-cum-community center to hear poetry from the Kenyon Review, Adroit Journal, Pleiades Magazine. After the reading, the DJ kicked up the music and we ate quesadillas in the parking lot and all felt right.

Saturday

Final day of the conference and I was pretty toast, but couldn’t let the final night slip away. Maudlin House put on an incredible reading featuring the band Movie Club backing all the readers. Definitely the most fun I’ve ever had listening to people read from books.

Sunday

And that was that . . . well, almost. Capped off the urban adventure with a casual hike into the mountains rising above the city—great view of downtown—and all I can say is it was the perfect way to close the whole thing out.

Here’s to all the writers out there making it happen.

(Now read them, seriously.)

His friend asked for some life advice. And a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson replied in a letter:

It is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. But a man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

Whenever I need a reminder to own my life’s choices, I revisit this letter—and it’s worth reading the whole thing—though lately I’ve been thinking this sort of examination might well apply beyond myself. For, what applies to one individual often applies to them en masse, to a whole society even, to a whole country. As Socrates said: the unexamined life is not worth living. I guess I’d add, an unexamined culture is not one worth living in.

THE STATE OF AMERICAN CULTURE

When I started in construction, all the guys would take lunch together sitting on buckets, shooting the shit and getting to know each other; now, for the most part, everyone sits on the same buckets and stares at their phones. In my mind, that captures our culture in a couple of ways: one, you might see it as a lack of community, and two, it’s our ever-present state of distraction.

I’m guilty as anyone, but I didn’t ask to kill time scrolling on my phone. The thing just seemed to appear in my hand, as it did in everyone’s, and next thing I know my free time just sheds away. Now, I might not have asked for it, but someone did.

Every cultural moment, for better or worse, is a product of the commitment of a few and the indifference of many. In a society distracted by convenience, it seems all the easier for those few to get their way.

What’s our current culture in America? says our culture has flattened and homogenized in the name of corporate profit. I’d argue so has our humanity.

At one point in the not so distant past, landing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon brought Americans together in triumph. The last time we all came together as Americans might have been 9/11. I was only 15 at the time, so I can’t be sure, but it felt that way.

What’s a recent cultural event in America that brought people together? Setting aside increasingly epic natural disasters, one that comes to mind was the local opening of a Buc-ee’s super gas station, which saw people lining up for miles for the chance to try fifty different flavors of beef jerky, watch choreographed barbecue chopping, buy some Buc-ee’s branded merchandise—which incidentally reminds me of the time In-N-Out Burger opened a few years earlier, for which people waited in a fourteen-hour-long drive-thru.

I think is right to call out the corporatization of our culture. Couple that with the apparent apathy of most people, if not outright enthusiasm for the offerings, and it feels like we’re consuming ourselves.

A SOCIETY OF CANNIBALS

The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake with its tail in its mouth. A common meaning is that of infinity or wholeness, but these days I see it as the mascot of a society that’s cannibalized itself. Or, more particularly, one part of society intentionally eating another, without realizing the consequences.

This reminds me of the time I worked on a cattle ranch that had been in continuous operation since the 1870s and some school kids came out to learn about it. At one point we stopped at the slaughterhouse, a small shed with some hooks on the ceiling, and one student earnestly asked: “wait, you have to kill the cow to get a steak from it?” This kid has grown up and now manages a private equity firm.

Community cannot be commodified. Trying to squeeze everything in life for maximum profit, justified in the name of convenience and efficiency, kills our communities and our culture. Because community takes time to build, and ironically, a strong community likely leads to the best long-term profit, but apparently that’s not something quantifiable in our instant gratification lifestyle. I’m sure people like can speak to this with plenty of factual backing, but I’m saying we seem to have consumed our way to the bottom, through the bottom even, creating an ulcer through which we as individuals have fallen, alone and lonely.

This is not a coincidence. Consider Facebook’s original motto: move fast and break things. It turns out that’s exactly what’s happening, and the “stuff” being broken is our community, our mental health, our environment.

Some might argue that the era of “move fast and break things” is over, but based on the technocracy manifesting in Washington, I’m not so sure. argues these people know exactly what they are doing, intentionally wrecking public services for the benefit of privatization, as she’s seen first-hand in my home state of Missouri.

I can see how all of this sounds pretty pessimistic, and honestly sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be best to hit rock bottom so we can see it all clearly, as has written about—but I’m not without hope.

I MEAN, WE HAVE A PROBLEM, RIGHT?

Convenience creates complacency. Interestingly, convenience and conventional share the same root word, the Latin convenire, meaning “to agree.” Perhaps we ought to start being more unconventional?

I had a college professor who said literacy today is not the ability to read and write, but the ability to understand the bias behind the messages we receive. (In other words, what people are trying to get us to do.) By that measure, we’re a fairly illiterate society. The technologists have their agenda—it’s posted on every door—but we can’t read, so it comes as a real shocker when we get evicted from a life we understand into their vision of the future (Google’s AI search results, anyone?).

Then again, we’re a society that refuses to use reusable bags at the grocery store, even though we know how bad plastic bags are for the environment, but the convenience is just too great to overcome. At this point, such action is either ignorance or laziness. (Apologies if I sound self-righteous here—but it just bugs the fuck out of me to see a grocery cart full of plastic bags.)

The point is good things are often a matter of inconvenience, but well worth it. The things we take for granted, the things we consider conventional, they’re not neutral or unbiased occurrences. They serve someone’s interests.

When you don’t know how you got someplace, it seems inevitable, unchangeable, and easy to take for granted as the new status quo. Then we move forward as if there’s nothing we can do to change it. But of course we can change it—all we need to do is pay attention.

Paying attention is the difference between driving the car, sitting in the passenger seat, and being blindfolded in the trunk. Many of us are tied up and don’t even know it.

STAY CURIOUS, MY FRIENDS

I’ve probably shared this email from Mark Manson at least a dozen times:

The defining trait of progressing in the 21st century appears to be a driving curiosity about anything and everything.

The 20th century did not reward curiosity. The traditional structures of schools, corporations, and the church didn’t just deter open questioning and experimentation—they often feared it. Instead, they usually rewarded emulation. Any sort of innovation or experimentation was limited to a few people at the very top of the pyramid. Everyone else was expected to be a good worker bee.

What a letdown, to do all the things you were “supposed” to do, check all the boxes, and wake up to realize what you expected never got delivered. That seems to be what’s at stake here.

At the close of that letter I mentioned at the outset of this piece, Hunter S. Thompson says: “No one has to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you had to do it. You’ll have lots of company.”

That sounds pretty miserable. And I’m pretty sure there’s only one way to avoid it . . . owning our present circumstances, then changing them accordingly.

I try to own my problems. It often sucks. But it’s better than playing the victim. We, America, need to own our problems and stop shirking responsibility. Not blame them on other people: People that don’t look like us or think like us or love like us. Our country’s problems aren’t the fault of the undocumented immigrant down the street or the trans kid at school. It’s not even Mark Zuckerberg’s or Elon Musk’s fault. No, it’s your fault. It’s my fault. It’s our fault.

The Navy SEAL Jocko Willink calls this “extreme ownership.” I willingly choose to mindlessly scroll on my phone. Sure, it’s in the technologists interests that I do so, but they are not compelling me to do it. And the same can be said for so many of our collective problems.

We got here through a lack of vigilance.

So, who asked for this? We did. We asked for every bit of it. And we deserve it all. But, we can decide to be aware of what we’re asking for, change the ask, and then we’ll deserve that too.

-Martin

If you liked this one, here’s another . . .

Simplicity is not hard to find. After all, we’re born with it. Eat, sleep, poop—doesn’t get much simpler than that. The problem is how to hold onto that simplicity?

We can’t, of course, because life inevitably gets in the way. Before we know it, we’re caught in a complex web of responsibility that is anything but simple. But not all is lost, for there is another kind of simplicity out there waiting for us all . . . the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Whereas we’re all granted simplicity at birth, the entry prize for being human, simplicity on the other side of complexity must be realized, learned and earned. And not everyone gets over the hump.

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Supreme Court Justice (1902-1932)

So what is this other kind of simplicity? And how do we find it? (Disclaimer: I’m not saying I’ve found it myself.)

Let’s start with a story about Picasso . . .

The old artist is sketching in the park, when a woman recognizes him. “It’s you—Picasso, the great artist!” she says. “Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.” So he agrees. After studying her for a moment, he uses a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. “It’s perfect!” the woman gushes. “You managed to capture my very essence. Thank you! How much do I owe you?” Picasso replies, “Five thousand francs, madam.” The woman is incredulous, outraged. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!” Picasso smiles. “No, madam. It took my whole life.”

What is simpler than a line? But when Picasso draws a line it’s more than merely ink on paper. It’s a lifetime of paying attention distilled into a single act.

Anaïs Nin once observed, “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”

As a homebuilder, I walk through a house and see details a layperson wouldn’t. A doctor looks at the body and sees an array of systems working in perfect synchronization. A painter sees the world in colors and forms. calls this the “Art of Noticing.”

This noticing takes time. There’s an inverse relationship between any acquired skill and time. An experienced plumber can fix a pipe in less time than a novice plumber; same with a skilled surgeon replacing a knee; or an artist sketching a portrait. This is part of the simplicity, the ease with which we accomplish the things we set out to do. It’s about the time one spends in the world, cultivating a vision.

Getting to the simplicity on the other side of complexity takes time. You cannot cheat your way into time. This is why we all must start as apprentices before becoming masters, and students before teachers.

However, I worry that we as a society are trying to cheat by engineering a path over the hump of complexity. Nothing exemplifies this more than AI.

It seems pretty clear that the jobs AI is best suited to overtake are the entry-level positions: junior copywriter, junior programmer, all the things we do early on. If these aren’t available, how will anyone become skilled enough in a given field to push it into new territory? To creatively solve problems? Some might say AI will eventually be capable, but isn’t it fundamentally derivative of things humans have already produced? Do we really want it to reach beyond these limits? Wouldn’t that be a planned obsolescence of our own kind?

From a humanist standpoint what I fear most is a collective helplessness in the average person, derived from AI kneecapping one’s ability to even get off the ground. In other words, AI might not be so much a nuclear explosion that wipes out humanity, but rather a societal failure to launch.

The “launch” is what pushes us over the hump to the simplicity on the other side of complexity. It’s us being able to find a purpose and act on it. It’s our being able to close what Ira Glass calls the “Taste Gap.” This is a long quote—well worth it.

Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be — they knew it fell short, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have.

And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase — you gotta know it’s totally normal.

And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?

The ability to make what we find tasteful, to live a life that feels truly ours, this is the mark of simplicity. Of course, that’s not to say easy. It takes a lot of sustained effort to get to the other side. So . . . let’s enjoy the work of a few people who’ve made it, for inspiration.

First, listen to Philip Glass’ masterpiece, Mad Rush. Read Raymond Carver’s sparse and lasting prose. And then look at the evolution of Piet Mondrian’s painting from early in his career to the end.

Some might label this all minimalist, but I think it’s more about a human knowing exactly what they want to say and stripping that down to it’s absolute essence, honed over a lifetime of pursuit.

As Michael White says of Mondrian’s later work: He didn’t use a ruler or measure them out according to any formula, but used the judgement he had accrued through decades of practice.

In many ways, there’s a certain playfulness to these artworks. The simplicity in them evokes the Buddhist idea of the Beginner’s Mind, or “an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying, even at an advanced level, just as a beginner would.”

In his article, Against Credentials, writes: Beginner’s mind’ does not contradict experience. Experience always gives more skills and tools. Chess players have a saying, ‘a move that only a beginner or a grandmaster would make.’

In this regard, more than a line with a hump, finding simplicity on the other side of complexity is more like a perfect circle.

If we view life itself as art, sometimes living long enough is all it takes to get to the simplicity on the other side of complexity. My 92-year-old grandfather (pictured at the top) has certainly rediscovered simplicity on the other side, the superfluous pieces of his life left behind years ago.

And when we get together as a family, you know who he seems to have the most in common with? My 5- and 7-year-old boys . . . like a perfect circle.

I guess sometimes it’s as simple as that.

-Martin

If you liked this one, try on another . . .

Well, it’s the heart of winter here in Colorado. Which seems like a perfect time to tell the story about my brief and wonderful career as an ice cream man.

To understand life as a mobile ice cream professional, cross a mailman with Santa: shitty truck, decent goods, a whole lot of travel, plus the jingle sticks in your head like some annoying Christmas song.

One lazy summer morning about fifteen years ago, I hear that jingle working its way up the street. Having just moved to Denver, and with nothing better to do, I call the number on the side of the truck. I ask if they are hiring. As it happens, they are because they always are.

I follow the address up to Commerce City, the industrial armpit of the area, and tucked behind a powder coating facility, I find the ice cream trucks parked in neat rows behind a rusting barbed-wire fence.

I join a few other prospective colleagues on some folding chairs in front of a small tv. After watching a ten-minute training video, I get the job.

🍦🍦🍦

Mornings in the yard start like this: I go see the yard manager to get my assignment—seniority reigns here, so the guys that have been driving for twenty years get the best neighborhoods. Since I’m a rookie, I get the suburban sprawl where kids don’t play in the streets anymore because they’re in the basement playing video games, or something.

I check my freezer to make sure I’m flush on Choco Tacos (rest in peace), Rocket Pops, Giant Ice Cream Sandwiches. I wait in line to top off the gas tank because there aren’t any fuel gauges in the trucks. Some drivers wash their trucks at this time but the grime never really comes off, so I don’t bother.

Finally, I test the speaker to make sure the ice cream jingle rings out clear. The other drivers test theirs, too. Every morning it’s a regular goddamn chorus of happiness up there in Commerce City.

Checklist complete, I sling open the door and putter off to my designated area.

I get the gist of the job pretty fast: drive around slowly, stop when someone comes running, sell the goods, repeat ad nauseum. I discover that peewee baseball games are goldmines, as are construction sites on lunchbreak. When it’s slow-going I drive around staring at mansions, imagining housewives desperate for creamsicles.

🍦🍦🍦

A thought occurs one day. I should do private parties. Upping my game, I start wearing collared shirts and print business cards that read:

Martin Brodsky - Mobile Ice Cream Services.

Slightly overzealous, I order 1,000.

Later that week, my roommate smuggles a stack of business cards into a concert and during the encore throws them all into the air. I watch helplessly as they flutter over the drunken crowd like confetti. (Sidebar: this friend is now very successful in marketing.)

Around 3am that morning, I receive a call:

“Hello?” the man says.

“Hello,” I say.

“Can I order some Rocky Road with a cherry on top?”

“Sorry. I don’t have that.”

“Alright. How about some cocaine?”

“Nope. Don’t have any of that, either.”

“Okay, well, thanks anyway.”

That’s the only lead I get from the cards.

My next day on the job, I’m taking a nap in the park because there aren’t any sports games or construction sites in my designated neighborhood, when I hear a rustling in my truck. I jolt up and see pair of chubby legs sticking out from the freezer.

“Hey!” I’m on my feet running toward the truck. “Get out of there!”

A kid pops out with a giant ice cream sandwich in each hand. We make eye contact through the windshield. He knows he fucked up. The kid falls over his sneakers trying to get onto his bike and drops one of the sandwiches, but the little bastard gets away with the other. The episode costs me $3.25, not an inconsequential sum to an ice cream man.

My best day on the job nets me $132. My worst day (also my last day), it’s $31. That’s good for about four whiskey sodas at the Commerce City Holiday Inn.

So I’m sitting at the bar in the Commerce City Holiday Inn, contemplating a new career path, and I can’t get the ice cream jingle out of my head.

Maybe it’s the whiskey, but I keep seeing Santa Clauses walking around the lobby. Pouring complimentary coffee in the late afternoon, they loiter around in red suspenders, checking the news on their phones. It’s hot outside and the plump old men are sweaty.

I ask the bartender about it and he says it’s some kind of convention, preparation for the holidays six months away. Hedging for future sins, I scribble on the back of a business card and hand it to one of the men: FOR SANTA, ONE FREE CHOCO TACO.

🍦🍦🍦

If you liked this one, try another . . .