Hey future Max,

I’m writing this from one of the harder seasons we’ve been through, and I want you to have a record of it, partly so you remember what it took to get wherever you are now, and partly because I need to write this down for myself today, while I’m still in it.

Here’s where things stand. So much of life is good right now, and that’s the strange part. The job is great, Celeste has been an absolute rock, the family loves us, the friends keep showing up, and from the outside, everything looks like it’s working, yet most days I’m depressed and anxious, wanting to crawl back into bed and start the whole day over. Both of those things are true at the same time.

Nobody would really know this based on how I show up online. I show up as my true self, but there’s a difference between being real and sharing everything, and a lot of what’s been on my mind lately stays off the feed. I’ve been in the mud and am still forcing myself to show up, knowing that one day it gets better, and that right now it just sucks. I hope by the time you’re reading this, you can confirm that it did, in fact, get better.

You know how impatient we are, how much we like things quick and want to see results immediately, and that’s been one of the most challenging parts of all of this, because healing doesn’t work on our timeline. I’ve been doing therapy, I’m taking the meds, I’m doing the things you’re supposed to do, and it’s still not happening as fast as I want it to. I’m trying to make peace with that. It’s part of loosening the grip on everything, being okay with not controlling the pace, trusting that things will happen as they’re supposed to, and that I can’t rush my way through this part. We were never good at that, so I hope you’ve gotten better at it by the time you read this.

There’s also this guilt that comes with it, and I want you to remember it. I know I have it better than most, and there are so many people who would trade places with me in a second, and somehow that makes it feel worse instead of better. Why do I feel this way when I have all of this? Why can’t I just enjoy what’s in front of me? Why am I sad and down when nothing is technically wrong? I don’t have answers to those questions right now, and maybe you do, and if so, be gentle with the version of me writing this, because he was asking them every day.

Here’s what I do know, and this is the part I most want you to remember. I’m going to get better, and I’m going to heal. I have no idea when, how long it will take, or what it will look like, but it’s going to happen, and you’re the proof. You’re reading this from the other side of something I’m still walking through, and I knew you’d get there even on the days when it felt impossible. Every story has a stretch where the person has to face the uncertainty and the low points, and this was ours.

We’re a work in progress, and we always will be, and I think we’re finally learning that’s okay.

One more thing. Don’t ever forget what Celeste did during this season, what our sister did, and what our friends did. The love they showed up with, over and over, without us having to earn it or be okay first. We wouldn’t be here without them, and I hope you’ve told them that more times than feels reasonable.

Hang in there, thank you for reading, and love you,
Max

Today (July 2nd) marks five years of marriage and eight years of being together, and I’m still surprised by just how fast time flies. Five years sounds like enough time to really know someone. Eight years sounds like a long time to have been lucky.

I want to tell you about how we met, Celeste, because I think about it more than you probably realize, and because it’s one of my favorite stories to tell. It also involves me being significantly less smooth than I would like to remember.

I was freelancing in web design at the time and landed a contract to redesign a coffee shop's website. When I got to the team page and started pulling photos together, I saw your picture and two things registered immediately. First, that you were beautiful. Second, that you were from Philly. And something about both of those things at the same time made me think, okay, I need to meet her.

So I did what any confident, self-assured freelancer would do. I started working out of your coffee shop casually so I would have an excuse to be in the same room as you. Very normal, very chill.

Here’s where it gets embarrassing. You gave me a free cup of coffee, which I am pretty sure was just good customer service on your part, and I completely froze. I could not say a single word that made any sense. So instead of just talking to you like a person, I went home and slid into your Instagram DMs to ask if you wanted to grab drinks sometime.

You said yes, which still feels like the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Our “first date”, and I’m putting that in quotes because you genuinely didn’t realize it was a date, which I find both hilarious and very on-brand for how we work, was when I knew. Being with you felt natural from the very beginning. It felt like home in a way I had never felt anywhere before, and I had moved around enough to know the difference.

Eight years later, I still feel that.

What I want people who are reading this to understand is that eight years is not just a number. It’s COVID lockdowns and the particular kind of closeness that comes from being stuck inside with someone and realizing you actually like spending so much time with them. It’s moving apartments, moving across the country, and figuring out how to build a life in a city that was both familiar and new to us. It’s going through IVF together, which is one of the hardest things two people can do, and coming out the other side with our hands still held. It’s losing Hoagie and then Scotch, two losses that hit harder than I ever expected, and adopting Deon, who has brought more chaos and joy into our home than I thought one dog was capable of. It’s watching you build Euflora from an idea into something real, and feeling proud of you in a way that sometimes I don’t have the right words for.

Eight years is a lot of life, and I would choose every bit of it again.

I have always been someone who second-guesses himself. It’s practically a personality trait at this point. I overthink decisions, I sit with doubts longer than I should, and I have a habit of circling back to questions I thought I had already answered. But proposing to you was never one of those moments. I just knew. There was this feeling I had carried around for years, something deep and steady that did not waver even when everything else in my life felt uncertain. When the time came, there was no second-guessing. No version of the story where I hesitated, just the clearest yes I have ever felt about anything.

That clarity is one of the greatest gifts you have given me.

I know we are still early, relatively speaking. Five years of marriage sounds like a lot until you think about the couples who have been doing this for thirty or forty years, who have weathered things we can’t even imagine yet. We have already been through more than most people go through in twice the time, and if that is any indication of how we handle what comes next, I feel pretty good about our odds.

It has not always been easy, and that feels important to say, because I think we do each other a disservice when we only talk about love as the good parts. There have been hard seasons, and there have been moments when we had to work for it, and every single time, we came through it closer than we went in.

Celeste, you are the steadiest thing in my life. You are the person I want to tell things to first. You are the reason I feel like I have a home, no matter what city I am in or what is happening around me. You make me want to be better at the things I am still figuring out, and you make me feel like enough on the days I forget.

Happy anniversary! Here’s to whatever comes next, and to figuring it out the same way we always have. Together, a little messy, and grateful for all of it.

Thanks for reading,
Max

There’s something surreal about meeting someone in person for the first time and feeling like you already know them. No awkward small talk, no figuring out the dynamic, just picking up a conversation that has been going on for months or years and continuing it face-to-face. That’s what it feels like when I finally get to hang out with people I met online first. Not strangers becoming friends, more like finding someone you had lost track of and just slipping back into it.

Some of my closest friends right now started as a follow, a comment, or a DM from someone who read something I wrote and felt like reaching out. We have never lived in the same city, but we built the whole thing through phone calls, voice notes, and showing up in each other’s feeds consistently enough that when we finally do end up in the same place, it feels like no time has passed at all.

That’s what years of showing up online have given me. Not a number that keeps moving, but people who have become a real part of my life.

When I came across this note from , it stopped me mid-scroll.

The point was simple: stop measuring your online presence by numbers and start measuring it by the people you meet. It’s like finally something clicked in my brain, like yes, Max, this is what it’s all about!

Almost every meaningful opportunity that has come my way traces back to a person. Speaking gigs that came because someone thought of me at the right moment. Work that started as a conversation in a comment section and turned into something real. Connections that opened doors I didn’t even know existed because someone knew me well enough to think of me when something came up.

None of that showed up in my analytics. None of it moved my subscriber count in a way I could point to. But if you asked me to name the things that have mattered from years of building an online presence, it would be a list of people, not numbers.

The numbers never once called to check in. The numbers never made an introduction, passed my name along, or sent a message saying they were thinking of me. People did all of that because of a relationship built slowly and consistently over time, not because of how many followers I had when they found me.

Opportunities move through people, not platforms. The rooms you end up in are almost always the result of someone thinking of you at the right moment, and they only think of you if you have been showing up in a way that felt real to them. You can’t fake that, and you can’t scale it; you can only build it by being consistent and curious and treating the people you meet like they matter more than the metrics they represent.

The friendships I have built online have made me better at my work, sharper in how I think, and more supported than I would have been if I had spent those same years obsessing over growth instead of paying attention to the people showing up in my world. That’s not something you can put in a graph, but it is something you can feel very clearly when you are sitting across from someone you met through a screen, and it feels like you have known each other for years.

Growth matters because more people finding you means more potential for connection. But it’s a byproduct of doing the real thing well, not the thing itself. When you make the number the whole point, you end up optimizing for the wrong thing and wondering why it all feels hollow even when the metrics are moving in the right direction.

The question worth asking instead is simpler and harder to track. Who did you meet this month that you want to know better? Who reached out because something you shared helped them think about something differently? Who are you in regular contact with now that you would not have known at all if you had not shown up online consistently?

That’s the stuff that adds up in ways that matter. The numbers will always move, and the goalpost will always shift, but the people you meet along the way, those are yours to keep.

Thanks for reading,
Max

My Mum died nearly 11 years ago, and I remember thinking at some point in the fog of all of it that I had no idea grief felt this physical. Like something had been rearranged inside me that I didn’t have a name for yet, and I was just walking around in it, trying to figure out how to be a person again.

She was the person I was closest to in the world, and then she wasn’t there anymore, and the thing that hit me hardest wasn’t just the loss, it was the speed of it. How normal everything was, and then how completely it wasn’t. How life had been happening in this ordinary, unremarkable way, and then it just stopped for her, and kept going for everyone else, and I had to figure out what to do with that.

What I didn’t expect was that somewhere inside all of that grief, there was also something that felt like clarity.

It took years to get there, but eventually I started to understand something about death that I hadn’t before. That it’s not just a terrifying thing waiting at the end, it’s also information. About how short this is, how uncertain, how none of us actually know what we’re working with in terms of time. My Mum didn’t know, and nobody does. Once that really landed for me, not as a concept but as something I had actually felt up close, it started to change the way I moved through things.

The small stuff stopped hitting the same way. The things I used to lie awake about, what people thought of me, whether I was doing it right, started to feel a little less urgent. I still cared, I’m not going to pretend I suddenly became some enlightened person who stopped worrying about things, but I started thinking about it all differently. If this is all finite, if we’re all heading toward the same ending regardless of how impressive or together or on-track we are, then what exactly am I so stressed about?

We’re all going to die anyway.

The most successful person you know, the one with the career and the house and the life that looks exactly right on paper, same ending. The person who followed every rule, stayed the course, did what they were supposed to do, same ending. Death has never once cared about your status or your title or how many followers you have, and there’s something almost funny about that once you let yourself see it.

What my Mum’s death did, eventually, was wake me up to the absurdity of spending the one life I have living someone else’s version of it. We’re conditioned from the beginning to follow a path, get in line, want the right things in the right order, and most of us do it because the path feels safe and deviation feels risky, and it’s easier to keep moving than to stop and ask whether any of it is actually yours.

When you’ve sat with death up close though, when you’ve watched someone you love more than most things leave without any warning, the path starts to look a little different. The things you were told to want start to feel negotiable. The version of success that was handed to you starts to feel like it was always someone else’s, and you were just wearing it because nobody ever told you that you didn’t have to.

So immediately after her death, I quit my job. I taught myself how to freelance, moved around, lived in a way that felt uncomfortable and uncertain, and was more alive than anything I had done before. It was a struggle, the kind where you don’t always know how things are going to work out, and you just keep going anyway because you don’t really have a better option. But it gave me something, too: a version of myself that trusted uncertainty, took risks, and figured things out as they came instead of trying to map every step in advance. I miss that person more than I expected to.

Gradually and without really noticing, I drifted back toward the safe lane. The stability started to feel good, the structure started to feel necessary, and the version of me who quit without a plan, moved around, and bet on himself started to feel like a younger, more reckless chapter rather than something worth holding on to. I started worrying about the future again, started hedging, started waiting until things were more certain before making moves.

Eleven years later, I’m sitting here trying to relearn what I figured out back then. That I’ll be okay, that things work out, that the risk is usually worth it, that I know how to figure things out even when I don’t feel like I do. It’s not as clean the second time around, and I’m doing it one day at a time, but I think that’s the point. The lesson doesn’t just land once and stick forever. You have to keep choosing it.

I’m not saying grief is a gift, because it’s not, and I’d give back every bit of clarity I got from losing my Mum if it meant I still had her. But she taught me something without meaning to. That the life worth living is the one that’s actually yours, not the one you inherited, not the one that looks right from the outside, but the one that fits. The one you chose with full knowledge that time is short and uncertain, and nobody is getting out of this.

Post when you want. Show up when you want. Wear what you want. Stop performing for an audience that’s too busy performing to notice anyway.

We’re all going to die, and that means you’re allowed to actually live.

Thanks for reading,
Max

I’ve been writing this newsletter for 3 years, and it's been called “Max’s Newsletter” the entire time. To be honest, I had no real thought behind the name, and always just viewed it as a placeholder that I told myself I would figure out at some point. That point kept not coming, and I stopped thinking about it.

But I’ve been sitting with this question of what and who this newsletter is really for. What am I trying to say when I sit down and write? I kept landing on the same thing: the idea that you do not have to have it all figured out to be worth something. That where you are right now, in the middle of all of it, still counts, and that you can want more and appreciate what you have without those 2 things being in conflict.

That’s what I’ve been writing about for 3 years, and I just never gave it a name until now.

This newsletter is now called Good Enough.

The why behind it

I want to be clear about what I mean that good enough isn’t about settling. It’s not deciding that you have peaked or that ambition is overrated. It’s something harder than that, which is choosing to believe you are already worth something right now, before you hit the next milestone, before the thing you are building finally arrives, before you have proof it was worth it.

Most of us are running around trying to earn that feeling. Hit the number, get the promotion, reach the subscriber count, and then you will feel like enough. But the feeling never comes the way you expect, and the goalpost moves, and you are back to running. I have done this more times than I can count, and in many ways, I’m still there.

What I have slowly figured out, and am still figuring out, is that striving and being enough are not opposites. You don’t have to pick one, and you can be proud of what you’ve built and still want to build more. You can be in the middle of something hard and recognize that you are doing okay. These things both can be true (shout out to ).

Why I started this in the first place

I started writing because I was tired of the version of the internet that only shows the destination. The clean lesson, the redemption arc, the story that only gets told once it has a tidy ending. I wanted to write about the middle part, where you are still tired and still going, where you don’t have the answer, but you’re sitting with the question anyway.

That’s where most of us live, and I think it deserves more company.

A lot of you have told me over the years that something in these posts felt like a mirror. People going through burnout who needed to hear that the messy version of recovery is still recovery. People who built something that looked right on paper and still felt something was off. If that has been you, this newsletter has been for you the whole time, and the name is just finally catching up.

Good enough to show up, good enough to keep going, and good enough to share the unfinished version of yourself and trust that it’s worth something.

Same newsletter, same writing, just a name that finally fits.

Thanks for reading,
Max

Something has been bothering me when I scroll through my feed. Post after post, newsletter after newsletter, everything reads as if it came from the same place. Same structure, same tone, same 3 takeaways wrapped up neatly at the end, and almost no real person behind any of it. Perfectly curated, perfectly presented, completely hollow.

I also get why it’s happening. The tools are right there, they’re easy, they’re fast, and everyone is using them. I’ll admit that I’ve used them too. There have been moments where I let something go out that I knew did not fully sound like me, that had been smoothed out a little too much, and the response I got felt weirdly flat, even when people engaged with it.

The feeling kept nagging at me. Because if the whole point of showing up online is to actually connect with people, what is the point of showing up as a version of yourself that nobody can actually reach?

The slow drift

It starts small enough that you barely notice it. You soften an opinion because you do not want to ruffle feathers. You post the more polished version of the thing you actually wanted to say because the raw version felt like too much. You make yourself a little more palatable, a little more careful, a little less specifically you. Each compromise feels reasonable in the moment, like just being smart about how you show up.

But those adjustments stack up. After a while, you have been performing a version of yourself for so long that you genuinely lose track of where the performance ends and where you actually begin. You get good at sounding like a credible, put-together person and then wonder why the connections you are making do not feel real, why the things you are putting out do not feel satisfying, and why you feel invisible even when people are paying attention.

That invisibility is the part that gets me. You can have people reading your work and still feel like nobody is actually seeing you, because what they are seeing is not quite you. And at some point, you have to ask yourself whether the version of you that exists online is actually doing anything for you, or just taking up space.

What real actually sounds like

There is a difference between someone sharing something genuine and someone filling space, and most people can feel it even when they can’t explain it. The posts that have stuck with me the most are the ones where the actual person behind the words was undeniable. Where something they said made me think, yes, that is exactly it, I have never heard anyone put it that way before. That specific feeling of recognition, of being seen by a complete stranger, that is what real sounds like. No tool or template gets you there.

What makes your voice worth listening to has nothing to do with how polished it is, or how consistently you post, or how well structured your content is. The only thing that actually makes it worth something is the specific way you see things, the stuff only you could say because only you have lived your exact life. Nobody else has your particular combination of experiences, failures, wins, and the way all of that has quietly shaped how you move through the world. When you outsource that part, you are giving away the only thing that actually made it worth sharing in the first place.

There is a version of using AI that genuinely helps, where it assists you in shaping and organizing ideas you already have, a thinking partner rather than a ghostwriter. Then there is the version where you hand it the wheel entirely, and that version has a sense that nobody was actually home when the thing was written. People are getting better at recognizing it, even if they don’t say so out loud.

When things started clicking for me

Things started to actually connect for me online when I stopped trying to create content I thought people wanted and started sharing the things I genuinely needed to hear myself. The stuff I was sitting with and wrestling with and trying to figure out without a clean answer yet. That shift changed everything about how the work felt to make and how it landed when people read it.

When you show up as yourself, you give other people permission to do the same, and that is when it stops feeling like content and starts feeling like something worth being part of. The conversations got more real. The people who reached out felt like actual humans rather than just engagement metrics, and the whole thing started to feel worth doing.

My Mum always used to say, “Be yourself, because everyone else is already taken.” She was never strategic about how she came across or optimized for how people perceived her. She just showed up as herself, fully and without apology, and people loved her for it without her ever having to chase it or engineer it. She never had a personal brand. She just had a personality that was entirely her own, and it was more than enough. I think about her a lot when I feel that pull to perform rather than just be.

The only thing that actually differentiates you

Everyone has access to the same tools now. Everyone can produce polished, well-structured, perfectly worded content at basically unlimited volume, which means the polish stopped being a differentiator a long time ago. What actually differentiates you is you. The specific lens you bring, the particular way you connect ideas, and the things you have been through that nobody else has been through in quite the same combination. That can’t be replicated or generated. It can only be expressed or suppressed, and suppressing it to sound like everyone else is the worst trade you can make.

The messy, specific, still-figuring-it-out version of you is not a liability to manage around. The people who actually break through, the ones you remember, the ones whose words stick with you, are never the most polished ones. They’re the ones who showed up as themselves so fully and so consistently that you had no choice but to pay attention.

Everyone online might sound the same right now, but you do not have to be part of that.

Thanks for reading,
Max

I’m writing this today because I need to, because today was one of those days where I caught myself doing the exact thing I keep writing about, the thing I thought I’d gotten better at, and apparently have not.

I saw someone get a new role, making well over $100k more than me, a year younger, and for a few hours, I did what I always do: start running the math on my own life and come up with the wrong answer.

I’ve spent a lot of time chasing a version of my life that doesn’t exist yet, while almost completely ignoring the one that does. The chasing is the kind where you’re always a few steps ahead of yourself and never quite in your own life, always planning what’s next, always measuring where you are against where you think you should be, always treating the present moment like a waiting room for the future you actually want.

The number I had locked onto was $300k. Why $300k? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t have a specific plan for what I’d do differently when I got there; it just felt like the number that meant something, the one that would finally make the voice in my head quiet down. I’d convinced myself that once I hit it, I’d feel settled and secure, like I’d actually made it, and I already knew that wasn’t how it worked, and I kept going anyway.

The pattern goes like this: I hit a milestone, feel it for about forty-five seconds, and then immediately decide the next one is the one that actually matters. I dreamed of making over $100k for years, got there, and the goalpost moved to $300k before I’d even caught my breath. I wanted to be a paid speaker, got flown internationally to do it, and immediately started wondering how to book more. I wanted a newsletter people actually read, built one with over 1,300 subscribers across three years, and found myself fixating on why it wasn’t bigger. Every finish line just becomes the starting line for the next race, and I’ve been exhausted in a way I don’t always fully recognize, because I keep convincing myself that moving fast and moving forward are the same thing.

They’re not. There’s a real difference between building something with intention and just running because standing still feels dangerous, and I’ve been doing the latter for longer than I want to admit, and today reminded me of that.

What actually helps, when I stop long enough to let it, is looking at what I’ve already built instead of scanning for what’s still missing. I make good money and save and invest a meaningful amount every year. I own a home in a city I love with a person I love. Over 1,300 real people read this newsletter. I’ve spoken on stages in Toronto and Prague, which is a sentence about my actual life that I keep glossing over like it’s fine print, like it doesn’t count until the next thing happens. None of it lands when I’m already somewhere else in my head, chasing the next thing before I’ve let myself feel the current one.

When I sat with all of that today, I didn’t have some big realization. I just remembered what I already know, which is that I don’t need to quit anything or grind harder or turn every creative thing I love into a revenue stream that has to justify its own existence. I just need to stop treating a really good life like a problem to solve, and I need to keep remembering that on the days it gets hard, which includes today.

The chasing feels like ambition, like drive, like you’re being responsible about your future, and that’s what makes it so hard to stop. At some point, you have to ask yourself whether you’re building something or just running, and whether the life you’re sprinting toward looks that different from the one you’re already in.

Today my honest answer was no. I went outside for a walk, came back, and wrote this.

Thanks for reading,
Max

I have always been pretty good at knowing what is wrong with me. Like, annoyingly good at it. I can sit with a feeling for about ten minutes, trace it back to its origin, identify the pattern, name the cognitive distortion, and then... continue doing the exact same thing anyway. Full self-awareness, zero follow-through. It’s a very fun way to live.

For a long time, I believed that being self-aware was the same thing as doing the work. If I could see it, I could handle it, and if I could name it, I could outthink it. I read the books, listened to the podcasts, journaled, talked to friends, and wrote an entire newsletter about my feelings. Surely that counted for something and meant that I was fine.

I was not fine.

I was white-knuckling things that probably did not need to be that hard. Just grinding through stuff quietly, telling myself that was normal, that everybody felt this way. Managing instead of healing, and just functional enough to convince myself I did not need anything more than I was already doing. That is a sneaky place to be, because from the outside, and honestly even from the inside, it can look a lot like being okay.

The thing is, I have been here before. I did therapy a few years back, and it helped a lot. I had all the evidence I needed that having a professional in your corner is a completely different experience than just being thoughtful about your own brain. And yet, when things started to feel heavy again, my first instinct was not to call someone. My first instinct was to try harder. To journal more, go for more walks, and figure it out myself because I’m a grown adult who is self-aware and should be able to handle my own stuff.

And to no one’s surprise, that did not work.

It took me a while to admit that to myself. It all came from a bunch of smaller moments where I kept bumping up against the same walls and wondering why they were not moving. Little signs that I was carrying more than I needed to be carrying alone. And at some point, the gap between “I know what is going on with me” and “I am actually doing better” became impossible to ignore.

So I’m going back to therapy.

And if I am being completely honest, it felt a little bit like admitting defeat. Even though I know intellectually that asking for help is not a weakness, there was still a part of me that had to sit with a little bit of ego bruising before I made the call. Like some voice in the back of my head going, “Come on, you literally write about this stuff. You should have this figured out by now.” Which is maybe the most absurd version of the problem, being a person who publicly talks about mental health and still feeling embarrassed about needing mental health support.

But I did it anyway, and I’m really glad I made the decision.

There is something that happens in a good therapy session that cannot be replicated by any amount of self-reflection. Someone who is trained to see your patterns from the outside, who is not your friend or your partner and therefore has no stake in making you feel better in the moment, who will actually push back on the stories you tell yourself. I had forgotten how useful that is. I had convinced myself I could approximate it on my own, and I absolutely could not.

What I have realized is that self-awareness is a starting point, not a destination. Knowing yourself is genuinely valuable, but knowing yourself while also being inside your own head all the time has real limits. You cannot see your blind spots by looking harder. Sometimes you need another set of eyes, and there is nothing embarrassing about that. That is just how humans work.

I think a lot of us, especially people who are thoughtful and introspective and used to being capable, fall into this trap of believing that needing help is somehow a reflection of not trying hard enough. Like if we were just a little more disciplined or a little more resilient, we could handle it ourselves. But that is not how it works with anything else in life, and I don’t know why we treat our mental and emotional health like it should be the exception to that rule.

So this is me saying, if you have been white-knuckling something for a while, if you have been managing instead of actually getting better, if you keep bumping up against the same stuff and wondering why it is not shifting, it’s okay to ask for help; in fact, it’s more than okay. It’s probably exactly what you need, and the fact that you have been trying so hard on your own does not mean you failed. It means you were doing your best with the tools you had.

Go get more tools.

I’m still early in the process and have a lot of work ahead of me, but I already feel the difference between pushing through alone and actually having support. It’s not a small difference, and I’m grateful I finally stopped trying to figure it all out by myself long enough to let someone actually help.

Thanks for reading,
Max

Earlier this weekend, after scrolling through Substack, I just kind of mindlessly clicked around the way you do when you’re tired but not quite ready to put your phone down, and I stumbled across someone’s milestone post. They had just hit 10,000 subscribers. Before that, another writer celebrated 20,000, and they were officially going full-time on their newsletter.

And I just sat there doing the math in my head, the way I always do, like some kind of involuntary reflex I haven’t figured out how to turn off yet.

I have a little over 1,200 subscribers, and have been writing here consistently for over three years. By the numbers some people are celebrating this probably sounds pretty modest. And if I’m being honest with you, there are moments where it genuinely feels that way. It feels like I am running a race that everyone else seems to be winning, and I somehow missed the memo on how to pick up the pace.

I know comparison is a trap, and I’ve written about it countless times before. I have told other people not to fall into it, and yet here I am doing subscriber math like that is a completely normal and healthy way to spend my time.

The truth is that I actually love writing this newsletter. I love it when a post comes together, and I can feel that it hit something real. I love the comments and the replies and the little moments where someone says, “I really needed this today.” None of that has changed. But somehow, scrolling past someone else’s bigger number managed to temporarily hollow out all of that, replacing it with a low-grade feeling of not being enough.

And I think that feeling deserves a name, because I know I am not the only one who experiences it.

Here is what I keep coming back to, though. 1,200 people subscribed to my newsletter. They found something I wrote, decided it was worth their time, and gave me their inbox. That is genuinely one of the more personal things a person can do on the internet. Your inbox is not a place most people hand out access to freely, and 1,200 people decided that what I have to say belongs there.

When I slow down long enough to actually think about that, it kind of blows my mind.

I have had people reply to my posts telling me they read them on their morning walks. I have had people say they forward them to their friends because something I wrote described exactly what their friend was going through. I have had people reach out months after a specific post to tell me it still comes back to them. These are not abstract stats. These are real people with real lives who carved out a few minutes to sit with something I made. That is not nothing, that is actually everything.

I think the comparison trap is especially sneaky for creators because growth is so visible and so quantified. There is always a number, and numbers are easy to rank. It is a lot harder to measure the person who read your post at 6 am and felt a little less alone before their hard day started, or the person who forwarded it to their friend who was going through something similar, or the person who has never commented but has read every single thing you have put out for three years. That stuff does not appear on a dashboard, but it’s the whole point.

I am also starting to realize that chasing a bigger number without a clear reason for wanting it is kind of a hollow goal. Like, okay, what happens at 10,000? Do I feel better? Do the posts feel more meaningful? Probably not, because the people who are already here did not suddenly become less real just because I wanted more of them.

That said, I am not going to pretend I have fully made peace with this. I still notice when someone else hits a milestone. I still feel that little flicker of something when I do the math. I do not think that ever fully goes away, and I am not sure it should. Wanting to grow, wanting more people to find your work, wanting to expand the reach of something you care about, those are not bad things. The problem is when the wanting starts to overshadow the having.

What I am trying to practice is this: showing up for the people who are already here, fully and without distraction, instead of spending energy quietly grieving the audience I do not have yet. Because those 1,200 people made a choice. They chose this newsletter out of everything competing for their attention, and that choice deserves to be honored with my best work, not with me half-present and preoccupied with someone else’s numbers.

So if you are a writer, a creator, a builder of anything, and you caught yourself doing the comparison math recently, I just want to say that I get it. I really do. And your number, whatever it is, represents real humans who decided you were worth their time. That is the whole thing, that is what we are all actually here for.

And to everyone who is already here, whether you have been reading since the beginning or just found your way to this newsletter recently, thank you. You did not have to choose this, and the fact that you did is something I think about more than you know. I do not take it for granted.

Thanks for reading,
Max

I caught myself staring at my to-do list and feeling like a failure because there were still a few things left on it at the end of the day. It’s wild how quickly we let a few unfinished tasks dictate our entire mood and make us feel like we didn’t do enough to justify our time on this planet. I spent so many years believing that my value was tied to how much I could produce or how many people I could impress with my work ethic.

This was especially true when I was younger and felt like I had to overcompensate for my financial situation or my disability by being the hardest worker in every single room. I thought that if I could just outwork everyone else, then nobody would notice the things I was insecure about.

I think we have all been fed this story that we are essentially human capital and that if we aren’t constantly growing or optimizing, then we are somehow falling behind. The truth is that the world is always going to demand more from you, and it will never be the one to tell you that you can finally stop and be satisfied. We have to be the ones to draw that line in the sand for ourselves and decide that our worth is inherent rather than earned through a salary or a title. It’s a hard habit to break when you are used to survival mode because your brain is convinced that stopping means losing everything you worked for.

When I look back at the times I felt most at peace, it was never because I hit a career goal or finished a massive project. It was usually because I was sitting with a friend, taking a walk without my phone, or just existing without a plan for what came next. Those moments are when I feel the most like myself because I’m not trying to be a content creator, or a tech professional, or any other label that society wants to put on me. I’m just Max. And being just Max has to be enough because that’s the only person I can actually be for the rest of my life.

You really are more than enough exactly as you are right now without the extra accolades or the perfect career path. You don’t need to do anything else today to prove that you deserve to be here, and you certainly don’t need to apologize for being human. The pressure to be extraordinary is just another way to keep us from enjoying the ordinary lives we already have. I hope you can find some time today to just be still and remember that your output is the least important thing about you. We’re doing just fine, exactly as we are.

Thanks for reading,
Max

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years trying to convince myself that building a personal brand was just a part of the modern career. I followed the advice and did what you’re supposed to do. I optimized my profiles, kept my posts consistent, and tried to make sure everything I shared fit this specific image of who I wanted to be seen as professionally. It felt like a safety net at the time because I thought that if I could just build enough of a platform, I’d never have to worry about where my next opportunity was coming from. There is this comfort in thinking that if you just follow the playbook and post enough “valuable” content, you can outrun the instability of the job market.

But I can’t shake the fact that I have been feeling a lot of friction with that whole idea. The problem with a personal brand is that it forces you to treat your personality like a product that must stay the same to retain its value. You start to look at your life and your interests through the filter of whether it’s “on brand” for you to talk about them. I’ve found myself hesitating to share things I’m genuinely interested in because they didn’t fit the niche I had carved out for myself. It’s a strange way to live, and it eventually starts to feel like you’re performing a version of yourself rather than just being who you actually are. You become a manager of your own image, and that takes a lot of mental energy that could be used for, you know, actually living.

I also think we’ve started to confuse having a brand with actually having a good reputation. A brand is all about the surface-level stuff, like your colors, your bio, and how often you show up in people’s feeds. It’s about visibility and perceived authority. A reputation, on the other hand, is something much deeper, built on the actual work you do and how you treat the people you interact with every day. I know plenty of people who are incredibly successful and respected in their fields who don’t have a single thought leader post to their name. They aren’t worried about their engagement metrics or their reach. They just do good work and are kind to people; that is more than enough to keep them busy and fulfilled. Their work speaks for them, so they don’t have to spend all day shouting about it.

The pressure to be a brand also makes it really hard to just be a beginner or to be wrong. Brands are supposed to be authoritative and have all the answers. They are supposed to be experts in a specific vertical. But I find myself much more interested in people who are just figuring things out as they go. I don’t want to feel like I have to have a polished takeaway for every experience I have. Sometimes I just want to experience something without thinking about how it will perform as content or whether it will get enough likes to please the algorithm. When you turn your life into a brand, you lose the freedom to just be messy.

I've also been thinking about how this isn’t a black-and-white issue. It’s not like you have to be a “chronically online” influencer, or you have to delete every social media account and disappear forever. There is a whole gray area in the middle where you can just be a person who happens to be online sometimes. You can share an update because you’re proud of it, or post a photo because you liked it, without it being a strategic move in a larger career game. We’ve been sold this idea that if we aren’t being strategic, we’re being invisible, but I’m starting to think that being invisible to the masses is actually a bit of a superpower. It gives you the space to do your own thing without the weight of an audience’s expectations.

What I’ve realized is that when you stop trying to build something, you actually start to connect more. The interactions become more genuine because they aren’t forced. You aren’t checking your notifications to see if your strategy worked; you’re checking them because a friend sent you a message or someone genuinely resonated with a thought you had. That feels a lot better than the hollow hit of dopamine you get from a post going viral. It’s about quality over quantity, and real relationships over followers.

I think we’d all be a lot less exhausted if we stopped trying to market ourselves and just focused on being present in our actual lives and our actual work. The people who really matter are going to remember you because of how you made them feel and the work you put into the world, not because you had a perfectly color-coded content calendar. We are more than our niches and our bios. We’re allowed to just be ourselves, even if that doesn’t fit into a tidy little box for the internet to consume.

Thanks for reading,

Max

Back with some more celebrations, because this week I got to celebrate my birthday. Celeste took me to a Sixers game, and it was great!

And this year, I’m giving myself some grace to just be.

I’ve been writing Sunday Thoughts for a little over three years now, week after week, and I really love what this series has turned into. It’s been a way for me to reflect, to have an outlet, and to connect with so many people in a way that’s felt genuine and grounding. Seeing these thoughts resonate with others has meant more to me than I probably can make sense of typing here.

At the same time, I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself to always have a new newsletter each week, and right now that just isn’t sustainable for me. The goal with my writing has been to never force it or turn it into something I’m doing out of obligation. I’ll still use this newsletter to share new pieces whenever creative inspiration strikes, without the expectation of constant output every single week.

So with that, happy sunday and I’ll see you back here soon :)

Let’s get into it:

1. Take time to ease into things.

2. I really love my new job, and it just feels good being able to say that.

3. Your output will never determine your worth. Prioritize breaks and resets.

4. Holding the door for someone is one of the simplest gestures, and it goes a long way.

5. I don’t care how cold it is outside, I need to get my steps in.

Pictured here is Celeste and me at the game ❤️🏀

Song of the Week

An oldie, but a goodie.

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to spend part of your Sunday with me. I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and see you soon :)

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There have been three big birthday celebrations this week in the Pete household, with my father-in-law’s on Tuesday, Deon’s on Thursday, and Celeste’s on Saturday! January is always a busy birthday month for us (my Mum and my birthday coming up next week).

Also had a great week 2 at Sprout and am feeling more settled, which is always a good feeling. Looking forward to an extra long weekend with Monday off work and will be celebrating by getting some extra steps in.

Let’s get into it:

1. A lot of life really is just relearning things you already knew but forgot to practice.

2. Tell your friends that you’re proud of them.

3. It’s so basic, but when I’m feeling anxious or in my head, the best things that work for me are exercise and journaling.

4. Sitting and doing absolutely nothing feels uncomfortable at first, then incredibly nice.

5. Somewhere in between, I like being cozy, but I’m also ready for warmer weather.

Pictured here is a cake that I helped design for Celete’s birthday 🎂

Song of the Week

My friend’s band is great, and I think you should know them too!

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to spend part of your Sunday with me. I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and see you next week :)

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I’ve been noticing a pattern in how I show up online, and it’s one I can’t ignore anymore.

I put immense pressure on myself to create content and always show up everywhere, all while being fast to react. That pressure has definitely helped me get my name out there for my career and my content journey in a relatively short amount of time, but it has also come at a cost that I don’t think I fully acknowledged until recently.

I spend way too much time on here and on LinkedIn, always trying to engage, create content, respond quickly, and be helpful like my life depends on it. Somewhere along the way, it started to feel like if I wasn’t constantly showing up, I would get left behind. Like if I slowed down, I’d miss an opportunity, fall out of people’s minds, or lose momentum in my career and relationships. That I’d somehow be forgotten and have to start over. I know that’s my scarcity mindset talking, and even though I can recognize it as not fully true, the cycle is still really hard to break.

I think a big part of it is FOMO, not just career FOMO, but life FOMO too. The fear that everyone else is doing things, building friendships, having conversations, moving forward, and I’ll miss it if I’m not constantly plugged in. It starts to feel like being online is how you stay included, how you stay relevant, how you stay connected. And once that belief sets in, it’s hard to put the phone down without feeling like you’re opting out of something important.

What’s strange is that the more time I spend trying to stay connected online, the less present I sometimes feel in my actual life. I’ll be half-listening in conversations, half-scrolling, telling myself I’m just “checking in” or “keeping up,” when really I’m missing the moment I’m already in. I want to be a good friend, a present partner, someone who actually shows up in real ways, and lately I’ve noticed how easily that gets diluted when my attention is always split.

When I really sit with it, I also realize I don’t actually want to be a content creator. I don’t want to live by the algorithm, constantly churn out new things, or feel like I need to be online 24/7 to justify my existence. I like writing, I like sharing, and I like connecting with people, but I don’t want that to come at the expense of my nervous system or my relationships.

And yet, there’s still this lingering fear that if I pause, I’ll let people down. That folks will be disappointed if I don’t perform at the level they’ve seen from me. That I owe consistency to everyone but myself. I know that’s mostly my ego talking and not something anyone has actually asked of me, but knowing that intellectually doesn’t automatically make the feeling go away.

So I’ve been asking myself where I go from here, and the answer isn’t a disappearing act, it’s smaller than that. I just set a daily ten-minute limit on both LinkedIn and Substack on my phone. I know I can bypass it, but I also know nothing changes if I don’t start honoring my own boundaries in some tangible way. I’m also going to revisit how much time and energy I put into my ALL CAPS TUESDAY and Sunday Thoughts posts. I still care about those series, but I need to be honest about what’s actually sustainable for me instead of running on autopilot.

More than anything, I want to be present again. When I check out of work, I want to close my laptop and put my phone away (even for just an hour or two to start). The goal isn’t to disappear or stop showing up entirely, but to stop ignoring that inner voice that keeps telling me I don’t need to wear the “chronically online” badge of honor to be worthy, connected, or successful.

I’m sharing this mostly to say I’m figuring it out in real time, and if any of this resonates, you’re definitely not alone.

Thanks for reading,
Max

This has been my first week at Sprout Social, and I’m enjoying meeting the team and getting back into the swing of things! Onboarding has been a bit overwhelming with getting used to all of the new things, but I’m reminding myself that I can ease into it, too.

Also, had a few house issues with plumbing and electrical this week on top of starting a new job, so it was definitely a doozy. Here’s to more calm and centered ahead.

Let’s get into it:

1. Believe in yourself always.

2. Giving back fills up my cup. Super grateful to be able to get back into volunteering again.

3. Good onboarding is chef’s kiss, and I’m thankful that Sprout does it on point.

4. Life feels noticeably quieter when you stop trying to prove you’re doing it the right way.

5. I love being up at 5 am, but I promise I’m not a tech bro 😂

Pictured here is a beautiful day at the Art Museum

Song of the Week

One of my favorites that I have on repeat.

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to spend part of your Sunday with me. I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and see you next week :)

If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone special.

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I hope that everyone has been having a great holiday break. It’s been pretty relaxing here. A lot of time with friends and family, and plenty of rest, which was much needed. This was my first holiday break without having to check in at work, maybe forever in my career, so I definitely took time to be checked out.

It’s the start of work for many of us this upcoming week, and a reminder to myself (and maybe y’all too) that we can take it slow. We don’t need to hit the ground running and burn ourselves out by the end of January.

Let’s get into it:

1. Most worries disappear once you breathe and move on.

2. Sometimes you just got to say some affirmations and remind yourself that you got this!

3. Instead of comparing what you have vs so and so, reflect on what you have now vs. you 1 year ago. We’re growing more than we think. We have more than we think.

4. Reminder: Small shifts end up doing the heavy lifting.

5. 10pm is the perfect bedtime and I don’t make the rules.

Pictured here is Deon doing what he does best and that’s being a cute boi.

Song of the Week

The best of vibes.

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to spend part of your Sunday with me. I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and see you next week :)

If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone special.

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Well, it’s the last Sunday Thoughts of 2025! I’m very much looking forward to a fresh start in the new year. I wrapped up my time at Origin and start my new job in early January. This was exactly the type of role and company I was looking for, so I’m very excited about this.

Hope everyone has a happy and healthy new year, and see you all in 2026 :)

Let’s get into it:

1. The power of cold outreach is real! Send that email, that note, etc. you never know what opportunities that may bring.

2. Be the change you want to see. A lot of what we want out of life, starts with us first.

3. Every time I try to control every detail of my life, I end up exhausted and annoyed. Then something small goes unexpectedly right, and I remember that not everything needs my full project manager energy.

4. Walk and talks > coffee chats. Getting some steps in and chatting with friends is the way to go.

5. Cold take, but leftover pizza is better cold.

Pictured here is Celeste’s table at a local holiday market. Yes, everything she makes is cute ❤️

Song of the Week

Big fan of Electric Guest and this tune.

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to spend part of your Sunday with me. I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and see you next week :)

If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone special.

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The holidays are about here, and if you’re anything like me, you’re very much looking forward to this break and spending some time with the fam!

Btw, don’t feel like you need to use this time to be productive and map out all of your 2026 plans. If that is what will bring you joy, then do it. But if not, take the time to rest and just be.

Let’s get into it:

1. I love being able to show up without overthinking everything.

2. It’s been nice to feel a little more grounded than usual.

3. Not every day needs a lesson attached to it.

4. Reminder: the answers usually come after you stop chasing them.

5. I will be full from dinner and will always still want dessert.

Pictured here is our first snow living back east ❄️

Song of the Week

Don West just doesn’t miss.

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to spend part of your Sunday with me. I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and see you next week :)

If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone special.

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This week was my nephew’s birthday, and I’m glad to live close to him now so I can celebrate with the fam. The closer we approach the holidays, the more checked out I am starting to feel haha.

Tonight also marks the first night of Hanukkah. Happy Hanukkah!

Let’s get into it:

1. You deserve all the good things happening in your life; celebrate them.

2. I forget how much calmer I am when I stay off my phone a little.

3. It’s nice when something works out without the stress spiral.

4. Giving back and volunteering just gives me so much energy, a reminder to do more of this.

5. Peppermint chocolate has me in a chokehold every holiday season.

Pictured here is from Celeste’s Parol workshop last week 🇵🇭🎄

Song of the Week

Such a great tune!

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to spend part of your Sunday with me. I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and see you next week :)

If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone special.

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It’s so nice having our home now that we can decorate for the holidays. I also took a quick day trip up to NYC this past week to see some community friends, and I always come back from these trips feeling refreshed.

One thing that I’m really grateful for this year is being near family and making more time to see old and new friends.

Let’s get into it:

1. You don’t need to earn rest, you just need it.

2. I love it when you think you’re in a “nothing is happening” season and then months later realize it was actually a major turning point.

3. My best ideas show up when I’m walking, showering, or trying to sleep. Never when I’m staring at a screen trying to be creative on demand.

4. I caught myself giving someone advice the other day and immediately thought, “wow, I should listen to me more often.” It’s funny how clear things feel when they’re not about us.

5. It’s nice re-watching your favorite shows. Not exactly sure what it is, but it brings a lot of comfort.

Pictured here is a little TJ’s tote that Celeste turned into a tree ornament 🥰

Song of the Week

This is just such a good vibe.

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to spend part of your Sunday with me. I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and see you next week :)

If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone special.

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