As a kid, I didn’t want to be told what to do. As a young adult, I had an “I got this” attitude. And honestly? I had receipts.

Good grades. Internships. Well-paying job out of college. Got married young, had a kid, built a house, started a business. Want to go on a trip? Done. Paid. Want to buy something? Done. Want to try something new? No problem. Life was easy. I willed things into existence. I didn’t need help.

Then my mom died when I was 25. It caused some depression and sadness, and it made me angry about things I shouldn’t have been angry about — like having an awesome new stepmom, or fighting with bosses at work over stuff that didn’t matter.

The cracks in my “I got this” identity started earlier than I realized — but I first noticed them running my business. I quit my job with a huge ego thinking I’d build something that crushed it. The company sustains us, but there were months without clients. Clients who didn’t pay. Deals that fell through or got delayed. Projects we lost money on because we estimated wrong. Falling on my face in sales calls. Learning about taxes, payroll, all the random stuff nobody warns you about. Early arguments with my business partner that tested things — we’re good now, we can make it through anything.

Somewhere in all of that, I started to realize that I didn’t “got this” — I just got lucky. Bad stuff happens to people, and it was starting to happen to me. The self-sufficiency myth was cracking, but I hadn’t fully accepted it yet.

Then my wife left for another guy.

Suddenly I needed to heal from that, stay sane, raise my daughter, and run my business — all at the same time. But it wasn’t just healing. I also had to re-find myself after years of erasing who I was to try to make things work. I started going back to church. I found God again. And I realized that good things had come from Him all along — I’d just been taking credit for them.

Life got weird in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Fridays are transition days now — coparenting days where my daughter goes from my house to her mom’s. On Friday I’ll watch her in the morning, take her to school, squeeze in some work, pick her up, play with her, then drop her off with mom. And then after a jam packed day of dad life, I’ll somehow chain prayer night, hibachi with the boys, a comedy open mic, and going dancing that same night. Other nights I’m locked in at home being a dad, maybe working after she goes to sleep. Grieving, rebuilding and laughing — sometimes all in the same week. I have the ultimate responsibility in life, but also have to let myself be a little weird as I re-find myself.

Through all of the painful and whacky times, I leaned heavy on my dad and stepmom.

They didn’t need to tell me what to do. I’m an adult, and the whole situation was uncharted territory for all of us. They just sat with me. Sometimes they offered advice. Sometimes I pushed back — “You could never understand.” And they were okay with that.

I called them one to two times a day that first month. Sometimes it was more stressful for them than it was for me. I’d talk fast, not sure how to make it through the day. Brain fog made work impossible. All my energy went to being present for my daughter, who I still watched most workday afternoons. There were even times we had to get off the phone because it was just too much for all of us.

I still call them a few times a week when I get triggered. They sit with me. They give me good advice. I trust them.

I think about that Kendrick Lamar song “Momma” a lot. There’s a verse where he lists everything he knows — morality, spirituality, loyalty, respect, the highs, the lows — and then it ends: “Until I realized I didn’t know s***, the day I came home.”

I felt that. I used to say so many gassed up things in my head. I know this, I got that, I don’t need anyone. I’m HIM. Then life fell apart and I realized I didn’t know anything.

The day I came home was when I opened back up to my dad. When I accepted my stepmom. When I leaned on my cousins and made new friends who could help me heal.

My dad was pretty stern and a little judgy growing up. He wouldn’t say it, but my sister, friends and I would. That’s just how my whole family is, including me sometimes. But as an adult? He surprised me. He softened in ways I didn’t expect.

And when your life is falling apart, there’s too much pain to worry about getting offended anyway. I just needed family. Love. Help. Community. So I shared my mess, and if I felt judged, I’d say so. It worked out. Now we don’t have to walk on as many eggshells.

The first time I told him everything, I had a panic attack. I didn’t know how he’d react. It felt so good to get it out. It hurt him too — he felt bad he wasn’t there, didn’t know. Sometimes I wondered if he was more mad at her than I was. But I couldn’t comfort him because my life was the one falling apart, and I had to stand up for myself about that.

My stepmom lost her husband before she met my dad. She knows pain. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. She volunteers, helps people — all kinds of people. It’s just what she does.

My dad processes out loud. She says less.

I remember sitting in their living room one night — me and my dad talking fast like we always do, going back and forth about everything happening. She was quiet on the couch, just listening. Then she chimed in with the wisdom and advice we needed ten minutes ago.

That was it. She’s not my mom. But she’s my mom. For the rest of her life and mine.

I used to be overprotective with my daughter. I didn’t let my parents help much. I’m self-employed, so if she needed dad, I’d stop work. I took half days constantly. I was always there.

Now they watch her so I can work. My cousin nannies for us. I let them have her sleep over. My stepmom treats her like my mom would have.

Because I accept help now, my daughter gets to know that other adults care for her. That she’s safe and loved by more people than just me. That’s a gift I couldn’t have given her when I was still white-knuckling through life alone.

I’m a parent now, and I need to be parented more than ever.

But it’s different this time. I want it. I need it. Without their help, being a parent and working amidst all this chaos would have been impossible.

I’m also adult enough to know when to say no to their advice. Not because they’re wrong — just because sometimes I want to do things differently, and that’s okay. That’s the thing about being parented as a grown-up. I get the best of it. The love and wisdom without the power struggle.

If you’re my age — early thirties, maybe a new parent — and you’re realizing how hard it all is, this is for you. I hope your life doesn’t fall apart like mine did. But I do hope you realize how helpful it is to have parents as an adult, if you’re blessed enough to have them there for you. It’s okay to need them. It’s okay to call them twice a day when things get hard. It’s okay to accept the help you used to decline.

And if you’re a parent reading this, wondering if your adult kid will ever come around — they might. We all come around eventually. Sometimes it just takes everything falling apart first.

One day my dad and stepmom will be gone. But their parenting will live on. Because when Kenzie is grown and her life gets hard, I’ll sit with her the way they sat with me. I’ll be there because they showed me how.

Needing your parents is actually pretty cool.

When I was in high school, I joined a summer basketball challenge with a goal of shooting 10,000 shots. I wanted to be better than my friends, and I became obsessed. I ended up shooting 2,000 a day all summer. I became automatic - at my peak, 75 three-pointers in a row, 300 free throws in a row. But I was robotic. My actual game suffered. I lost friends because I was too busy getting my shots up. What I built was technically sound and completely empty.

The same pattern followed me into my career. I started agreeable and coachable, a real team player. But over time, bitterness seeped in. I’d channel spite into late nights trying to prove people wrong. I became less of a glue guy and more of an “I’m gonna get my 30 points whether we win or lose” guy. I did some of the best work of my career from that place. But I wasn’t a good person. I wasn’t always kind to my bosses (sorry, especially to Jerad). I’m embarrassed that I have that attitude tied to my name forever, but writing this lets me know it’s just part of my story and the shame won’t hold me back from growth.

Here’s what I’ve learned: your intention doesn’t just fuel the thing. It becomes the thing.

You can start with spite or comparison or proving something. It’ll light a fire. But it immediately becomes the whole reason. It contaminates everything you build.

I saw this pattern play out again recently. I had started lifting weights before my relationship ended. Then she left me for a guy who liked lifting. My first night home alone, I crushed my workout out of anger, blasting hip hop at full volume. But then every time I lifted after that, I was angry at something that should have been healthy. I’d try to start again, feel angry about it, and stop. I started choosing not to do it rather than doing it from the wrong place.

That choice - stopping instead of forcing it - unlocked something huge for me.

Eventually it clicked. I’ve been lifting for a few weeks now, and I feel at peace with it. No pressure. I’m doing it because I want to be healthy. I’m not trying to prove something. I’m just trying to “be”. If something small like that can come back pure, something bigger will come too - something I can do for the right reason.

The same thing happened with work. After everything fell apart, I’d sit for hours with my hands on the keyboard, just staring. Frozen. But lately, when I work, I’m efficient and excited. So much has been stripped from me that I don’t have any impure ambition left. I just want to do my best and be a good example to my daughter.

I don’t feel the pressure to crush it anymore. And somehow, not feeling that pressure makes me know that I’m actually going to crush it as more time passes. Because life is more about chance and timing than banging your head against the wall with max effort. Of course working your hardest is always good, but you can’t assume it will solve all your problems.

Learning to choose the right path doesn’t happen overnight. Ever tried EMDR therapy? It’s pretty dope. Days after my first session last summer, when I faced the trigger I’d gone to therapy about, life went into slow motion. I zoomed into my brain and it looked like Google Maps - I could see the routes. My brain wanted to take the negative route. But I had access to the good route. My heart told me to take it.

That’s what choosing pure intentions feels like. You can see both paths. And you choose.

It’s wild though, because it’s hard enough to choose the right path, but even harder to even identify that there are two paths in the first place.

I’ve been actively creating new memories too. There was a moment this Fall in the car with a friend where we appreciated the gradient fall leaves - something my ex would have had no comment on. Knowing someone shared that thought made me feel less lonely. Another night I rage-danced in the mirror for 30 minutes, peak confidence, just being myself. That moment made me realize: I can just choose. I can choose to be confident, to be happy, to do the right thing for the right reasons.

Now when I think about what life could have been, I think about moments like that. Moments where I was like, “I’m still here. I’m me. I’m good.”

I’m only a few months out from everything falling apart. It’s not perfect. But when I think about where I was three months ago, I’m so much further along. A year and a half ago, I started tracking my nutrition and losing weight. Three years ago, I started a business - another long game play. Now I’m building muscle, building my personality back with the scattered pieces (that never really left), building my work motivation. All of it takes time.

But here’s the difference now: I get to do it with pure intentions. For the right reasons. Not for other people. For me.

I can’t put into words the loss I’ve felt. But having the impure ambition stripped away? That’s a relief. A gift. You could hide behind “go-getter” energy your whole life, crushing it to prove somebody wrong, and people might think you’re successful while having no idea you’re insecure or doing it for the wrong reasons. You could hide behind that for decades.

I get to do things for the right reasons now. It makes my soul happy. I feel more at peace. It’s easier to connect with people because I’m not overthinking things.

Usually motivation - for me at least - comes from reacting to something external: spite, comparison, proving people wrong. But I’m learning to seek internally instead. To find motivation that comes from who I want to be, not what happened to me. This deep intrinsic motivation is something I’d never felt before. And it’s making life easier.

I want to work to provide for my family and help people. I want to parent to raise my daughter right. I want to exercise to feel good. I want to date, eventually, because I genuinely believe in love and marriage. I want depth and connection.

I don’t want to be proud of what I’m doing. I want to be proud of how I’m doing it.

When you strip everything else away - the spite, the comparison, the pressure - you get to just be. With pure intentions. Deep intrinsic motivation. No contamination.

Just you, doing things for the right reasons. Finally.

She was so diligent about it. Put all four sheets on, one sticker at a time. And while she was placing the hearts, she kept saying it over and over: “Love is happy, Dada. Love is happy.”

It’s such a simple thing for a 3-year-old to say. Surface-level. Innocent.

But it’s also the deepest thing I’ve ever heard.

Because love is a lot of things. And when you’re an adult, you learn all the complicated versions first. Love is sacrifice. Love is putting others first. Love is endurance. Love is toughing it out through the hard parts, staying committed when things get difficult, giving everything you have even when it hurts.

We’re taught that love is supposed to be hard. That if it’s not hard, maybe it’s not real love. That the struggle is proof of devotion.

And somewhere along the way, we forget that love is supposed to be happy.

I gave everything for a long time. Time, money, parts of myself. I changed what I believed. I accepted things I didn’t want to accept. I thought that’s what love was—giving until there was nothing left, sacrificing until it hurt, and calling that devotion.

But giving into a void doesn’t create love. It just makes you feel small. And the sweetness that used to come naturally to me—the part of me that was caring and gentle and soft—it got lost in all that giving. It stopped feeling like a gift and started feeling like survival.

I was a sweet kid. People told me that all the time when I was young. I got it from my mom—she was a kindergarten teacher, one of the most creative and kind people I’ve ever known. I never once heard her yell at anyone. Not once. She was just genuinely sweet, all the time.

She died a few years after I finished college, but I carry her with me (I always did, even when I was too sad to think about her). That sweetness, that care for other people—I got that from her.

And then somewhere along the way, I lost it. Or maybe I buried it. Maybe I thought I had to grow out of it—not just to be a man, but because the guys around me weren’t like that. I got confused. I didn’t know if I should keep being that way or if I needed to be something different to fit in, to be accepted.

But then I had my daughter.

And I couldn’t see myself until I saw her.

She’s unbelievably empathetic—way beyond her years. When her Mimi moved to a new house, she asked if we could get her a housewarming plant. Completely on her own. I didn’t suggest it. She just wanted to do something nice.

She asks about her cousins all the time. She wants to play with her friends, share things with them. If we’re getting a treat, she’ll say, “Maybe I can take this home for [my neighbor] Adaya.” She’s always thinking about other people. In every way possible.

She notices things. She feels things. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. I’ve never seen her push someone, steal a toy, or be mean to someone. Sometimes she’s even a little too timid, but I love that about her.

And watching her be that way—so sweet, so caring, so present—it’s like seeing a mirror of who I used to be. Who I still am, underneath everything. Who I want to be forever.

Maybe she got it from me. Maybe she got it from my mom and its just in her DNA. But either way, she’s teaching me that it’s okay to be sweet. That it’s not a phase you grow out of. That you can be an adult and still hold onto that part of yourself—the part that cares deeply, that notices when people are hurting, that wants to make things better just because.

She’s showing me that sweetness isn’t weakness. It’s the whole point.

A few weeks ago, I was at my stepsister’s wedding. I was sitting at a table with all my cousins—most of them married, some for two years, some for ten or more. I’m separated, so this was the first family wedding I’d been to without my spouse.

During the speeches—those moments when people say beautiful, fluffy things about the bride and groom and your heart just swells—I wasn’t focused on myself. I was watching everyone else.

And I noticed something I’d never seen before.

All my cousins were looking at each other. Making eye contact. Sharing the happiness of the moment, deeply and quietly. Some of them have been together for years, and you could still see it—the way they looked at each other, the way they smiled, the way they were present with each other in that joy.

Behind us, at the parents’ and grandparents’ table, the older generation was doing the same thing—but they were watching us. Watching their children and grandchildren. Watching love happen in real time.

Both of my grandmas were at that table. Their husbands are gone. They would have been making eye contact with their partners, sharing that moment the way my cousins were. But instead, they were watching their grandchildren experience what they once had.

And I realized I was in a similar place. Not the same—death and divorce are different kinds of loss—but there’s an unexpected parallel. We were both at a table without our person. And instead of being bitter, we were both watching love unfold in front of us, learning from it, remembering what it looks like when it’s real.

It was strange, being in that position at 31. But it was also beautiful. Because I got to see love through three different lenses in that moment.

Through my daughter’s eyes: Love is happy.

Through my grandmas’ eyes: watching their grandchildren share joy with their partners, even after years together—joy they once knew and carried forward.

And through my own eyes: finally understanding what I need to see, what I want, what love is supposed to feel like.

I don’t know what’s next for me. I hope I find love again someday. But this isn’t about that.

This is about being thankful.

Thankful for a daughter who can teach me about love when she’s only 3 years old. Thankful that the hard things I’ve been through have given me the ability to see moments like this with depth, to learn from them, to be inspired by them.

Thankful that I get to understand the difference between being childish and being childlike.

Childlike is wonder, presence, sweetness, curiosity, genuine emotion. And I want to be childlike in almost every way possible. Because that’s where the truth lives. That’s where love lives.

My daughter taught me that with four sheets of stickers and a cardboard streetcar.

Love is happy. That’s the core. That’s what matters. The hard parts are edge cases—they happen, and you deal with them, but they shouldn’t define what love is. At its core, love should make you feel safe. It should make you feel seen. It should make you feel like a kid again in the best way.

And now I know that. Because a 3-year-old told me while decorating a streetcar.

I know where you are right now. You’re disconnected. You’re going through something you can’t even fully explain to the people you love, and honestly, you’re not sure if what you’re experiencing is normal or not. (It’s not, but you’ll figure that out soon enough.) You’re afraid every single day. Afraid to be yourself, afraid to be funny, afraid to even ask simple questions. You’ve kind of pulled away from everyone—your family, your cousins you used to be close with, your friends. It’s not that you want to. You just… can’t right now.

And you think you’ve lost all of that. Those deposits you made over the years—being the life of the party at family events, encouraging people at work, showing up for friends (emotionally being there, random gifts and surprises just for fun)—you think maybe you’ve burned through all of that goodwill by disappearing.

Here’s what I need you to know: those deposits don’t expire.

Especially with family. And even with close friends, they last way longer than you think. When you’re ready—when you finally break the news about what’s been happening—they’re going to show up. Your cousins are going to reach out wanting to hang out. Your dad and stepmom are going to talk to you every day even though you’ve been pretty cold to them because you couldn’t explain what was happening.

And your stepmom? You never felt close to her. After your mom died, it was just too hard. But she’s always been an amazing person—life had just been too hard for you to realize it. And she’s still going to be there for you, like a mother figure despite your distance, to encourage you and care for you. That’s going to mean everything.

Your neighbors are going to become some of your best friends. And your business partner? He’s going to treat you like a mentor—not just in work, but in life. He’s going to offer advice, know way too much about your personal life, and support you in both work and life. Without him, you don’t get to keep working through all of this.

And the wild part? You’re going to be confused about why people love you when you can’t even love yourself. You weren’t perfect—let’s be honest—but you were surviving. And people could see that. They knew something was up.

You’re going to rediscover something you forgot: you can see again.

Everyone you meet has a beautiful smile. You didn’t use to see that. Now you do. You can start conversations with strangers. You can make jokes without thinking twice. You can be goofy again. You’re going to start freestyle rapping again. Making puns. Thinking of cool ideas. Feeling creative. And on top of that—this is the wild part—you’re going to connect with people on a deeper level than you ever did before. Because you went through a lot, and now you have this emotional depth and empathy that you didn’t have at 22.

You’re going to realize what community actually means. Not just people you hang out with, but people who encourage you, who make you better, who are down for you no matter what. You stopped going to church a decade ago. You’re going to start going again, and somehow the people you’re around are going to make you feel comfortable opening up about what you went through. And they’re going to accept you and encourage you. And somehow, opening up to people you just met makes you less afraid about the future. You’re not a monster. You’re here. You’re working on yourself.

And yeah, you’re going to lose everything.

The relationship. Your family structure. Even time with your daughter that you never thought you’d have to sacrifice. You were self-employed to spend more time with her, and now you only get half your time with her. You’re sad. She’s sad. You didn’t intend for life to be like this. Now it’s less about quantity and all about quality. You’ve gotta make it count.

Money too. The empire you built. The comfort. At 31, it’s going to feel late to restart. You lost the only person you ever dated—over half your life. Self-employment island is scary and lonely.

But here’s what you gain: you lose the anxiety. Not all of it—we all have worries—but so much of it lifts because you already survived losing everything. What’s left to be afraid of?

You’re going to have everything and nothing at the same time. This beautiful house. The best daughter. But also uncertainty about the future. And somehow… you’re not going to care. Not in a careless way, but in a free way. You’re going to trust that it’ll work out. You’re going to focus on healing. And you’re going to be happy most of the time—which you would not have guessed was possible a few months earlier.

You’re going to therapy one or two times a week. You’re reading your Bible, getting daily mantras and stoic principles as push notifications on your phone to improve your outlook on life. You’re journaling every day. You’re seeing art and music in ways you never used to. You’re piping positive things into your ears (well, maybe a little too much trash music, but less than usual, haha). Everything around you is a mess, but somehow at your core you feel happy. You’re not afraid every day that you could lose everything with one wrong step. You already lost. So in turn, you’ve already won. And also… you never lost.

Here’s what you need to hear: the people who really love you are going to show up differently.

Your dad, your cousins, your friends—they’re going to let you share the same frustration and confusion over and over until you get better. They’re not going to shut you down or make you feel like a burden. They’re going to give you space to be human. You’re going to call your dad like two times a day to vent or talk through confusing feelings. Eventually it happens way less. All of a sudden you look back a few weeks later and can’t believe that progress.

You gave everything you had. Every ounce of effort and love and care and encouragement. You compromised on things that made you uncomfortable just to try to make someone happy, and that’s actually what caused the most damage. But you’re going to learn that you have so much love to give.

At 31, you’re not starting from zero.

You have half a lifetime of entrepreneurship and work experience. Your pain gave you wisdom that some people never learn in their entire lives. You have a daughter you love. You have relationships that came back stronger—and NEW relationships and friends. You connect on new things with them. You’re encouraged by them. Your old friends are still there for you too.

You’re going to be selective about which pieces of yourself to bring back. But you’re surprised that you actually want most of you back. Some of the pieces you don’t want back (anxiety, judgement, impure ambitions) are already gone. You still grew even when you were going through stuff. Not trying to be who you were at 22. You’re trying to be more like a kid again—because Kenzie always says, “…Maybe someday when you’re little, Dada.” The version of yourself that loved building things, making silly videos, drawing and seeing things as amazing.

And here’s the thing that’s going to surprise you most:

Enjoying your life isn’t even about you. It’s about being with other people. Being a dad. Hanging out with other parents. Running a business not to get rich, but to do good work and make good connections. Being happy and being yourself isn’t about pleasing other people, but it truly involves being around good people and community.

The other day at church, the small group icebreaker was: what’s a simple pleasure in life? Your answer wasn’t coffee or a TV show. It was your neighbors. It was people, not things or experiences. That’s community. That’s what you didn’t know you needed.

You can’t expedite healing fully—it’ll still take time.

You’ve actually met a handful of other people who went through exactly, maybe too specifically, what you went through—and they said it takes a year or more, pretty consistently. You’ll be patient, but you’re not letting that happen. You can be happy sooner. You already are. Pieces will scar you forever, but you can get to that 80% quickly because of your community and reflection and joy and prayer.

So hang in there.

The people are still there. The version of yourself you’re afraid you lost? It’s waiting on the other side. And it has the best parts about your past, what you want about your future, and some surprise elements that came from going through some “stuff”. Some things that were the worst things to happen to you are already turning into positives and life lessons—it’s just all about perspective.

It feels like standing outside a subway watching people through the glass doors (or the streetcar if you’re from Kansas City like me). You can see them clearly, but you can’t reach them. They’re moving through their lives in this protective bubble of distraction, and you’re on the outside looking in, hyperaware of patterns they can’t see in themselves.

When you’re going through real pain, the kind that’s too big to ignore or push away, something shifts. All the usual distractions stop working. You can’t scroll away from grief. You can’t Netflix your way out of heartbreak. The pain demands your attention, forces you into a kind of unwilling presence that most people spend their whole lives avoiding.

And once you’ve been shaken awake like that, you start seeing things differently.

A Thousand Yard Stare

We talk a lot about digital distraction—phones, social media, binge-watching TV. Those are obvious problems. But what I’m seeing goes beyond that. Even when the phones are put away and the TV is off, there’s still this palpable absence you can feel when you’re with someone who isn’t really there.

They can be looking right at you, responding to your words, going through all the motions of conversation, but there’s something missing. Their consciousness is somewhere else entirely—replaying yesterday’s problems, planning tomorrow’s tasks, or just floating in this kind of mental static that keeps them from actually landing in the moment with you.

I’ve become uncomfortably aware of this because I recognize it in myself. There’s a certain vacancy you can spot in people’s eyes if you know what to look for—a thousand-yard stare that says someone is anywhere but here. I know it because I’ve worn it myself, showing up to family gatherings physically present but emotionally checked out, hoping nobody would notice.

They noticed.

Life On Autopilot

Most people aren’t living their lives so much as they’re being lived by them. Wake up, work, parent (if you have kids), watch the game, repeat. It’s a perfectly fine life—the same rhythm that generations have found comfort in. But when you’ve been forced awake by crisis, that autopilot existence starts to feel suffocating.

The real tragedy isn’t the routine itself. It’s how unconscious it all is. Parents dropping kids at school with their minds already at the office. Friends hanging out but never really connecting. Family dinners where everyone’s physically present but emotionally scattered.

I started noticing this everywhere—the exhausted relative who can barely engage when you visit from out of town, even though you only see each other once a year. The perpetually upbeat friend whose performance can’t quite hide the exhaustion underneath. People who respond to your pain with a vacant nod before quickly changing the subject.

Distraction becomes a protective cocoon. But sometimes that cocoon becomes a prison. I watched someone close to me choose increasingly destructive ways to avoid facing their shame and regret. It started innocently—wanting more friends, going out more. But it escalated to some pretty bad habits, then to completely changing their personality, until even the closest people in their life didn’t recognize them anymore. That’s what avoidance can become when the pain gets big enough: a complete erasure of self.

Nothing To Lose

Pain, for all its devastation, gave me something unexpected: the inability to pretend anymore. When you’re at rock bottom, when you’ve already lost everything that felt important, there’s nothing left to protect. You can afford to be real in ways that people still holding their lives together simply can’t risk.

This has made me bolder about being vulnerable with new people, about having conversations that go deeper than surface-level pleasantries. I’m not looking to dump my trauma, but I’m also not willing to hide behind small talk when something meaningful could happen instead.

The response has been surprising. People are hungry for real connection, even if they don’t know how to reciprocate it yet. They might not share their own struggles, but there’s often a visible relief when someone else is willing to be genuinely human.

But it’s also isolating. When you’ve experienced what real presence feels like, surface-level interactions feel almost painful. You’re still watching people through that subway glass, wanting to connect but unable to break through their protective distraction.

Choosing Consciousness

There’s a meditation technique where you notice when your mind wanders, acknowledge the distraction without judgment, and gently return your attention to the present moment. Crisis taught me to do this in real life.

When I’m with my daughter and feel my mind pulling toward worry or regret, I’ve learned to catch myself: This is silly. I’m in my head. She is here right now. This is life. This is everything. The pain in the past, the anxiety about the future—none of it matters as much as this moment with her.

It’s not perfect. I still get pulled away. But I’ve developed a sensitivity to presence versus absence that I never had before. I know what it feels like to be truly here, so I can tell when I’m drifting—and when others are too.

Maybe the point isn’t to find some radically different way of living. Maybe it’s about bringing consciousness to whatever life you choose—refusing to sleepwalk through your relationships, your daily interactions, your own existence.

The most heartbreaking part isn’t just witnessing all this distraction. It’s seeing how it gets passed down. Family patterns of emotional unavailability. Generations of people who never learned how to have real conversations about hard things. Kids growing up thinking that surface-level interaction is all relationships can offer.

From Knowledge to Wisdom

I used to make rap music, obsessing over technical perfection—syllable counts, rhyme schemes, vocabulary choices. The result was impressive on paper but lacked soul. When I’d freestyle in the car years later, it sounded better despite being less “perfect.” It had something the technical version was missing: life.

That’s what this awakening feels like. I’m not interested in accumulating more knowledge anymore—more podcasts, more self-help books, more ways to optimize and improve. I’m seeking wisdom instead. The kind that comes from actually living your life rather than thinking about how to live it better.

Sometimes it takes losing everything to realize what actually matters. Sometimes the worst thing that ever happens to you is also the thing that finally wakes you up.

I don’t want to spend my life watching it happen from behind glass anymore.

Hard Hitting Calmness

I was a sweet, thoughtful kid growing up, but not particularly confident. I was hard on myself, a perfectionist who developed pretty bad anxiety in high school. But even back in middle school, I’d discovered something that helped.

Before school started, I’d plug in my headphones. The fast-moving flows would make me feel calm — ironic, right? But there was something about that intensity that grounded me when my mind was racing.

When I was 10, I got Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Outkast’s double album). Growing up in a religious household, my parents only let me listen to Andre’s side because they liked Hey Ya (which is ironic — there was less cursing on that half of the album, but the content was probably more inappropriate haha), but I discovered Big Boi’s half on my own. Listening to him absolutely dice up every track with varsity bars and fast delivery — I was hooked. My mind runs fast, and hip hop’s rapid-fire flow made me feel safe in a way other music couldn’t.

Reclaiming Myself

In middle school, I was goofy and not afraid to be myself. I would always make a rap song about any book we read in English class. But as anxiety crept in during high school, I lost that side of myself. I do remember my senior year of high school we were studying Othello, and I decided to make my magnum opus of English class raps — we had a student teacher, and I just remember everyone being like, “woah where did this come from?” I reclaimed a small piece of who I used to be.

That’s happened multiple times in my life — even right now as I’m battling some of the hardest things to ever happen to me. I lose myself sometimes, but hip hop always brings me back. Reminds me who I am and gives me confidence to reclaim myself.

The Soundtrack of Everything

Music became essential as I went through more pain: my mom getting sick, anxiety, health issues, relationship issues. The older I got, the more I needed it.

Looking through my Spotify “likes” lets me remember exactly what I was going through at any given time. Life is cyclical — similar problems, same music, same coping, just more maturity.

I listen to boom bap in the fall — that’s the ultimate ego boost. Hard beats, elite flows, classic braggadocio that you just don’t get from other sub-genres. As a software engineer, I love the “Related Artists” rabbit hole. You could probably get from any rapper to Mozart in a dozen clicks, which is kind of wild to think! That’s how you expand your taste and find genre benders (Kenny Mason, Aries, and Jean Dawson are some of my favorites).

I remember when my daughter was born, Smino dropped Luv 4 Rent. She had trouble sleeping, and I’d have my AirPods in, putting her to sleep with that light butt pat every parent knows. Smino’s crazy out-of-pocket flows mixed with the drums perfectly — I’d pat Kenzie to that consistent cadence until she fell asleep.

I remember the songs I listened to when I got job offers, what was playing on the way to my grandpa’s funeral, the track that was on when I solved a two-week problem at work, what song I had on the day before I proposed. It’s all ingrained.

The Artists Who Shaped Me

Saba is one of my favorite rappers, and each of his first three albums hit me at wild times. Bucket List Project inspired me to build software side projects that made me smarter and catapulted my career. Care for Me? My mom died of cancer shortly after I graduated college. Saba was grieving his friend’s death, but it helped me grieve my mom. Few Good Things? I had a job offer for an insanely high salary and had just found out I was going to be a dad. That album uses his grandparents’ house as this metaphor for family stability — how when everyone scattered from that foundation, the family fractured. I stayed up till midnight when it dropped on New Music Friday. After listening, I woke up the next morning and turned down that huge raise opportunity. A few months later I started Haystack. Music can really move you — that’s wild.

Growing up, I loved Nas—he had a way with words that made you feel like you were there. Kanye was incredible before… well, yeah, but he always inspired me to push myself, be brave, and create. Lecrae, even though he’s Christian rap, is honestly elite—consistency, depth, feelings, pain. That conscious rap was easy to pitch to my religious parents and became my favorite. It kept me afloat during the hardest time of my life and left me open to faith again.

The Deep Work

In college, I got my first Bluetooth speaker. I’d listen to music and study nonstop—that’s when my listening went way up, and I got straight A’s (minus one… thanks, data structures). Whether it was coding homework or a painting project in my dorm, I was locked in. I only needed my music to push me through.

Hip hop made me deep and reflective — it shaped how I write, how I have conversations, how I approach problems. I spent countless hours in my parents’ basement making music, learning to mix and master before YouTube tutorials existed. Hip hop taught me that sharing your art is vulnerable but necessary — whether freestyling for friends or posting songs online.

Sometimes I’ll share a rap lyric with my business partner about a situation we’re facing, and it makes perfect sense to me. He just looks at me like “what?” because he doesn’t listen to much rap. But those bars capture exactly what we’re going through better than I ever could explain it myself.

Hard Hitting Softness

Here’s the ironic part: hip hop is often about being “hard,” but some of the best artists are incredibly vulnerable. Songs will literally move me to tears. Hip hop taught me it was okay to feel deeply, to process pain over 808s.

But let’s be real—nobody wants to go for a run and realize the lyrics they’re listening to are absolute garbage while they’re trying to reflect on life as their feet hit the pavement. On the flip side, sometimes I listen to trash just for the flow or vibe. Sometimes you need something to make you feel, not through words but through cadence and beat.

Hip hop keeps changing, and it helps me stay open-minded. As I get older, that gets harder. You might hear something the kids like and think “what?” But then you appreciate something about it. Maybe it lacks depth, but the simplicity is beautiful — hip hop is hip, after all. It keeps me on my toes and reminds me not to get stuck in my ways.

Now

I don’t rap much anymore, but when I don’t believe in myself, I flip on my favorite songs and transport back to when I first learned confidence. Being a dad has changed my relationship with the music, but I still need it to feel like myself.

I want to pass that feeling on to Kenzie. I want her to feel like she can express herself and channel other people’s art to inspire her own. We live in a world where anything can be generated instantly, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still make our own art.

Hip hop made me creative, confident, empathetic, and resilient. It taught me that vulnerability is strength, that it’s okay to feel everything, and that sometimes the hardest beats help us find our softest truths.

What made you? Sometimes our most powerful influences come from the most unexpected places.

When you’re going to shake life up and do something big, you spend months or even years crafting the perfect plan. Every step is mapped out, you build up a safety net, calculate your risks, make sure you’re okay with them, and make a plan for if you fail. You’ve created a dozen spreadsheets of how things could go and you’re okay with accepting even the worst case scenario.

Finally something prompts you to take a dive, and you jump. And Immediately every calculation goes out the window.

The Surprising Beauty of the Riddle

The plan was clean, linear, and logical. You’re an engineer. You’re used to “If this, then that”. You also have a list of things that equal success, and things to avoid. Seems simple enough? Nope!

You thought every decision would be logical, like a math problem, but its more like a riddle. Nothing in business or life is predictable. You’re “vibe-living” your way through life. You even have to dig into your retirement account because you believe in today’s version of you more than your 65 year-old self.

The wild part is: life isn’t going as planned, but somehow you have more underlying joy than you’ve ever had. You’re taking punches to the face regularly, and somehow you’re still happier than you were when your life was comfortable. You’re doing things you never thought you could do with ease. New problems come up, big problems come up, but you’re Mike DiPasquale, you’ve got this (If you’re from KC you know the reference 😂).

Every day you question if you should give up. You tell your closest friends and family you might give up. They think you’re going to. You keep talking about it, but you’re just talking through it — you know deep down that you won’t, you just need to hear yourself say it out loud to motivate yourself to keep digging. You still believe in yourself. You still have hope. You realize you can't wait for all the info—you have to make calls with incomplete information and trust you'll figure it out. You’ve never lived like this before, it feels foolish, but it feels rewarding.

When Your Why Changes Everything

When you’re in the middle of some beautiful chaos, something shifts.

You started with impure ambitions — wanting people to notice you, prove old bosses wrong, whatever. But somehow that seems like a different life, and a completely different person.

When you see your daughter, when you take the afternoon off to go to Science City, when you start work late to get a vegan breakfast wrap at Mildred’s, you realize this is what matters. She’s your everything. All the original reasons you started feel so small. You have nothing left to prove — you just want to provide for her and have a job that’s flexible enough for you to spend half days with her.

You’re no longer building your business to escape or become wildly successful. You’re doing it because you realized the struggle is making you a better person. Being an entrepreneur has humbled you. When your day-to-day is just you and your business partner, you can’t hide behind blame and anger anymore. You used to blame everything on other people at work. Now you’re accountable for yourself and you have to self-actualize your life.

Somehow what you’ve learned in business directly applies to your personal life. You were so blind before. You start apologizing to people you've done wrong, going to therapy, realizing the whole point of all of this is to just be a better person. When you have a dry-spell of work, you remember you’re still growing as a person. You used to be scared when a client had an idea you didn't know how to execute. But you always find a way. You can solve impossible problems and you don't need to be hesitant to say so—you know you've got this.

Your 401k growth used to be the scoreboard. Now it's your personal growth that gets you excited to wake up.

What just happened? Who am I?

The Irony of Calculated Risks

I thought I was taking a calculated risk starting Haystack. I built runway, safety nets, and backup plans, but my day-to-day is just a big improv show. Every week brings a curveball (personal or business) and there’s no textbook to help, and no one to bounce it off of.

It’s crazy: when you were 21 you used to have such bad anxiety that you didn't want to try a new restaurant. Now you'll navigate a rocky situation with ease (while also still dying inside, but at least you’re brave, haha)

You spend all this time trying to minimize uncertainty, and then you discover that embracing uncertainty is actually what life is all about.

Staying Power is Everything

The difference between people who are doing what makes them happy and those who aren't isn't talent or luck or having the perfect plan.

It's staying power.

Everything in life feels instant. People don't lock in for the long haul anymore. Everyone wants to do their own thing, but nobody actually does it. People start side projects and abandon them. They want to get strong and give up. They have the desire, the fire, but they also have fear and don't believe in themselves.

You stay in it until you've stayed in it too long to quit. Until walking away would feel like betraying the version of yourself who believed this was possible when nobody else did. And honestly, you'd be throwing away growth, knowing there's more around the corner. There are things you've learned about yourself that would have been hidden your whole life without the pressure, risk, and bravery. You could have lived your entire life with the wrong mental models, trapped in comfort, not growing.

The Beautiful Mess

Some days I think about the 2022 version of myself and laugh. I knew I’d still be running my business now, but I also believed I’d be the same person I was when i started. I’m not. I’m better. And I’m proud.

The plan was about becoming successful. The journey ended up being about becoming a better version of myself.

And honestly? That's way more interesting than any plan i modeled in a spreadsheet.

The irony isn't that planning doesn't work. It's that the real plan reveals itself only after you start walking. And the person capable of executing that real plan? They don't exist yet when you start. You have to build them as you go.

That's the most beautiful, terrifying, exhilarating part of this whole thing.

We make our plans. Then life happens. We adapt. We grow. We become people we didn't know we could be.

And somehow, that messy, unpredictable, impossible journey becomes the point.

What started as a calculated risk has become something much more valuable: a daily practice in becoming the person I was meant to be. There is no ROI on that. It’s priceless.

I was a chubby kid. I was also funny, nice, smart, athletic, and artistic. I remember being 10 years old and feeling conflicted about confidence. I have memories of feeling like "the man" — drawing a crowd while I drew an awesome picture of LeBron James during indoor recess, beating my friends in basketball for 4 hours straight on a summer afternoon, or feeling brave enough to make everyone in the room laugh. I felt good about myself. I knew I was talented.

I also remember getting made fun of for being fat — by strangers at the pool, kids at church, or the older kids in the neighborhood.

Guess what shaped my identity? Not the positive memories. I still view myself as the fat kid. I can count on 1 hand how many times I've taken my shirt off in public the last 20 years (I'm in good shape now too!) In high school, anxiety crept in and I lost friends. I went from being loose, free, and funny to guarded and worried. Lately, it's been blowing my mind how your past views of yourself will ruin your confidence in the present.

When I was 17, a client burned me on a freelance project. They didn't pay me and actually yelled at me for asking to get paid. It made me afraid to charge what I was worth. It's crazy how things like that stick with you.

Even knowing I was talented, those negative voices stuck with me through everything. There have been times in my life when I let my ego get the best of me, and somehow I use those weak moments to bury myself even further. I'm never going to be the best dad, husband, business owner, or friend if I keep doing that. You can say what you want about believing in "energy" in the universe — but whether or not you believe in that, if you have negative energy, you're going to rub that off on people around you and not get far in life.

The Breakdown

Last year I had some sort of a mental breakdown. Personal stuff happened that I won't get into, but it shattered my confidence even further. Beyond that, the stress of life was so suffocating — I was learning how to run a business and be a father. I was so worried about my wife being burned out, or my daughter not having the best possible dad that I completely erased myself. I dropped social time, hobbies, even watching sports (I hadn't missed a KU basketball game since my early childhood). I was still working, but it wasn't going great — and I wasn't spending any time being creative for myself, which has always brought me joy. I gave up everything that made me me.

I didn't even feel like "me" anymore. I wasn't creating anything that felt meaningful. I was just surviving, trying to keep everyone happy and failing at all of it.

Remembering Who I Am

I always used to say "I like to build cool stuff." In high school I just created — logos, websites, posters, photography, videos, art, music, whatever. I was obsessed. I had to make something every day because it brought me joy. I wasn't afraid to share it either.

When I started my career, I always had some side project going. But I was more guarded now, and when people shot down my ideas, it just reinforced all those old wounds about not being good enough.

Starting a custom software business felt like getting back to my roots, but I started letting the difficult situations shape me instead of the wins. I started doubting everything - my skills, my judgment, my worth.

I've been so worried about trying to be a good dad, husband, and business owner that I forgot that sometimes doing something for yourself might actually get you farther in life than just checking all the boxes for other people. I'll never aim to be selfish. But it can't be healthy to bury yourself in other people's needs and your failures. That's not the example I want to set for my daughter.

What Now?

I'm choosing to put the negative feelings that have shaped my existence for my entire life away. They're not real anymore, and maybe never were. I've missed deals, lost money, lost time, spent too much time stressing, but I'm actually living. I've made it too far to give up, so the only thing to do now is fail forward.

I'm starting this blog because I want to create again. I don't care if anyone reads it. I don't care if I post less often than I want to. I'm just creating when it feels right to create. Getting back to that kid who had to make something every day because it brought him joy.

So here I am. I'm that kid drawing LeBron again, ready to draw a crowd. I'm dope! Shooters shoot, and I'm ready to start shooting again.