This wonderful world.
Dear friend,
I know I’m not well. I have something negative to say about nearly everyone and nearly everything. I’ve escaped to the safety of victimhood.
I couldn’t possibly be responsible for how dreadful my situation is, not even in part. I want to run. To be free. To be better. To win, at the snap of my fingers. But that’s not how any game worth playing works. I hope that through writing about it I can change it (see “Why I Do This”).
So what? What can I do? What agency can I activate to climb out of the rut I’m in (see “You’re Saying There’s a Chance”).
I can:
- Name the problem.
- Normalize it.
- Frame it as mutable.
- Act.
In this case, I think, naming is not enough. I have to show the frustration and depression to others so that they might help me climb out of the hole. Or, at the very least, they’ll know I’m in the hole and can avoid dropping dirt on my head.
Conclusion: I feel weak, powerless, overwhelmed, and clueless. And I should package that message in such a way that other people can see it without feeling compelled to pity or avoid me.
It’s true – I run the risk of creating a cesspool. Of watering the yuck, thereby giving it a place to grow. But anxiety and depression both love the dark. By exposing them to light and making it uncomfortable for the fungus to grow, maybe I can rid myself of this particular colony. Or maybe I’m calling in a heavy dose of antifungal that the fungus will learn to overpower and I’ll have used one of my limited weapons against it. Acting feels better than sitting still. Only time, and paying attention to the results, will tell.
Back to the game plan.
Normalizing, in this case, is easy. I know, for a fact, that millions of folks feel like me. That’s why there’s always a whole shelf of new self help books available at bookstores. It’s why grown men go to bars and talk about investments and whether or not cryptocurrency actually makes sense. It’s why we celebrate people who free themselves from the doldrums with such fervor. It’s why we talk about bearing the doldrums as a sacrifice to endure as we create opportunities for others.
Conclusion: this yucky feeling I have? It’s normal.
Framing it as mutable seems tricky. If millions of people feel this way, and always will, and if it takes some combination of hard work and luck to break free, then how can I possibly change it. If the results are the measurement that matter, then I don’t actually have much agency at all. Bill Walsh, in The Score Takes Care Of Itself, and Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search For Meaning, have the answer for us. Care about something else.
But telling your anxiety and depression riddled brain, full of doubt, shame, and guilt, to care about something else is sort of like… telling the dog from “You Might Be The Roadblock” to just walk inside. That’s not how it works. Elizabeth Gilbert, in Big Magic, has more answers for us. You might have to trick parts of your brain into coming out to play in the rain. And Shane Parrish, inspired by Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger, teaches that our position is much more important than our effort in terms of where we’ll end up.
Conclusion: framing the yucky feeling as mutable is a choice we make. It’s up to us (See “We Are What We Make”). I choose to believe that I can feel differently. With that choice made, I have the responsibility to act. Or not. I’m the one who has to live with the consequences.
So… what should I do? Set unachievable goals and then beat myself up for not achieving them? Pile on more to-do’s? Physically move? Create grandiose plans for how to build towards a new life? Start a new habit?
Fortunately, life intervened between the conception and authoring of this letter. It intervened with works of fiction and impromptu travel. Disruptions to the status quo that provided shocks to the system and new perspective. Mostly, they provided opportunities for wonder. A tingly sensation in the back of my neck that shivered down to my lower back. A lifting of soul that sang “I’m heard. I’m seen. I belong here. Others have belonged here. Together in belonging we’re spinning on a rock around a sun and it matters.”
Conclusion: when you’re not sure what to do, traveling is typically a good idea.
You’re not alone. In the words of Dungeon Crawler Carl, don’t let them break you.
Yours, JT
P.S. –
This letter was drafted and, more or less, finalized in December of 2024. It sat in my “to finish” bucket for more than a year. The first half of 2025 was almost entirely consumed with homemaking, after a move and house sale, professional stress brought on from acquisition, and training for an endurance run. The second half was lost to a job change and a miscarriage. Both things, in our age, are common. I’m sure hundreds of thousands of people, just like me, had similar back halves of 2025, and it rocked my world.
Returning home from vacation, and dipping into Montaigne’s Essays, reminded me to polish this one off so I can move on to my next letter (see “Get to the Next Screen”). I’m returning home feeling relaxed and balanced after a week of reading on the beach and enjoying delicious food with the love of my life. We’re ready for whatever comes next. It was cleansing to get away, which hearkens back to the action I referenced near the end of the original letter.
I remember two spellbinding moments from the second half of 2024. The waterfall in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and The Reading Room in The British Library. As I call those places to mind I can still feel the tingles. Wonder will change your life. Go find it.