Friend gave me a John O’Donohue book recently. It’s quite good. “To Come Home To Yourself”

moloch feeds on our shame

thesis i'm about to fuck with: if i publish my best writing as a high-quality physical artifact, and keep it entirely off the internet (no pdfs or digital versions at all), it will feel substantially more valuable for readers, and create far more economic value for me

honestly same

good morning

old story in rob's head: ahhhhhhh i'm feeling super overwhelmed by my to do list, so i should prob run away and do a bunch of recreational numbing in the name of "self care" new story: the more i do the better i feel

every time i quit coffee, it takes less than two weeks before i realize that nope my life is unequivocally better with coffee in it

just like woody guthrie had a guitar that said "this machine kills fascists" i think i'm gonna get a tattoo that says "this machine pets cats"

we lost our way when we started worshipping statistics more than stories

type of guy who's learning to love being a work in progress

have you ever felt genuinely moved by writing from chatgpt or claude?

might fuck around and start a physical newsletter business

just wrote a super personal six-sentence manifesto that gets at the core of how I’ve self-sabotaged with money and work over the last decade feels very freeing seeing this whole story in one place

YOU NEED A MANIFESTO 50 reasons to declare your independence

brb gonna trade my synthetic certainty for authentic confusion

my working definition of perfectionism is that it's the pathological need to be perceived as both special and exceptional, because you learned that love and acceptance are conditional on being perceived that way

new spiritual practice just dropped (choosing not to amplify things on this platform that annoy/anger me)

they call me

i've gotta get more threatening (playful)

i have entered my "rob is obsessed with monospace fonts" era

one day in the not too distant future, i suspect many of us will regret having poured so much of ourselves into chatgpt, having freely given so much psycho-emotional context about ourselves to an entity that will, almost certainly, find ways to abuse it

guys i am so tired of the whole nonfiction convention of "clever anecdote > description of scientific study that supposedly confirms anecdote > author giving you tidy, prepackaged Insights based on scientifically confirmed anecdote" like, i get a visceral ick reaction from it

"there's more power in practicing who we want to be, than in constantly analyzing why we're not already"

today is gonna be a day of culinary experimentation in the hardy household 😈

of all the emails in my inbox, this one makes me happiest

some lovely af clouds this morning as i went out to ruck. gonna be a good day

did you know that you can just write essays and send emails and build an entire business with a cat snoozing on your lap?? the world is your oyster!

live the question, anon

ok i think i finally dialed in my hypothesis around manifestos and why they matter so much as a genre of writing how does this land with y'all?

today i wrote about how i spent a decade trying to make my art pay the bills, and how it didn't really work, and how i'm slowly learning to meet my needs for BOTH financial security and creative fulfillment ungated.life/p/soul-work...

so uh, i wrote a cool manifesto for a startup called lightpage, and in the process discovered a daily practice that softens my perfectionism and also decided to revamp my personal writing?? a lot going on in this one, but feels like the birth of something rad 🦋 ungated.life/p/the-livin...

a wave of sanity and serenity would wash over the world if we all started working towards what we actually want right now, instead of doubling down on the socially accepted ladder-climbing games we believe we must play in order to get what we want some day in the distant future

i feel mildly envious of ppl who have clear snap judgements and takes about current events. makes it so much easier to play the creator game and ride the waves of attention takes me a long ass time to figure out how i feel about anything, let alone have a coherent perspective

re-reading the wind up bird chronicle for the first time since high school. what a batshit insane book lmao

entering my "rob makes huge-ass batches of chili" era

running a workshop tomorrow about writing "six sentence manifestos" and ngl i'm really fucking excited about it

"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself." —Augustine of Hippo

hinges are for doors, not for humans

"this reads like it was written by someone who’s walked through fire barefoot and came out holding a bowl of soup." -chatgpt, upon reading my latest personal manifesto

hi friends. happy sunday

have been reading a shit ton of john steinbeck's novellas of late, and because i'm me, i found a way to connect this to writing manifestos lmao may i present to you, Of Mice and Manifestos ungated.life/p/of-mice-a...

type of marketing guy who has a deep existential fear around being seen

"The way the world gets healed now is not by getting a good idea that everybody agrees with, not by having a summit that solve the problems, but having more people awakening to who they are and learning how to give what they have come into the world to give." - Michael Meade

just watched a hummingbird take a tiny lil poop

making a trip to the story realm y'all need anything?

y’all i’ve spent this month cooking up a brand manifesto, and i’m legit excited about it. been awhile since i've felt this energized by a writing gig it’s for an app called lightpage, which is kinda like a moleskine notebook, but with some thoughtful AI baked in

just had my first experience of my cat jumping on my back while doing pushups appreciated the extra weight, but NOT the claws lmao 😅

"unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments"

just paid off a credit card that's been carrying a chunky balance since, like, 2019 feels good man

“the purpose of writing a manifesto is to launch yourself into a quest, the trials and tribulations of which will temper your soul and help you cultivate the courage, grace, and genuine leadership we so desperately need in this chaotic world, bro” -me, when the uber driver asks for directions