The sun is back, and it’s cooking us alive. Not Miami heat—no, this is that dry El Paso blast where the shade lies to you and the second you step out, you’re in a microwave. I spent part of the week outside hammering rebar into the dirt, questioning my life choices and trying to keep my brain from melting.
And somehow, that wasn’t even the hardest part of the week.
What stuck with me wasn’t the heat—it was a classroom.
A bunch of kids. Quiet. Too quiet. Not rebellious, not chaotic… just stuck. Phones out. Eyes drifting. Existing, but not really living. And then I overhear this conversation—one kid trying to understand how another one talked to a girl. Not what he said specifically, but how he even did it.
Like it was some impossible spell.
And that hit me.
These kids aren’t afraid of failing. They’re afraid of being seen.
That’s the real monster.
Because once you’re seen, you can be judged. Rejected. Laughed at. And somewhere along the line, they decided that avoiding that pain is more important than actually living.
Here’s the problem with that:
If you never risk anything… you never get anything.
I’m not saying go jump into traffic or wrestle a basket of vipers. There’s such a thing as smart risk. But talking to someone? Trying something new? Putting your work out there?
That’s not danger. That’s life.
And yeah, you might mess up.
Good.
In a year, it won’t matter.
In five years, it’s a story.
In ten, you barely remember.
But the things you don’t do? Those stick. Those haunt you.
I look back at my life—and yeah, I’ve been a bit of an idiot. Probably still am. But those moments? Those wild, dumb, brave decisions? That’s the gold. That’s the stuff I laugh about now.
And then you look around at adults—full-grown people—still saying:
“That’s not me.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Not my thing.”
Who told you that?
Seriously—who decided your limits for you?
Because most of the time, it’s just you. Talking yourself out of something before it even begins.
Meanwhile, the most confident people out there? Half of them are idiots.
So what’s stopping you?
This week, I’ve got a ton on my plate—finishing FUGLY, thinking about rollout schedules, cleaning up Zombie Years, wrestling with a stubborn short story, grad school, teaching, life. It’s a lot.
But I said yes.
And maybe I’ll regret some of it.
But I’ll take that over nothing.
So here’s your Monday:
Go try something.
Go risk something small.
Go fuck up—just a little bit.
You’ll survive.
And you might even become someone you didn’t know you could be.
