Excerpted from an email to a friend, Oct 2018: Most of this year was exceptionally difficult. I was blindsided by a breakup, a project I spent years on failed, someone threatened to sue me over a deceptively complicated copyright issue (I was in the wrong and fixed it), and I kept running around in circlesRead More

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes” – Walt Whitman – 1 – I’ve been listening to Mount Joy’s “Sheep” and Son Little’s “Blue Magic (Waikiki)” on repeat. Both songs have these moments of recklessness and darkness that just capture me. They pierce my sense ofRead More

Learning to set boundaries made me more uncomfortable than I expected. Much of my identity was unconsciously defined by the desire to be liked, and putting my needs first – and possibly upsetting someone along the way – often didn’t sit right with me. Looking back, I realize that this was a side effect ofRead More

My parents dragged me to a fancy dinner party in 1999. I was 13-years-old: at the end of the night, the adults ask to see a magic trick. I grab a dinner roll and a napkin from the table, cover the roll with the napkin, pretend to concentrate really hard, and, low and behold –Read More

May, 2009: It was advice I didn’t want to hear. I was trying to start a business and busy dreaming of a comfortable life – one with a nice apartment, vacations in Costa Rica and an exotic sports car. J*, a trusted mentor, turned to me said, “You know Jason, if you do become successful,Read More

August 2018: It’s been months since the last wild night with the boys, ambitious project at work, or whirlwind romance. Given that pretending to be a rock star is one of my favorite pastimes, this is a dramatic change of pace for me. I feel… boring. And yet, despite the boredom, happiness keeps sneaking upRead More

For years, thought leaders and pop-psychologists have been telling us that gratitude is the long lost secret to happiness, success, harmonious relationships, wild sex, financial abundance, world peace, and the perfect brownie recipe with crispy edges and gooey middles. There’s even a bunch of quasi-compelling science to support gratitude’s transformational power. When I first startedRead More

Note: this is the second installment in a two-part series on getting out of a rut. The first part, which can be found here, is on emotional spring-cleaning. One subtle characteristic of being in a rut is that we become self-obsessed. We ruminate over the past and where we went wrong. We scornfully replay allRead More