It’s rare I read an essay that puts me on pause. But it happens. Amidst the rubble of Elon Musk fanboy pieces and lessons learned from the centurion set, there are storytellers who go deep. They draw cross-cultural references and care less about clickbait titles and tidy 5-minute reads to deliver something meaningful and real.

An essay where you felt you learned beyond its borders. An essay that had you clicking all the names and going down rabbit holes of delicious, wanton knowledge. I don’t skim, I immerse. Writer, I will follow you into the dark.

Enter David Perell’s “Expression is Compression,” (via Benek Lisefski, whom everyone should be reading because he writes and shares the best stuff) which made me think about the power, impact, and weight of the words I use and how I use them. …

Garbage rises to the surface because there’s no weight or depth to any of it. 7 Habits of Successful Manatees, Elon Musk For Fanboys Volume I, Learn How To Make $10,000 a Month Writing — No Writing Experience Required. Everyone whines about the money they never make as if they’re entitled to it: the money, the readers, the virality — a term I assumed would be retired after coronavirus, but no such luck.

Do you even know what the word virus means? This is something you actually want for your writing? To spread like sickness?

I am so very alone.

Having experience, being an expert in your field — these are now the dirtiest of words. Better to learn without doing. Better to rip off Seth Godin articles. Better still, any article written by a man. Let’s dig Steve out of his grave and trot him out for the curtain call. Why not? The internet teaches you everything. Watch a few videos, read a few articles, and boom you’re a teacher. Bearded one, grey-haired one, you’re so wise. Oh, wait. …

How We Work

Jenna Britton is one of the brightest lights. We worked at the same company and although we’d never met during that time (she was on the west coast and I was in New York), we’d come to have our first coffee when I moved to Los Angeles in 2015. Jenna’s energy is infectious — she envelops you in warmth and kindness in a way I’ve rarely encountered. Whenever I first meet someone I like, I worry about first impressions. Was I too weird, too chatty, too severe and alienating? …

Am I the only one who doesn’t want to write or read about politics and the abattoir that is the plight of humanity? Trust me, I get it. We are royally fucked. I can barely leave my home because California is one of the few states experiencing record-number losses from the virus. White terrorists stormed our Capitol and the online unhinged are trying to explain it away, or blame someone else, or say it never happened when another event will probably occur before the inauguration. I imagine overseas terrorists have lost interest in the U.S. because we’ve become our ruin. We’re doing the dirty work for them. …

I used to care about what people thought of me, my work, everything. For the great portion of my life I was a chameleon whose body, opinions, and words changed based on who surrounded me. I didn’t want to take up space, kick up a fuss. Even when I disagreed with what they had to say. Even when they were mean, petty, duplicitous and cruel — I just smiled and said nothing because fuss. Even though I wanted to open my mouth and shout, BUT! BUT! BUT!

But only moth balls spilled out.

Sometimes, it takes the most ferocious of storms to clean the shores. To strip them of all the garbage and the kind of harm that cuts deep. For me, that storm was moving to Los Angeles and leaving my seemingly terrific-life-on-paper behind. Distance creates space and space creates clarity and clarity forces you to see — and once you see, you cannot unsee. …

People really want to tell me things. You know what you should do? You know what your problem is? Here’s my take…If I were you…It’s as if their desire to dump their litter on my lap is greater than my desire to hear or read it. They rarely get it right because they’re envisioning a whole rather than realizing they have only a sliver, a small part of a life. In absence of a complete picture, they fill in the blanks. They apply color, create depth and shadow — a visual they can hold on to so they can write their prescriptions. …

How We Work

2020 threatened to ruin the best of us. Our best laid plans were shot. The adventures we imagined and trips we wanted to take were cancelled indefinitely. Many of us lost our jobs or reliable sources of income, and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the past few years is the ability to get crafty when it comes to making an income.

I’ve written at length about how to turn your smarts into diversified services and digital products, and my friend and peer Crosby Noricks is the epitome of that vibe. I know her back from my agency days in New York, and her consistent reinvention and pivoting awe me. …

They believed sickness couldn’t touch them. They shimmied into the pool with their swimsuits, goggles, and inflatable donuts and made a mess of it. Sporting visors and sunglasses, they slathered on sunscreen fragrant with coconut and passion fruit. Mask-less, juice boxes in tow, they pretended to be on a resort holiday in Fiji or Maldives where the water is an impossible blue and the sand is hot, clean, and bone-white. But the reality was we were in the middle of the desert and our ocean was a tiny, chlorinated pool surrounded by manufactured greenery.

A few months after the pandemic was the earthquake we expected but never say coming, I marveled at the family of ducks making a home in the water. How they squawked and clacked and splashed, and now it feels wrong to violate their reverie. Ours is an intrusive race. Given time, there are no spaces humans won’t colonize and occupy. …