I Fell Off (It's So Over)

# I fell off (it's so over)

[00:00:00] It's time for us to have a talk. I have to confess, I have to come out with it, rip the bandaid off and accept reality. I fell off. It happened to me, no doubt about it. I fell off I guess it's been like almost two year, two years now.

[00:00:20] My creative output has been super sporadic. I've been super mentally flustered and distracted and my growth on all my platforms just kind of stalled out and I kind of stopped publishing consistently. I kind of lost track a little bit of my own goals and my own intentions in a way, and life just sort of drowned me and I fell off.

[00:00:46] whatever little bit of kind of internet cultural capital I had sort of slipped through my fingers. It all went to zero. People stopped inviting me to things and I kind of lost all relevance that whatever tiny little bit I had, not that I was, ever that important, or relevant but, you know, I had for a few years growth on multiple platforms.

[00:01:07] You know, I was sort of in the conversation with, a lot of people and somewhat relevant, whatever. I'm not overstating any of that. But the point is I had growth going. I was publishing consistently. I had a very clear sense of what I was doing and, I was on the radar of a lot of people

[00:01:22] Whatever, you know, I would get invited to cool parties, that kind of bs, and then I just kind of fell off totally and completely. And it's painful to admit that I think I've been putting off, admitting that I wanna tell you about what it feels like to fall off. I'm gonna gonna break this down very honestly, and then I'll also reflect a little bit about.

[00:01:41] How to come back. 'cause as you've seen, I've, I've been publishing consistently in the past couple weeks. I have videos coming out and podcasts coming out, and the newsletter, has been more consistent as well. and of course, I have this book that I'm finishing and we'll be shipping very soon to people who've pre-ordered it.

[00:01:56] So I do feel confident that I'm back, but I'm still coming back. And so I wanna talk about this wall. It's fresh in my mind. And. Live and painful and sensitive, because you know, if I do come back to a hundred percent as I intend to and as I fully expect to, at that point I'll probably forget these raw feelings.

[00:02:15] So I wanted to fire up this video. Just no plan, no prep, and just tell you what it feels like to fall off, how it happened to me, how I think it probably happens in general. I'm gonna try to generalize a little bit about. What I suspect the process is. And then I wanna also kind of demystify it a little bit because at the end of the day, you can just come back at any time and it's actually pretty cool.

[00:02:37] There are some good aspects to falling off in a way. I think I kind of experienced like an ego death basically, and I think I kind of needed that. So in a way, now that I'm back, I'm grateful that I fell off. Because it was a massive reset. it was an ego death and a massive identity kind of recalibration.

[00:02:55] And when I say recalibration, I mean basically an identity reduction to zero identity can be a very dangerous thing. It can be a very possessive and controlling and constraining thing. And when you fall off, you kind of lose all identity and all ego, and that's painful at first. But then if you're able pull yourself back, then it's.

[00:03:14] I think on net, a very good cleansing and mentally freeing kind of experience, but that's only on condition that you pull yourself back. I mean, there were definitely many moments in the past year where I really was despondent and felt like maybe my entire creative, vision and creative life that I planned out for myself was maybe.

[00:03:39] Destroyed. Like, I really thought that maybe I lost it completely. And that is utterly depressing. I mean, it's some of the most kind of anxiety ridden and depressed days that I can remember. So if you don't pull yourself up, then falling off is

[00:03:53] Terrifying. I'm still terrified of that, but if you can pull yourself back, then I think on net it's better. So I'd rather have never fallen If it were up to me, I never would've fallen off. I would've just kept plowing consistently, steadily growing my various platforms and my business and my larger, creative project.

[00:04:11] But I do think that if it happens to you, you gotta remember, A, you can literally just come back whenever you. Are able to, you have to kind of create the conditions for that.

[00:04:22] On another level, it is actually complex and there's a lot of mental, challenges and, and roadblocks there. and then if I, I do believe if you do come back as I feel now that I'm back, or at least coming back, then I do think on net it's, it's actually. Very beneficial. I wanna explain why and how that works.

[00:04:40] So first, let's just share some details. it's not pretty, but, let's just first establish I did just completely fall off. I mean, the way it happens is you feel like you're not really falling off. You tell yourself, you're not really falling off. You're like, oh, you know, I had a bad week.

[00:04:54] Then it's, oh, I had a bad month. And then it's like, oh, okay. You know, this is just a, difficult moment of life. I'll be back on the horse. And then it's like three months, and then you're kind of like starting to sweat and you're like, oh my God, what's happening? What, what happened to my focus, my discipline, my consistency?

[00:05:10] And that's when you really start to kind of panic and then you try everything you can to kind of get back at it. But then I'd say like after, six months or so, if you're still sort of like falling off. you should accept that it's happening. it's maybe already happened.

[00:05:26] so that's how it came to me. it was this kind of like quicksand basically is what I would compare it to. it's a kind of process where at first you're like, okay, it's no big, it's all right, I got this just a bad week. And then you slowly find yourself kind of, spiraling in a way.

[00:05:41] and when you. Spiral. The longer you spiral down, the harder it is, I think, to get out of the rut. that's how it happened for me. And obviously in my case, I don't know if you have been following me, for some time you might know. the proximate cause of it, in my case is the approximate cause of a lot of people falling off.

[00:05:59] Which is having kids. And that's been a beautiful, interesting, and highly worthwhile experience. I have no regrets about becoming a father. I now have two kids. it feels like just yesterday when I had no kids, I honestly feel like between not having kids and having kids, it's been one day

[00:06:16] I'm just now coming up for air, even though my oldest son is three now. we had a second son, about four months ago. you go into a crazy wormhole, basically. I mean,keeping a creative, intellectual project focused and alive and growing while having kids is, the hardest thing I ever tried to do.

[00:06:33] And, and I failed. I mean, the kids. Got the better of me. Not just the kids, but the larger ensemble of responsibilities. the kid himself or herself, especially the first one is, it's not that bad in and of itself. It's all the other things. It's supporting your partner.

[00:06:47] It's, having to get much more serious about the finances and things like that. And it's even just the mental load of responsibilities. it's very hard to describe, but it's incredibly real I think it hit me harder than many men for some reason. I don't know why exactly.

[00:07:02] I guess my own personality, I was very accustomed to a lot of freedom and independence and time. I always, before having kids work in a pretty unruly way where I would wait until I got inspired and then once I got inspired I would just crank and I could just work, really hard for long periods of time.

[00:07:20] once I got into it. But when I got into it was very unpredictable and sometimes it'd be at night, sometimes it'd be in the morning. And if I got into it at night, I would just stay up all night writing something or making something, whatever. and that worked for me my entire young adult life, through grad school, through my post academic adventure.

[00:07:37] That was always a fine working model. Obviously when you have kids, you can't do that anymore 'cause you have to wake up with them at a certain time or put them down at a certain time. And so I think. For my personality type, if that is the kind of way that you work generally before having kids. I think having kids screws you up disproportionately more than other people.

[00:07:56] For whatever reason, having kids ruined me mentally and. Creatively and I just, it got the better of me basically.

[00:08:06] I put on weight, I'm sort of back to normal now. I think I look alright, but, when the first kid came in, the first like six to eight months, I gained like, you know, I wasn't that bad. I wasn't like super fat or anything, but I was like chubby basically in a way. I had never been in my entire life. I still feel like maybe slightly, but I think I'm pretty much getting back to normal now.

[00:08:24] It's just bad, man. Everything fell apart. I'm not gonna lie. Everything fell apart by six months into the first kid, I, it was pretty much already falling apart. And now I'm a total of three years later. So About two and a half years after that, I've slowly kind of built things back up, but man, it ruined me and.

[00:08:41] So what I'll say is that it did cause some of the, hardest and most kind of depressing days of my life. Like there were many days in the past three years where I would just kind of like stare at the wall and just be like, I can't believe it happened to me. Like I'm a washed up, middle-aged man who's lost all his mojo and lost all my momentum My audience isn't growing, my business isn't growing, and I'm just sort of like stuck. And basically, once you have kids, you can do like one or two big things a day. you just can't do like four or five big things a day, all day and night, whenever you want to. And so I was able to basically maintain my life.

[00:09:23] Like, I have been a very good father, and I'm, I'm very, you know, proud of that. I have my own failures and imperfections, but I will say that, for all intents and purposes, I think I've been pretty much flawless, as a father and as a husband. I've been ultra present, highly dedicated, reliable.

[00:09:38] I haven't fucked up anything, serious. So at least I have that, under my belt. people say you should really enjoy these years when the kids are young. I haven't always fully enjoyed it 'cause I've been very stressed and disappointed with myself and I've been beating myself up every day since the first kid came.

[00:09:52] I'm not kidding. every day I have reflected on and felt pain specifically about not. Achieving enough progress on my creative work it's literally caused me pretty serious anguish, every single day for the past three years. it's starting to lessen up as I get control over things.

[00:10:11] And I do feel now things are kind of back on, so that pain much less frequently. Not every day now, now it's just like two or three times A week. So I have been able to minimally maintain things like I have published. A handful of newsletters here and there in the past year. I've published a handful of podcasts in the past couple years here and there. you know, and I do have, my various kind of, business operations humming. although my focus across them has been terrible

[00:10:39] I probably owe you an email and I've dropped a bunch of balls and I just hate dropping balls, man. I love the feeling of just being on top of everything and being out in front of everything. I haven't felt on top of my life once since the kids came, like every single day since the first kid came.

[00:10:57] I feel like I have just this anguished feeling of being behind, And the to-do list kind of gets longer. It never gets shorter. and so these are the feelings. this is how it manifests. And it just sort of gradually, gets the better of you until you're just kind of like screwed and the weight is too much and the obligations are too much.

[00:11:17] And the loss of momentum, the memory of focus and consistency and disciplined output is like so distant that you're kind of like. Stuck in mud basically. Anyway, that's what it feels like and it kind of creeps up on you. like I said, you kind of deny that first you're kinda like, oh, I'm gonna get back to normal, I'm gonna get back to normal.

[00:11:35] But at a certain point what I learned is that you actually do have to admit defeat. And once I kind of admitted like. It's over. Not for good, but, but for now, it's over. I lost, I'm not gonna win this. I've been defeated by life and it's gotten the best of me. Once I could admit that, then I actually in a way felt less anguish.

[00:11:57] I felt more like, okay, now I can take stock and I can just, you know, figure out what to do next and how to solve this, and what the next. Era looks like. but in all the time where I was telling myself, I'm gonna get back to normal. I'm gonna get back to normal. That actually caused the most anguish and actually prevented growth because I was clinging to something in the past that that was what was worse.

[00:12:17] The worst thing about it, the fact is I'm a new man. I'm a, my life is completely different. Everything is different. It has to be. And I was trying to like, not confront that. I was trying to Pull back up the old version of my life and that's not gonna work. Right? So accepting defeat actually felt good in a way, and I just sort of had to throw my hands up and like I am that washed up, middle aged man who's losing energy, losing ambition, losing everything is kind of, has a cluttered, flustered mind every day.

[00:12:46] And it's just trying to stay afloat, trying to take care of the kids and my wife and keep them all happy and healthy. once I. Admitted that to myself, then it actually opened things up. And I would even say I honestly feel like I basically had an ego death, whatever that means. I don't mean any kind of technical term, but I really feel like my sense of who I am, like any sense of, you know, I don't know.

[00:13:08] Like I don't think I, I don't think I'm cool anymore. I never, like, I don't even try to entertain that. I can't even pretend to entertain that illusion. You know, when I was younger and, you know, I had people who read my work and, you know, watch my stuff and listen to my stuff and every now and then I'm like recognized in public or whatever, you know, when I was younger, I thought I was, you know, I had a sense of myself, like, I'm a badass, I'm cool.

[00:13:28] I'm gonna be, slightly famous. Now I'm gonna be more famous. I'm gonna make a lot of money. And, you know, it was like this identity, kind of aspirational identity thing that I had when I was younger, which of course you do when you're younger. You have these kind of personal, selfish ambitions and whatever.

[00:13:41] now I can't even pretend to have any of those things now. I literally just, I am just a super normal middle aged man. Like, I don't, it's hard to describe. Like, I just don't think about my own. Self really anymore. There's no time to think about myself. I'm not bragging.

[00:13:56] This is not like a reverse, you know, kind of like ego thing where I now I'm talking about how humble and, based I am or something. No, I'm just like, literally, I, I don't have time to think about who I am and I, I don't, and since I did fall off, like frankly, I'm, I'm just sort of, assume now that no one knows who I am.

[00:14:13] That I'm not involved in any relevant conversation, that no one's paying attention to me, that no one cares. Like, I don't feel cool. I don't feel terrible either. Like, I'm proud of everything I've done and you know, I, I, I still have, you know, a lot of ambitions for the future, and I'm, I'm positively oriented towards 'em.

[00:14:28] I'm, and I'm confident in myself, but like, I'm just honestly more grounded and I'm kind of empty. Like, I have this kind of, like, my, my, my identity is emptied. I don't, clinging to anything I used to be or wanted to be or whatever. So now I'm like, the cool thing is like I do still have an audience.

[00:14:43] I still do have a platform. I've built this totally independent business model for myself as an independent scholar, and it's all still there. So that's one thing that's been really amazing is that, you can actually just turn things back on and everything works. And so like when I publish a video or a newsletter or something, like the same number of people still read it

[00:15:01] I still get positive feedback and I can still sell things that I'm building or whatever. So that's been actually really cool to experience that you can fall off completely for a long time, like years. Okay.And everything you've built is still there. and you can just resume. it's mostly a psychological, obstacle.

[00:15:17] in my case, I just had to rip off the bandaid.

[00:15:19] before I had kids, I guess I was just kind of obsessed with myself. I didn't think that I was, I really didn't. But when your ability to focus on yourself is totally, stolen from you, against your will, you realize actually how much you are obsessed with yourself, In that pain and anguish of not being able to focus on myself is the evidence that, in fact, I was obsessed with myself.

[00:15:44] I mean, looking back on it, I see now that I very much lived inside of my own identity conception and, aspirations. Like, especially, you know, I came out of academia to pursue this lifestyle that I've. created as an independent scholar and the business model I built around it before having kids, I was kind of obsessed with my story, and what I represented and what I was trying to do with myself, for myself, to make a name for myself and what that name means, how I would be seen, and how I would show the world this or that, and prove to the world this or that.

[00:16:16] I was very much obsessed with that. I think, and maybe that's appropriate, maybe when you're young, especially a young man, maybe that's just fine. that's motivating and there's nothing wrong with that. But boy, do kids kind of tear you away from that because like I said, you just can't, you can't even afford to think about yourself that much.

[00:16:34] And when you first start to have that torn away from you and you lose your focus and you, you're not able to create good work consistently.

[00:16:45] Because you have to serve these new little people and your wife and attend to all of these new needs.

[00:16:52] At first it just feels like failure, basically. And it is, in a way it is. Right. you can't deny it. Falling off is falling off, And it is painful 'cause it is failure.

[00:17:01] But then what happens really forces you to

[00:17:05] think about.

[00:17:07] What you were really doing all those years anyway, when you subtract the ego and you subtract the identity stuff and the chip on your shoulder and what you're trying to prove to the world when you do let go of all that stuff and then you ask yourself like, well, what's left?

[00:17:22] What was underneath? All of that stuff. You get this kind of purified, crystallized version of things, and

[00:17:30] that is probably the real truth of what you were doing all along anyway. And maybe you only get that by having something external and just devastatingly difficult and distracting to kind of burn away. Everything else, so it's painful, but I do genuinely believe you come out better on net

[00:17:50] and that's how it feels for me. another thing is that you ultimately can just rip off the bandaid at any time. Like any time in the past three years, I could have turned this camera on and just started being honest, started producing stuff like this. I write like three, half baked essays a week, even when I'm not publishing.

[00:18:06] Like I could have forced myself to publish a blog post every week or something like this. I actually could have any time in the past three years flipped a switch and turned everything back on. But it's mental. and money is a big problem. You have to kinda get the money right and you kind of can't focus on creative work until.

[00:18:23] The money for your family is like really secure in your mind. Like until you're really confident, you're on top of that, you kind of can't think about philosophy and social science and stuff like that. so it's vexing because it's not like objective constraints. Exactly. there, there subjective, but they're so binding.

[00:18:42] That these subjective constraints are essentially objective and outside of you and bigger than you. And these are the kinds of, questions that are very frustrating

[00:18:53] I will say that I definitely now have a much better sense of what it is I'm doing. Exactly, I mean, writing this book, which just, oh my gosh, another, incredibly difficult trial, getting this book done over the past year while I'm kind of in this.

[00:19:10] Quicksand of the past couple years,

[00:19:12] that's a whole separate story. But now that it is truly just about done and will be shipping soon, I can say that. I mean, I've learned so much about myself by writing that. That really complimented this kind of learning process because when you are hustling and growing and you're kind of in that high energy, high growth, young man's game online.

[00:19:34] You just go by momentum and you don't actually have to have a clear sense of exactly where you're trying to go or what is the meaning of what you're doing. You don't need to have a strong sense of those things necessarily. So long as you're getting after it and you're putting stuff out and it's resonating and there's some kind of audience that you've built up, you can just kind of crank.

[00:19:53] And what that means is you can afford to. Tell yourself all kinds of things. Like, oh, one day you're gonna do this, one day you're gonna do that. you can kind of entertain a variety of different hypotheses about what it is you're really doing or where it's gonna go.

[00:20:06] But once you fall off and you have kids, and the momentum goes to zero.

[00:20:10] To actually restart. You need to

[00:20:13] have a particular sense of why you're restarting or what you're trying to do. When you restart, you suddenly can't get away with.

[00:20:21] That fuzziness that you could get away with when you were younger. I mean, I think back to the first few years after I left academia set out on this adventure, I had so many different ideas about what I was doing and where it would go. There were months at a time where I thought I was going to pursue a kind of high growth YouTube strategy or something like a Mr.

[00:20:44] Beast or something, and I was gonna scale that and maybe I would be like a big YouTuber. Then there's other months where I was more focused on writing and I just wanted to, Focus on growing the newsletter and I was just going to be an essayist or something. Like, I had all of these different ideas. there were times where I actually really kind of flirted with the idea of just actually really focusing on business and scaling the business and making the biggest business I could out of what I had and what I was doing.

[00:21:09] And in those months I would kind of think of myself as a businessman or almost identify as a businessman and listening to business podcasts. And that's, you know, what I care about and what I think is cool. And I'm fancying myself, an entrepreneur,

[00:21:21] and then another months I'm like.

[00:21:22] Returning to the tie and Antonin au and Burrows, and I really think I'm just gonna be a lone wolf, crazy guy out on the margins for my entire life. And that's all I ever wanted. And that's all I ever need. And that's my real calling. When you have infinite time and you have the natural energy and bravado of a young man with no responsibilities, you can cycle between all these things. You can just sort of do one thing and the next and just be creative and go on your own momentum. And as long as you're publishing stuff, you know your audience will grow.

[00:21:55] You'll build things and generally things will go up and to the right in one way or another.

[00:22:00] And that's fun in many ways. But in retrospect, it's now obvious to me that it's retarded also, like

[00:22:06] I was actually objectively. Confused and ridiculous in many ways, and immature and silly.

[00:22:14] And so if I never had kids, I would've just kept doing that and I probably would've a bigger audience now and I probably would be more successful in, you know, certain dimensions.

[00:22:23] But it makes me wonder, you know, how many people. Like that are sort of always permanently inhabiting that state where momentum and success.

[00:22:32] Sort of answer these difficult questions for them and all the power to you. I mean, that sounds great, honestly, Like I would love that in many ways. but all I can say in my own case is that having fallen off so bad. But now coming back and you know, here I am, I'm still standing, I'm still thinking, I'm still writing, I'm still publishing, and I still have this successful lifestyle I've created as an independent scholar online. I'm still surviving.

[00:22:54] I can only say for my own part that.

[00:22:56] All of this pain and tribulation has been worth it. I've never had such a precise and specific sense of who I am and what it is I'm doing, what it is I've always been doing, and what it is I'm really trying to do with the rest of my life. It is all one thing, and it's always only ever been one thing, but I could only really pinpoint it after everything really grinded to a halt and stayed halted.

[00:23:20] For so long.

[00:23:21] And I think this specific mechanism. Of this clarification process, this purification is just that once you fall off, you realize that if you're going to come back, if you have any chance getting back up to a hundred percent.

[00:23:37] It is only going to be because

[00:23:39] you know exactly what it is. You're doing what you want to do, what you must do, and why you need or want to do it. If you can't answer those questions, clearly and calmly and confidently. And genuinely, I don't mean telling yourself some story that's exciting. I'm talking about something much deeper. I'm talking about actually being correct, like knowing in your heart of hearts what it's all about and what it is exactly you're doing.

[00:24:03] Not for performance. Not to amp yourself up, not to build a cool story for the public, but to actually. get to that deep inner conviction.

[00:24:12] You need to get that, and you need to be right to have any chance whatsoever of pulling yourself outta the quicksand. That's what I think it is. And in a way you're testing it empirically because.

[00:24:23] If it doesn't get you outta the quicksand, then you're not correct yet, in a way. And I think one of the reasons I was stuck in the quicksand for so long is because I did have all of these very different ideas, which were very confused And multifarious far too multifarious, sort of like the curse of optionality. It's a pretty similar idea.

[00:24:42] And so specifically in my case with this vocation of mine, this calling of mind to build a new kind of professorial life.

[00:24:51] To build a new kind of model for independent scholarship. One of the things I realized in the hiatus of the past couple years is that.

[00:24:58] What I'm doing right now, just turning on this camera and being honest and trying to make sense out of something organically and directly as thoughtfully and intelligently as I can, but also not in an overly. Polished or prepared or professionalized way that this itself is a huge part of what it's always been about.

[00:25:16] For me, like when I first started doing this stuff on the internet, when I was working as a professor, and even earlier when I was in grad school, I always did this kind of stuff. What I'm doing right now, I always did it naturally. And organically because it was fun, because it was a form of direct, creative, public honesty that really satisfied something deep inside of me.

[00:25:39] I found it liberating and just intrinsically rewarding, fun, creative, and worthwhile. I felt called to do it.

[00:25:46] And so then when I leave academia and I attempt to build a whole business around the internet content game to figure out what is the ideal business model for the independent scholar, I think it just became. Too heavy. I felt that I had to professionalize everything and that I had to be really diligent and serious and ambitious and optimized about everything.

[00:26:07] So if I'm gonna do videos, or I'm gonna write a newsletter, or I'm going to, you know, develop my ideas in public in these different channels, now I have to get real. I have to get serious. I have to treat it as

[00:26:18] something to be maximized. And I did do that kind of stuff a little bit here and there, and had some success doing it. But ultimately, nothing ever really quite clicked in that way. and I didn't really know why at the time, it didn't click with me personally.

[00:26:31] I was never able to lock into any kind of high growth, focused, professionalized content strategy of any kind. never with the newsletter, with the YouTube or with the podcast like growing my Twitter account none of these things that a lot of people, professional content creators do.

[00:26:46] None of these things literally ever clicked for me. And I tried them all. Like I tested them all. I experimented with all of these things, because I was never sure which one I was gonna really focus on or how that would, how would that would look in terms of like the ideal indie scholar lifestyle and business model.

[00:27:01] So I was testing everything. I was always testing everything, and I was open-minded about. What would be the right combination of both working in terms of, financially and results, but also personally and basically everything I tried was like moderately successful. I had like little bits of success with all these things, but nothing really clicked in such a way where I was like, this is my groove, this is my thing.

[00:27:20] I can do this hardcore every day and scale it up and it will make a lot of money and it will also be a true. embodiment of the vocation and calling that I see for myself, I never got there. I never found that thing that had that intersection and then I had kids. that searching process was sort of interrupted, but in a way it wasn't interrupted.

[00:27:41] It was actually consummated. it was solved because it, I felt like it was being interrupted. But once I had to throw my hands up and admit defeat and realize everything was over, like everything was off track, like I was never going to get back into that. highly kinetic, experimental, constantly creating and testing things, lifestyle.

[00:27:59] Once I realized that was like that entire period was over for good, no matter what, I would never get back to it. Then I had to kind of just like look at everything holistically and be like, okay, well what is it all about? I can't test it anymore. I can't experiment anymore. I've learned a ton.

[00:28:13] I've tried everything. I have all of the data I could ever possibly want, and much more than most people, in fact, ' cause I've tried so many different things and tested so many different things. one of the things I realized was just that when I look at all of those experiments and everything I noted and felt.

[00:28:27] It's that

[00:28:27] all of that stuff is antithetical to you, the indie scholar vocation to the scholarly vocation more generally. And when I started studying the biographies of. The greatest independent scholars, people like Spinoza and people like Emerson, people who were the most wildly influential thinkers in history, who were also fully independent.

[00:28:48] I saw this truth reflected back to me.

[00:28:50] obviously Spinoza was not trying to have the biggest audience he could get. He certainly wasn't trying to make the most money he could get. He obviously was not trying to. Maximize a business. Obviously

[00:29:04] Emerson was not.

[00:29:05] Hoping to become rich or famous from his lectures and essays and the books that would be published around his essays.

[00:29:13] The very idea or possibility that

[00:29:17] a scholar could even be tempted to have such aspirations would've been, it would've been absurd to them.

[00:29:25] It is only in this 21st century digital creator economy with the rise and the great success of very large number of what we can only call pseudo scholarly personality types. And I mean that with no disrespect whatsoever, all the power to them. I just mean there's. Now, probably at least a thousand people out there who have, more than a million followers who make seven figure incomes by producing content that has some of the trappings of philosophy or social science or what have you.

[00:29:55] If you want to pursue a life as an independent scholar,

[00:29:58] you can very reasonably convince yourself. Okay, I'm gonna build a life as an independent scholar, and I'm also going to be famous and wealthy by doing so, and that those are my conditions for success. Those are the requirements. And so I'm going to do this in a strategy that gets me all of those things.

[00:30:16] if I can't get famous and I can't get wealthy through it, then it's not working and I'm not gonna do it.

[00:30:22] when you look at the greatest. Independent scholars in history, it becomes abundantly clear that each and every one of them is pursuing a highly idiosyncratic, difficult, confusing, and highly personal path of singular ideas, ideas that are unique to them, that are quite illegible for a very long time in the first part of their career.

[00:30:42] their work only resonates with a relatively small segment of fairly sophisticated readers and observers. in some cases, it doesn't even earn that.

[00:30:52] And very obviously, they're all basically obsessed with their own weird ideas and they make everything else about their life conform to their development of those ideas.

[00:31:03] we now in retrospect, see these people as highly admirable and heroic, but in their life as they're experiencing it, it is actually almost closer to the truth to say that they're deformed people in a way. Like there's something weird about them. There's something almost broken about them. That makes them obsess over these ideas they need to develop, and it actually creates problems for everything else in their life.

[00:31:25] It makes it sometimes harder for them to have a successful career. It makes it harder for them to make money. makes them harder to like network with the right people or whatever. but they do it anyway and they stay focused on the ideas and they just try to move forward one step at a time, developing the ideas, putting in the work to figure out the truth of things.

[00:31:41] And to express it in their own way. and then they sort of use whatever kind of financial strategies are available to them that make the most sense given their personal details and circumstances and their personality. in just about every case that you study that is. Basically how the life of the independent scholar works, at least the ones that are the most successful, the most admirable. And those are the ones that I've, I've studied the most in the book. there are whole chapters on. On several of these. And so realizing that fact grounded in history and then comparing it to my own heart and my own experience, it just, as I said, everything was purified and crystallized in this ego death and the absolute grinding to a halt of my production and my audience growth and my business growth.

[00:32:27] It just became obvious to me at a certain point, like, yeah, I'm probably never going to have a massive audience. I'll probably never be

[00:32:36] very famous. Like, whatever. Nowadays, everyone, you know, almost anyone can achieve. some form of niche internet MicroFame, and I already have that in my own little, pocket of the world. So that's fine. I'll continue to enjoy that, and that will grow just by continuing to do my work.

[00:32:52] That's fine. But if it never exceeds that, that's already more than I ever could have hoped for. Right? Like in the history of independent scholarship, I'm already crushing it. Basically. Like that's such a privilege. and it's so much more than. independent scholars ever could have hoped for in previous times, and people went on to be, incredibly successful and incredibly influential, enjoying much less fame in their own life than what I already have, or what anyone, working today on the internet can pretty readily achieve.

[00:33:20] If you have anything interesting and real to say, and you put in the work for a few years, so. I think I just kind of realized like, that's fine, that's enough. It's already enough. Like it's going to all keep growing just by continuing to get back on the horse. there's no doubt about that, but I don't need a, A level change.

[00:33:34] I don't need a different order of magnitude. I don't need some kind of strategy to get to a million followers within 12 months or something like that. Like that. That was always how I was thinking, and I was always. Testing those types of ideas and those ways of thinking. And I needed to have kids and I needed to be totally destroyed to actually just realize I'm never gonna do that and I don't need to.

[00:33:53] And that's not who I am. It's just not the game I'm playing. but I could only realize that with this. You know, having fallen, fallen off one of the other things I learned is that really all I care about is I just wanna do amazing work. I want to do truly high quality, original thinking and writing and creative production that I'm deeply proud of. And in the first few years of this adventure, after leaving academia, I did lots of cool things that were pretty good and that I'm proud of or whatever, but I never actually produced truly great work that I'm genuinely and deeply, particularly proud of.

[00:34:28] at no point, basically in the past five years since sleeping academia, at no point. Have I produced any single piece of work that is, I would say, at the, at the height of my abilities. again, I'm not alluding to some super genius or something that I have. It's nothing like that. I'm, I'm just saying everyone has a sense of their abilities and. You have to know what you're capable of, and you have to know when you're falling. Short of that, and I know for a fact that everything I've been doing in the past five years before having kids was, it's all been warmup.

[00:34:59] I really do essentially still believe this, that, now all I really care about is like, okay, enough warmups, like it, enough is enough. I've spent enough time testing business models. I spent enough time. Testing different, you know, publishing channels and figuring out how this all was going to interconnect.

[00:35:13] I was doing all of that, pretty much publishing like work that I could do quickly, basically not, you know, some was better than others. I'm not saying it was all crap. and I did work hard on, on certain things and some, I think turned out to be quite important and, and meaningful and, and all of that.

[00:35:28] What I really care about is just producing a small number of hopefully very high quality and original and meaningful and important works. that matters more to me than having a big audience. It matters more to me than being wealthy. It matters more to me than literally anything like I just want when I die.

[00:35:47] I want to know that. I produced at least a few things at the height of my ability and that I, I put it all out there that I tried my best, I gave it everything I had. I did not hold back. I gave it the time that it deserved and I got it done and I put it out into the world. And the book that I'm publishing now is the first time I have felt like that my entire post academic career.

[00:36:09] And that's why it's taking so long. If you pre-ordered the book, I do apologize for that. There were a couple times where I basically said that it was imminently about to be printed. and then I would have a new idea and there was something else I wanted to add. so apologies if, you were expecting it sooner.

[00:36:21] It's coming. A hundred percent absolutely promise. And it is a real work. It's taken a lot of time. this is the first time that I feel deeply proud of a written work that I've produced since leaving academia, which is a pretty. Crazy thing to say. It's pretty sad to admit. Honestly, don't get me wrong.

[00:36:37] I'm proud of many things I've written and they're cool little things I've done. But like I said, I feel like it's all just been warming up and testing this kind of post academic indie scholar content model that I've been iterating. these are the things I've realized.

[00:36:51] In my hiatus after my ego death after falling off irredeemably and undeniably. These are a few of the things that I, Irealized With these kind of purified intentions and this purified understanding of who I am and what this whole indie scholar calling is, I'm back.