I’m now almost done with my second week of the new gig. But I was supposed to start on March 30. My first day was April 27. I did everything right. Had it all lined up. Was ready to start the next chapter. I left my job of nearly eight years. Went out on a limb. Took a leap of faith. Then, I waited. And waited.

Here’s what happened and how I got through an unexpected sabbatical.

Somehow, it took my new company’s vendor more than seven weeks to complete my background check. As my start date approached and still no word, my anxiety kept spiking. My start date was pushed week after week. Left with no income, no insurance, and most importantly, no control.

Stuck in a state of limbo, my mind went off in a million different directions. Did I make a terrible mistake? Why is this happening to me? Should I have just stayed where I was?

I planned to take one week off in between jobs. I went five weeks without working. Unsure of when we would have insurance again, when my next paycheck would be. Forced into a state of inactivity and insecurity, I had to figure out how to keep my head above water.

I did not handle it well. I found myself checking email constantly. Refreshing it every few minutes sometimes. Unconsciously opening my phone and checking it several times an hour. I did it so many times every day. I tried to stop myself but I just couldn’t. It took me until the last week for me to finally show some self restraint.

This psychological toll spread from my mind to my marriage. The desperation and helplessness led to tension at home. It’s not just me anymore. My wife and son are on my insurance now. And we we were now going without insurance for who knows how long. My role as a provider was put into question. I’m not the sole breadwinner by any means. My wife does very well with her new business. But I pride myself on providing for my family, getting us good insurance, and bringing in a stable income. Now, all of that was gone. This purgatory paralyzed us in a constant state of fight or flight.

The worst case scenarios were considered. What if I didn’t get the job? What if that one thing comes up in my background check and they withdraw my offer? My job at my old company was just filled. The backup of going back to my old job was no longer an option. What if something terrible happens to our son and we have to pay out of pocket?

I had an urge to lash out at HR. It took everything in me to keep my cool until the job became real. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what the hell was taking so long. My hiring manager was similarly upset and embarrassed about how it all shook out. I wanted to force an outcome but there was really nothing I could do. Despite the shitty situation, I kept it together for the most part, despite the tension with my wife. We had our arguments. She was rightfully pissed and wanted me to do something about it.

We had been through some tests during our short marriage so far. They might not have made sense at the time, but I truly believe everything happens for a reason. Housing setbacks. Loss. Fertility struggles. The chaos of becoming parents. My wife started her business in early 2025, now, a year later, I was going through a career transition.

I didn’t want to just wait and wallow around. I couldn’t just sit and refresh my email all day. I had to decide what to do with the time that was unexpectedly given to me. Here’s what I did instead.

I made the most of it.

We cleared out 15,000 pounds of lava rock and dirt from our backyard, giving me the opportunity to get after it during my time off. In the extra four weeks off, I was able to finish much of the backyard that had been unfinished for so long. I built a border around the grass area, prepped and cleared the ground for grass seed, dug and installed a sprinkler system, and planted seeds. The grass is now established and I just mowed it for the first time. I also built an extensive paver walkway with rock pebbles in between our other grass area and the hot tub and our fire pit area, then another smaller paver walkway along an area we call The Jungle Cat Club, our hangout area with a hammock where we installed new turf. Nothing better than the feeling of a job well done. Building something with your hands. But there’s still more to finish.

I also stayed active. Though I wasn’t up at 4:30am every morning and in the gym by 6am, I worked out three times a week. Got a lot of steps in, especially with all the backyard work.

I read a lot. A few books finished. I didn’t write much on Substack. But I did focus on finishing up the latest round of edits on my book, Rewired. I now have a full final punch list to get the manuscript to the last step of polishing before moving on to publication later this year.

One book I read was The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd. It’s about leaving the default career path to find a life filled with more meaning beyond the grind of a traditional 9-5 job. One thing he recommended was to take four weeks off from work, a mini-sabbatical, and seeing how you feel. Though I did not plan to do that, that is exactly what ended up happening.

It might have been exactly what I needed. Didn’t feel like it at the time. But now, removed from the chaos of that neverending limbo, I realized how I found contentment in that uncertainty, channeling energy into appropriate areas, not lamenting over my circumstances, but controlling how I showed up each day ready to do whatever I could to stay sane and stay balanced.

Over the course of those weeks, I accepted the delay. Even though I hated the feeling, I stopped trying to force it. I stopped trying to pray for it to reach its resolve. I started focusing on what was in front of me. I kept my feet moving forward and controlled what I could.

I found myself even more grateful to be working again. Counting my blessings that I have a job and new career track I’m moving full spead ahead down. It was a strange saga that I will never forget.

I was not always the best version of myself. We got through it together. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t what we had in mind. But I am happy with what I did with my time off.

Finally, the day came. An automated email from the background check vendor. I was cleared. I checked with HR. Confirmed my start date was on Monday. It was all over. I was able to negotiate a 10% signing bonus which helped. We are still without insurance until June 1, but the benefits are better and less expensive, so it’s not all bad.

I’m not celebrating. I’m not mad at my new employer. I’m ready to get to work and put this whole mini-sabbatical behind me.

It worked out. Not the way I planned it, but everything turns out the way it should. I found my patience but I fell into despair and despondence more than once. Life doesn’t always reward you in the way you think it should. Things don’t always happen right away. Sometimes, it drags on and takes time.

I was handed another test. Not sure I passed, but I stood my ground despite the lack of forward motion. I’m moving forward even though we were held back for a bit.

I did not find enlightenment. I found steadiness.

I was stoked to see him back doing his thing. I looked into his backstory as I couldn’t quite recall what happened. Since the 2012 release of that song and this 2026 performance, Justin Bieber has come a long way.

From teen idol and pop star icon in the early 2010s, the wheels started to come off around 2012 to 2014. There were arrests, erratic behavior, and incidents that made you think he would be yet another child star to fall from grace. He dealt with substance abuse, isolation, and the pressure of growing up in the spotlight.

Bieber first stepped back from touring in 2017 and then cancelled his Justice Tour early in 2022. He has since opened up about his depression, Lyme disease in early 2020, and Ramsay Hunt syndrome in mid-2022 (which left half his face paralyzed). Compounding it all, he also sold the rights to his music in 2023.

Things started to stabilize over time. His relationship with Hailey Bieber appears to be the constant he needed. They married in 2018 and in 2024 welcomed their first child. Mrs. Bieber posted on Instagram regarding her husband’s performance at Coachella, saying, “nobody will ever know even an ounce of what it’s taken to get here. so grateful for this beautiful life.”

Everyone loves a comeback.

His Coachella performance on April 11 was his first major concert since cancelling that last tour four years ago. He’s not calling it a comeback, more of a rebirth, a chance to redefine himself and become the man he was always meant to be.

Bieber’s story reminded me of my own.

On New Year’s Eve 2011, I had it all. A girlfriend. A degree coming in May from the prestigious Loyola Marymount University. My whole life ahead of me. So what did I do? I drove home drunk from a friends’s house, got my first DUI, and spent the night in jail. One stupid decision at a pivotal point in my life, spending the first day of 2012 in jail, less than five months before graduation, set me down a dark path.

I limped my way to graduation day and barely got on that stage to get that important piece of paper in my hand on Cinco de Mayo. I moved home to Sacramento, lived with my parents, stayed sober, worked a data entry job, and took care of my legal requirements.

I got my car back in early 2013 and decided to move up to Seattle to live near my girlfriend who for some reason still wanted to be with me. I didn’t really think it through much. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I was desperate to not be alone so I stuck with the one person I had loved up to that point and hoped I wouldn’t fuck it up again.

For those of you who don’t know, I did indeed fuck it up. After the breakup in early 2015, I was alone and depressed. I didn’t know where to turn. I started drinking again and smoked a lot of weed. I fell into a deep pit of isolation. I got wrapped up in politics and lost friends over a goddamn election.

Seattle was a fun place to spend my half of my 20s. I enjoyed playing rugby and going out with friends. But my relationships were hollow. I had pivoted away from the law school track and found a decent career in commercial real estate research. But I was not going all out in my role.

I left Seattle in September 2017 and moved back to Sacramento to live with my parents at the age of 27. I kept drinking. I kept throwing away every opportunity I had to be a better person. I lost my job and lost my sense of self. I almost went out on my own, which would have ended in a very bad place, but instead, was convinced to check into rehab and reinvent myself.

It took me falling further and further until I reached such a dark bottom I couldn’t even see any light at the top.

The eight plus years of sobriety since then have been a quiet rebuild. I’ve maintained my momentum and built a career I’m proud of, making a pivotal step to take it to the next level. I’ve married a woman who brings out the best in me. We’re building our lives together and I am so lucky to have her by my side. We own a house that we continue to make our own. I’m getting the last chunk of our backyard done this month. It’s backbreaking but like all hard things in life, it’s worth it. And most importantly, we have our beautiful son. The reason for all of it. He’s made our lives whole. He just turned two and we are grateful for the journey it’s been to bring him into this world. Every day with him is a gift.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. We’ve had our ups and downs as husband and wife. We’ve experienced tragedy and hardship. We’ve dealt with loss and obstacles and uncertainty. At this point last year, I was recovering from weeks of panic attacks and constant anxiety. And in the last few weeks, I left my job and made a strategic professional pivot into a new role in a different industry but related field (which I will share my about later). But that’s life. That’s what it’s all about. There’s no easy way to do it. There’s so much outside of your control. There’s real risk in making a change, but also plenty of risk if you stay exactly where you are. Though I’ve done much of it the hard way, it’s all easier now. Going through what I’ve been through, getting to where I am today, has made me a better person. I wish I would have been less reckless and better to my body, but I do not regret the path I’ve taken to get here. Every step I’ve taken, every mistake I’ve made, has gotten me to this very spot. Sitting on my couch writing this article.

This past year I’ve doubled down on waking up early. Owning my mornings does not solve everything, but it keeps me grounded and prepared for the day, before the chaos comes bearing down. I’ve recommitted to working out and walking more. Though I went too hard last summer and dealt with shoulder and knee issues, I’ve largely recovered from those. The long and grueling road back reminded me to stay steady. Be intense, but in control. I’ve gone back to meditation and have embraced both Buddhism and Stoicism. Reading both the ancients and the contemporaries in an effort to live a better life aligned with my values.

Rebuilding your life happens in these small moments. Not all on stage. Not in the spotlight. In the early morning hours, the late nights, the long weekends. It took a lot of effort to find myself again. It took some time for me to forgive myself. It took courage to allow love back into my life. All in all, it’s been an adventure.

So just like Justin Bieber, I’m getting back on track. Approaching life with newfound gratitude and real intention. Finding out who I really am. Realizing what’s really important and comprehending how lucky I am to still be here. Still standing. Still setting a course, with my crew by my side, sailing away to our ultimate destination.

March is the month of change. And for me, there’s plenty of change coming.

My son was born two years ago this month. Change is a constant for us now. Change is all I know. Just when I start to feel in the groove and I’ve got my footing, another shift knocks me off. It’s hard to convey the full range of emotions, responsibilities, and rewards that come with being a dad. But I won’t be going into all that today. The following will be about work that no longer fills you. How when you know you need to make a change, you know.

I’ve feared change most of my life. Resorting to feeling cozy in my little zone of comfort instead of taking a leap into the great unknown. Would always find a way to put off the hard uncomfortable thing and keep taking the easy predictable route. But in this latest chapter, I’ve discovered how to do what’s hard to live a life that’s worth striving for.

I’ve been doing the same thing for 11 years now. At the same company nearly 8. It’s been rewarding, fulfilling, and full of growth and development. It’s also the end of the road for me.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave my two week’s notice. Before speaking to my managing director, who is the whole reason I got my life and career back, I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest. The conversation played out better in my head. I’m pretty sure I repeated myself, rushed through what I wanted to say, but I made sure to get the message of gratitude across. He was happy for but sad to see me go. Frustrated over just two weeks. Had a bad feeling this was coming. I held firm. I didn’t crumble. Got emotional certainly, but held it together.

I’ve been a commercial real estate researcher since January 2015. After Friday, I will be taking a week off before pivoting into a new role in a new but related industry. The career path has played out. I’ve come a long way. Doubled my salary. Several promotions. Heightened my profile. Built my reputation. But I can already touch the ceiling. There’s very little room left to grow here. I needed to find another path.

The work was also draining me. I wasn’t burned out but I pretty well checked out. The job just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. The work felt strained. Felt like a job. No longer a career. I’d had this feeling for months now. Ever since the season of panic attacks in early 2025, I’ve known for sure that I needed to move on. That season of life where my chest tightened every day I went into the office was the biggest wake up call for me. I needed to move on to something different. Something challenging. Something to get me out of this morass of stagnation. It might not be better. I might hate it. But at least I’m doing something to get out of the rut I’m in. This will be good for me, personally and professionally, no matter what happens.

Leaving is hard. Change is scary. But when you know it’s time, you know. The people I’ve worked with, the connections I’ve made make it hard. I will always cherish the time I spent here. Moving on from something I’m really good at, something I’m known for, something I have a reputation for locally, regionally, even nationally is daunting. These last couple of weeks I’ve wondered if I made the right decision. If I’m doing the right thing. All these feelings are natural. All change creates thoughts and feelings that are tough to grapple with.

There’s no knowing if you’ve made the right decision until after you’ve made it.

On the 30th, I will be moving into the healthcare industry. Still working in real estate, but closer to it. I’ll be on the real estate strategy team for one of the largest health systems in the country, managing the California portfolio. Working with market leaders, healthcare providers, and real estate teams to optimize medical offices and outpatient facilities so that it is best meeting the needs of the patients while being financially feasible for the company. Finding opportunities for expansion or consolidation in the market. Helping doctors and providers grow if need be, or understand utilization to better see how they’re using their space.

The new gig will be a much less analytical and research-focused role, and will be heavy into client-facing relationship building work. It will get me out of my heads-down research analysis report writing presentation preparing work and into more face-to-face light analysis to make recommendations kind of a job. There will be some data and number crunching but it will be a smaller part of the job. Honestly, I’m still not 100% sure on what the day-to-day will look like but I will be coming into it with an eye toward embracing that uncertainty with excitement and curiosity instead of dreading the fact that I don’t know everything yet.

I’m eager to start something new. Been going through the motions a lot lately. Ready to dive into a new role where I can prove myself again. Build on my reputation with a new team and show my new manager that he made a great decision bringing me on. I haven’t felt this way in a while. This fire burning in me will push me through this new chapter and set me up for long-term success. “It’s a dangerous business, going out your door,” Bilbo says in The Lord of the Rings. “You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.” I’m ready to find out where this new road will take me.

I had to keep fending off that desire to stay put. I had to get out of my head and get out of my own way. I thought long and hard about this decision but it was an easy one to make. I knew I was meant for more. I knew I needed to do something different. I knew it was time to pivot, shift, and reorient my career.

I’ll be working remotely, though they do have an office nearby that few people go into. So that will be a change. My wife works from home too. I might need to get out of the house a couple days a week. Been working out of an office four days a week since late 2020. Working with new people makes me nervous, but there will thankfully be a couple of familiar faces.

When you know it’s time to move on, you know. When you dread going into the office. When you sigh when a new project hits your inbox. When you keep doing the same thing over and over again, getting nothing out of it. When you feel trapped but too comfortable to do anything about it.

I thought I would be at this company for a while. And I was here a good amount of time. I served my time and accomplished great things. There comes a time when you no longer feel challenged, do not see a path of growth, and know you have to make a change.

After a failed long shot at a dream job in Southern California that would have been great for me but super disruptive to my family, the universe spoke to me about a new thing closer to home.

I used to work with my new manager at the company I am at now. And he lives very close to me. In the span of a couple months, I ran into him randomly. Once at the grocery store, then at the park. I hadn’t seen him out in public like that in the five years I’ve lived in that neighborhood, even though he’s lived nearby nearly all that time. A few weeks after I saw him, I noticed the position posted and found out he was the hiring manager.

No such thing as coincidences.

I got coffee with him shortly thereafter. Was intrigued enough by the role to apply. There were delays that tested my patience, but eventually, I got the job.

We will see how it all plays out. I’m leaving a job where I am considered an expert. One of the best. Though I’m leaving that all behind, it’s not all wasted. I’m starting something new that will likely build on that.

Taking a chance on yourself and making a move to keep growing is scary. But staying stuck and stagnant is even scarier. I don’t know where this next path will lead me, however, the excitement of something new is building a fire inside me for this new chapter ahead. And I know there is a much longer runway to keep growing with this company.

I no longer fear change. I embrace it. I get after it. I get out of my own way and go where I know I need to go, especially when where I am is easier and safer.

March is the month where everything changes.

It was another wet and rainy day in Seattle. I was 27 years old, sitting on the couch, watching TV and drinking alone on a Friday night. These were the nights I looked forward to after working a job that kept me out of trouble during the week.

I had teammates I’d play rugby with. Surface level colleagues at work. Roommates who were nice. But weekends were usually like these. Drunk and high. By myself.

One morning, I thought, ‘should I just quit my job and disappear off the face of the earth?’

I wasn’t depressed in any clinical way. I was adrift. Coping with a break up that broke me. Trying to figure out who the hell I was and what I was doing with my life.

Millions of men are similarly without direction. Living some version of this same story that was my life less than a decade ago. That same lack of purpose, lack of drive, lack of hope, lack of connectedness. It’s a symptom of a larger cultural malaise hollowing out an entire generation of men.

I got through it and am on the other side. It wasn’t easy, it definitely got worse before it got better, but I know it’s possible. I’ve come to understand—through recovery, through fatherhood, through years of reigniting that spark and rebuilding new and old relationships—that my downfall wasn’t necessarily about work, or alcohol, or ambition. It was about meaning. About not having a real answer to: what am I here to do and who am I trying to become? When a man can’t answer that, he folds. He doesn’t stand tall, shrug his shoulders, and push onward. He falters. Retreats. Disappears.

America is full of men who have fallen off the face of the earth.

Men Without Work

I was able to hold on to my job through most of my darkest days. Something that laid the foundation for where I am today. I almost lost it all. I had to hit rock bottom, start the road back in rehab, and rebuild my life one day at a time. It started with a personal transformation but was sustained with what I did professionally.

Ten years ago, roughly 7 million working-age men—ages 25 to 54—were neither working, looking for work, nor in any school or training program. That’s one in eight men in the prime of their lives deciding to completely drop out. Not unemployed. Not in between jobs. Just completely checked out of society and not in the labor force.

This is a problem that was gradually building well before the Great Recession of 2008 and was already accelerating by the COVID craze of 2020. From 1960 to 2000, the number of U.S.-born men aged 25 to 54 increased an average of 37% every decade (+760k per year), from 1.2 million in 1960 to 4.2 million by 2000. It then spiked another 35% from 2000 to 2019, hitting 5.8 million by 2019. It has since then settled around the 5.7 million mark.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, detailed this in his book Men Without Work. First released in 2016, he discovered that for every man who shows up in the official unemployment numbers, there were roughly three more who were completely out of the labor force. The headline unemployment rate (U-3)—has hovered around 4.3% to 4.5% the last few months, but it doesn’t see these men at all. They are statistical ghosts. The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes “all people marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons…plus all people marginally attached to the labor force” provides a better picture of the labor market. The U-6 rate has been 8.0% to 8.7% since November 2025. But even this number does not completely account for the far too many who have given up.

“This is not about joblessness—it’s a retreat from adulthood, responsibility, and purpose,” Eberstadt wrote. They are refusing to leave the nest. Resorting to what is easy instead of choosing what is hard. It’s not all their fault. It’s a society-wide issue. It starts with parenting and continues with education. It’s not that they want work but can’t find it. They could work but aren’t. So what are they doing all day? There’s something deeper going on.

COVID turbocharged all of this, of course. Shutdowns combined with unprecedented unemployment benefits, stimulus payments, eviction moratoriums, and government expenditures basically paid men not to work. By 2022, over 11 million jobs were going unfilled while men sat on the sidelines.

It starts in high school and college. I started refereeing soccer games in eighth grade for cold hard cash. Then I was a lifeguard, summer camp counselor, and firework stand builder throughout summers in high school and college. But teenage boys and young men work much less these days. The 16 to 24 male labor force participation dropped from 61.6% in 2003 to 56.2% in 2023. The 20 to 24 male unemployment rate peaked at 9.9% in August 2025. Though this came down to 7.2% in January 2026, it has averaged 9.0% over the last 12 months.

I’m not saying everyone needs to be working in high school and college like I was every summer. Some students prioritize studying or athletics or social life. And that’s probably harmless, until graduation anyway. We should be on track to find our footing professionally by our early 20s. Then onto a career path or something to work toward by 25. Adulthood is being punted down the field… a trend that is not slowing, but accelerating.

To make things even crueler, AI is eliminating the first-rung of the career ladder. Entry-level jobs are already going away. Entry-level job postings have declined about 35% since January 2023, according to Revelio Labs. AI is not replacing jobs (yet), but it is depressing the number of white-collar job openings for workers with the least amount of experience. The grunt work, the boring, tedious drudgery. The work I cut my teeth on in the five years after I graduated (as a legal assistant, paralegal, then research analyst), is already shifting to the robots. If we over-automate, we shouldn’t be surprised that an entire segment of society is devoid of purpose and lacking meaning.

A college degree is becoming disconnected from professional success. As of mid-2025, male college graduates (ages 22-27) had roughly the same unemployment rate as the same aged men without a degree—about 7%. An entire generation has taken on debt in exchange for an opportunity that no longer exists.

These men out of work are not disabled, they’re without hope. They’re unable to get up and get after it. To contribute something, anything, to society. Time use data shows these men not in the labor force spend nearly 8 hours a day on socializing, relaxing, and leisure—with most of that watching TV, playing video games, or scrolling social media. There is plenty of work if you look to non-white collar occupations like construction or manufacturing. These men are either too good for that or too lazy to do anything.

Women are a completely different story. Though not without their own distinct problems, they are at least working. Women have entered the workforce in droves since the 1960s. Conversely from men, U.S.-born women, aged 25 to 54, have seen a 13% average decline (-2.0M per year) in the number of people out of the labor force from 1960 to 2000. It fell from 18.8 million in 1960 to 10 million in 2019.

The lack of men in the labor force and the dire straits facing young people today is perhaps the biggest issue that is getting the least amount of attention. There’s a deeper current to all of this. Men are not just without work or ambition to find work, they are also missing the most vital things that make life worth living, and are losing hope before they even become adults.

This has been happening across two generations now. Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation, traces the collapse back to the late 1970s, when boys started being pushed out of the real world and pulled into a virtual one. First by computers and video games, then by the internet and social media. By 2010, something snapped.

Suicide among men now accounts for nearly 80% of all suicides in the United States. Men are now four times as likely to kill themselves as women. Male suicide rates have increased by 30% since 2010 and 2022 was one of the highest rates in 70 years. Between 2010 and 2023, suicides for men aged 25 to 34 have increased 31%.

Social isolation is literally killing us.

Depression among teenage boys also rose 161% from 2010 to 2020. And the percentage of high school senior boys who agreed with the statement “people like me don’t have much of a chance at a successful life” has been climbing steadily since 1977, accelerating sharply after 2010 (Instagram launched in October 2010).

Video games make it easier for boys to retreat to their bedrooms instead of being outside with people face to face. The virtual world became more alluring year after year while social skills deteriorated. The real world, with all its friction, challenge, and opportunity, started to become optional. Growth was stunted. Resilience squandered. Potential out the window. The kids are not growing up.

The man spending his days on the couch in his thirties was the boy who spent his adolescence online. Eberstadt shows us the end of the story. Haidt shows us where it started and how it accelerated. The big question is: what is driving all this?

The Deeper Wound: Purpose, Direction, Meaning

Work doesn’t solve all your problems. But it does give you a sense of direction. A purpose in the chaos of it all. If you do it right and find something you’re good at or better yet, something you enjoy (or at least don’t hate), you’ll find meaning in it.

Young men don’t know what they’re doing. I didn’t have it all figured out when I was 21, however, I did have the drive to push myself until I got my feet under me.

Despite all its frustrations and limitations, work has always been one of the primary ways men answer the question of identity. What do you do? This question gets to who you are… what you spend your days doing. Though work is not the only thing that defines us, and shouldn’t be the only thing we portray ourselves as, when there’s no answer, just a black hole of despair, bad things happen. Not just a lack of confidence and income, but a lack of identity, and a propensity to fill that void with something dangerous.

Men often find themselves caught up in shifting identities. From high school athlete to college frat star to early career professional trying to climb the ladder. As seasons change, so do we. But too often, men give up when things don’t go their way. Refusing to tap into the well of resilience that lives inside all of us. Retreating inside ourselves. We get quiet. Disengage. Stop reaching out. Sit at home and watch the days pass by. And in an era of digital distraction… social media made for addiction, video games created to kill days of your life, pornography in everyone’s pocket… there is always somewhere to go. Even if this is not a physical space we go to, it is very easy to forget about all your problems. To pretend that everything is okay.

I understand how easy it is to fall into this spiral. When I was falling head first to the bottom in my mid-to-late twenties, alcohol and marijuana distracted me from the listlessness of my life. Always waiting impatiently for the next drunk, the next high, to take me out of my miserable state of mind and into an altered one.

Taking accountability is scary. Looking yourself dead in the eyes and asking ‘what the hell are you doing?’ Being honest with yourself instead of making a change to be better is easier said than done. Taking action to become the person you’re meant to be is impossible if we disappear into screens or substances. Creating before consuming is the way forward. Connecting instead of cowering can save your life. The momentum of directionlessness compounds. The more the hopeless young man sits on his couch and wastes his days away, the harder it is to believe he can become anything else. Purpose doesn’t come easy. It is built through effort, through challenge, through the experience of stepping outside of your comfort zone and discovering who you really are.

I refuse to believe all these men are lazy. That there’s no hope for them. Some people need help up to their feet. Others need a slap in the face. You can’t help someone who won’t help himself, but extending a lifeline and pushing them to strive for more can remind them that they matter and that it’s not too late to achieve great things.

The Collapse of Marriage

We aren’t getting married anymore.

In 1960, 72% of American adults were married. Flash forward to the present, for the first time in modern history, less than half of all U.S. households include a married couple.

Pew Research Center also discovered that the number of 40-year-olds who have never been married is skyrocketing. In 1980, just 6% of 40-year-olds were never married. By 2021, it was 25%. Men are also more likely to be unpartnered than women, which is a reversal from where things were in 1990. Among prime-working-age men, 39% were unpartnered in 2019, up from 29% thirty years earlier.

We’re getting married later now too. As adulthood starts later, so do the other things that come with it (we’re also not having kids anymore but we won’t get into that here). The median age for a man’s first marriage is now nearly 30 (I married at 31). Back in 1960, it was 23. Men are delaying marriage or forgoing it entirely.

Sure, marriage is not for everyone. And it’s incredibly hard. But marriage, for all its complexity, has been one of the most concrete ways to be financially stable, in addition to being an obvious route for men to find identity and purpose. Anything worth doing will be hard. The effort is worth the reward. Married men have been shown to earn more, live longer, and report higher life satisfaction than unmarried men. They are also more engaged at work, more connected to their communities, and more likely to be present in the lives of their children. The structure, the obligation, the shared daily struggles all help men grow into better people.

We were not meant to live alone but 13% of men do. We all need someone to come home to. We don’t all need to be married, but we need love, we need relationships, we need support, something outside ourselves to push us to strive and make something of each and every day.

Men without stable work won’t form families. Men without families have less reason to find work. Without higher stakes, we crumble and fail before we even start.

The Vanishing Home

Owning a home continues to be out of reach for too many. You own a home, you are literally and psychologically invested in the community around you. You have something to protect, maintain, and improve.

I bought my first house at 30. More than half of 30-year-olds were homeowners in 1970. Today, barely 13% are. This milestone of adulthood has become an exception.

Homeownership exploded from 44% in 1940 to more than 60% in the 1960s. The postwar boom kept homeownership there through the 1980s. Today, the homeownership rate sits around 65%, but that number hides the deeper reality.

According to Fortune, there are now more homebuyers over 70 than under 35.

Historically, 50%-65% of men owned homes by age 35. Today, that figure is down to 36%.

The median age of first-time homebuyers just hit a record of 40, up seven years since 2020, after averaging around 30 since 1981.

This is shocking but not surprising. We aren’t building enough homes where they’re needed most. And the homes we are building are not at price points most people can afford. Higher construction costs and development fees have driven home prices up well beyond the pace of incomes for at least 20 years. In many major metro areas, the median-priced home requires an income in the top quartile.

In 1980, more than half of 35-year-olds were married and owned a home. Today, just under 30% achieve this. The American Dream is on life support if not already dead.

The Friendship Recession and the Death of the Third Place

Robert Putnam saw it coming five years after I was born. In Bowling Alone—first an essay in 1995, then a landmark book in 2000—he documented the collapse of American civic life across virtually every measure: church attendance, union membership, PTA participation, neighborhood socializing, civic club membership. The average American attended 12 club meetings a year in the mid-1970s. By 1999, that number had fallen to five.

The web of relationships, obligations, and trust—Putnam called it social capital—was unravelling. Driven by television, suburban sprawl, and the erosion of shared spaces where people interacted together.

These trends have not reversed. They’ve accumulated over the years. With social media, porn, gambling, and remote work, we’re more isolated than ever. Connected virtually. Disconnected physically, emotionally, spiritually.

The Survey Center on American Life found 55% of men reported having six or more close friends in 1990. Today, that number has been cut in half to 27%. Even more stark is that the data point of men reporting zero close friends in 1990 was just 3%...today, it’s 15%. Young single men are most at risk. The number of single men under 30 with no close friendships is 28%.

I have very few friends. I am terrible at maintaining relationships and building new connections. Much of my social life revolves around my family. I go into the office four days a week just to have some face-to-face interaction. We don’t need a lot of friends to function, but we do need people in our lives we can share it with.

Men are navigating life’s hardest moments by themselves. White-knuckling. Winging it. Wondering how to move forward but never asking for help. Only 21% of men report getting emotional support from a friend in any given week, compared to 41% of women. Married men increasingly rely on their spouse as their only real confidant—which places enormous pressure on marriages. When those marriages fail, men have nothing underneath them. My wife is my life in a lot of ways. This is not healthy and I know I need my own people I can talk to and count on who is not married to me.

People aren’t going to church anymore either. Church attendance is now below 50% for the first time ever. All kinds of community organizations and groups have seen membership and attendance decline over the last 40 years. All while technology has become integrated in every aspect of our lives.

The third place, neither work nor home, where you met a neighbor or a friend, has largely disappeared, replaced by a phone in your pocket and an algorithm deciding what you see. Even at the gym I go to, everyone’s got their headphones in, living in their own world as we all quietly work out together.

We’re all alone. Together.

The Path Back

Now that we have the full picture, where do we go from here? I don’t really know what to do about this. I’m not an economist, psychologist, or sociologist. I don’t have a lot of friends and a full community I’m a part of. I’ve got a lot of issues personally and am at a crossroads professionally. But I’m working on all of that. What I do have is experience on how to build back from the bottom. The experience of being one of those men who was adrift, and the experience of scrambling back onto the path of purpose. And I think that experience points toward something the data alone can’t show.

We’re at a real crisis point. These young men without direction aren’t broken. They aren’t gone for good. They’re lost. They can be found again, but only if they step out of the shadows.

The path forward isn’t solely about jobs, programs, marriage, or housing, though all those things matter. The path out begins with a decision to take responsibility for the direction of your own life. I was numbing my pain for years with substances that held me back and made me forget what I was capable of. For a man who once gave up on himself while telling everyone he was fine, I can tell you that the decision to be honest about what is really going on and then to act anyway is genuinely hard. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Derek Thompson, writer at The Atlantic and author of Abundance, concludes in The Monks in the Casino: “The alternative is staring us in the face, and like most true things, it is obvious but not simple. The game is being alive. It comes with tears and boredom and disappointments and deep, deep joy. It is meant to be played in the sun and in the shadows cast by other people.”

Life is full of pain. It’s not simple. It’s never straightforward. Feeling your way through the pain is the best way forward. Using that pain constructively, creatively, can bring great joy if done properly. It starts with finding out who you are and what you want to achieve, but it’s sustained by real and loving and supportive relationships with other people in real life who bring out the best in you.

Get up and find out what happens when you do what you think is impossible. Stand tall and be courageous. Keep showing up no matter what.

Start with something small. A job application. A workout. A call to a friend. Shift the narrative. Win the war in your mind. Alter the internal monologue from stagnation and fear to growth and opportunity. From victim to victor. Defeat to triumph. Look yourself in the eyes and become unshakable.

There’s a lot we need to do to turn things around…

We need the return of rites of passages. Things that turned boys into men. We need employers willing to take a chance on someone young and inexperienced but hungry and committed. We need communities full of spaces where connection and creativity and collaboration can happen. We need an education system that actually prepares our young men and women for the ever evolving labor market. We need to open up pathways to build back the American Dream with work that makes homeownership possible and careers that bring some sense of meaning.

And yet, we cannot do any of that unless we first acknowledge the severity of the issue.

Here are some things that helped me find my way back and build the life I always wanted.

Structure helps, but no amount of motivation will be enough if there’s no core belief in one’s self. No program rescues a person who thinks they’re beyond rescuing.

First step: be honest. Then, get out of the victim mentality doom loop. Look at the life you’re living and ask whether it’s the life you intended. If it’s not, then decide what you can change today. Pick one thing. And do it. Then do the next thing tomorrow.

Purpose is found through action. Through the accumulation of small acts of responsibility. Work is one path to it. Marriage, homeownership, and fatherhood are others. Community is everything.

All of the above requires showing up. Being present. Being honest. Being courageous.

I know young men without direction are not a lost cause because I was one of them. There is a way back. But you have to want it badly enough to get off the couch and take that first step.

I used it so much I broke it.

Sitting at my desk. Staring at the broken hand grip. Trying to focus on the work in front of me. Unable to do so. Alarmed by the tightness in my chest. The heart rate increasing yet again. It wasn’t going away. Box breathing wasn’t cutting it. I couldn’t get it together.

I got up from my desk and paced around. Mind spiraling. Thoughts racing. Should I go home? Should I call my wife? Am I going to die? I looked outside at the trees swaying softly in the wind. But in trying to do anything I could to not think about it only made me think about it more.

There was no white knuckling this anymore. I needed to help myself before I collapsed under the weight of my own deficiencies. I’d rebuilt my life externally, but internally, I was running the same software.

I had to break the pattern. I had to take back control. I couldn’t keep living like this.

I’ve come a long way since this early 2025 chapter of panic attacks that shook me. Looking back, I got complacent. Too comfortable. I was running from myself instead of facing my current reality.

We all have a version of running from ourselves. Mine was alcohol in my twenties, then anxiety in my thirties. Somewhere along the way, sobriety wasn’t enough. I had stopped doing the uncomfortable work that kept me grounded, that kept me firing on all cylinders. The stress of fatherhood, marriage, and career combined to grind me down until I had nothing left.

My body cried out and I had to rewire my mind for resilience before it was too late. I had to rebuild because the structure I had worked so hard to put up was crumbling. Your life won’t change until you do. You are defined by how you respond when things get hard. I had done hard things before and this was another obstacle I had to overcome.

First, a quick rewind. I went to rehab in early 2018. Rock bottom hit hard right before that. Second DUI. Fired from my job. Family intervention that I stiff armed to keep drinking. Rehab was a reset. The first steps of a new path on a long journey.

I handled those days away so well my counselor actually asked me if I was faking it. I assured him I was not. There was a certainty in my mind for the first time in a while. I knew I had to be there. I knew I had to do this work to get back on track. I learned how to sit with my thoughts and see them for what they were—not letting them impact my mood or dictate my actions. I realized that nothing is permanent. Everything in life comes and goes. The mistakes you’ve made do not define you. How you move forward despite how you’ve fallen short is the true test of character. This helped me keep it all in perspective.

Rehab didn’t make me sober. It taught my nervous system how to stand still. It created space between craving and reaction. Cultivated a resilient mindset to be present for my life again and turn it into something I did not need to escape from. The shift from “I’m broken” to “I’m human—flawed but capable.”

I tested the new wiring in my brain in those early weeks out of rehab. Living in a sober living house, attending outpatient four days a week, going to meetings the other days, I had to get back to work that paid me. Sobriety and recovery was a full time job at the time, but I had to restart my career. I asked my outpatient group, “How should I address the gap in my resume?” The feedback: “Just be honest.”

Leading up to the interview, my palms were sweating. My mind was playing out all the possible worst case scenarios. I knew I had to be honest. But now that I was about to bear my soul to a prospective employer, I almost lost my nerve and took the easy way out. But I didn’t. When the big question came up, I took a breath and told them the truth. That I’d had a problem with drinking. That I’d gone to rehab. That if they took a chance on me, I wouldn't waste it. I got the job. Seven years later, that same managing director who interviewed me said: “he’s the best researcher I’ve ever worked with.”

Honesty, even when it costs you or exposes you, is the only way forward. In the years that followed, I stopped avoiding and started confronting. Taking one or two steps beyond my comfort zone. Choosing vulnerability. Choosing not to stagnate. I fell in love. Got married. Bought a house. Got a dog. Was promoted. Became a father. Did all the things. I thought I had it all figured out. That I had done the tough part. But it was just beginning. Beneath the surface, the wiring became disconnected.

Back to last year, the panic attacks nearly broke me. Work stress. Newborn chaos. No sleep. Marriage tension and transition. The system was overloaded. There was nothing wrong with my heart. There was no pill to do the work for me. My nervous system was stuck in overdrive. The only antidote was action. A system to keep anxiety at bay. Putting myself in the driver seat again.

Every hero faces this call to adventure. They can either leave the comfort of the cave they inhabit and push themselves to transform who they are or they can stay put and wonder what if. I had the choice to double down and push through or retreat to a life that was comfortable. In early recovery, I had learned to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I could do it again.

The decision: 4:30am wake-ups. Meditation back everyday. Structure rebuilt with fitness, reading, and writing before the sun comes up.

I chose different problems—the discomfort of boundaries, the grind of daily habits, the vulnerability of putting my sanity first. We cannot eliminate problems, but we can focus on the problems that demand our attention.

A significant change never sticks unless there is a strong foundation holding up the structure. Motivation only goes so far. In fact, motivation builds after you start—discipline creates drive, not the other way around

Every morning’s non-negotiables: cold water face dunks, then meditation for five to fifteen minutes. Everything else (writing my book, reading a book, working out, going for a walk, stretching, writing an article) is a bonus, depending on the reality of that morning. Sometimes my son wakes up early. Sometimes I sleep on the floor of his room. Some days I don’t wake up early and that's okay. I’ll get after it tomorrow. Adapt and evolve. Flexible and focused.

Action rewires anxiety into agency.

I don’t have it all figured out. I still fall short as a husband and father. I still let my emotions get the best of me sometimes. I’m no longer denying my shortcomings or pretending it’s all easy now that I am sober, married, and have a house and family. I am taking it all one day at a time. That’s all we can do. And that effort, showing up daily, no matter how imperfect, is where true growth comes.

On days you fall short, the system holds you up.

Three things changed everything for me.

Mindset. Stopped seeing discomfort as danger. Started seeing it as growth.

Action. Stopped escaping. Started sitting with it, then moving forward.

Structure. Stopped relying on willpower. Started building systems that work when motivation is nonexistent.

Life will always have something else in store for us. A curve ball we won’t be able to hit. The ability to face it all with grace and gratitude keeps it all in perspective.

Growth is never a straight line—it’s a constant cycle of failing, adapting, and rising stronger.

Your life won’t change until you do. It will take time. It will be uncomfortable—but that’s how you know you’re moving forward.

Don’t wait until you’re forced to change like I did. Take one step today, then another tomorrow. Then you’ll look back and smile at who you used to be.

Squeezed this until it broke. Learned you can't white-knuckle your way to calm.

There was a lot of wreckage behind me. And a lot of uncertainty ahead. Looking back now, I feel grateful for where I’ve ended up.

Mid-October 2017, I got in my car after way too much to drink. I don’t remember going nearly 50 in a 25. I don’t remember the impact. I don’t remember what the four parked cars of crunched metal looked like. I don’t remember neighbors coming out to see what the loud noise was.

I do remember coming to in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed. Head pounding. Face scraped. Then, back to another night in county jail, sitting on a concrete bench. The smell of incarceration. The sorrow of regret.

This was my second DUI in seven years. I’d been flooring it to this moment for years. One drink at a time. One regret stacked on another.

I’m lucky I didn’t kill someone that night. I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself. In many ways, I was already trying to.

You’d think that brush with death would’ve scared me straight. It didn’t.

A few weeks later, there I was again—Tuesday morning, in a bathroom stall on the ground floor of the office building where I worked. I opened my backpack and pulled out a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Screw top, of course. I downed it in a couple minutes. 9am was approaching. The warmth calmed the shakes. Made me feel like everything was going to be okay.

For a moment, I stared at the bottle, knowing how fucked up this was while denying how empty I felt inside. This was far from the first time. Same stall two days earlier. More bottles the week before.

I was fired not long after.

I spent the better part of my twenties trying to escape myself. Running from it all. From the breakup, From the DUI. From my own dark thoughts. I thought if I drank enough, if I moved back home, if I reinvented myself, I could outrun the wreckage.

I couldn’t.

I had to lose my car, my job, my girlfriend, and nearly my life, to realize I was capable of becoming someone I respected.

Nearly eight years ago, I left the treatment facility. Sobriety didn’t start for me because I was brave. It started because I ran out of exits. Jail, institution, or death—those were my options.

I chose sobriety. I had no other choice.

Not everyone gets this chance. Fewer still take it. I chose to face my suffering, to not become another statistic, and to make the most of it.

Sobriety taught me how to stop running from myself. Early recovery forced me to observe my thoughts and feelings for what they are, not letting them dictate my actions. Rehab allowed me the opportunity to look deep inside myself, realizing the damage I’d done to myself and others, while giving me the structure to start to rebuild from the ground up.

For the first time in years, I stopped fighting myself and I actually enjoyed who I was becoming.

The eight years since haven’t been perfect. I didn’t stay active in meetings, but I stayed sober. I did the work—meditated, journaled, reflected. I learned to forgive myself. I learned to stay the course when things got hard. To choose the long game over the quick fix.

My anxiety didn’t disappear. The self-doubt didn’t go away. What changed was how I responded.

One day at a time. Then eventually, it got easier.

Sobriety gave me a real life. A wife I love. A house we own. A son I adore. Work I’m proud of. Self-respect earned. Not a perfect life—but an honest one.

I’m grateful to my parents, who held the umbrella while I weathered the storm. To the counselors who helped me rebuild a foundation. To the friends I made along the way and the ones who were always there for me. To the people who took a chance on me when I finally told the truth.

And most of all, I’m grateful to still be here.

Eight years later, I wake up clear-headed. I show up as a husband and father. Flawed but present.

I’m still standing. Still building. Still choosing to make the most of the chance I was given.

One day at a time.

I would get to work and it would subside a bit, still lurking in the background. I’d do everything I could to not think about it. But then the not thinking about it made me think about it. Then I would be distracted for a few hours by the work in front of me, it would subside until lunch time, then I felt like I was dying again. The workload I had, the poor job I’d been doing to manage it all, and the demands at home all kept the panic right there. My nervous system never reset. My inability to cope with the onslaught of stressors last January kept me on constantly on edge. Going a hundred miles an hour without any shoes on—not even knowing how to find my footing or even where my shoes were. No amount of motivation could change the fact that anxiety was at the wheel. I had to act and act fast. Getting back in the driver’s seat was the only way forward. If I failed, I could lose everything I’ve built and erase all the gains I’ve made.

I went to my doctor. EKG came back clean—nothing wrong with my heart. It was all in my head, a clear stream of communication I’d been ignoring. No pill would fix this. No therapist could do the work for me. It was on me to rewire my mind and build a foundation I could stand on.

The last 365 days have seen the integration of a system that has helped me find out what I’m made of—with meditation, movement, creativity, and adaptability—I have rediscovered the path. But I did not rely on motivation. It all came down to discipline, fueled by resilience, guided by purpose. I knew I needed a change and I kept at it because I had no other choice. Sometimes you do the thing you need to do because you have to, but I would suggest doing it before you get to the point of having a mental breakdown or becoming crippled with anxiety.

We’re all motivated the first week of January. This time of year, we’re inspired to make significant changes to our lives. But this feeling will fade. We will fall short of our resolutions. Our goals will not be achieved. The January desire to be better will disappear by Valentine’s Day and be consumed by the realities of our circumstances. Motivation will only get you so far. We all have reasons for wanting to improve. Countless ways to be a better version of ourselves than we were last year. The regrets pile up into a mountain that cannot be traversed unless we have a plan we can stick to, tirelessly climbing higher from checkpoint to checkpoint until finally reaching the summit. This time of year is for figuring out what can actually be accomplished, what systems can be implemented through repeatable habits done day after day, week after week, month after month.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger posted on X on January 1st:

“As you start today with all the motivation in the world, remember this: it won’t last.

Build a routine. Do it no matter what. When you really can’t, don’t quit or beat yourself up, just do it the next day. Show up, over and over.

It is the only thing that works.”

Be realistic about what you can actually accomplish. If you haven’t been to the gym in a year, don’t try to go five times a week on January 1. You’ll fail spectacularly. If you’ve never meditated before but want to give it a try, go for a minute, try guided meditations, then work your way up to five minutes instead of starting with a twenty minute silent meditation. We all need to push ourselves into the realm of discomfort to make sure we grow and develop, but we also need to stay inside the arena of possibility. If we fail to stick to our routine, we cannot falter, give up, or become despondent. Just take it in stride, get after it the next day, and adjust accordingly.

Habits. Routine. Systems. These pillars become the transformation, but they are held together with discipline. You can have all the motivation in the world but it will come and go and fluctuate with your emotions. You cannot solely rely on it. Though it can help occasionally, there has to be more than an internal desire to change. There has to be a persistent effort and sustainable drive to make it happen. A real gumption.

During my season of panic attacks last year, I was convinced there was something catastrophically wrong with my heart. I did not have the tools or the game plan to figure out how to get better. My motivation level was zero. Worse than zero actually. I felt broken. Weak. Like I’d never be normal again. Discipline helped me find my way again. My mornings with meditation and movement gave me back a sense of control. Breathwork tools provided a lifeline when the tightness came in the later months of the year. Over time, my nervous system finally settled and I began to feel like myself again. Going on walks, writing a book, and being present for my son and wife helped me get out of my head and be more in tune with my life. Moving from passenger to driver.

Motivation fails us because it depends on our emotions. We cannot rely on our emotions because they can send us down the wrong path. It is important to be in touch with our emotions and realize what they are telling us, but we cannot let them dictate our actions. Motivation also requires constant renewal. It will never stay at the level necessary to keep you engaged in a certain activity or framework, abandoning you when you need it most.

4:00am this morning. My alarm goes off. Son finally slept through the night. It’s been a rough return to preschool following winter break. I slept on the floor of my son’s room the night before to help regulate his nervous system. I’m exhausted. All I wanted was to hit snooze. But my wife was leaving early for an event today and this was the only time I’ll have to myself today. Motivation was zero. Inspiration was below zero. No voice inside my head telling me to stop being lazy and take on the day. But discipline kicked in because it’s something I’ve been cultivating and practicing over the last year. I woke up anyway, jumped out of bed, turned on the coffee maker, drank a cup of water, plunged my face into ice water, meditated, and am now writing this article. Not because I felt like it, but because it’s Thursday and I have a lot going on in my life and I have to make the time to do certain things like write on Substack, edit my book, and read books and articles that fill the soul.

So here I am. No secret sauce. No motivational soundtrack. Just doing the next right thing, no matter how I feel. So when my son wakes up early and my wife is out for the day, I can feel confident I did what I had to do for myself so I can be there for my family.

Discipline works because it is decision-independent. You do it no matter how you feel, creating an identity shift. I’ve become “the person who wakes up at 4:30am everyday.” Sometimes sooner depending on the day. Later on some days when I fall off the wagon, but those days are few and far between now thankfully. I became someone who does what I need to do in the morning before the demands of the day take over. I find solace in the pre-dawn hours, allowing me to face the rest of the unpredictability of the day ahead with grace.

Dig deep and surprise yourself with how disciplined you can be. Three actionable steps for 2026:

1. Start small. Wake up 15 minutes earlier. Then earlier and earlier until you find the optimal time for you to maximize your morning routine. No idea how to get in shape? Start with a 10 minute walk. Then 5 push ups and 10 squats.

2. Build systems. Goals are fine, if achievable. Resolutions are unnecessary. Writing a book? Don’t focus on the endgame of a finished book, simply commit to regular writing blocks throughout the week, and before you know it, you’ll have a finished manuscript. Want to journal more? There’s no need to fill a whole page every day. Just start with a sentence or two, see how you feel, then go from there.

3. Progress not perfection. We will all fall short. A day will be missed. The snooze button will be pressed. A workout will be missed. Fast food will be eaten as the spinach goes bad in the fridge. Acknowledge reality and move on. Focus on the pattern, build the routine, look forward—not backward, and don’t beat yourself up. None of us are perfect.

Discipline will always be there if you tap into the resilience inside you. Don’t wait around for that rush of inspiration to change and be better. Find a sustainable system. Set targets to achieve. Be intentional. Be boring. Be excellent. Identify your blind spots and address them. Evaluate what is working and what is not. Dig deep, find out what you’re made of, and rebuild your life from the inside out. We’re all meant to strive, to grow, to flourish. If you’re not on the right track, find out where you strayed and find your way back.

There won’t be a “right” moment. The best time to start is now. Hold yourself accountable. Let your actions be your guide. Get out of your head and into your life. Stop setting yourself up for failure by trying to do too much. Demand discipline for yourself. Become unshakably resilient. Motivation and inspiration will not serve you in the long term. Daily habits, monthly systems, and annual achievements will keep you going in the right direction. Stick with it and you will actually be motivated to do more because you will see the results that came with that discipline and always doing the next right thing.

Discipline over motivation.

It’s been a hell of a year—personally, professionally, emotionally. 2025 was never easy, but it challenged me in the best way and rewarded me in the biggest way. I was pressured, pushed, and nearly cracked. I’m still standing. Still building. Ready to push myself farther and be better for those who rely on me.

The year forced me to reevaluate my priorities and reshuffle how I lived. A forced reset. Learning to let go and build intentionally. Prioritizing myself so I could be there for others. Handling competing demands and finding purpose in the chaos. 2025 brought clarity and urgency that realigned my actions with my values. It was about waking up and getting back on track. 2026 will be about building on these gains and laying a stronger foundation for my family and myself.

The Breaking Point

It started in January. My body sounded the alarm I’d been ignoring. Panic attacks hit hard and fast—physical, terrifying, destabilizing. Fear of dying while sitting on the couch doing nothing. Heart racing. Chest tightening. Convinced I was having a heart attack at 34. I was carrying too much, going too fast, never slowing down, white-knuckling life instead of living deliberately. This changed everything.

A slow, uncomfortable reckoning followed. The result: a rewired mind and newfound resilience. I tapped into something I’ve always had inside me. Trying to do everything without taking care of the little things nearly broke me. I rebuilt from the inside out—not like rehab years ago, but from a subtler breakdown: burnout, anxiety, distraction.

I got back my mornings. Leaned into meditation. Hit the gym. Walked more. Scrolled less. Started writing a book. Took back control. Started being present for my own life.

By summer, my body threw another curveball: shoulder pain, knee issues, a sore ankle. Just when I was in the best shape in years. Frustrating. Humbling. Another dose of reality I had to adjust to.

The Career Cage

At work, I no longer felt challenged or engaged. I’ve mastered my role and built a solid career. But after a rough start to the year, by summer it all felt misaligned. Comfortable? Yes. Safe? Sure. But deep down, I knew my job was a cage.

I was stuck in a role I’m objectively excellent at but no longer the best use of my time. I questioned everything: what I was doing, where, and why. I was headhunted for a bigger job in another city. Didn’t get it. But the opportunity shifted my mindset and stirred belief that I’m destined for more.

I’m now going after my next role actively—shaping my future and setting our family up to elevate accordingly. My wife has supported and pushed me to be my best. 2026 is the year I finally make the change. I’m leaving behind something I’m grateful for and proud of, but we all have to keep growing. Stagnation can’t be my daily experience.

The Home Front

At home, life was intense. Fatherhood focuses the mind but spikes the nervous system. The demands were constant, and I didn’t always handle them well. My son went through physical and emotional changes, and I became more aware of my flaws: distraction, impatience, emotional reactivity. We dealt with nonstop crying in the morning, tantrums before bedtime, 1 am wake-ups. Resistance to new foods. Inability to sit still. Now testing boundaries daily and saying “no” constantly.

My marriage hit several rough patches. My wife started her own business. She’s crushing it and I’m so proud of her. We navigated childcare challenges and recurring relationship issues. We would have the same fights time after time. Both of us stretched thin, holding on by a thread. It’s what we signed up for and we knew it was going to be hard. But in the thick of it, we both have had our regrettable moments. Two people learning to be partners while becoming parents, managing careers, finances, exhaustion, and emotions.

Our son started preschool in the fall—half-time. I helped out as much as I could with work flexibility. My wife’s business is thriving, but managing the workload at home has tapped us out. We took a much-needed vacation alone in November for our four-year anniversary. It was perfect. Then December hit like a whirlwind, and now we’re one week into our son’s two-week holiday break.

The Lifeline

And with this backdrop, I wrote a book. I’m editing it now and hope to publish in spring. Writing became the way I made sense of it all. I didn’t have time, but I made time because it was vital. A lifeline. A way to process what I’ve been through, how far I’ve come, and help others going through something similar.

I wrote before sunrise because it was the only time no one could take from me. I reclaimed my life and wrote about it. Substack has been a fulfilling exercise to hone my craft. Writing Rewired has been cathartic, clarifying, and transformative. It's my life distilled into a playbook for anyone ready to rebuild.

What I’ve Learned

No, I haven’t figured everything out. Not everything’s fixed. But things are stabilized. I feel more clarity and confidence in overcoming whatever arrives. I know what I need to work on and where I want to go.

I learned that anxiety isn’t weakness—it’s information. Comfort is a cage as dangerous as chaos. Presence is necessary as a father and husband. Discipline is self-respect. Growth requires risk, especially when the stakes are high.

I am not healed. Not enlightened. Don’t have it all figured out. But this year oriented me back on the path I needed to be on.

What I’m Leaving Behind

• Reaction instead of intention

• Numbing instead of feeling

• Coasting instead of choosing

• Comfort disguised as safety

• Confusing productivity with progress

What I’m Building in 2026

Three pillars: Better Husband | Better Father | Stronger Foundation.

These are identity-based, not outcome-based. Everything else is downstream.

Better Husband: It’s not about doing more—it’s about being emotionally steady instead of mentally absent. Listening instead of fixing or defending. Showing up regulated, ready to respond instead of react. No grand gestures. Just showing up calm, present, and available when things are hard. We have work to do to get back to being partners, and it starts with me.

Better Father: I’m a good father. I need to be great. All the time. This starts with presence and ends with grace. My son is observing everything. I need to put the phone away when I’m with him. Take a deep breath when he’s having a hard day. Be patient when he’s struggling. Model discipline without rigidity. Teach right from wrong. Raise a decent man. Through it all, he needs resilience to overcome what I struggled with.

Stronger Foundation: 2025 taught me that without sleep, movement, stillness, and physical maintenance, everything collapses. 2026 will be about margin—fewer maxed-out days, more consistent effort, fewer ignored warning signs. Sustainable effort leads to a stable foundation.

The Work Ahead

This year is about finding purposeful work. I’m done staying put and feeling stagnant. Done feeling small and underutilized. Done feeling competent but constrained. I’m ready for a massive step forward. 2026 will be about work that demands more and gives more back.

Writing is no longer a hobby—it’s a strategy for living. I’ll continue writing publicly here and get Rewired out to the world. Writing helps me think, process, and stay grounded. It keeps me awake and focused on growth.

The Shift

2025 taught me that discipline without alignment becomes pressure. Awareness without action becomes anxiety. Comfort without purpose becomes decay.

2026 isn’t about grinding harder. It’s about living my pillars truly and fully.

I’m building:

• A stronger internal operating system

• A steadier nervous system

• A clearer sense of purpose

• A man my son can watch and trust

• A partner my wife feels supported by

• A life aligned with values, not convenience

Forward momentum. Calm confidence. Becoming a published author. Writing regularly. Journaling consistently. Getting my body back in shape. Keeping my mind sharp. Settling my thoughts with meditation. Walking to see clearly. Starting the next phase of my career.

Deepening routines, not expanding obligations. Taking care of the little things so I can accomplish big things.

This is not a New Year’s Resolution list. Goals expire. Systems endure. Motivation fades. Structure remains. Progress is quiet, unsexy, but compounding.

I will be a better version of myself in 2026. I’m putting 2025 behind me but taking everything it taught me. Change is built daily. Systems are created by the habits you choose.

What are you building this year?

But it’s impact is already being felt.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said AI “is going to change literally every job.” It’s not wiping out whole departments, but it is stripping out the layers inside of them. Work that is codified, rules-based, and repeatable is getting automated or semi-automated. Work that relies on judgment, context, or nuance is staying human (so far). This is translated into fewer entry-level roles, higher expectations for current employees to adopt and implement AI-supported processes, and a growing premium on those who can leverage AI instead of just talking about it.

This article examines how AI is reshaping hiring, why younger workers are feeling the impact already, and what these shifts mean for the future of office demand, workforce development, and the future of Gen Z.

Early labor market signals and future forecasts

While we are still in the early innings, AI’s disruption on the nation’s labor market is inevitable. However, a recent Goldman Sachs study predicted the impact will be modest and relatively temporary: unemployment up 50 basis points and 2.5% of jobs at risk of related job loss. Unsurprisingly, the most exposed roles are in the white collar, office-using bucket: programmers, auditors, legal and administrative assistants, and customer service representatives.

As for its impact on the office property sector, a recent Green Street article stated that “the available evidence thus far suggests GenAI’s impact on the office sector will likely be negative.” The authors went on to also state “while the magnitude of the impact AI will have on the office-using workforce is highly uncertain, our initial lean is for it to be a headwind on aggregate office demand as office-using jobs face disruption.”

David Sacks, Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said he doesn’t believe AI will trigger widespread unemployment. He frames it as a multiplier for human productivity, as other forms of new tech have been previously. After the dotcom bubble burst in early 2000, tech unemployment never surpassed overall unemployment, and fully recovered within a few years. On the other side of the argument, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is much less pessimistic, saying that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years.

Job postings are increasingly emphasizing AI skills and qualifications, and employers are willing to pay a premium. In past technological revolutions, the people who thrived weren’t the ones who resisted change. They were the ones who learned to leverage new tools to become indispensable. The same choice exists with AI.

But when you zoom into what’s really going on in offices across the country, the AI disruption is already being felt. A recent Stanford study tracking occupations where AI directly automates tasks found that employment for 22- to 25-year-olds fell after late 2022, even as employment for workers in the 35-49 range kept growing. In some tech roles—software developers in particular—the pullback for the youngest cohort was close to 20% from the late-2022 peak. Job postings data from office-using job postings for candidates with three years of experience or less this year were down 12.2% from the 2022-2024 average, while total office-using postings declined 9.0%. Meanwhile, job postings with AI skills or qualifications spiked 47% from the 12-month trailing average. Finally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest data from August revealed a 9.2% unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds, which was 2.5 times the rate for prime-age workers.

However, a recent Yale paper argues the labor market has not been adversely affected by AI yet. “Overall, our metrics indicate that the broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption since ChatGPT’s release 33 months ago,” the paper concludes, “undercutting fears that AI automation is currently eroding the demand for cognitive labor across the economy.” Tell that to the 49% of young job seekers who now believe AI has made their degrees obsolete.

Whatever impact AI is having, a growing trend is emerging: large corporations are reducing their workforces while increasing their profits and AI is at least partly to blame.

How companies are responding

Companies have been experimenting and evaluating. Adjusting hiring and tweaking workflows.

PwC is planning to cut U.S. entry-level hiring in tax and assurance occupations by one-third by 2028. The Big Four accounting firm explicitly cited AI and offshore “acceleration centers,” plus lower attrition. As routine work becomes increasingly automated or altered, there will be fewer associate seats for recent graduates and a higher bar for AI literacy for those who do get in.

Klarna, an AI-powered global payments network, rolled out a GenAI assistant to handle two-thirds of customer service chats, doing the equivalent work of about 700 full-time agents and cutting average resolution time from 11 minutes to 2 minutes. Headcount fell from 5,000 to 3,800, and the company said most new hiring will be for engineers. Klarna did, however, reverse course this year and will be going on a hiring spree to ensure customers can still speak with a human.

Deloitte has been doing something similar on the professional services side. Auditors are upskilling on AI and other tasks are being automated. Its DARTbot helps 18,000 audit professionals handle routine tasks, which first-year associates historically did. PairD, pushed out to more than 75,000 employees, handles summarization, research, and other data-related tasks. Its Omnia audit platform is moving more testing into AI-assisted workflows. None of this replaces partners or executives. All of it eats away at the first rung of the ladder.

The tech industry has been hit especially hard since 2023. As of late October, 112,732 tech employees have been laid off in 2025, including almost 18,000 in October alone, according to Layoffs.fyi, following 417,000 layoffs in 2023-2024. While some of this was due to right-sizing following an over-hiring spree post-Covid, layoffs have accelerated as AI investment has increased. After paying $100 million or more for some AI researchers recently, Meta laid off 600 from its bloated AI unit. Paycom is replacing over 500 workers with AI at its Oklahoma City headquarters. Salesforce is laying off 262 in San Francisco after the CEO recently praised AI. Amazon announced 14,000 job cuts and is expected to reduce its corporate workforce by up to 30,000, or 10%. America’s largest private employer, Walmart, is also planning to freeze new hiring for the next three years.

The Big Five tech companies are doing more with less. Revenues at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon are all up this year while their global headcounts are down from their post-2020 peaks. Big Tech revenues were up an average of 12.9% year-over-year as of Q2 2025 while headcounts were down an average of 4.9% from 2021-2023 peaks. Meanwhile, these companies plan to invest $400 billion in AI this year, with more planned for 2026.

The transformation of the office sector

Just like remote work did not kill the office, AI will not destroy it either. Companies will still need places for teams to come together—to collaborate on high-value work, review AI output, integrate new workflows, and train on new tools. But as Amazon’s Andy Jassy recently noted, “the advantages of being together in the office are significant” and “teams tend to be better connected to one another.” Similarly, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, who just opened the bank’s 2.5M SF Manhattan headquarters, warned that hybrid or remote-only models risk leaving younger employees behind, as culture and mentoring sag. These statements reinforce the idea that even in an AI-enabled future, companies will still need physical space. Though many won’t need as many desks in the short term, the office will be more important than ever, becoming the place where people do what AI can’t: align strategy, test out ideas, and build culture.

Donald Bren, CEO of the Irvine Co., says the 35% vacancy in San Diego’s Central Business District (CBD) office space will likely endure for years. The Irvine Co. almost never sells its assets. Bren has sold his 6 largest buildings in San Diego’s CBD, all for 50% or less than he purchased them for. This value destruction is real and America’s downtowns are experiencing an existential crisis. Those that do not diversify their land use outside of office buildings are doomed to be left behind.

This decline in office occupancy in CBDs across the country is more than cyclical, it is structural. The way we work is likely never going back to the way it was in February 2020. For the first time, knowledge work is being down outside the physical office space at scale. This kind of work will be done more by machines as we move into 2026. AI is automating tasks across industries and occupations while news of layoffs continues to accelerate. With humans doing less work, office space demand could never recover to pre-2020 levels.

While a handful of larger markets are currently enjoying some positive absorption, with Manhattan being the major standout, the bulk of the national office market, particularly the CBDs, is mired in anemic office demand growth. Much of the older office buildings, maybe 25% of existing stock, are functionally obsolete. Some of this space will be converted to residential, medical, or hospitality uses. Some will be demolished entirely for a new building that is not an office building. The emergence of AI and ongoing integration into corporate workflows will reduce the need for human work and the need for office space. These impacts are only just beginning to play out. The office sector nationally is beginning to heal following five years of deterioration.

The office is not going to die. Much like retail did not die because of e-commerce, the office will be different, better, brighter, and more functional. There will be less in some places, more in others, but altogether changed forever.

Exacerbation of the Gen Z loneliness crisis

Work has changed dramatically in the last five years, and AI is now accelerating this shift. For younger workers and recent graduates, the timing couldn’t be worse. Entry-level white collar jobs—the traditional onramps into professional life—are thinning just as a generation already shaped by remote schooling, social distancing, and economic volatility is trying to find its footing. The unfolding economic reality is compounding an already dire set of circumstances for a dreary generation that is lonelier than ever and devoid of purpose in a society that is increasingly disconnected and divided.

This matters because work is more than income. Early-career roles provide structure, mentorship, confidence, and a sense of progress. When that forward momentum disappears, anxiety and depression can run the show. When those first rungs of the career ladder disappear or shrink, the consequences ripple outward. Delayed independence. Slower skill development. Weaker attachment to the workforce. Over time, this risks becoming a social problem, not just a labor market one.

Young men, in particular, are struggling. Guys are rarely dating, socializing less, staying in their homes, while spending more time watching porn, gambling, and gaming. They’re not partying anymore or eating with friends and family, and are generally isolating themselves from the rest of society. They can’t afford a home. Can’t leave the nest. Can’t launch their lives and find out who they are.

I saw this firsthand earlier this year while speaking with a group of university students. Many had applied to dozens of internships and entry-level roles with no response. Their anxiety was palpable. Their fear was not abstract. It was about not being able to start at all. It was about their time in school being all for nothing. In an economy where AI compresses task-heavy junior work, that experience is becoming more common—and more consequential.

None of this means AI is inherently bad, or that companies should stop adopting it today. Productivity gains are real and will be realized exponentially over time. Competitive pressure is driving decisions as AI is integrated faster than it should be in some cases. I do believe there will be a popping of the AI bubble—a correction in the labor market where human-driven work will come back hard and fast.

If AI erodes entry-level work, the long-term costs will show up across society—in disengagement, in declining participation, and in a generation that feels shut out of opportunity. And, eventually, it will lead to calls for larger government intervention in the economy.

The challenge ahead is not whether AI can do the work. It’s whether companies, institutions, and policymakers choose to preserve meaningful pathways into careers while adopting it. What good is AI if 20% of our 20-30 year-olds are unemployed? What will they be doing with their days? We will likely need to redesign entry-level roles instead of eliminating them, while investing more intentionally in training and apprenticeship models. In addition, we need to be more deliberate about moving people out of college-educated white collar career paths if there are fewer opportunities and into more of the trades—the blue collar jobs that have an endless amount of demand and nowhere near the necessary level of supply right now. These roles will also likely never be replaced by AI (at least until the robots come).

AI will continue to reshape how work at a computer gets done. The question is whether it becomes a ladder or a trap for the next generation. That choice is being made now—by how companies hire, how they train, and how they think about the human side of productivity.

As uncertainty persists and change accelerates, data and insight are the only way to make confident moves in a chaotic world.

I’ve always been a morning person, but now, more than ever, I crave the calm quiet predawn hours. They keep me grounded, focused, and productive in a world that pulls me in so many different directions. Mornings became my anchor in a sea of overwhelming anxiety and endless overstimulation.

Subscribe now

Waking up before the sun rises helps me reclaim control. At the start of this year, I felt overwhelmed by everything in my life. Marriage. Fatherhood. Work. It was all too much. So, I started waking up at 5:00 A.M. Started meditating and reading while it was still dark outside. Began writing this book and getting this Substack going. This is the time the rewiring of my life happened. This was where renewal took shape. Where the rebuilding was done. These hours are when I do exactly what I want to do with no distractions or concern, just focus and flow.

When I don’t wake up early and meditate, read or write, work out or walk, I feel off balance the rest of the day. Disciplined mornings, waking up when I want to sleep in, boosts my confidence and maintains my sense of control. It’s a signal to myself that I still run the show. I’m in charge and I decide what I’m going to do with my life. Some mornings, my son wakes up early and disrupts the routine. And I’ve learned to adjust to that. So, I wake up earlier now — 4:30 A.M. most days. It’s who I am now. The ritual stacks day after day. Wake up, water, coffee, read, write, workout, get ready for the day, repeat. Discipline is all about consistency. Even on the weekends.

Silence is a competitive advantage. The world is missing quiet right now. We all feel we need to be constantly listening to something. Always taking in information. Never letting our mind wander or focus on one thing at a time. The modern world barrages us with noise and notifications, forcing us to speed up and never slow down. Distracted by so much we lose touch with what’s actually important. Silence rests the mind and settles the nervous system. I look forward to waking up every day. Even if I don’t know what I’m going to read or write about, just knowing I have the sacred silence to do what I want to do helps me get up and get going.

On the mornings I don’t go to the gym after my meditation/reading/writing session, I like to go outside and listen to the neighborhood wake up. The world begins to light up and the birds start chirping as the sun seeps over the horizon. Waking up before the rest of the world makes me feel like I’m ahead of schedule, creating the calm I need in my life.

I wrote almost my entire book in these early morning hours. In the dark while most of the world slept. My best ideas come at this time. My focus and creativity combine to create and consume within the first hour of waking up early. I find a flow. The words come out. I get lost in a great book. This is my little slice of paradise. No task list to fret over. No social media to scroll through. I write honestly, unfiltered, clear. I read closely, deeply, freely. These creative acts light up my mind and build momentum I carry into the rest of the day.

My mornings set the tone for the entire day. I start ahead instead of catching up. I feel more present with my wife and son after getting my early reps in this way. I have better focus at work. I stay proactive instead of reactive. I stack small wins that compound over time. Feeling productive while beating back that sense of inadequacy and anxiety.

Panic attacks brought the need for structure, calm, and ownership. I started my day with meditation and that made all the difference. The rest of the morning solidified that foundation with reading, writing, and movement. These habits rewired my life. Made me a better husband, father, and research director. They brought clarity and purpose, forging my identity with each early alarm. Before the sun rises, I meet the man I’m trying to become.

Not a morning person? No problem. Just because it works for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. However, I would highly recommend finding some sacred time to devote to your personal endeavors. Feel inspired? Try waking up 15 minutes earlier each week. A night owl? Do something for yourself after the kids go to bed. See how much you can get done when you prioritize yourself and make time to do what you want to do. Stay away from your phone for the first hour of the day. Limit screens close to bedtime. Read something that makes you think. Write anything to clear the mental clutter. Protect your time and push yourself to do more with your day.

Early mornings alone won’t change your life. But they can help steer it in the right direction. Waking up early cultivates discipline and builds up resilience over time. Doing something you enjoy, something worthwhile, creates meaning. Having a reason to get out of bed in the morning can help you reframe the rest of your day, week, month, year, and life. You don’t need to be a morning person. You just need a reason. Find your quiet creative time to give you the space to build your future today and the next day and so on until it becomes your reality. Get after it before the rest of the day demands your attention.

If you want to change your life, start with the hour no one can steal from you.

This Thanksgiving hit different. It’s been a hell of a year for me personally and professionally. Through panic attacks, writing a book, raising a son, rethinking my career track, and rebuilding my life, gratitude helps keep it all in perspective. The stress, the feeling of not being enough, the inability to stay positive despite the progress I’ve made — all of that can be pushed aside with a healthy helping of gratitude.

The following list is a short reflection on what I’m thankful for as we near the end of 2025. It’s not about being sentimental. It’s focusing on the good to help rewire the mind and stay on an upward trajectory. Maintaining discipline in the face of adversity and remembering what keeps me grounded when life gets chaotic.

This exercise is a healthy reminder to be grateful for what you have. I try to do this on a weekly basis as well. Daily gratitude is best but any amount of thankfulness for the blessings you have is worth the time.

Here are 13 things I’m grateful for this year.

My son. Fatherhood changed me. It’s made me a better person. Pushed me beyond my limits. Practiced my patience and forced me to be more present. The love I have for my son is unlike anything I’ve experienced before. He’s what I do it all for. He’s what keeps me focused and grounded when I feel like I’m flailing. Being a parent is incredibly challenging but it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. There’s nothing like having someone love you wholeheartedly and to feel the same way about them. He is filled with such a zest for life that reminds me to be in the moment more and be my silly kid-like self.

My wife. She is my rock. I don’t know where I’d be without her. We’ve gotten through some really hard times together. Had our ups and downs. Failed her many times but she still stands by my side. There’s nothing we can’t accomplish together. The love she has for me, my son, and others close to her is inspiring. I know I can be a better husband and we can get to a better place. This past year has tested our marriage early but we’re holding strong. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her and I know she feels the same way about me.

My home. Having a safe place to build a life together is sacred. We’ve lived an incredible amount of life in these fast five years here. A homebase is crucial to stabilizing yourself in the storms that will befall you.

My sobriety. Getting sober saved my life. Gave me another opportunity I don’t take for granted. I went from drifting to thriving. From numbing myself to becoming the best version of myself. Sobering up in my 20s forced me to face the man in the mirror and become who I was meant to be in my 30s. It taught me discipline, accountability, consistency, and clarity. Sobriety didn’t make my life easier, it made me stronger, and it’s the reason I’m here today.

My parents. For the sacrifices they made to get me to where I am today. I know now how hard it is to be a parent. I will be forever grateful to them for everything they did. I put them through the ringer and despite it all, they were there for me in the darkest of times. They’re not perfect parents, but they were imperfect people who shaped me for the better.

My past. The struggles I went through forged me through the fire. The mistakes I made became lessons I take to heart. The regrets I have fuel me to be better in the future. You are not your past. You can change your present and design your future.

My mind. Worst enemy turned greatest ally. For learning how to not get lost in my mind. How we are not our thoughts but our thoughts can drive emotion and action. Keeping my mind sharp and focused on short- and long-term goals through a wholesale rewiring has kept it from going down into that deep dark place.

My body. Strength and movement fuel the soul. Staying active builds discipline. Staying consistent with a healthy lifestyle feeds everything else.

My work. It’s not a dream job but it’s been a fulfilling and rewarding career up to this point. This past year has refocused my efforts on continued growth and development. I am evaluating what’s next and making sure I don’t stay stagnant. I’ve gone after a couple of new opportunities that have opened my eyes to where I could go.

My mornings. This is my anchor. The calm quiet before the chaos of the day. Meditating. Reading. Writing. Breathing. Lifting. Walking. It’s my reset button I press every day to keep me functioning at my fullest.

My book. Writing it has been the most fulfilling project I’ve embarked upon. I set a goal and I am nearing the completion of it. Eight months from idea/outline to completed lightly edited full manuscript. The challenge has fueled me and brought a passion I have not known for some time. The editing process is brutal.

My curiosity. The need to read, learn, and understand the world helps me know myself better. It’s the engine behind my book, my personal development, and my future self.

My second chance. I almost lost it all. I very easily could not be sitting here today writing this sentence. So I’m making the most of it. The life I have is nothing short of remarkable. The future I’m shaping is something I thought would never be possible. I owe it to myself to remember where I’ve been so I can be grateful for everything I have and everything I’m building toward.

Gratitude is a crucial. We all should prioritize it more. Instead of getting lost in the comparison trap or thinking about what else you want, be thankful that you have what you need and make note of how far you’ve come. Instead of beating yourself up for the mistakes you’ve made and focusing on the regrets you have, shift your perspective to being thankful for the life you’ve lived and the ability to make a name for yourself. You are not who you were and you can change who you become. Progress compounds. Consistency keeps the train moving forward. These 13 things keep me on the tracks and I keep them in mind any time I feel like giving up or slacking off.

This year reminded me how close I came to losing myself again. In recent months, I’ve refocused my mindset to my top priorities while pushing the distractions to the side. There is so much left to fight for. So many more obstacles to overcome. Gratitude keeps me grounded and gives me the strength to move forward when stress and anxiety become overwhelming.

What keeps you moving forward? How can you be grateful for what you have today? Write your own list. Or just name one thing you’re grateful for today. Start small. Go from there. Awareness is the first step.

Gratitude is the antidote to anxiety. Give it a shot.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

There I was. Sitting with my son as he played. I was happy. I was a father. But I was pulling my phone out. He reached out to me. I opened Instagram. I scrolled. My mind drifted away. Pulled into the social media time suck. How could I not be present for my son, who wants nothing more than to be with me in the here and now?

Fatherhood demands presence, and we are a distracted disconnected society.

We live in a world of phones, feeds, and notifications. Dopamine loops and comparison traps. Chasing status instead of meaning. Prioritizing comfort over purpose. Modern life erodes attention, patience, and curiosity. Despite my awareness of all of this, I still find myself pulled away somewhere else instead of being fully present.

Becoming a father changed everything. It’s the best. Challenging, but incredibly rewarding. I’ve lived my whole life building up to this moment. The responsibility. The ownership. It’s daunting, sure, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I still find myself falling short. In addition to being distracted, I have a short fuse and let my temper get the best of me. I complain about how hard things are when I knew this was what I signed up for. I let my emotions get the best of me and lose patience when I need to be more caring and compassionate. I know all this, and yet, I still have so much room for improvement in being the best dad I can be. Now, I can’t even remember what life was like pre-child.

It’s been a hell of a year. Learning to steady my nervous system through meditation. Training myself to reorient my life with productive, quiet mornings before the chaos of the day. Becoming the man I want my son to be. Being someone he will look up to. Breaking old patterns and installing new habits. Demonstrating resilience by modeling it and being cognizant of what I say, knowing my son is starting to imitate me physically and verbally.

Everyone tells me it goes by fast. Before you know it, they won’t want anything to do with you. Then, they’re gone. I remember this every time I have a frustrated moment. I tell myself to cherish it. Savor it. Be present for it. The days keep going by slow but its hard to think my son is already approaching two years of age.

I was on solo dad duty today. My son kept bringing me a book and insisting he sit on my lap while I read to him. I could feel a sense of pride well up in me. The feeling of contentment in that moment, when all that matters was me, my son, and the book. So simple yet so powerful. The joy of being fully in that moment is how I strive to be every day. Some days I fail, but more often than not, I am practicing presence with my son.

Raising a child with my wife has been my ultimate purpose. It provides a deep meaning that unlike anything else has up to this point. I want to be a stable father, not a perfect one, but one who is present. Who is there no matter what. A provider. Protector. Caring and comforting, but raising him to realize that growth comes through discomfort. Excellence comes through hard work. I want to show him how discipline is the greatest love you can show for yourself and others. I want him to love reading and learning. I want him to be curious. To explore. Much of this can be accomplished through my presence and participation as he evolves through childhood.

I need to lead my family by leading myself first. I’ve rewired most of my mind and feel better equipped to deal with life’s daily anxieties. I’ve helped myself so I can support my wife and partner with her to provide for our son. He is going through so many changes and we are figuring things out as we go along. It’s not easy but it’s incredibly gratifying.

Some ways I’ve learned to create presence with my son:

• Leave the phone out of reach during playtime

• When reaching for the phone, stop, ask why, then return to the moment

• Go on walks, be outside, play and interact

• Prioritize my morning routine to maintain my stability and balance

• Stay unplugged as much as possible on weekends and during bath, play, and bedtime

Fatherhood forced clarity. It opened my eyes to what really matters. By rewiring myself, I’ve limited distractions and emphasized presence. Though I still have more work to do, I know I am on the right track and need to continue being there for him. I do not want him to have to compete for my attention with that damn thing in my pocket. Nor do I want any other external circumstance to affect my mood while I am with my son. Fatherhood is my responsibility, my purpose, my gift. I will do whatever it takes to help my son develop and grow. To be strong and stable. So he can become a man pursuing his purpose, standing on his own two feet. For him to get there, I need to live with discipline, consistency, stability, and structure. I need to be present for each and every moment.

If you feel distracted, overwhelmed, or half-present, you’re not alone. Your child doesn’t need a perfect mom or dad. They just need a present one. Start with that and go from there. Keep your phone elsewhere. Leave your to-do list until they’re asleep. Put your attention where it matters.

Let’s all be there for the ones who need us in a world trying to keep us sleepwalking through the day.

I could feel it coming on again. Home alone. Sitting on the couch. Trying to watch TV and relax. My heart started racing. Chest tight. Mind spiraling.

I got up and walked around. Took some deep breaths. Put my hands behind my head and tried to stop the panic from taking over. My heart seemed to jump out of its chest and skip a beat. My eyes widened. I thought I was dying.

Laying on the floor. Baby sleeping in the room next to me. I thought, “Could this be it?” A sense of doom enveloped me. A dark fear filled my head. This went on for what seemed like an eternity. I called my wife just to talk to someone. Didn’t tell her what was going on. Didn’t want to scare her. But I think she knew something was up.

I thought I was having a heart attack. Though nothing was actually wrong with me, this acute panic attack convinced me that something was physically off.

It would eventually pass. But it went on much longer than the ones that had come before. I finally realized it wasn’t my heart. It was my mind. And that scared me even more. But that night, I didn’t think I’d see the sun rise the next morning.

This was the latest in a string of similar episodes. I experienced a spate of panic attacks in early 2025. A multitude of stressors had combined to hijack my mind. These then manifested in overwhelming physical sensations. I was dealing with a significant situation at work that was showing no sign of resolution. I was stressed from the lack of time I had to myself. We had a newborn at home. I was navigating a marriage in transition: from husband and wife to dad and mom. My sleep was suffering. My mind was deteriorating. My body broke down.

I saw my doctor to confirm nothing was actually wrong with me. My heart was fine. I went to a psychiatrist. Pills did not work. In fact, they might’ve made things worse.

Shame. Confusion. Anxiety about anxiety. I was a wreck. I realized I can’t live like this. I have to take control. The panic wasn’t a breakdown. It was a message that would lead to a breakthrough. My body was saying what my mind refused to admit.

This wake up call helped me implement a mindset shift. But it started with action. Enter meditation. Slowing down. Sitting still with my thoughts instead of running from them. Breathing before spiraling. Rebuilding my life one day at a time. Recommitting to a quiet, creative, and productive morning routine. Meditating. Exercising. Reading. Writing. Not trying to eliminate anxiety, but to manage and understand it. I evaluated what I could do daily, weekly, over time — to aim higher and return to an upward trajectory. I could not control external forces. But I could control how I respond to life. I alone decide my thoughts, feelings, and actions. This shift in perspective has made all the difference.

That experience became the backbone of Rewired — a book born from panic, rebuilt through discipline. Panic taught me about control, ego, and fear. It reminded me how life will always keep throwing obstacles in your way. How growth only occurs in discomfort. How anxiety is a part of life but it’s an invaluable warning system. How we have the power within ourselves to be resilient and overcome anything blocking our path. I listened to my body and rewired my mind. I do not have it all figured out but I’ve learned a lot along the way.

You can only run from your mind for so long.

If you’ve felt your heart beat fast for no reason, this book is for you. If you feel a tightness in your chest but know you’re physically fine, then there is something for you in these pages. If you don’t know where to go or feel like something is missing from your life, I might have some morsel of insight to inspire action and drive personal transformation.

Discomfort is the way forward. Discipline is the fuel. Resilience is the structure.

These panic attacks didn’t end me. They reintroduced me to myself. A wake up call to get my life together. Putting it all into perspective and driving a rebuilding process that is still very much underway.

I have kept my panic attacks at bay, written a book, and become a better version of myself. The anxiety is still there, but I am now equipped with the tools to make sure it does not escalate into overwhelming panic. I’m not perfect, but I’ve made an incredible amount of progress. Sometimes, we all need a little push to get back on track. Panic did that to me. Don’t wait until you’re at the end of your rope, on the ground feeling like you’re going to die, to make a change.

A counselor at rehab said, “Get comfortable being uncomfortable.” This line has stuck with me all those years since. Comfort, or more aptly, the avoidance of discomfort, is what kept me caged throughout most of my twenties. It still affects me today. The difference now is I don’t run from discomfort—I use it. Very little growth occurs inside my comfort zone.

Growth happens in pain, uncertainty, and effort. Going where you do not want to go but where you know you need to go.

My anxiety and inner critic put avoidance as my default setting. I feared change and would do anything I could to maintain the status quo. Relegated risk to the back burner. Lived a life that was easy instead of doing something hard. I would build things up in my mind and be paralyzed to inaction. Anxiety accelerated. Potential squandered. I drank to forget. Drank to feel different. Dulled the senses with weed. Stimulated with nicotine. Stumbling through life. The uncertainty of stepping outside, into the great unknown, scared me half to death. But staying put was easier. And so I coasted. Held myself back, until it all came crashing down.

Life addicted to drugs and alcohol was comfortable in its own twisted way. Predictable in that I would escape my thoughts and feelings by numbing them into oblivion. Comforting because I knew I would always have an avenue to forget who I was by becoming someone else. An altered state of mind so I did not have to look in the mirror and face who I had become. I was my own worst enemy and my number one critic. But I did nothing to change my behavior and lived in a prison of my own making.

The uncomfortable choice was admitting I needed help. That I couldn’t go on living like that. I had to give up who I was to embrace who I could become. Stepping into rehab was the most uncomfortable thing I had ever done. It was something I knew I had to do but put it off for far too long. Walking through those doors and working on myself for 40 days was a transformative, life trajectory altering experience. It was where my old self died and growth finally began.

We fear change. We cling to what’s familiar and avoid anything different. Staying where we are because it is easier is the fastest way to living riddled with regret. Get outside of yourself to become the best version of yourself. Find the edge of your comfort zone and take one more step.

Life went on and I found my way again. Got back on track. Proud of the work I had done and the progress I had made. But in some ways, I eventually relegated myself to a life of comfort.

Seven years after leaving rehab, I was faced with another obstacle. Now with a wife, newborn, house, and career, I thought I had it all figured out. But I was stretched thin, and dealing with an untenable situation at work. I was living in a new version of comfortable misery. That of burnout, anxiety, overstimulation, and disconnection.

These stressors resulted in a spate of panic attacks that nearly broke me. They forced me to step out of the cage yet again and recommit to an uncomfortable rebuilding process. I doubled down on early mornings and workouts before the sun rose. Meditated to calm the mind. Moved the body to ease the soul. Discipline drove me forward. Structure kept me afloat. I reengaged with my life, became present, and took back control by focusing on what I could actually control. Tackling what lay before me and not worrying about what was to come.

Discomfort was the way forward to becoming the man my family needed. Being uncomfortable and doing more work on myself to find myself. Discomfort is a sign you’re on the right track and are doing something right.

Here’s what I’ve learned along the way:

• Comfort = stagnation, decay, frailty

• Discomfort = learning, strength, growth

• Chasing ease and convenience leads to fragility

• Leaning into discomfort brings out resilience

• Every meaningful shift in my life began with stepping into something uncomfortable

• Growth happens in three places: uncertainty, effort, and pain

Here’s how you can choose growth over comfort:

• Do the thing you’re avoiding and don’t delay

• Start small but be consistent

• Sit in solitude instead of distraction

• Write out what you want to achieve and cross it out upon completion

• Trade dopamine for discipline

• Seek struggle, not safety

I’m not telling you to suffer constantly. I’m saying you can’t build a meaningful life while clinging to comfort like a security blanket. Comfort feels good — but it softens you if you never leave it.

Every year since I got sober, I’ve done something that scared me and had a real chance of failure — marriage, fatherhood, writing this book — to name a few. None of it was easy. All of it changed me.

I’m living this lesson in real time. Right now, I’m interviewing for a job that would move me to a new city, being a part from my family for a period of time, leaving what’s familiar, and stepping into a bigger arena. It scares the hell out of me. It’s uncomfortable in every way. But that’s exactly why I’m doing it. Because I know I’m built for more than staying safe in a job I’ve known for a decade now. And sometimes the only way to grow is to walk straight into the unknown and bet big on yourself.

Go out and do things. Find your way. Don’t be afraid to fail. Learn from your mistakes and try again. We all fail. We don’t all grow.

We’re living in a frictionless world that leaves us anxious, depressed, and mentally brittle. More “connected” than ever but more anxious, depressed, and fragile. Discipline, structure, and daily challenge are the antidotes to isolation, disconnection, and directionlessness.

Embrace the daily chaos that arrives on your doorstep each day. Seek the stress that makes you stronger. Push yourself until it hurts or accept a life of mediocrity. Those who do what’s easy live a life that’s hard.

My book Rewired and these pages are not about being perfect. They’re about choosing discomfort on purpose. About getting out of your own way and moving forward no matter what. Doing the thing that makes you feel uncomfortable is where life actually begins.

Getting comfortable with discomfort has changed my life. And it’s the only reason I’m still here.

Earlier this year, I hit a breaking point.

Stretched thin, stress closed in from every angle—work overload, a newborn who changed everything, and a marriage shifting from husband-and-wife to mom-and-dad. I’d been going too hard for too long, thinking I was handling it. But it was all too much. My mind broke and my body cried out in panic. I experienced a round of real panic attacks. It scared the living crap out of me. They came in hot. Chest tight, heart pounding, thinking I was dying. Multiple times.

I knew something had to change or I would lose everything.

And that’s when I knew what I needed to write about.

In March 2025, I saw a post on X by Nicolas Cole about writing your first book in 30 days. Choose a title, write an outline, then write and edit until it’s done. I didn’t finish in 30 days, but seven months later, I had a 34,000-word edited manuscript of my book. It’s called Rewired and I hope to release it in early 2026.

The book is not a highlight reel or a victory lap. I haven’t figured it all out. It’s a field manual following the fight of my life. I didn’t write it because I have all the answers. I wrote it because I’ve asked all the questions and I’ve lived the consequences of getting them wrong, as well as the rewards of getting some of them right. I’ve learned most things the hard way and I’m still learning.

The last 15 years have been a whirlwind. I hit rock bottom at 27, checking into rehab after drinking through much of my twenties. After wasting potential, I rebuilt my life from the ground up. Been sober almost eight years now and in that time, I fortified my physical, mental, and spiritual health. Six years after leaving rehab, I had a wife, a son, a career, and a home. None of it came easy. All of it came from rebuilding my life one day at a time. Striving for progress, not perfection. Consistent effort, showing up, making mistakes, learning from them, and trying again.

Then the panic attacks came this year and humbled me to the core.

I doubled down on myself so I could be there for others. Invested in discipline, meditation, mindfulness, breathwork, stillness, reading, writing, eating well, and working out. Some of these things saved me the first time and had to save me again. I’m still trying to be the best version of myself. I’m still on the journey of transformation. But I’ve found the path and I’ve learned how to stay on it.

That’s why I’m writing this book.

I’m not chasing fame. Not looking to go viral or write a bestseller. I’m writing for those who feel stuck, numb, anxious, and burnt out. For those who feel like they know there is more to life but don’t know how to climb to that higher plane of purpose, resilience, and self-respect. People who are sick of Instagram motivation or TikTok life-hack therapy. We want truth. We want experience. We want something real.

This Substack is for them and for me.

Writing this book has been a therapeutic process. Cathartic really. Going back through it all and creating something that could potentially help others has been incredibly transformative. As writing is rewriting, the editing is where the magic happens, and that’s where I’m at now. Putting words on the page has rewired my mind in a way, making sense of the past, and choosing a better future. It’s taught me to slow down, look honestly at who I’ve been and who I want to become. And then objectively ask, “Am I getting there?”

So what will this Substack be?

It will be where I share parts of Rewired, but also what didn’t make it into the book. Personal stories, reflections, thoughts on resilience, fatherhood, discipline, discomfort, presence, purpose. Insights from other voices who have inspired me over the years.

It’s for people who are trying to carry the weight of work, family, doubt, and expectations. For those who want to get after it without falling apart or going numb. For those who feel directionless, isolated, or lost. I’m here to show you that resilience already lives inside you—you just have to learn how to use it.

This will be a place for those looking to play the long game. For doing the work when no one is watching. For finding some semblance and peace amidst the chaos of it all. Slow and steady still wins the race.

What I’ll write about here:

• Rebuilding from addiction, anxiety, and burnout

• Discipline, mindfulness, resilience, purpose

• What Rewired is about and lessons learned from writing

• Habits that saved my life and how I maintain them

• Lessons from philosophy, fatherhood, failure, and stillness

• The wisdom and perspective that helped rewire my life

• Professional development, leadership, and work-life balance

• Insights and takeaways from other books and articles

• Personal stories that don’t fit on X and that I don’t want on LinkedIn

What I want from you, the Reader:

• Not likes or restacks—just your attention, if something here resonates

• If it does, subscribe, reply, share it with someone who needs it

• Start a conversation. This isn’t a monologue. I want this place to feel like a campfire, not a stage.

This is why I’m writing a book. This is why I’m writing here.

The longer we run from our problems, the more control they have. The moment we face them, we take that power back. Let go of where you were. Build who you want to become. Progress compounds. Stability grows.

Let’s see where this goes.