Month: September 2026

Getting To Through [Poem]

Published on September 21, 2026

Getting to out…
Getting to face-to-face and in person…
Getting to you…
Getting to eye contact and approaching…
Getting to a line… or a move… or two…
Getting to shamelessly…
Getting to intimately…
Getting to, “What’s your number?”…
Getting to, “I’d love to…”
Getting to, “Let’s spend the night together…”
Getting to, “I like you…”
Getting to, “Let’s move in with one another…”
Getting to, “Will you be…”
Getting to, “I love you…”
Getting to, “We’re going to be…”
Getting to, “Congratulations, it’s a…”
Getting to, “I do…”
Getting to sit and watch and wonder…
Getting to raise a human better than me or you…
Getting to build and connect and share…
Getting to read and write and stew…
Getting to legacy that’s carried…
Getting to the most evolved version of me or you…
Getting to bedside with me…
…Or me with you.

Yours won’t read like this or in this order…
Some lines won’t make their appearance at all…
Getting to through should always be carefully contemplated…
For indoctrinated is probably already you…
Order matters only to the orderer…
Getting to lived is whatever it means to you…
Even if that means starting over yet again…
Be thoughtful… be deliberate… be picky…
And most importantly… be true.

P.s. You can read my other poems here.

The Energy Behind Belief and Trust

Published on September 20, 2026

Yesterday, on the day of my uncle’s wedding, I got a text from his fiancé—soon to be wife.

She texted me playlist links, music signal cues, order of events, and other details pertaining to the DJing and emceeing of the wedding.

She had so much faith in me to rise to the occasion that she casually sent it to me the day of the wedding itself—details that I hadn’t seen or heard about prior to that text at all.

…And that trust?

…That faith?

…That casual belief that was lended to me in that moment?

Absolutely made me rise to the occasion to make sure they had the best day of their lives.

In that moment… in the few hours leading up to the wedding… there was no room for worry or overthinking.

And even though my mind wanted desperately to go there—I kept it focused on the love and generosity of their trust and belief.

And it was through that energy that we were able to make some wedding magic happen for two people who I admire, respect, and love dearly.

And when somebody lends that kind of trust and belief in you… maybe you, too, can alchemize it into a magical kind of energy…

Creative Collaboration vs Creative Inhibition

Published on September 19, 2026

Synergy is the idea that 1 + 1 = 3.

Your results alone. Plus another person’s results alone. Equals less than the results of us working together in creative collaboration.

I’m sure you can confirm this based on previous first hand experiences in your life.

What’s also true, however, is 1 + 1 = 1.

Your results alone. Plus another person’s results alone. Equals more than the results of us working together in creative inhibition.

And I know you’ve worked with people who can confirm this idea.

So the question then becomes: who’s who in your life?

…And how can you spend more time with the people who create that synergistic effect on work results?

…But maybe most importantly (since this focuses on what’s within your control vs what’s outside of it): how can you better facilitate creative collaboration vs creative inhibition? I.e. How can you be a better synergy facilitator?

…Can you be a better listener? Can you be more kind? Can you create a more safe space? Can you ask better questions? Can you offer a more playful, fun energy? …And so on.

Because you can either invest in the above inner work to potentially create a results multiplier in your life or you can keep throwing your hands into the air, complaining, and choosing to just, “do it all yourself, because working with others is a waste of time…”

The choice is yours.

The Autistic Adult Who I Wish I Could Be More Like

Published on September 18, 2026

Yesterday, I had an autistic adult take one of my group martial arts classes.

…And I’m almost positive I left feeling more inspired than he did.

To paint you a picture, he was as excited to take this class as Hulk Hogan would’ve been to get on a microphone in the middle of a wrestling ring and talk smack to a crowd of raging “Hulkamania” fans.

He was practicing his moves (which he hadn’t learned yet) in the office one-way mirrors, was excitedly greeting everybody who walked past to tell them he was going to be “battling for his new belt” today, and had about a thousand and one questions about martial arts and the school and myself that never quite satiated his appetite—and this was all before the class even started.

Once I got him into the class, he enthusiastically did every bow and handshake and followed each respectful tradition requested… he put his entire life force into each of the techniques taught… and he gave off an infectious energy to the other students he worked with that rippled its way around the room and raised the vibration of the whole class.

By the time the class was over… it was evident he had a blast. He couldn’t stop asking when he could come back and what other moves he could do and how he could get his white belt.

And yet ironically, it was I who found myself thinking, “I wish I was more like him.”

Completely present. Wholly engaged. Infectiously enthusiastic.

…Seemingly zero other worries or concerns in the world.

An Easy Way To Quickly Become Irrelevant

Published on September 16, 2026

You know those videos where people use AI for virtual job interviews?

…The ones where the interviewer asks a question, the interviewee has an AI model opened on their phone that’s transcribing the question in real time, and in the space it takes for the interviewee to regurgitating the interviewer’s question and fluff up the space with additional filler words before the response, the AI model spits out an answer that the interviewee reads back to the interviewer verbatim?

…What happens when they meet in real life?

…Or this person gets invited to give a presentation to team members because of how impressive they’ve been?

…Or this person gets promoted to an in-person position or gets asked out to a business meeting with his/her boss?

…What then?

Using AI to do the work for you is an easy, short-term solution… and when tactfully applied can serve a valuable role… but let it do too much and it’s also an easy way to quickly become irrelevant long-term.

Overplanning Mixed With Perfectionism

Published on September 15, 2026

As a creator, I live with this oftentimes debilitating mixture of overplanning mixed with perfectionism.

And when I imagine the things I want to create… I get stuck in the imagining phase because I can’t quite get the planning perfectly in order in my mind.

And so I keep looping and circling over problems and solutions and details and minutiae until I feel like I’ve nailed it—and it’s only then that I’ll begin.

And while a big part of my journey has been about learning how to begin before I was perfectly ready… another part has been about learning how to honor this desire to create things of quality.

Because while, yes, it’s important to learn how to get unstuck and bring the imaginings within your head to life… it’s also important to honor your innate desire to produce things up to a high standard.

This is what’s meant when people say sometimes your greatest weakness is your greatest strength and vice versa.

The mission right now isn’t to lower my creator standards or blur my imaginings of what I want things to look like… it’s to simply measure my progress based on what I’ve been able to get out of my head and into reality.

…Because each time I’m able to do that successfully—I’m one step closer to the most evolved version of my overplanned, “perfect” creation.

Complex And Multi-Faceted Glory

Published on September 14, 2026

An associate was telling me how her partner is on vacation this week and she’s stuck caring for the kids, doing the chores, and essentially managing several complex and multi-faceted lives.

What was interesting to me was that, not too long ago, we were on a work trip with the opportunity to turn part of it into a vacation—and she opted to go home early… to get back to her kids and all of the complex and multi-faceted.

And so many times in life, isn’t this the case?

We simply continue to want what we currently don’t have…

When we’re home we want to be on vacation and when we’re on vacation we want to be home.

When we’re single we want to be in a relationship and when we’re in a relationship we want to be single.

When we’re building something we want to be done and when we’re done we want to be building something.

That is… until we can learn to appreciate fully where we are. The place we only dread because we’re not seeing through the right perspective. The very place that countless others would kill to be in. The place that we would probably kill to be back in if life took a drastic turn for the worse.

…Let’s be where we are today. Here. In all of today’s complex and multi-faceted glory.

P.s. This book helped me appreciate the power of being present more than any other I’ve read so far. Maybe it’ll help you too?