On Christmas Day, stuffed full of mildly seasoned and occasionally recognizable food on a farm in the prairies of Canada, about as far away from the Bronx as you could possibly imagine, I made a promise to you and to myself. I committed that this would be the year that I would become the writer that I
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always imagined that I would be. The writer that I had promised myself. My word count for 2025 would be 365,000 words, an average of 1,000 words every day on Substack. This space would be my confessional, my vision board, my accountability coach, all rolled up into one.
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And together you would be on board as my witness, my cheerleader, my critic. Collectively would find a new way to make sense of this wild new world order. And then January happened and all of my best laid plans got blown away into dust. There's lots of reasons why none of them are important. But it really shook me.
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Shook me to my core. Shook me to my purpose. Shook me to wondering what the fuck I've been doing and whether or not this was all a big waste of time. And then I watched Star Wars, a movie that I've come back to over and over again over the years.
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And then I remember seeing for my eighth birthday, my brother Philip took me to the Lowe's Astor Plaza with a big bucket of popcorn. We watched the greatest movie of all time. When I need a pep talk, when I need to be inspired or snuggle up to a great story, the galaxy far, far away is always there.
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And there's so many important lessons about what happens when things go to shit. when it feels like all is lost. When it feels like the bad guys are winning. And at some point in January, I looked at the torum world that was happening in my life, and I was like, fuck it. It's not important.
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Why should I bother? It's all going to hell anyway. I was even having a time focusing, being able to focus on writing a story from beginning to end. My tension span all over the place. It's a weird thing to think that you've wasted period of time that everything that you've been doing and building and building is
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all going to collapse at the weight I think what I realize is that this moment, this sense of urgency and anxiety that we're all feeling is not the time to give up. It's not the time to become apathetic or apoplectic or disinterested. This is the time to make the thing. This is the time to create.
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This is the time to live your purpose. This is the time to dream. This is the time to believe. And more importantly than to believe, than to trust. Trust that when all is said and done, all of this time, all of this patience, all of this faith will be worth it.
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I have such big ideas and big dreams for myself this year that include no longer hiding behind strategic plans and big thinking and just put shit into the street. And maybe that's why I'm sending you this as an audio file instead of trying to write it. Because sometimes you just got to draw the line in the sand.
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And so I'm not going to write 365,000 words this year. At least I'm not going to write 1,000 words a day. But I think there is something even greater than that commitment is realizing and accepting that sometimes you got to pivot. Sometimes you got to change. This is going to be messy times.
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This is going to be messy work. And the thing we think on Monday is going to be different than the thing we know on Tuesday. As much as I really believe that my purpose is in words, I'm remembering that words can take many forms. And maybe instead of
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Trying to craft paragraphs, sentences that are cute and neat and tidy and beautiful. That you have to say the shit that's just on your chest. No filter, no chaser. Straight from the heart. will be my testimony that will be my duty and my responsibility that will be my
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promise yesterday someone who I didn't know was reading my substack came up to me and said hey I've missed your writing Are you okay? I didn't even know that they were following me. But what it confirmed is that for each one of us that comes on this platform or any
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other platform and puts their shit in the street, there is someone on the other side That is learning from being inspired by the things that you put out in the world. And let's face it, most of us will not have words that will touch a million people or maybe even a thousand people.
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But just think about the fact that you can change the world if one person, the right one person, connects with you. So part of my commitment is not to get caught up on the format, whether it's written, audio, video. My new commitment is just to commit in however it needs to come out, in whatever form it takes,
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whether it's messy or sloppy, whether it's got, whether it sounds good or whether I look good, whether it's grainy, whether it's not edited properly because we deserve and you deserve whether you regardless of how you act come to me and connect with me you deserve
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to hear see read because i've made a promise and commitment to you and i have a couple of great wild things planned for later this month that i'm hoping to execute And I'm happy that you're here.
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Peace.
