So many questions.

It makes me so curious.

There is an electricity to it. A resonant frequency.

I’ve fallen in love with these people and their creativity many times. Ram Dass says that “love is when something or someone allows you to access the part of you that is love.” Or something like that.

There is something about how, when I catch that feeling and the curiosity kicks in and I submerse myself into it, that can access that place. It starts to flow through me like a rhythmic river into a delta. And that feeling ignites in me the desire to be creative. To walk myself out onto the ledge.

Out into the unknown space to explore it on my own, expand my boundaries, and push my limits.

And see what I find

OUT THERE.

Through my intense desire to experience the works of these types of people and learn all that I can about them, I’ve realized that they are able to take what they find and communicate it in a way so unique to them that it takes form and is ushered into this reality that we all share an experience in.

This is no small task. Going out onto the ledge and trying to bring stuff back with you that you find meaningful and giving it form is very, very hard. It’s hard work. It takes a lot of discipline and suffering, because the farther and more often you go out there, the forces at play become stronger and stronger.

You don’t know what you’re going to find out there either. It’s not always a guarantee that you’ll find something good or be able to communicate it correctly so that it takes the right form.

Even when it takes the seemingly right form, you don’t really know whether you’ll be able to work with it and distribute it out and into reality in a way that resonates with others. That part takes so much courage it’s… crazy. I have a hard time summoning that much courage. I think most people do (or at least that’s what I tell myself to not feel so cowardly).

Yet I’m still compelled, pulled in by the gravitational force of that mass — the creator and their creations. Willing to take on the risks that come with being an explorer of the unknown.

Daring enough to go out onto the ledge and look over it, because the risk is great but so is the reward. The great and fundamental paradox.

I’ve seen it, experienced it. Sometimes in myself but also through the types of people that I’m talking about. Those people, they don’t always make it back. Some figure it out and find a way to keep coming back, seemingly through grace and gratitude and balance. They are able to keep in harmony, ascending in an upward spiral so that you can see and feel their aura.

Some do not. Some go too far, where the slope of the ledge gets so steep that they fall all the way out and leave this reality. Some fall down so far and get stuck, not ever able to quite get back to a clear view of reality. It becomes distorted and fractured. Because of this, they can’t feel that feeling anymore or in the same way. They become distant to it. The place inside themselves where they access love becomes small and hard to find.

Maybe that’s where my fear comes from, the worry that that will be my fate. My hope is that being aware of it and conscious to it is a good balance. Restraining myself from judgment and attachment along the way (as best that I can).

The more I’m able to do that, the better I’ll get at it. That seems to be the way to do it. Anyways.

With love and deep appreciation,
Andrew

The amount of effort, mental and physical involved I would equate to running a marathon every day for a week straight. Brutal.

When I set out, it seemed nearly impossible to accomplish everything in the timeline before me. The landscape contractor I’d hired even told me I was crazy and abandoned the project mid-way, leaving the bulk of the hardest work to me. I stayed committed, and some friends and family pitched in near the end when my body was failing—a huge lift. In reality this was the culmination of ten years of work I’ve put into the property as a landlord—a “last gasp” of effort to finally see the reward for years of patience, struggle, and frustration. It turned out great, and it’ll be a sweet sweet day when the ACH comes through and our life complexity is minimized. I’m so grateful.

Here is my essay:

Hard Physical Work

There is a rhythm to working with your body—a back-and-forth between “keep me safe and comfortable” and complete ignorance of that same thought. The work must get done, so the downbeat of this rhythm is that willful ignorance. At every moment when a sensible person would stop and give in, you harden the fuck up and push on. The more you choose to do that, the more gets done and the more capable you feel. Confidence grows as the rhythm builds and you see the fruits of your labor.

The pile of heavy rocks that had been an eyesore for years is gone. The stump that served as an ugly mailbox post is savagely ripped from the ground. The cancer-like weeds are removed from the soil. The progress high carries you even as fatigue sets in: a thousand swings of the pick-axe, five-hundred shovels of dirt, a hundred carries of 30-pound boulders—it all adds up. It’s less the gross force of each movement and more the absorption of the reverberations of that force through the tool and back into your hands, forearms, shoulders, back. When your hamstrings start to tighten and the lower-back twinges begin your mind starts to induce whispers of doubt.

That’s where the battle begins. The “keep me safe” voice grows louder, stronger. It fuels the doubt like gasoline on a fire. Your body insists there’s no way you can finish it all - there isn’t enough time, not enough strength. Tasks feel 50 percent harder now, and the doubting voice amplifies. It gets loud and you give in. You flop onto the grass, your back instantly savors the sweet rest and support as you look up at the cerulean sky. The sun warms your face, a breeze cools your skin, the dusty sweat evaporates. The reprieve is nice—until it isn’t.

“How am I going to get up and keep working?”

You lie there, almost comatose. Nothing comes to answer the question for what seems like 10 minutes. You know the answer already - take a few deep breaths and go. You shake your legs out, roll your wrists, feel your limbs moving. You summon more of that willful ignorance and commit your body and mind to one simple act: stand up.

You channel that ignorance into strength. On your feet, you shrug your shoulders, roll your neck, grab your water and chug, then pour some down the back of your neck—chills race down your spine and out to your limbs. A little dog-shake and, for a moment, no pain. Eyes narrow, focus sharpens. Gloves back on, shovel in hand, back to work.

As you resume the work your body pushes back, it’s gotten a bit cold, stiff. The Lactic acid is building up in your muscles. Your brain and body are working in concert now to dissuade you from carrying on.

You go to your music app and put on a song with a vibe and energy that you can’t ignore. You turn up the volume in your headphones to try and drown out the thoughts of quitting and failure. It provides the hype necessary to keep moving, you start humming along and syncing your movements to the beat. You forget that your working and laboring, the body and muscles warm and loosen. You’re back in the rhythm.

At this stage the muscle fatigue hits earlier, or at least you notice it quicker. Undeterred by it, you start to be led by it. When it hits you don’t fret, you just drop the tool knowing you need the rest. The wheelbarrow isn’t full yet but you take the load anyway, it’s a reprieve yet progress is still made. Your brain starts to notice other little tasks that need to be done – a missed weed to be pulled, a pile of leaves in a hard to see corner, some scraggly roots popping up that are unsightly.

By the time you finish these small tasks, the body has gotten some rest and rejuvenation. You remember the pile of dirt and rocks you were working on, bring the wheelbarrow back and get shoveling again.

There is an unconscious realization that balancing the tasks and spreading out the effort between hard and easy is key. In order to do so a letting go must happen. An awareness and intuition to what the body needs in the moment and a following along to that. It’s a game of mystical hokey-pokey between your consciousness, your body and the environment you’re interacting with.

You can only get to this point, when the universe is guiding you, by pushing through. It’s a necessary process. It’s a combination of effort, ignorance, progress, confidence, pain, motivation, exhaustion, doubt, and belief. These things come in waves, cycles. Eventually the cycle winds up (and down) enough where trust in it continuing combined with the right action creates a vision of the expected result.

Buying into that vision and dedicating yourself to realizing it, the work gets done. Not only does it get done, but it gets done to the level that satisfies you, pleases you. Often times you’ll surprise yourself with the final result – it will be even better than you envisioned. This is the universe rewarding you for trusting in it and diligently following it’s path, despite the hardship of its process to get there.

The primetime event for the evening was Figure skating.

My oldest grumbled.

I reacted, “Whoa whoa whoa, this is like the best sport to watch!”

He argued for curling. He wasn’t wrong, we were both right. We settled in and focused on the screen.

There she was, standing and waiting in the center of the ice in her golden facade. It took exactly 2 piano chords - her eyes shot up and she cracked a smile.

She was vibing.

You could tell. She was so utterly connected to the environment but seemingly floating above it. It wasn’t long before the cracked smile had turned in a huge smile on her face.

Glowing, Radiant Aura.

The technical skill was incredible. The power and grace combination visceral. She made it all look completely effortless.

But the Aura.

Her AURA

You can only get to that level, travel that plane, exist in that state, when you are certain.

100% completely certain.

That you’re in it.

Immersed in the present. Perfectly prepared.

So in the flow that you are directing the course of the universe.

It’s all there for you.

And if you can simultaneously fight the urge to recognize it and wield it consciously and instead you just let it be and unfold while submersing in the joy of it.

Then you can have that Aura too.

I explained all this to the boys after Mike Tirico’s interview to end the program.

“Boys, listen up.

When kids talk about aura, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s non-sense.

That, what you just saw from Alysa Liu, that was Aura. That’s what it looks like and feels like.

You can even tell by how the people around her are affected. Look at those other people.

She’s got a field of aura around her so big and powerful that everyone that enters it gets taken up in it too.

When you say the word aura from now on I want you think of this.

And know that you can achieve that feeling too.

It takes so much hard work that it seems easy. That’s why she made it look so effortless and easy.

You have to try and live like that every day if you can. Every moment.

And surrender yourself to it.

A belief so persistent and strong that despite all the suffering you encounter… you endure.

But it’s all inside of you already, you can already do it!

I love you!

Now let’s go bed.”

The Boys: Noooooooooooooo!

There’s prison, the DMV, and anywhere that the fluorescent light feels like part of the punishment.

You usually know it’s one of those types of places by the feeling you get even before having to go there. The knotted ball of yuck right below your rib cage forms when you look at your calendar and see that place is on your destination list. The ball of yuck grows and tightens (somehow both) the closer you get.

When you step into your car and type it into your Google Maps and it gives you an exact ETA you feel the wave of nausea flow over your whole body. That’s when you know it’s one of those places.

This is the thought I had today while waiting outside clinic 3A (Sarcoma Clinic) at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. I don’t really get those same feelings anymore, it’s been 8 years of coming here regularly and almost 12 years of managing the tumors in my right ankle. It’s become a place that’s normal for me, although that may be part of the punishment, the normalcy. That feeling is still palpable and accessible to me, though. Especially because I can sense when other people have that feeling.

This time what triggered it was the teenage girl, black baggy jeans and oversized hoodie on, sitting with her dad. You don’t see a lot of kids here. She was fidgeting, her eyes darting around the room, her posture sunken and shoulders curled over. She was scared. So was her dad, who sat there with his head turned to the right staring blankly out the big window overlooking the campus and downtown Salt Lake City.

That’s when it hit me and my memories of feeling that way came flooding back into my consciousness.

Nobody actually wants to be here.

I can’t think of any scenario where one would want to find themselves in this place. You’re here because either you or someone you love needs to be here. And that “needs to be here” bit means you or the loved one has or is suspected of having cancer.

Even the people that work here, the doctors and nurses and admins and techs and janitors, they don’t actually want to be here either because this place that they go to work at they wish didn’t have to exist at all.

Every single day people walk in here and experience one of the worst days of their life.

Sure, some joy gets sprinkled in if you get to come here one day and get some good news, but the fact remains even those people don’t want to be in that position to get that news in the first place.

As with all things there are levels to this. Things behind things behind things. Places within places within places.

There are places within this place that you really don’t want to be or find yourself in. If someone gets on the elevator with you and hits the 4 button on the control panel, it’s no bueno, that’s inpatient treatment. Level 5 is even worse, intensive care and the chapel/meditation room is there. I learned this mostly by observation. I’d walk in the elevator and see people’s faces, observe their posture and notice their oxygen tanks and colorful knit hats on their heads.

Sometimes I just ask people while we are there in the moment together. After they hit their number I’m just so curious I can’t help it, mainly because I always feel like an imposter here and want to know what the full cancer experience is like. It’s perverse, I know. I don’t really want that because the full experience is the worst possible experience - it’s horrible suffering and death. It means generational trauma and fear, spread out across many people and timelines connected to that. It’s so fucking grim it’s hard to put your mind in THAT place.

I’ve had moments here where I can’t help it and my mind travels to THAT place. It’s the moments when people are outside on the 5th level courtyard crying and saying their last goodbyes to loved ones. Or in a chair next to someone in the lab who’s struggling under the weight of the consequences of what that blood is going to mean once it gets processed and the results are in. Or the family member in the cafeteria who’s exhausted and at their limit and you can tell by how they are slouched over their tray in the back corner booth avoiding everyone else and eating at a pace that’s 1/3 their normal pace.

Just yesterday there was a nurse in one of the circular booths laying down on her side, knees tucked up to her chest forming a curve with the booth, Kleenex clutched between her hands, eyes red and swollen. My mind goes to whatever moment preceded that moment. I don’t know the actual reality of that moment for that person, I couldn’t possibly, but I can imagine it, viscerally. I can feel it in my body.

Once when I went to eat in the cafeteria and the general mood up there was solemn I had this dream/vision that the Grim reaper was just hanging out there, working the room like a salesman. It went like this:

THE GRIM REAPER IN THE CAFETERIA

FADE IN:

HUNTSMAN CANCER INSTITUTE - 6TH FLOOR CAFETERIA - DAY TIME

A nice hospital cafeteria with big windows looking out to the Wasatch mountains. Patients in various stages of treatment sit with their caregivers at scattered tables. Nurses and doctors roll in and out between appointments The hum of quiet conversation.

ANDREW sits at a table near the center.

The double doors swing open. THE GRIM REAPER enters with an unmistakable swagger — black robes flowing, scythe casually slung over one shoulder like a golf club. He moves through the room with the energy of a pharmaceutical sales rep working a conference center.

REAPER
(finger guns at a woman near the entrance)
Hey Susan!

SUSAN forces a tight smile, looks away.

REAPER (CONT’D)
(approaching a stoic man, hand raised for a high-five)
What’s up Jim?

JIM doesn’t move. His eyes track the Reaper with cold contempt as he passes. The high-five hangs in the air, unmet.

The Reaper spots DR. RYAN, a surgeon, getting coffee. He gives an exaggerated head nod, projecting his voice so the whole room can hear.

REAPER (CONT’D)
Don’t mess up and send one of these fine folks to me, Dr. Ryan!

Dr. Ryan ignores him. The Reaper moves on, unbothered.

He approaches Andrew’s table, extends his fist for a dap.

REAPER (CONT’D)
Andrew, not you yet dawg, but watch for me!
(winks)
You never know!

ANDREW
Fuck you, Reaper.

The Reaper grins, keeps moving. He spots KATHY, mid-50s, clearly in treatment, picking at a salad.

REAPER
(too cheerful)
Kathy! How’s that chemo treatin’ ya?

In a corner booth, a CAREGIVER — exhausted, protective — groans to his LOVED ONE.

CAREGIVER
(under his breath)
Not this fucking guy again...

Something snaps. The Caregiver stands, voice rising, anger spilling out

CAREGIVER (CONT’D)
Reaper, Why you gotta come up here like this?

REAPER
(hands up, mock-innocent)
Hey hey, come on now. I like you guys!
(beat)
Remember, I don’t wanna see you either. I don’t like this shit.

He gestures around the room.

REAPER (CONT’D)
But you gotta be real, You know damn well where you’re at.

CAREGIVER
(shouting)
Shut the fuck up and get outta here! We don’t want your ass around!

REAPER
(motioning downward with both hands, trying to calm the room)
Everyone calm down.

He pauses. Looks around at the faces watching him. When he speaks again, his tone shifts — still casual, but with an edge of cold truth.

REAPER (CONT’D)
This is the cafeteria of an elite cancer hospital.

Beat.

REAPER (CONT’D)
You know what this is. You know where you are.
(matter-of-fact)
I have to be here. You all are my ICP (ideal customer profile)

He spreads his arms wide.

REAPER (CONT’D)
This is where I make my money.
(pointed)
Don’t rob me of that. You’re fucking with my livelihood if you tryna kick me outta here.

Andrew stands. Chairs scrape. He squares up with the Reaper, face to face.

ANDREW
Just wait till the AI solves this cancer shit, Reap.

He steps closer.

ANDREW (CONT’D)
This place will be fucking bankrupt and you’ll need to find another place to hang out on Tuesdays

Beat.

ANDREW (CONT’D)
…BITCH.

The Reaper holds Andrew’s gaze. For the first time, something flickers behind those empty sockets. Uncertainty? Fear?

The cafeteria watches in silence.

SMASH CUT TO BLACK.

THE END

That flicker behind the Reaper’s empty sockets - that’s the part I keep coming back to. Not the bravado, not the “fuck you” moment, satisfying as it is to imagine. The uncertainty. Because the Reaper works that room like a salesman for the same reason salesmen work any room: he doesn’t actually feel anything for the people in it. They’re transactions. He breezes through, cracks his jokes, moves on. He has to. Feeling it would destroy him.

I don’t get to breeze through. Twelve years and counting. I sit in those rooms, I get the IV ports and chemicals in my blood, I lay in the MRI machine, I take my meds and watch my skin and hair deteriorate. I ride those elevators, I eat in that cafeteria, I pray in that prayer room and sometimes even I get asked why I’m there.

And somewhere along the way the thing I dreaded most about this place became the thing it gave me. The proximity did something. The regularity of it — appointment after appointment, waiting room after waiting room — wore down whatever barrier I had between my experience and everyone else’s. I didn’t choose that. It just happened, the way a stone in a river doesn’t choose to become smooth.

I can feel that nurse curled up in the booth. I can feel the dad staring out the window because looking at his daughter right now would break something he can’t afford to break yet. I can feel the caregiver slouched over their tray in the back corner, eating slow, trying to disappear, wishing they were anywhere but here. Not because I’m special. Because I’ve been forced to be in the place with it, over and over, until the walls between me and them got thin enough to see through.

That’s what the Reaper will never understand. The places you don’t want to be are the places that teach you how to be. And that, somehow, is the thing I’m most grateful for from a place I never wanted to be.

With love and deep appreciation,

Andrew

I also like the idea that I can gain wisdom as I move from conscious to unconscious and asleep. I’d like to think that knowledge can be absorbed subconsciously while my mind and body drift off to sleep.

Upon searching for something new one night a few months back Alan Watts came into my zone of interest. I don’t really know much about him yet, but his son Mark and their org are releasing recordings of Alan to the public.

Alan has an incredible British accent and way of simplifying complex and esoteric concepts into easily digestible communication. His lectures, which he would give to crowds of westerners throughout the 1950’s/60’s and routinely recorded, are so well delivered that they both pull me in and put me to sleep. It’s like Alan is my dad, cradling me as a swaddled baby in his arms, talking to me softly in his english accent as he bounces me gently to sleep, filling my ears with profound wisdom and inspiring thought that my brain won’t comprehend for many years.

As I was putting our youngest son down for a nap one Sunday afternoon (and planning to doze off myself in what feels like the greatest luxury of all as a middle-aged dad), I turned on an Alan lecture to play in the background. After a couple of minutes a topic came up that I had never heard of before - the concept of mutual arising.

It’s a Taoist principle, stemming from the Tao Te Ching, that refers to the idea that opposites or dualities do not exist independently but rather co-arise - defining and giving meaning to each other through their relationship.

• 相 (xiang) = mutually, each other, a reciprocal relationship between two or more entities

• 生 (sheng) = to give birth or life, to arise, to produce

In this context nothing arises and exists in isolation, everything arrives at the same time and exists co-dependently with its opposition.

Light is only light because we know of darkness and they arrive at the same time as interdependent poles of a unified system. Apparent opposites cannot exist independently but must arise together, each defining the other through their relationship.

Lao Tzu expresses this in Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching:

Alan taught me that this is the true essence of Yin and Yang. The principle comes from the idea that a mountain has both a sunny side and a shady side. Yin (shady north side) and Yang (sunny south side) exist only in relation to each other. Without both arising mutually, there is no mountain, there is no “sunny” or “shady” side; their identities arise from their opposition and exist in harmony.

It’s this mechanism of dynamic balance that underpins all of existence.

It’s the examination of the Yin and Yang of life that helps us understand our reality and how we experience it. In Itzak Bentov’s brilliant work “Stalking The Wild Pendulum”, he talks about how everything we experience is relative to our perception of it. That our reality and what we perceive is context dependent. The full passage is much better than anything I can write:

These two things together, Mutual Arising and Relative Perspective, have helped clarify so much for me and how I experience the world. It’s given me a fresh set of eyes on how I interact with other humans as well. Each of us moves through this world with a completely unique experience and that experience, our own keyhole of reality and how it’s interpreted impacts us all. It changes with us moment to moment. We change moment to moment.

In a brutal but truthful sense, this means that no one can ever truly understand our perspective and reality. It’s relative only to us. Conversely, I cannot ever understand fully what someone else’s experience is or was in a moment or compounded over time. In the words of the great modern philosopher in her exquisite essay Skittle Factory Dementia Monkey Titty Monetization:

It’s in this vein that I keep challenging myself to understand WHY my reality is experienced the way that it is. Why my Skittle Factory makes my skittles the way that it does. It hinges on my relative perspective and how mutual arising presents itself and is examined as an ingredient into my skittle factory.

The next part to Parakeet’s essay explores this idea that we have the ability to create the skittle factory that makes the skittles that we want (life). That our thought patterns/loops are the core production line and that we have the agency to maintain them, upgrade or reconfigure them. The thought-loops create our reality and our reality determines our experience - so to change our reality and experience something different (better!) we have to learn to examine and change our thought loops. It’s necessary.

In examining our thought loops it’s easy to fall into the dualism that life presents and get lost. Do I like this or not like this? Is it good or bad? Is this beneficial or hurtful? It can lead to complete apathy and a figurative throwing up of the hands. Like all things, practice here makes all the difference. It’s in a meditation practice or contemplation practice where we hone this ability.

That’s where power comes from concepts like Mutual Arising - in the parables and stories that accompany them and give us a framework for reflection and doing that practice.

In particular there are 2 of them that resonate deeply, one from Alan and one from a professor of mine posed to me in college that I’ve never fully understood (maybe still don’t) until now.

Alan’s quote is this:

“You can’t have an inside without an outside or an outside without an inside”

It’s one of those sentences that if you say it out loud and in front of people they will scratch their head and think you’re crazy.

The second quote is from my college Professor, Dr. Dave Levy (whom I’ve written about here before), whom I remember saying this to me at the end of class one day:

“To go westward one mile is to go eastward one mile”

These are classic Zen parables, the latter of which lived rent free in my head for the better part of the last 20 years. It would pop up in my mind from time to time while meditating or out on a run or sometimes even just driving and following google maps. I’d always end up thinking to myself “WTF does it mean?”

Although I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand it, I feel closer now than ever. The concept of direction is entirely dependent upon your current relative location and your unique relative perception of where you are in time and space.

East and West are constructs of that reality that can only exist in opposition of each other but as part of a greater whole. On our spherical earth movement in any direction eventually unifies with its opposing direction. Think of someone on the other side of the globe watching your movement in a particular direction and perceiving that movement as contradictory to your perception of it.

When I bring that parable home in my own practice, it’s more personal.

Am I heading in the right direction? What direction am I heading in? Do I know where I want to go?

Ever conscious of this, I try to just orient myself to move towards joy. I’m just now realizing that in order to do so I have to understand it’s opposing feeling and it’s relation to why something feels joyful for me and the harmony between the two opposing things. The pain and suffering on the other side of that coin is necessary and complimentary - together the joy and suffering form the ground on which I perceive my reality.

Which means that embracing and understanding both sides is necessary to living a fuller experience. Resisting one side is futile and only serves as a mechanism for muting life, which may be what others choose, but I don’t want a muted life. I want mine to be colorful and exciting and interesting. I want my relative experience dial turned up to 11.

As I try more and more to seek to understand and lean into that I’m learning simultaneously what suffering really means to me. I’ve still got a long ways to go, we all do, it’s something that takes a lifetime.

Damn am I grateful that I’ve started to understand it. That Alan, and Dr. Levy, and Lao Tzu before them, brought it to me at this part of my journey. The things I’ll continue to learn from it seem limitless, which is always the best place to be. Or the worst? Or both the best and the worst? Yes, both.

With love and deep appreciation,

Andrew

The people closest to me describe me as a “rabbit holer” - when I get curious and find a rabbit hole, I typically go very far down the rabbit hole.

One of my longest running obsessions is coffee.

I first drank a cup of coffee during an internship I did over the summer of my Junior Year (2008) while at the US Air Force Academy. I made it through a pretty competitive process to be selected for the Cadet Summer Research Project which allowed me to go work at a defense contractor and learn about how they do business with the Air Force (since I was set to become a Contracting Officer… shout out 64P’s!).

Moog Inc. was were I got placed, an American engineering and manufacturing firm in East Aurora, NY (south of Buffalo 45 mins), who specializes in motion control systems (actuators and their computer systems). I got to shadow a young engineer, Phil Gurbacki, as he worked on the F-35 Flight Control system. The first thing he handed me was a “Python for Dummies” book and started walking me through the scope of his work.

That work was programming a bunch of sensors for Prognostic Health Management of the system to give warnings when parts where near their failure points or WOULD BE near their failure points. Literally processing signals, filtering out the noise, and predicting the future with a combined hardware and software system.

*(Phil is now an AI Engineer and is VP of Product at a very important and respected AI platform for developers called Weights & Biases. He’s a genius, one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. We’ve fallen out of touch but this will give me a reason to reach out and say hi)

I was working 9-5 for the first time in my life. Going to an office, sitting down in a chair, and staring at a computer for 8 hours, learning to code, learning tons about everything within a business, and then leaving. The second day I started to dose off around 2pm. Phil was like

“Dude, you gotta drink some coffee, it’s the only way to survive”

So we walked to the break room, where a pot of folgers was brewed and sitting on the heating element of an old Bunn brewer, and he poured me a cup.

It was awful.

I thought what everybody thought the first time they tried black cheap “diner” coffee… YUCK

Phil of course encouraged me,

“You’ll get used to it, eventually you’ll like it”

“Yeah right” I thought, but I muscled my way through it and finished it.

Then the caffeine hit. Oooooooooohhh baby, I liked it.

I even remember the second cup (and third). The next day at 2pm again, break room. Phil explains to me that lots of people put cream and sugar in theirs, it makes it more palatable and drinkable. I follow his 2 creamers, 1 sugar recipe.

It’s better, still not great. Same caffeine hit though, I still like it too.

3rd Cup - and this is where it gets weird - I decide to put a couple altoids in the bottom of my cup, poured it and dissolved them, and then added 1 creamer. I love mints, in particular Peppermint Altoids and Wintergreen Lifesavers, during this time of my life I always had a tin and a pack of each in my backpack. I ate A LOT of them. I digress.

The sugary altoid, the peppermint, and the cream did it for me. Looking back I’m completely ashamed of myself, but what can you do. The past is the past, right?

That was my routine the rest of those 6 weeks. One coffee a day at 2pm in the break room.

Then I went home for a short 2 week summer break (all that we got at USAFA) and told my mom I was drinking coffee now. At the time she was really the only one in the house that drank coffee and I remember her drinking it throughout my childhood.

The most poignant memories are from waking up at our cabin early on a Sunday morning to the smell of a pot of coffee. My mom would prep the machine the night before and set the timer for 6:30am so that they woke up to hot coffee. My uncles and aunts and parents would be outside on the front porch looking at the lake, drinking a hot cup and socializing.

So now I’m at home on break and I have a new fun routine with my mom, we would wake up and drink coffee together. So lovely.

That’s when I realized coffee was a galvanizer of people. It’s one of the few drinks that a huge majority of people agree on and drink in some form or fashion. And it’s true, usually the more you consume it the more you like it. Sure it’s a bit addictive and can be abused like any substance, but it really is the king of drinks.

For the next year as I went back to USAFA and finished my senior year, I’d drink 1-2 cups a day of just black coffee from wherever I could source it. I’d study at Panera out the north gate sometimes and get Hazelnut Coffee sometimes as a treat. I’d drink a cup an hour before a basketball game too, after learning that Kobe Bryant (RIP) used this routine (actually he helped create Bulletproof Coffee). Game changer.

When I moved to St. Louis MO after graduating and getting to my first Duty Station, I really took advantage of the social nature of coffee. New people that I’d meet got an invite to weekend morning coffee with me. It became a regular thing to leave my apartment, walk through downtown and post up at a coffee shop, read a little (I loved The Atlantic and NYT Magazine and their long profiles), talk to the baristas, hang with friends, etc.

Back then (2009-2011) I didn’t really care for the quality of the coffee. Sure I was developing a taste for it and knew what I liked and didn’t like but it wasn’t serious. It was just a top of mind thing that I didn’t put much energy into.

Things changed.

The obsession, MY obsession, with coffee started in Japan, when I moved to Tokyo in January of 2012. The coffee culture was so strong - from being able to get hot coffee from a vending machine or Seven-Eleven to cafe’s on every other street corner. Right down the street from our house was a local roaster, who only roasted beans on demand for clients in the neighborhood. It was these two middle-aged Japanese ladies that didn’t speak hardly any english. They sourced green beans from all over the world and roasted them to their clients liking, I’d put in an order for 2X 500G bags a week.

Then I remember sitting down while drinking a cup of Woods & Water roast my mom shipped me one rainy Saturday morning in the fall and reading this article about Bear Pond #9 and Katsu Tanaka

That day I jumped on a train to Kita-Setagaya to try this elusive spot. To my delight I walked in and Katsu was behind the tiny bar that morning. That day we nerded out about roasts for about 2 hours - he showed me his notebook and how he selects, tests, documents, and dials in all his roasts.

He walked me through his latte process and we tasted and sipped together all day, to include a final shot of Britney Spears (Yirgacheffe espresso shot over ice with a shot of handmade cherry liquor) served in a bar glass. It was a blast. An unforgettable moment for me, in my mind Katsu is still the Coffee GOAT, and I’ve taken that day with me for the last 12.5 years.

I’d go on to visit Katsu every couple months for the next 2 years and drink his exquisite coffee and learn about it from him. He’s an obsessive, like me, and few things fill me with more excitement than when someone is willing to share their same obsession with me. To this day I’m still chasing him, which is to be understood, he’s dedicated his whole life to coffee and he’s got 30+ years on me.

What I’m really chasing is that elusive moment when the coffee just tastes perfect and it fills your whole being with warmth and energy and comfort all at once, when you most need it.

My roasting ladies in Japan introduced me to Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans and since day one, they have been my absolute favorite. The flavors and aroma’s into the nose are invigorating. It’s the brightness and acidity, the potential blueberry and tart cherry notes combined with that Chocolate-y and earthy underbelly. A natural process unwashed (super earthy + bright) very light roast is typically my preference.

Today I made a latte with a Glitch Tokyo (one of the world’s top roasters and coffee shops) roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Gersay Washed, roasted on 3/11 and it was the closest I’ve ever gotten to Katsu’s latte that day at Bear Pond #9. Simply exquisite.

This brilliant and crazy guy on Reddit, u/dirtydials, has created a business called Rotation Coffee where he sources and ships small packages of unique and hard to find roasts from the world’s best roasters. In every rotation you might get 4-6 different types of beans - a whole palette of flavors to enjoy. All the props go to him for a great idea and executing on it and delighting coffee obsessionistas like me. (if you love coffee you should sign up and join this coffee cult).

In the last 2 years I’ve dove in even deeper by buying my own espresso machine (a mid-level Breville Barista Pro) and trying to perfect how to make a latte. 2 years in and I’m not even close, my latte art is improving, my milk frothing is getting very good and I’m as consistent at dialing in a roast as I can but I still pull 1 bad shot out of every 8 or so.

I don’t plan on stopping this obsession either, but I am moderating it well. It’s an expensive hobby if you want it to be. Someday a beautiful La Marzocco Linea Mini will sit on this counter top, plumbed in to a RO water line and custom painted to match the bar (we guy can dream, right?)

Coffee has given me so much. It’s a source of connection between me and lots of people and a lot of my best friends. Its a community builder and gatherer, it’s a soulful companion when I need it most, and it’s a hobby I love that brings me lots of joy. I’m a big believer in orienting my life to always move towards joy. Be aware of the joyful things and soak them up like a spunge, within reason and with balance, of course.

With love and deep appreciation,

Andrew

—

My latte process:

1. ⁠23g of espresso (double shot)

2. ⁠150g of Quarter Milk (50% Half & Half, 50% whole milk - makes for a smoother thicker experience)

3. ⁠Sift grounds

4. ⁠Even grounds

5. ⁠Press to 20 psi

6. ⁠38 second pull

7. ⁠Froth milk to paint-like texture, tap lightly on counter until only micro-bubbles

8. ⁠Pour

9. ⁠Enjoy!

When I awoke my friend was at the house ready to pick me up. I jumped in his mid-sized SUV and we took off for what he called a small adventure. My exact response to him was:

"I'm here for it, I'm just along for the ride."

Our first stop was to a delightful stationary store, Tabula Rasa, a true gem in SLC. His present to me was to let me pick out a stationary set for myself. I picked out some PREMIUM 32 pound 100% Cotton letterhead and corresponding envelopes in a beautiful Ecru.

Next stop was dinner, I told him I just want some nourishing hot soup, Ramen or Pho would do the trick. While driving we immersed ourselves in a deep convo surrounding our explorations of consciousness and the return of magic. Distracted, I missed that we had driven aimlessly back through his and now my neighborhood. Eventually I picked up on the oddity of continuously missing turns whilst also looking at google maps on his navigation screen. Something was up. A surprise.

I immediately knew who was responsible... BRI !!!

In shock and saying to myself "shoot, I should have realized something was up!" I decided to just let that thought go and embrace the reality of my wife's well executed surprisery (made this word up, but I love it and also she’s amazing at surprisery).

As we walk in the door of our neighborhood gathering place, I notice all the familiar vehicles of my friends and loved ones. A smile impossible of being held back emerges on my face. I walk into an intimate gathering of the people I'd most want to be around on a day like today. A room full of joy - my favorite things and people.

A meal was catered in from amazing neighborhood eatery, an Old Fashioned bar was established with some great whiskeys and artisan bitters and accompaniments. The drinks and eats and people were the present. The 90 minutes of laughter and joy throughout dinner was the dessert as we told stories about the times we had all nearly almost died and how they are “funny” now (well, the bread pudding from my favorite restaurants around town was the actual dessert... incredible).

The cherry on top was a stage and microphone and a folder. The folder containing letters to me from the people in the room and mailed in. My wife announces for people to come sit around the stage and microphone and that some people are going to read their letters to me from the stage.

I remember to myself as I sit down directly across from the mic:

"I'm just along for the ride"

The smile, now bigger and holding back immense emotional gratitude, remained on my face after emerging some 2 hours prior. What a treat!

Then I get asked to the stage, to read a letter to myself, crafted by my friend Adam and fellow Severance die-hard fan. Apparently my "innie" was present state me and my "outie" had the thoughtfulness to write me a letter for my birthday as well. Such a good outie, I love that guy.

My outie was spot on, the work is important.

In tears of laughter, I accept the letter and gift with gratitude and head back off stage. My oldest son comes up on stage, he reads me the most classic 11 year old boy letter ever and I love it so much.

Then my youngest is announced to come up, he gleefully obliges. His letter was transcribed during a drive with our neighbor, verbatim. He loves being the center of attention, the stage is comfortable to him and his soul eats up the attention. He hogs the mic repeating the things on the letter a half-dozen times, giggling gleefully in between each choppy phrase. He's the cutest human ever.

For the next 30 minutes some friends read their letters aloud for me to soak up all the nice things to say.

I love every word (and every one of you immensely) and welcome it like those warm rays of sunshine on a sunny spring Sunday afternoon.

With love and deep appreciation,

Andrew

So, I ventured out into the wilderness for a 24hr period, camped by myself, hiked a few trails, sat in some natural hot springs for a few hours, and then headed back home.

There was one core thought I kept coming back to that I had heard the previous weekend while also in a (different) hot spring.

That Saturday morning was a blustery spring day, a little cold, a little rainy and windy, but peaceful. I had come with my family and in-laws to spend the day relaxing and soaking up the mineral rich water from beneath the earth’s crust.

Being the connoisseur of hot-temp activities that I am, I found my way to the smallest and hottest pool after some family time in the main area. After a few minutes of being mostly alone, a pair of men entered the hot spring and sat across from me.

These were your classic, Middle-aged dads, decently fit and clearly there to relax with their families. They sat down and were talking about mountain biking and some new trails they'd like to explore this spring when the snow melts.

A few minutes after that a group of 3 women enter the hot spring—one older and two middle-aged, seemingly the daughters of the older woman. As they settled into the very hot water, making the usual observation about how hot it is in this bath/spring, the older woman pipes up, loud enough for all in the bath to hear (and trying to curry some sympathy from the crowd):

The middle-aged guy with dark hair and skin with a barrel chest responds almost immediately:

The way he responded was so quick and powerful, it froze everyone in place in that steaming hot water.

It was one of those moments where the person responding was intimately prepped and ready for the response because it’s been top of mind for them.

Maybe just recently he got a call or sat down with the best friend, and they shared the bad news of a worsening prognosis.

Maybe he'd spent some of his time that day at the hot springs contemplating and thinking about his friends’ wife and her perspective.

His response wasn't snarky either; if anything, it was incredibly gracious and delivered with true kindness and wisdom. I think it hit everyone, including myself, as this deeply grateful moment.

After a moment of taking in the profound words, the older woman replied:

She gave a quick smile his way and nodded, closed her eyes and tilted her head back, relaxed her shoulders and sank down into the hot water.

With love and deep appreciation,

Andrew

Over the last few weeks this is the question I wake up most days and ask myself. The reason the question is so important is because it’s framed around the assumption of agency. It’s also a question with infinite answers. Let’s break it down word for word:

How - In what way or manner…what are all the possibilities?

Do - perform (an action), to act

You - the person being addressed - me (finger pointing at myself)

Want - desire

To Experience - direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge

This World - reality of what can be observed (this is the most loaded part)

As I’ve deeply contemplated this question I’m often left with more questions than answers, although the answers are becoming more clear. The questions that have arisen have taken me down several very interesting paths of inquiry.

• What agency and choice do I have and can control?

• What is “the world” and reality?

• What is matter?

• Is everything just an emergent system?

• What do I want and desire?

• What do I like and not like?

• Can I change what I like and don’t like?

• How does my brain encode experiences?

• Is my body and mind just a sensory experience machine?

• Can I tune and shape that sensory experience machine?

• What is a thought?

• What is a feeling?

• What are emotions?

• Are emotions just the calculated output of a compilation of all conscious and subconscious signals?

• What is consciousness?

• What is the subconscious?

• What is material vs non-material?

• Is everything non-material?

• What can I observe/experience?

• What can I not observe/experience?

• If I can not observe/experience it now, can I train myself to observe/experience it?

As you can see, this list is merely scratching the surface, each of these questions leads to more questions and more complexity. It’s led me down some pretty deep rabbit holes. I want to start and focus on one key part of this that started me down this path.

What is matter? What is material?

Classically, matter is defined as any substance with mass and volume, occupying physical space and resisting changes in motion (inertia). This encompasses everyday objects—solids, liquids, gases—and excludes massless entities like photons.

Wait, what? How can it be defined while it excludes massless entities like Photon’s?

Aren’t photon’s a key ingredient to, well, everything?

Well, what is a photon then?

A photon is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that can move no faster than the speed of light measured in vacuum.

Light (i.e. photons) carries the electromagnetic force. Without it we would have no atoms.

Emission of light of all frequencies, visible or not to our eyes, is a consequence of electrons in atoms being excited to higher energy levels and giving out photons as they return to their equilibrium state. Whatever your philosophical view of it, because it’s so fundamental to how matter works, the universe would have to be very different to not have light. It's like asking whether the universe would be different without matter, the two are so entwined.

If we didn’t have photon’s to carry light and radio waves, atoms wouldn’t exists, which means matter (as defined above) wouldn’t exist.

So the classical definition of matter is meaningless.

If light and the photons that carry it are a consequence of excitation of electrons to higher energy levels and atoms themselves wouldn’t exist without this - than what is an atom even?

This is where I became shocked.

The nucleus of an atom is composed of electrically positive protons and electrically neutral neutrons. These are held together by the strongest known fundamental force, called the strong force.

To give you an idea of the composition of an atom - imagine a nucleus that is the size of the tip of a ball point pen (it’s much much much smaller than that) or about 1mm by 1mm.

Do you know how far away electrons are from the nucleus? 10000x the distance away as the size of the nucleus. So electrons are 10 meters (33 feet) away from the tip of the pen that is the nucleus.

This is what blew my mind.

What is in all that space between the nucleus and the electrons?

And if matter is composed of atoms, than matter is just vast empty space as well.

I know I’m just barely scratching the surface here and that way more is to this paradigm - mainly that quantum field theory and quantum mechanics being are huge parts and I’m oversimplifying.

The point of getting to this simplified conclusion is that the implications for it boil down to this:

The key word being choose. We have agency over it.

Having conscious choice or thinking of consciousness as being the fundamental element of reality itself is not even a new thought. In fact the founder of quantum mechanics, the German physicist Max Planck, posited this position back in January of 1931 (quote from The Observer).

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

I find it fascinating that this subject was never brought up in any school classroom I ever stepped foot in - at least not directly.

I took one class at the Air Force Academy called “Perspectives in Management”. My professor was Dr. Dave Levy.

This was an unconventional class to say the least. It was designed by Dr. Levy to to twist and distort your mind and challenge the way you think about everything. It was the first place I had any formal education on meditation and contemplation and to explore and idea or topic from many viewpoints, even if those viewpoints seemed crazy.

Looking back now, I think Dr. Levy was trying to teach us the lessons I’ve talked about here.

One day we walked in and playing on the projector at the front of the room was the movie The Matrix.

We started class and when he paused it after a particular scene in The Matrix where Neo visits the Oracle and in the living room encounters the spoon boy.

Watch:

The spoon boy is a “Potential” a person who has the ability to manipulate the Matrix (a computer simulation where the processing units for the simulation are the human brains - those billions of brains are connected together to run the Matrix).

He is able to bend a spoon with his mind.

Neo approaches him, curious and interested.

The boy gives him the spoon and gives him a simple explanation:

“Do not try to bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth”

Neo asks “what truth?”

“There is no spoon”

What the boy is saying to Neo is that the spoon itself is coded into the program of the Matrix (a construct) meaning its properties and how it exists in the matrix cannot be manipulated. That’s why it’s impossible.

The “truth” he talks about, that there is no spoon, is the fact that Neo’s own mind is part of the processing and intelligent power that runs the Matrix and that his mind is what controls the properties of the spoon. It only exists because he allows it to exist.

The realization quickly hits Neo and he’s able to control the spoon. He can Exert his will on the program.

After all these years I’m finally connecting the dots. Dr. Levy tried to connect them for me back in 2008, but I wasn’t ready yet. Even so he planted the seed, I truly think that’s the first time I even pondered the idea of consciousness.

If consciousness comes first and all matter and reality are derivative of that, then even in this world there is no spoon.

How do you want to experience this world?

The question becomes much easier to answer, at least to me, now that this perspective exists.

I get to create it and mold it and craft it any way that I choose.

I can fill it with good energy and vibrations. With love and compassion and grit and resilience. I can fill my experience with what serves me and my family and help them experience the world that they want, too.

I’m so grateful.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew

The snow means a lot to our region too, especially now, today. The American West is in the midst of a 20-years long mega-drought. The great Salt Lake is estimated to be about 20 feet lower from its peak, exposing many parts of the lakebed and a drastically reduced surface are. It’s scary to think what it would be like here without the water.

Our geographic region is special when it comes to water and most that live here don’t know that. More to come in a later post.

With the snow falling so beautifully today and the water from it soaking into the earth I channeled my creative spirit and wrote a poem about how I felt about the above scenario when it came into my mind as I watched the snow.

Here is my poem, titled simply “Water”

Molecule
2:1
Simple
Abundant
Liquid
Life
Sustain
Absorb
Travel
Thirst
Consume
Assume
Fight
Consequence
Ignore
Idiots
Over

If there is one thing we should be thankful for it’s water. Our water, the earths water. It’s precious to all life.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew

After 2 years in Japan and travelling around Asia exploring we got pregnant. It both wasn’t planned and planned - we sort of just threw it up to the powers that be and decided it would happen whenever it happened and that would be the right time and it would be great. That turned out to be true… within like 3 weeks.

We made that decision because our friends and neighbors had a 7 year old boy and a 1 year old girl and they showed us the way. They took their kids with them everywhere and made them just a normal part of their life. We back-packed with them AND their kids for 2 weeks around southeast Asia - staying in hostels in Kuala Lampur, hiked through the dense jungles of Borneo, and ate/partied at rooftop fish markets at 10pm in Kuching.

They really empowered us and gave us the confidence to do the same. That was really our only ever intention, to take the kids along with us for the ride and make them a part of the lives we wanted to live (and raise them to be great humans of their own). I’m so grateful to Kat and Justin for doing that for us. Without them, we wouldn’t have Otto.

And he’s the best

Every year on his birthday I write him a letter. From me to him, man to man. This years’ letter may be my best writing ever. Honestly. When I finished it I walked over to my wife and just told her “it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, by far.” I had a rare moment of creative flow and found a way to channel it into the words. I couldn’t have done this 3 months ago before I started writing everyday and posting it here on Substack. It’s testament to what practice and the process does… the outcome is progress.

I came downstairs to the office and typed it out on my Tower Constellation. I finished around midnight, right when the day clicked over to February 7th. I walked it upstairs, sat at the table with my wife Bri, and read it to her. We both were sobbing within 20 seconds. Tears of joy and love are the best.

I packaged it up, sealed it in the envelope, and set it on the table for Otto to read this morning. When he woke up we all sat at the table and he asked me to read it to him. I obliged and we all sobbed our way through it together. Beautiful. A moment I’ll always remember.

Anyways - I have permission to share the letter with you all. I know I already said this, but… it’s GREAT. If you’re in our family or close to Otto (or you just want to really READ it) and you’ve gotten this far please remember the instructions from my very first post:

A Letter For Otto Bear:

Dear Otto Bear,

Do you know why we call you Otto Bear? It’s not just that you were a giant baby, although that did play a role, or the fact that you’ve always been so tough and strong. It’s because even without intention behind it from your mom and I, the name was… just you. It wasn’t planned or thought through or devised by anyone, it just found its natural place, bestowed upon you.

Think of it more like a gift itself that the universe gave to you. It’s a more special gift than you might think. A name like that brings with it real power and energy.

The bear, especially large bear species like a grizzly, are fierce apex predators. An apex predator means they are at the top of the food chain, there are no animals in the wild in their environment that hunt them. Despite being apex predators bears are also omnivores, like humans, which means they eat plants and other animals. At first this might seem like a “mid” fact but it’s not - the only apex predators on earth that are omnivores are bears and humans, that’s it. It’s a special club.

Why special? Because being omnivorous has the advantage of being highly adaptable to many different environments. Before you were born or even had a name your Mom and I promised ourselves that we would be parents that took our kids with us through the adventures of life. We set an intention for you to be adaptable, just like bears, to many different situations.

This trait is, and always has been, one of your biggest strengths. You have an ability to thrive in many different situations that most people don’t have. Whether that’s in school and learning academics with your mind or sports and learning physicality with your body. You have this unique ability to adapt and learn and pick up new things and meet new people and fit in everywhere you go. It’s not a coincidence.

One of the other things that makes you Otto Bear is that when you were little, every couple of weeks your body would need to sleep for wayyy longer than a typical child. You’d go to bed for a nap at 2pm and somehow sleep until 8am the next morning, 18 hours long. We were so scared the first time it happened that we took you to the hospital and had all kinds of tests run and they all came back negative. The doctors just looked at us and said you’re fine and to let you sleep as long as your body needed to sleep. Just like a bear hibernates.

Did you know that female bears actually give birth while hibernating? Meaning that all bears are born in a den, in the middle of winter. Do you know what happened the moment your mom started going into labor? It started snowing. This wasn’t just any snow storm either, it was the biggest snow storm in 100 years in Tokyo. It was the first time they shut down the subway and train system in decades. We got almost 3 feet of snow in the 17 hours from when your mom went into labor to the time you were born (it was a long day).

I like to think that the universe knew you were going to be born that day and the storm was its welcoming party to you. You created and took that much energy to get your big body out of your mom’s womb and into this world. It’s not a coincidence.

Bears are also incredibly smart and intelligent. They are one of the only species that remembers food sources and can plan. They are excellent problem solvers and even show creative behaviors in outsmarting human hunters. They are one of the only creatures on earth that has been known to use tools as well.

You share this trait with bears too. Your brain since you were little was always figuring out how to do things and be creative. Your mom and I would always joke that if you did something or tried something once you would always just get it from that moment on. As soon as you’d get over the hurdle of doing it, whatever it was, and even if you failed the first time, you just confidently went about doing it and never looked back.

Never forget this superpower. It’s two fold - don’t be scared to try the first time and then confidently go do it the second time and every time thereafter. Bears have the ability to learn to fish and where to fish. They are shown by their mothers once they are ready to and often fail the first time they try to catch salmon. Inevitably they figure it out and succeed, their survival depends on it, and feast on delicious salmon.

Wait, isn’t salmon your favorite food? Not a coincidence.

Did you know that the Japanese Ainu people held bears in great reverence? In their mythology they considered them god like creatures or gods in animal form. They believed bears had supernatural powers. I believe you have those same powers, you were born in Japan, after all.

Here is the craziest one (and I didn’t even know this until I started writing this letter!), so crazy I almost can’t believe it. Our families’ ancestors came from the Nordic cultures, we are descendants of Vikings. The Viking warriors, or Norse warriors, were called “Berserkers”. These warriors were said to have channeled the power of the bear and enter into a trance like state of rage in battle. The word “Berserker” literally means “bear-coat” as if the warriors went into battle with a bear suit of armor.

It gets better. Do you know who the chief “God” of Norse mythology is?

Odin.

When the Berserkers went into battle it was believed that Odin was their patron, the god who granted them the bear like abilities and his battle fury. They believed Odin gave them supernatural powers and made them immune to pain. Somehow without knowing that, we named your brother Odin. Your whole life you will be able to channel the supernatural abilities of Odin when you need them most. Not a coincidence.

Now you can see the name is much more than just a name. It’s all those things and all of the universes magic channeled into one being, you. It’s a special thing that only you can claim. You must use it wisely though, for good and only when you need it, or when someone else needs it from you. It’s always in you.

It is you. It’s just you.

Love,

Dad

I’ve become accustomed to laying out a 24x18 inch mixed media pad of paper, grabbing a few copic markers and these beautiful Japanese Kuretake Bimoji Brush Pen, and writing out my thoughts and reflections as a sort of meditation to start my day. This practice started about a year ago when I couldn’t find a notebook and needed something quick on a call and behind the coffee bar I kept the large mixed media pad, so I grabbed it quickly and started scribbling down notes for a meeting.

The sheer size of the page and blankness feels like a playground for my mind - I’ve always been a doodler and note taker. It’s my purest expression of my thoughts in a moment.

This morning, as so happens every 6 months or so, my routine changed. Today was the day that I cycled back onto my medication to control my TGCT tumors in my right ankle that I wrote about yesterday. The medication forces a routine change - I have to take my 2 pills every morning and evening (12 hours apart) with a small low fat meal.

The fat content in this meal is important because it makes all the difference in how the drug is absorbed into my body. Too much fat and I absorb too much of the drug, too little and my body doesn’t get enough. I’m also supposed to wait 2 hours after I eat this meal to eat anything further.

It’s not too crazy of a routine but it’s certainly far more rigorous than a typical dietary routine.

The drug’s fancy marketing name is Turalio, it’s less interesting but maybe more fun name is Pexidartinib. It’s an antitumor agent that is a selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor that works by inhibiting the colony-stimulating factor (CSF1)/CSF1 receptor pathway. Basically it prevents the cells in my body from being able to activate their replication mode and regrow tissue beds.

This is an amazing thing. The story of Pexidartinib is uniquely woven into my journey with these tumors over the last 10 years. When I first was diagnosed no such drug existed, like not at all. The idea of this drug didn’t even exist. It stayed that way until about 2017. By that time we were living in Los Angeles and my treatment had moved to UCLA where I got connected to a TGCT specialist, an orthopaedic oncologist named Dr. Bernthal.

Dr. Bernthal had a special bond - he played basketball at Princeton and ran the Princeton basketball system just like I did at Air Force (Go Falcons). He also was the leading board member on a study on a new set of selective inhibitor drugs that were targeting rheumatoid arthritis. One of those drugs in the earliest study did something magical that they hadn’t expected - it reduced PVNS/TGCT tumors in a few patients that had rheumatoid arthritis BECAUSE of PVNS/TGCT tumors. It was literally a fluke.

Dr. Bernthal was so interested in this that he raised his hand to lead the research into the drug and using it for this use case. He told me early on that he had to tell me that he was given a financial stake in the success of this research if it proved meaningful and they could get the drug to market. Good capitalism at its finest.

Dr. Bernthal told me to hang tight and that in 2-3 years they may be able to go through trials and get the drug into my hands as I was a perfect candidate based on my tumor cells’ biology. In the meantime Dr. Bernthal had to perform a second surgery to remove tumors. In just over a year from my first tumor excision, the tumors had grown back. Not quite as large this time, but pretty damn big for the timeframe.

He told me that he hoped that I wouldn’t need surgery again. By early 2018 he gave me a semi-positive outlook on the trials - about 50 patients were able to start a stage 3 trial (it’s hard to find 50 PVNS/TGCT patients - we are a rare bunch and I’ve actually never met or talked to a single other person with it). The early results were promising - about 50% of the participants showed profound decreases in tumor size. The only bad part was that two people in the study passed away and they linked the deaths to the drug and hepatotoxicity of the liver.

In short, the drug is extremely hard on the liver to process, it’s toxic. So toxic it can cause severe liver damage in just 3-4 weeks. It also causes some pretty severe side effects:

To add to this it basically degrades your skin and hair and nail cells - hence the translucent looking skin and hair you’ve seen in previous photos of me.

I’m giving you this context because it’s important. Why you ask?

2 people died testing this drug. They literally made the ultimate sacrifice so that I could benefit.

I can’t ever forget that fact. I owe those people dearly.

My ankle is still functioning and a part of my body because of those people. I’ll never know their names or anything about who they were or what they did on this earth, but I know they existed and owe them a lot of gratitude.

The drug works for me and shrinks my tumors. It’s a miracle.

In 2015 when I was first diagnosed if I had looked 10 years ahead I didn’t have my right ankle. In fact, I spent time early on researching prosthetics and narrowing down the styles of ones I liked. I just sort of imagined my future as a cyborg with a robot foot and ankle.

The side effects I experience are actually pretty fucking annoying. My skin becomes extremely sensitive to hot and cold and wind and touch. A soft towel feels like sandpaper. If I’m exposed to the summer sun I can get 3rd degree burns and blister in less than an hour. Hot showers burn and luke warm water feels best but very unsatisfying. Cold wind shivers me to my bones. So it’s layers on layers in the winter and long sleeves and pants in the summer with lots of sunscreen.

I get nauseous sometimes and lose my appetite, and I definitely feel the fatigue as my body tries to process the poison for the first 6 weeks or so, then my body kind of figures it out.

When I look down at my hand with those 2 pills in it I face this weird cognitive dissonance.

But it allows me to still walk and run and play with my kids. I’ll take it.

I have so many people to thank and be grateful for when it comes to that.

• The researchers and PhD students

• The doctors

• The drug company Daiichi Sankyo

• The trial participants

• The blood lab that monitors my blood

• The pharmacy who delivers it to my doorstep

• The nurses who do my feedback sessions and pass my data back to Daiichi Sankyo

But most of all those 2 unknown souls whose lives were cut short, the unlucky ones.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew

My wife and oldest son are huge fans and listen to the band regularly. They love them, blast them in the car and in their earphones.

Imagine Dragons has many billions (yes, with a B) of streams and many platinum records, I realized why live in person. These guys are freaking rock stars and A+ musicians. In particular their lead man and creator of the group Dan Reynolds. At the show one thing was very apparent:

Dan Reynolds is in his prime - so confident, so comfortable in how he carries himself. So utterly sure that he can put on a world class performance with the world class music he creates.

I also realized that these dudes have some absolute hits, great songs. Bangers. Totally original style and delivery. And then they have some gut wrenchingly emotional and introspective pieces.

There was a moment early when Dan gave a little monologue between songs and talked about how he wrote a song, It’s Time, about a college friend of his who had cancer while they were attending BYU. He explained how the song is about how he didn’t want to ever let that friend go and lose him. He was scared to leave town or leave the hospital at night to head back to his dorm because he didn’t want it to be the last time they saw each other. He was paralyzed by the unknown and uncertain.

His friend tried to qualm those fears and anxiety by telling Dan that he is going to die, just like Dan is going to die someday and that that’s okay. He’s still going to be the person, the soul, that he is and embodied on this earth and that death is a chance to rise to the top of heaven. It’s just a new beginning, for both of them.

The song is a conversation between friends, grappling with this reality and trying to move through it together as imperfect and impermanent humans.

I didn’t know this context to the song even though I’d heard it a million times. By giving us that little nugget and setting the stage for the words and beauty that flowed through them, he gave me such a gift. Listen to these words:

“The path to heaven leads through miles of clouded hell”

I’m a visual person so when they performed the song live I was transported into that hospital room, picturing the conversation happening between the two friends. I got overwhelmed with emotion and started holding back tears, eventually I just let it out. I tried to be faced away from the rest of our friends/neighbors to not let them know I was crying. I still have that weird midwestern male ego that doesn’t want to be seen crying, vulnerable, weak.

So stupid.

I spend a lot of time thinking about cancer. How the people that get it don’t deserve it, they didn’t do anything wrong. They didn’t have a choice in the matter, not really. The miracle of biology and life that they were given betrays them.

It’s so fucking cruel. That your own body would attack itself and eventually kill itself.

My body is trying to kill itself in this way - fortunately the tumors I have just aren’t good enough at it (killing me). At first they named it PVNS or Pigmented Villonodular Synovitis, now it’s called Tenosynovial Giant Cell Tumor. It’s a very rare sarcoma tumor condition caused by a random mutation that affects my right ankle synovium and tendon sheath. I have the form (diffuse type) that will relentlessly mutate until I die or they have to amputate my leg, whichever comes first.

It’s a 1 in 4 million random genetic mutation to a specific cell type that makes those cells produce a protein that creates an enzyme that signals to the other similar cells to multiply. In typical healthy humans the cell knows when to turn it on and when to turn it off. Mine doesn’t turn off, ever. The cells just multiply, unimpeded, and don’t stop. They form massive tumors eventually (hence the “giant” in the name). They take limbs eventually if uncontrolled, but they can’t spread to the rest of my body.

In November 2019 the FDA conditionally approved a new drug called Turalio, with a black box warning (it works but it’s not necessarily safe to take without constant monitoring as it can poison the liver quickly). This funny little blue and white capsule of poison, if taken twice per day with specific little meals 12 hours apart, can degrade the cells so much that they can’t produce the protein that makes the enzyme that makes the cells multiply.

My story starts back in August of 2014. I still remember everything so clearly. That first time I played hoops and my ankle swelled up for no reason.

Then a couple weeks later when I went for a run at night and came home telling Bri something was wrong. I iced it. Poked at the swelling. I racked my brain to remember if I twisted it or stepped wrong… but had nothing. I remember thinking, because I felt so much pressure in my Achilles, that maybe I just slightly tore my Achilles.

My friend Patrick was the Orthopedic surgeon on the air base in Tokyo that we lived on. Patrick is a foot and ankle specialist, so I asked him if I could come in and take X rays and have him examine it. He obliged and got me in that morning. We went to the x-ray room chatting like friends and like nothing crazy was going on, I[ve had a million xrays of my ankle from all my hoops days.

I went to the exam room and waited. He came in the room with the X-rays. I remember the look on his face, a blank stare. The way he held the X-rays at his side, looked at me briefly and then turned and plopped them onto the little whiteboard with lights behind it was sheepish and uncomfortable.

At first it looked like a normal foot, but I could sense the unease in his voice. He grabbed the pen out of his pocket to use as a pointer. When the tip of that pen moved towards a dark splat towards the heel and he made a little circular motion around it and said the word “Tumor” is when it clicked. Like tunnel vision, everything closes in, the darkness from the perimeter gets tighter, your chest compresses, stomachs drops, whatever chemical is flying around your brain is flying like a F-15 in a dog fight.

Then he circled another dark spot. And another. He plainly told me that I have 3 golf ball sized tumors that have invaded my ankle. Worse yet, all of them appeared to be pushing into my joint space. No good. That’s what’s causing the massive swelling. Every time I step my tibia grinds into a tumor .

He says he can only see so much on an XRay and that he needs to get an MRI scheduled at the hospital in downtown Tokyo. The earliest I can get in is 3 weeks and this was about a week before Thanksgiving, 2014.

At this juncture it was impossible to know if these tumors are cancer or not. He informs me that what’s worrisome is that I only noticed the swelling and pain starting in September. To have 3 this size means they probably grew to that size very quickly, but that we should get an MRI and measure them and then wait a couple months to see what happens.

The 3 weeks to the MRI is a long ass time to sit and think about 3 large tumors. To make matters worse, we were scheduled to move back to the US, and a new home in Utah, in between when I could get my first MRI and the second one.

The first MRI confirmed the tumors. What kind, we didn’t know. A soft tissue sarcoma for sure, how aggressive or what type was undetermined.

Then we moved halfway around the globe to a new strange place in Salt Lake City and waited for a couple of Months to get that second MRI. While distracted with moving across the globe and starting over again in a new city, having a 1 year old, buying a house and starting a new role, I found a way to put the potential cancer out of my mind. Although it’s never really out of your mind when every step you take you can feel the tumors.

Every once in a while the creeping doomsday scenario would take hold - the one where maybe I had aggressive cancer that had a decent likelihood that it had spread or had the ability to spread into my bones and rest of my body. There aren’t really words that can describe those moments, your brain scrambles itself pretty fast with overwhelming surges of fear and anger and helplessness.

The 2nd MRI showed that the tumors grew even more. The largest one now nearly 4 cm’s by 6cm’s, towards the back of my heel and pushing back into my Achilles, wrapping itself around and entangling my nerve bundle. Not good news.

Two more weeks.

Biopsy time - the moment of truth. It was time to sample some cells and determine for real what these cells were. This was a delicate procedure to perform because my oncology team was concerned with the prospect of the cells “spilling out” from the tumors and giving them an opportunity to move to other tissues or into my bone marrow, since the the tumors were diffused and in the joint space.

I went to the hospital early in the morning on a Friday. They put my foot in this live imaging rig and blanketed my body in lead blankets. The surgeon had on an entire lead coat and outfit as well. I was trusting this random persons steady hands to be as precise with a giant needle going into my ankle joint as possible, it’s weird how much trust we put in those people in those moments.

One little snip and a verification under a microscope that the cell sample was good and that was it. They would call later that day with the results after the oncology team had a look at it and could verify.

My mom had flown out to stay with us while this was happening and to help out. I don’t remember what happened the rest of the day other than I remember exactly where I was when the call came. My mom accompanied Bri, Otto and myself to Leatherby’s Ice Cream on North Temple Rd, a simple and pretty old school ice cream place. We were sitting at the table in the northeast corner by the window nervously eating ice cream and pretending like everything was normal, but the nervous energy pervaded the table.

My cell phone rang and the caller ID said “Intermountain Hospital,” I stood up from the table and started walking away as I answered the call. Dr. Miles, my oncologist was the one who addressed me.

“Hey Andrew - good news. The tumors are PVNS - they aren’t cancerous or metastatic. They are localized to the ankle tissue. They are large and causing damage though to the joint, we need to take them out asap”.

Phew. What a relief. The emotion wasn’t joy or happiness though, it was much more complicated than that. It was more a release of nervous energy. An unloading.

I think I smiled, gave my family a thumbs up and said something along the lines of “It’s not cancer”.

The surgery was a mess and partly ruined my ankle/foot forever as 80% of my nerve bundle and tendon sheath was removed, but I could walk normally again. My doctors gave me a 50/50 chance that the tumors would return and are the bad version of this condition.

Turns out I had the bad version. The tumors continue to grow and come back. 10 years on and I’m still a “cancer patient”. Those 10 years have been filled with frustration and anger and joy and complications and all sorts of other stuff. Part of that stuff is my now ability to take those little blue and white pills and shrink the tumors.

I’m thinking and writing about this today because tomorrow I start taking those pills again as I cycle back on them. It’s weird to ingest poison into your body willingly twice a day. It comes with all sorts of weird consequences and side affects - one being that my hair and skin turn white/translucent/void of color and pigment.

In about 6 weeks I’ll look like this again ☝️

Whenever I’m reminded of my tumors, like this week, I listen to “It’s Time” a lot. It a great reminder of the emotions and journey I’ve been on. It’s always amazing to me how music and great art can do that - it can permeate your psyche and provide solace in hard moments. It’s a real testament to a great creator, someone like Dan Reynolds and Imagine Dragons, if they can create something that can do this to our minds.

I believe it can only happen when you truly and deeply examine the things emotions and feelings that are happening directly to you. When you can pull that out of yourself and communicate it in and through the art. The success of the art is then in its success to resonate with as many people as possible.

If that’s the measure of success than those Billions of streams of Imagine Dragons songs means they’ve succeeded at an extraordinary level that most creators can never even dream of reaching.

I’m so grateful that I got to see the band live and watch Dan just rip up the stage for a couple hours. But I’m most grateful for that little 30 seconds of context that connected and resonated deeply in my soul.

With love and deep appreciation,

Andrew

I’ve struggled with the idea of failure my whole life, at least since I can remember. One of my earliest memories is of playing in a rec basketball game in 2nd grade, I was 7 years old and it was one of my first organized games ever. My team lost the game. I felt like a loser and a failure and my actions followed. My memory of that moment isn’t a positive one - it’s a horrible one. I broke out in uncontrolled rage.

I remember stomping around Eisenhower Elementary’s gym yelling and crying and throwing an absolute tantrum. I’m pretty sure I physically assaulted my parents as they tried to calm me down. Every parent and kid in the gym saw me, shook their head in disgust and I’m sure got in their car and had a conversation about how it’s not okay to act that way. It was embarrassing… it’s still embarrassing.

I don’t know where I get that from - the hatred for losing and failure. It’s almost always been a stronger driver in my psyche than any sort of joy for doing well or making positive progress. Even more perversely I used to take deep pride in this trait as well. I’d brag to people that I was a deeply competitive person who hated losing more than I liked winning. I heralded it in job interviews and when I’d meet new people playing pick-up hoops or other sports. I find myself asking in this very moment:

Where does it come from? Why do I feel and act that way?

There has to be some anthropomorphic reason - is it just survival? Is it passed down from generations and generations of my ancestors who ingrained that trait into my dna so that I felt it and then used it? I only know my families’ history so far back - my grandparents grew up very poor and with near-zero privilege. One side was farmers in small rural Minnesota and the other on the streets in Milwaukee fighting to survive a deeply abusive alcoholic household.

Maybe their generation needed this trait and I’m just left to deal with it in a different world and environment. I know deep down that I don’t need it anymore. That I’m slowed by it or held back by it. That I should observe when I’m feeling it, explore why I’m feeling it, and then find a way to act on it that helps me rather than hurts me, like it always has.

I’m trying to balance the emotions now and give myself the grace to just accept it in the moment. When I woke up this morning and sat at my coffee bar with my giant notebook and markers I didn’t know this was the direction my morning reflection would take me. I’m glad that it did. It’s something I’ve been needing to reflect on and so maybe this moment was meant to be for that.

Here is where my exploration of those emotions and feelings of failure, in regards to this project, have led me:

• Maybe I needed a break and reset on the project and the universe provided me that, it just happened 60 days in

• I both overcommitted last week and gave other things priority.

• Neither of those things were bad - I had a great week.

• I went to 10 social events, hosted and spoke at an event, had friends/colleagues travel in and stay with our family, and continued my push with my business to make it great and better for our clients. ALL GOOD THINGS

• It made me realize I don’t have good enough systems for the project. The only system I had was to block 45 minutes every afternoon to write, but I often neglected actually focusing in during that time or scheduled things during that time

  

• I need to plan how to write better and create better systems. I’m going to try:

  • Writing in 2 big blocks per week

  • Writing all 7 posts in those 2 blocks and scheduling them to send

  • Creating a planning block of time and being more organized and thoughtful about my topics/subjects

  • Having a system and flow to the writing, keeping it natural but more focused

• Incorporating my typewriter into the project more. I’m reinvigorated after the curated typewriter sale last Wednesday to use mine more and make it a bigger piece - I moved to far away from it and too digital

  

• There needs to be an IRL (In Real Life) piece to this that builds more human to human connection. It’s just too human of a project to not do that

  

• Gratitude shared amongst humans is best - I want to get back the feeling I had when Debbie Millman responded to my letter to her with such love.

• I want to try to reframe what I’m doing from “How I” or “How to” to “How You”. I’m going to do my best to practice this over the next 44 posts

  

• My new goal is to get to 104 total posts. Maybe I’ll do that in exactly 44 days, maybe not. I still think the 100+ goal is important, I’m making it 104 because that’s the equivalent of 2 years worth of posts if I were writing weekly. Writing 104 posts, I surmise, would put me in the top 1% of all substackers in terms of total volume of posts.

Highest Level of Resonance This Week:

The event that I helped organize and spoke at had 80+ people show up and it was awesome. Met some great people, had some great conversations, and it’s inspired me to get out from behind my screen and in person with more people more often

Big Ask of the Week

I want this to be more of a 2-way street between my readers and myself. So I’m going to start asking something of you all every week to try to get that engagement going. Here is my ask this week:

Tell me your story or thoughts about your struggles with the emotions and feeling of failure

Leave a comment

It can be in the comments (public) or in email/DM (private). I will not share the emails/DMs ever unless you say it’s okay to. We can only grow if our perspective widens, so your input would be extremely valuable.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew

Here we are on earth, the 3rd rock from our sun in an otherwise uninspiring galaxy we call the Milky Way. The closest galaxy to us, Canis Major Dwarf, is 25000 light years away from our solar system. To best understand that distance, if you take the size of the Milky Way, the distance to Canis Major is 20X that.

When I was a teenager my Uncle Jeff would explain this to me and my cousins while sitting around a campfire out at our cabin in Western Wisconsin. You could see the Milky Way out there very clearly some nights. That discussion always fascinated me because you could look and see the vastness but that vastness was just a spec of dust in the grand scheme of things.

And yet at the same time there is matter and life on earth that is so small that it also seems incomprehensible. What is big is small. It’s such a wonderful juxtaposition.

I find it very clarifying at times to think about this. I’ve saved this video on my phone that I’ll open up and watch sometimes when I feel a bit of anxiety coming on to help me find that clarity.

The video is a visualization of what it would take to navigate from one end of the universe and find earth.

I’m sure there are people who watch this and it gives them anxiety - I can understand that point of view. It makes our existence seem so absolutely miniscule.

It makes me question our understanding or construct of time and distance. What if that construct is just wrong? What if it’s fundamentally flawed and these insurmountable “distances” don’t exist the way we think they do, both in “time” and “space”?

Maybe it’s not so crazy to think that everything is a single point, as a manner of speaking, and we can get anywhere in and around the universe easily.

I’m grateful for the ability to challenge the incomprehensible. To stretch my mind to conceptualize the vastness as something other than vastness. It matters both more than anything and not at all.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew

There are lots of good feelings that humans can experience - being able to make a referral for a typewriter has to be in the top 1%. Lots of people have “guys” (or “gals”) for things - a great mechanic or tailor, someone who’s always got the hookup on event/show/game tickets, or maybe even a political connection. How many people have a direct connect to a typewriter dealer?

I responded immediately

“I got you”

My oxytocin and dopamine were firing hard. I flipped to a new text and reached out to my dealer.

“Hey I got a friend who wants a typewriter - you got any good ones available right now”

Bad news - “I maybe have one ready, but I’m out of town for 3 weeks, can’t help until then” he replied.

(Inside my brain) Shoot! I can’t come through for my friend! How can I make this work?

My dealer beat me to it though. He suggested we make a redeemable coupon and when he got back home he would fix up 2-3 models and let me know when my friend could come over for a private curated shopping experience.

Such a great idea.

He sent me some copy for the coupon and I typed it up on my typewriter that I bought from him.

It needed a little extra touch, so I packaged it up in my A Letter For packaging and delivered it to my friend.

On Christmas my friend (the one receiving the typewriter coupon) shot me a text professing his excitement. He had wanted a typewriter ever since I showed him mine about 10 months prior.

Then we waited.

As the excitement died down over the next 10 or so days, my expectations internally went through the roof. I wanted the curated shopping experience to be so perfect. I built up all these false narratives and unrealistic scenarios for how it would all go down.

My typewriter dealer sent me a few messages.

The expectations grew larger. I had put myself in this middle-man position too. The way everything played out I became the facilitator of the “event” and it’s never been my strong suit to play that role (I’m much better at just showing up and having a great time). I started relaying the progress and trying to coordinate the date and time.

Way over my head and stumbling through this role we finally nailed down a time to meet. Until we didn’t. The day before the plans fell apart for no fault or reason of really anyone, but I got frustrated.

My wife reminded me that I can’t get worked up about things not in my control, after all, that’s what my stoic philosophers were teaching me lately. Great advice, I just needed to action it.

I also needed to tamp down my expectations, ground them in reality, and just let things be. Eventually my friend sent a note.

“hey let’s make this thing happen I’m getting itchy to get my typewriter - I’ve got some creative stuff I’m holding on to that I need to type out”

With some pointed energy and flexibility, the opportunity arose and all parties jumped on it.

That day was today.

A typewriter was chosen. An old machine became new again and handed over to a trusted source. New life to creative work was born. Man and machine became connected. What a beautiful thing.

The crazy part was my expectations were far exceeded. The typewriter dealer came through big time - these machines he fixed up were gorgeous. Absolute works of art. All mid-1900’s machines from Germany and all unique in style and form.

He gave this incredible run down of each machine and why he chose it, their pros and cons and little unique pieces to them. He set the table perfectly until the machines were ready to try.

My friend could barely contain himself by the time he got to hit the keys. He learned quickly that you can’t just press those keys like a computer, it takes some panache and exuberance to hit them and make a clean mark. We gave him a little coaching, he figured it out quick, and then he got to messing with all the machines.

As most typewriter folks know, the machine chooses you. My friend’s initial instinct for which one he liked, based on purely aesthetic style and form, was not the machine that chose him. It was the Remington Mark II, with its rubber-coated and flatter key board and Torpedo mechanicals that grabbed him tight and didn’t let him go.

You see, when you try a typewriter you sort of just know. It feels right. It responds to your touch a certain way and the connection is made. It’s a magical moment.

It was such a delight to watch someone else experience it too. We all were just giddy with excitement and full of joy.

The best part is it’s just the beginning. The timeline just started and the new communion between man and machine has several decades of work and creativity ahead of it.

If that’s not something to be grateful for - then I don’t know what is.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew

PS - there are still two typewriters available in absolutely mint and working condition (the 2 Olympia De Luxe’s pictured in the gallery). If you’re interested reach out. I’d love to facilitate more of these finding their way into new homes.

One of my calls today, with my friend and someone I’m helping build a business with, Raechel Lambert, touched on this exact problem. That computers and smartphones have created these vortexes of attention that can be impossible to get away from. This has been exacerbated by COVID and the work from home movement. Technology the last 15 or so years has been optimized to keep our attention on the screens. We’ve embraced a digital culture where everything can be done on a screen. I don’t think that’s a good way to live and optimize humans’ experience on this earth though.

In fact, we are putting on a little event on Friday morning as part of Utah Tech Week to talk about that exact subject. Rae and I will be joined on stage with 2 other expert community builders in Clint Betts (CEO of Silicon Slopes and CEO.com) and Kyle Spencer (COO of Utah Tech Week).

Sign Up Here for our Community Builder Breakfast Event

Thoughts / Ideas / Reflections

I’m actually starting to feel like my writing is improving. The realization has come in the moment while crafting my posts. It’s become more about crafting stories instead of just a stream of consciousness coming from my fingers. This is where the real craft comes into play and something I’m getting excited about. It’s FUN to play with words and phrasing and framing up HOW the story will be told.

Storytelling is such a fine art. There is so much depth and rigor that can go into it. When my 100 straight days of writing my posts ends my goals will shift to honing this art. On the days I don’t write I’ll focus on learning and crafting. Which means the posts will get exponentially better. I’m excited to get to that moment - just gotta stay focused and reach my next milestone.

Open to any suggested places to get learning material on crafting stories / storytelling if you all have recommendation??? Just reply to the email!

Stats

Percentage to goal: 58% of the way to my 100 day straight goal

ALF crossed the 50 subscriber threshold, which means nothing, but feels like a nice number and feat to celebrate. My friend Nadene Cherry says I should celebrate more small wins, so I’ll oblige.

Had a consistently good week in terms of total views, averaging 84 or so a day over the last 7 days. My next goal is to get to 100 avg views a day - then 1000 a day.

I continue to average 52+% open rate on emails, which I think is a good signal that people are reading and liking my posts. Bless 🙏

Biggest Learning

Somehow we’ve let our public equities markets become mostly non-public. What you’re looking at is a graph of total trading volume of US equity markets and the tread of what percentage of that trading volume is transacted on a “Lit” exchange. A Lit exchange is is a trading venue where all bids and offers for stocks are publicly displayed and visible to all market participants in real-time. The key characteristic of lit exchanges is their transparency - anyone can see the current best bid, best ask, and the depth of the order book, which enables open price discovery.

Contrary to a “lit” exchange is a “dark” exchange or dark pool. A dark pool is a private trading venue where financial instruments are traded without publicly displaying pre-trade pricing or order information. These venues primarily serve institutional investors who need to execute large trades without impacting market prices.

The whole point of public markets is that participants have the same transparent view of the market with no entity having a knowledge advantage and the order book and price discovery driving the prices. We should be appalled that this trend is continuing because it’s a disservice and large disadvantage to retail investors if only large institutions have access to dark pools/exchanges (and btw they have access to order flow as well) because then those institutions will front run retail investors and dump large trades before anyone else knows. VERY CONCERNING.

Biggest Win

I taught my son how to really use AI this weekend as we executed his science project. He did a bang up job (despite lots of teeth pulling to get him to focus for long enough to complete the tasks at hand) by utilizing ChatGPT voice mode to do his research. His curiosity took over and he used the AI very conversationally to extract a ton of info. He tooks notes by hand as he chatted with it and then we used those notes by feeding them back to ChatGPT and asking it to digitize them and compile them for the project. Brilliant.

I’m believing more and more in AI for learning - I think my son learned more about science and faster by using this method. Wild what the future holds for our kids with this level of interactive intelligence available.

Highest Level of Resonance This Week:

Nuff said! Create “How You” content, be authentic, and give your uniquely human POV and you will win.

With love and deep appreciation,

Andrew

He wrote a great LinkedIn post about this concept as well and I have to say… I love it! It’s turned out to be prophetic as well - I’ve run into so many great people tonight. Some expected and some unexpected.

I’ve caught up with people I have talked to in a while, seen clients, and met a bunch of new interesting people. I love meeting interesting people, hearing their stories, and picking their brains (if they’ll allow).

By far the highlight of my night was meeting the founder of one of my all-time favorite brands and products. Almost every day after work or as an appetizer to dinner I crack open a bag of tortilla chips and grab some salsa for the fridge and snack. I’ve convinced myself and tell people I don’t have an addictive personality, but for coffee and chips and salsa I don’t think that’s true.

There is one brand of salsa I’ve been buying and eating regularly since I moved to Utah in 2015.

Salsa Queen

My lifetime value to them as a customer is probably over $2000 ($4.50/week x 52 weeks x 9 years). I’ve been buying their Green Roasted Tomatillo salsa since 2015 and sprinkle in a few of their other varieties as well (the creamy jalepeno and the pico are excellent as well).

This is me and the Salsa Queen. In fact, I learned that it’s now her legal name! She talked to me about how she’s a creative at heart, she just likes coming up with new recipes and trying things. Her favorite thing right now is just mixing two of her salsas together.

I learned so much more about her and her journey too. When she started the company she had only $3000 left in her bank account as a single mother raising kids in 2009. She made the original recipes in her kitchen and then built a brand and hustled her way into local retail grocers.

She built their own production facility when they got big enough right here in Salt Lake City. She’s spent 15 years building a business and gotten it to the point where she’s going national into major grocers. They think they can add another shift and double their revenue in 2025 after a sharp increase in order volume at the end of 2024.

Does it get any better than that? No.

I also collided with a shoe wear brand, called Kuru, and met the founder Bret, who invented actual new technology to go inside a shoe and support your heel. It’s a brilliantly simple solution, a polymer piece that’s molded into the heel and mid foot of the shoe that flexes and adapts to your foot shape as it experiences load. Fucking brilliant. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most elegant and effective.

He’s also been building the company for 10+ years (I forget the exact timeline). The commitment and longevity to seeing and it through is just the most impressive thing ever.

I’ll live these people anonymous for now - but I also ran into 2 whole people that subscribe to this project and read it regularly and they told me how much they like reading it. Ok, I guess that could be better. That’s the actual best.

I’m still in this mindset that just nobody real reads this, that when I post a letter it just goes off into the ether of the interwebs. I need to change that. The happy collisions tonight have taught me that for certain.

Hopefully I still have a few more great collisions to make tonight and throughout the week. I’m sure I will and I couldn’t be more grateful for it.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew

What is Utah Tech Week you might ask? It’s a community driven, grass roots powered week of events that celebrates, connects, and educates the people on the tech business ecosystem here in Utah. This is only the third year that it’s taken place and it’s grown in that short of time into quite the spectacle. With funding now from the state and nearly all the Venture Capital firms in the state - the events throughout the week will be even more elevated.

Last year after attending several UTW events and all the festivities had ended the founders of UTW held an open forum for the community to come and give them feedback. I went to the forum and couldn’t believe how transparent and open to feedback they were. Those main organizers, Trent Mano and Scott Paul from Convoi Ventures and their right hand man/event super organizer Kyle Spencer, truly have a lens of making the week as great and empowering for their industry as possible.

That lens has made the week such a powerful force for every person and business in the tech ecosystem. From start-ups and first time founders to established tech powerhouses and government officials. I think that’s a pretty magical thing.

At the end of the open forum last year I asked Trent and Kyle if I could help with UTW next year and offered both my time and a connection to a start-up venture I am involved with, called River. They obliged and we’ve spent the last 6+ months ramping into this week. They took almost all of the public/community feedback from that forum to guide how they approached it this year. They feel a real obligation towards respecting what the community wants to see from UTW and to keep it as community/grass roots oriented as possible.

In fact they’ve always held to the promise that anyone can submit an event to be on the calendar that wants to. I love that.

Most people that know me wouldn’t describe me as a community organizer in any way. It’s not my strong suit, so this endeavor to help UTW has been outside my comfort zone but so rewarding. More than anything I’m learning from great people what it’s like to take on organizing something this big. Such a blessing to be able to absorb how they do it.

That’s really what this post is about today, how grateful and thankful I am to those people. To Trent and Kyle especially for their trust and focus and collaboration. But also to Raechel and Ryan (the founders of River) and their team for stepping up big time and building in-flight the platform to keep pace with such a dynamic and fluid event. I’m truly humbled by what they’ve been able to do and accomplish.

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew

P.S. I’m hosting and speaking at an event on Friday morning about Community Building with Raechel and Kyle and Clint Betts (CEO of Silicon Slopes) and would love for anyone reading this to come if they live in Utah.