Every time humanity stumbles into a new technological era, we split into two camps. The fearmongers and the optimistic optimizers.

Each side looks at the other and says they just don’t get it. One worships new horizons. The other looks at our humanity as the one thing that needs protecting for age eternity.

Both are usually right. Just not about the things they think they’re right about.

Y2K was supposed to end us. It didn’t. But the doomers weren’t wrong that the internet would bring chaos. They just had the date wrong by two decades.

Social media played out the same way. The fearmongers warned about privacy and data and the warping of public life. In hindsight, they nailed it. But the optimists were also right. Global access to information changed what a person from anywhere could learn, build, become.

Both camps were correct. Neither was complete.

Now we’re in the age of autonomous agents, robotics, and whispers of some sentient cyber-god threading itself through every part of our lives. The contrast between camps has gone from sharp to surreal.

One side says there’s nothing left for humans to do once AI wipes out most work. The other says jobs will be redefined, the way they always have been.

Sam Altman recently called out other AI founders for not “reading the room.” Jeff Bezos brushed off the doom and said we’re too quick to assume jobs disappear rather than transform.

The pushback I see most often comes from the people whose work took the longest to become proficient at. The artist who spent years training their eye to make things that live or die by taste. The researcher who spent decades citing, studying, narrowing into the one percent of understanding on a single topic.

I respect both deeply. But I think their framing of fear is wrong. The tools aren’t here to replace the expertise. They’re here to extend it. The people with the deepest mastery are the ones best positioned to harness AI well, not the ones most threatened by it.

Both camps are reaching for the same thing from opposite ends. What they’re actually arguing about isn’t AI. It’s whether human meaning is hardcoded to labor, or whether labor is just the social structure we built around meaning.

That distinction matters.

If work is just scaffolding, removing it frees us to do the things that make us human. But if work is wired into us, if survival and struggle are what gave even suffering its purpose, then taking them away might hollow us out in a way no abundance can fill.

I’ve always felt pulled toward technology. But not in the way that pushes against our natural instincts.

I live in a quantum between. Where tech is an extension of natural phenomena rather than a replacement for them.

A species evolves in response to its environment. Humans should evolve in response to what we ourselves create.

Horses to cars changed the road. Typewriters to computers changed the office. Longer lifespans changed what people do with the years they have.

AI will change what it means to be a human living in society. Not because the human disappears. Because the society we built around the human is going to have to bend.

The optimist in me says: when we take away the need to work to survive, we get more time for the things that make us human.

The skeptic in me says: if work and survival are hardcoded into us, we might lose the one thing that gave our suffering shape.

So the question isn’t whether AI will change the world. It will.

The question is what we’ll do, as humans, to change the structures we built for ourselves. So we can actually thrive in the society we created.

The mind is what creates. We dream, we wake up, we build things.

But when the building is done, do we still know how to create? Or do we only know how to produce?

I’ve always hated the question “what’s the meaning of life?”

To me the answer was always simple. To live.

My 10-year-old self is smiling somewhere. Because his adult version still thinks he was right.

This story doesn’t begin in a dilapidated Quonset-style hut in industrial heavy East LA. It starts in Black Rock City, at the edge of the city limits, covered in darkness with a belly full of dried mushrooms, and BLM patrol cars looking for their prey.

I might not have known it yet, but I was at the tail end of my yoga teaching career, and I was subconsciously looking for answers of what a life worth living really meant.

My co-conspirators were my Dad and his childhood friend Donald Cassel. Donald likes to call himself a professional partier, and this identification is absolutely in line with the truth. Every year Donald packs his RV and runs a Burning Man camp called the Playa Surfers. A little commune of like-minded folks who make the pilgrimage from Silicon Beach to the dusty playa, where we work day and night to build a city from scratch with 80,000 others.

This introduction is not placed in this writing to convince you to make the journey to the desert. It’s to show you the magic of synchronicity and the ability it has to show you the future of where your journey might be headed.

Donald isn’t just a professional partier, he is a full-fledged bootstrapped founder, who knows no limits on what is possible with just the clothes on his back.

Donald has started over 30 brands over the years. The most notable ones being Von Dutch and GrindKing Skate Trucks.

Donald says his own super power can be broken down into a single acronym called AGE (Adaptability, Grit, Experience).

Which I would argue is the exact formula you need to succeed in the world today. This is the age of the generalist. With the rise of powerful Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Claude, the world is starting to redesign how we work and collaborate as humans.

How this started

A year ago I was in between career choices and was spending my time studying marketing, psychology and the rise of successful brands. Knowing Donald’s background, I knew he was the person to call. I hopped on the I-10 East and met at Donald’s warehouse, with the hopes of either learning a thing or two about building a brand, or landing a job.

At the time Donald was working on a novel way to carry your phone, which is still in the works. But after seeing something sitting on his desk, the conversation pivoted from “How can I help?” to “Why doesn’t anyone know about it?”

It was a prototype skate truck. A truck is the hardware that is quite literally the suspension system of the skateboard. It’s bolted to the bottom of the skate deck and dictates the entire feel of how a skater feels on their board.

The design of skate trucks hasn’t seen significant change since the 1980s. But that’s a story for another time.

GrindKing was the number 3 skateboard truck brand in the early 2000s, but after the Great Recession, Donald’s skateboard empire was forced to close its doors and he focused entirely on underground parties.

I grew up in Santa Monica, and skateboarding and surf culture is a part of who I am at the core. Long story short, we pivoted in the direction of bringing back GrindKing skate trucks from the dead.

GrindKing was already part of the zeitgeist of skateboard culture, which meant that we weren’t starting from scratch. The goal here wasn’t to follow the old-school guide on how to run a skate company, but to design a more modern system on how to distribute a product for a new generation of skateboarder.

Old thinking would be to follow the status quo. Sponsor skaters, collect a Pro team, purchase ads in the magazines, and create a network of distributors.

This would be fine if the top brands in skateboarding didn’t have a monopoly on the industry, so we thought outside the box. We started with genuine content, having our main output channels as YouTube and Instagram. A podcast that spoke to our target market, and an Instagram that wasn’t afraid to not be cool. If you supported us, we supported you.

With the immediate goal being to reveal a new innovative product, we had to start dropping bread crumbs on where the brand was actually heading.

Here is the scope of what I was facing when helping Donald bring back GrindKing:

- Almost zero video editing/filming skills

- Almost zero content marketing and social media experience

- Almost zero product development experience

- Almost zero web development/Shopify experience

- Almost zero experience across the board of building an actual brand

But here is what I did have:

Adaptability, Grit, and the hunger for experience.

Not only was AGE on my side at the ripe age of 32. I had worked multiple odd jobs, 6 years of experience as a yoga teacher, a few years as a commercial real estate broker, and a family-owned business that I grew up in.

I had another super power that was always in my pocket, sitting at my desk, and dangerously agreeable, if no context is given.

Donald and I might have been a two-person team but we had the perfect consultant always sitting by our side.

Edit a podcast → ChatGPT. Clean up my copywriting → Claude. Bring GrindKing’s mascot to life → Google Veo 3. Build a Shopify store from scratch → ChatGPT.

With determination and grit on our sides, in a short period of time with only two people we relaunched GrindKing, grew a YouTube channel to over 2,000 subscribers and an Instagram to over 16,000, we shipped product every day, and made a small wave in the industry.

What this means for your business

It wasn’t that long ago that running a small business meant having a team of 10–20 people to run your company. Today I don’t believe that to be true.

For a small business owner or even a medium-sized business owner, AI can be scary if you only look at the headlines. If you’re reading this article, and have opened up any AI tech before, but have only asked it questions and gotten responses, you’re missing out on the 99.9 percent of what it’s actually capable of.

If you have an existing workflow in your business that you have been doing for years that takes up time from your team or even time away from your family, I’m 100% certain AI can help.

If you have a missing skillset that needs a hire, AI can help you at least become proficient enough to do it yourself.

If you’re worried about watering down your creative process by using AI, I’m confident it can be used to maximize the creativity.

I recently left GrindKing on good terms — the work gave me the confidence to start something new. I can’t live the rest of my life not trying to build something of my own.

What I’m building now isn’t a content agency. It’s a systems practice. For my mom’s catering company I built a quoting tool that replaced hours of manual copy-paste. For her dessert bar I built a closing-shift checklist with photo verification the manager actually trusts. For GrindKing we built a content system. Different bottlenecks, different systems. Same approach: find the manual thing eating the operator’s hours, build the AI-powered tool that fixes it.

As I said earlier, this is the age of the Generalist, and those who use new technology to work smarter, and not harder, will have the edge as we move into an AI-first world.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Donald:

“You create stuff in your mind, you build these things, but they don’t always mean they’re going to be successful — they lead you to something else.”

This is the perfect set of words to explain my ongoing development. Today I try to get on the phone with Donald to talk innovation and business. Mostly every call is a brainstorming session on how to do things differently.

The call is mostly never about skateboarding, but the underlying systems that make a business successful. Today that is agentic software, automations, community architecture, and anywhere on the edge of what’s possible.

If you wan’t to check out GrindKing skate trucks or their youtube channel i’ve posted the links below:
GrindKing Skate Trucks

FTWG Youtube Channel

If you enjoyed this article and want more, hit the subscribe button so I can deliver my long-form writing straight to your inbox. As a one-man jam band on tour, I currently post on multiple topics ranging from Small Business Mindset, Bootstrapping, AI Systems, Psychedelics, and anything that I find interesting enough to write about.

If your looking for more short form thoughts and an inside look of what i’m working on you can visit my X account:

Ryan Batiste On X

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Let’s be honest. I’m a nerd. A pretty cool one though.

I’m a brown belt in jiu jitsu, a dad with a multitude of joint issues. A beer connoisseur and a tech fiend.

I’ve been using LLMs since they were shitty and I’m a non technical rage builder. I tried to learn how to code by building a side scroller game in python. The main character was a squirrel.

I switch up direction a lot. And honestly it’s my super power. A single look at my non existent resume would turn a niche maxer to stone.

Here’s What I Know For Certain

From all the people I have worked for and all the businesses I have frequented — they truly do not care about your CRM with 5000 features and an AI assistant.

They care about time, resources, ease of use, and operate on 1 problem at a time.

When you explain your workflow to them their eyes glaze over like that episode of Black Mirror where two bros boink each other in a video game.

The Learning Curve Nobody Talks About

Now that’s not to say SaaS isn’t helpful to small businesses.

But if there is a learning curve then you have to understand something.

They just don’t have the time.

The Moment That Changed Everything

The other day my Mom was spending hours writing quotes to inquiries for her catering business and she asked me to help her.

She had a calculator, and was copy and pasting her old quotes, and filling out the new numbers. Not even a hot key was used.

I wasn’t going to sit there and do the same thing. So what did I do?

I popped open Claude Code and spun up a quote generator complete with all her menu items, pricing and service charges and ran it locally on her desktop for her to always have access to.

It saved her 5 hours of time and made me look like I performed voodoo magic.

No subscription. No login. Not even an internet connection.

Simplicity at its finest.

I’ve Been Solving the Wrong Problems

It took me weeks to realize it.

I’ll let the tech bros build web3 apps, agentic web scrapers, and the next vybe coding IDE.

I want to solve problems for the people that don’t have the time to setup OpenClaw and build their personal AI assistant.

Why I’m Building Terrapin Tools

This is why I’m building terrapin.tools.

A simple web app built for people who work.

A library of tools that save hours of time on unsexy tasks.

I built it for humans first. No login, no expensive subscription, and you can run almost all of the tools locally on your computer.

Caterers, dry cleaners, coffee shops, street vendors, bars, restaurants, farmers market purveyors — I’m here to build for you.

You are the destinations that make a day a day and a night a night.

AI Can Work For You

It doesn’t have to be complicated to make an impact on your business.

First we start with you. And when the time is right I’ll let the agents through the door.

But first we start by saving you time.

Will have something for you soon. 🐢

Ryan is building terrapin.tools — a library of simple local tools for small businesses. No login. No subscription. No nonsense.

When the THING Leads You Somewhere Else

It’s amazing to me that when you think you know what the THING is, and it leads you to a realization by the THING not being the THING.

Sometimes the THING is the THING that brings you to the realization of what you should be doing.

I started writing on Substack because I thought that was the THING that would set me free.

In a way it was…

But not in the way that I thought. As I was waking up every morning sitting in the coffee shop getting my thoughts out, I started to dissect what makes me Ryan. And when I really dug deep into it, the pieces started to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

My best man’s speech at my wedding gives a perfect map to my ultimate strength. My ability to never “stick to anything.”

Some would say that I lack focus or discipline, but if I take a closer look it’s not that I lack the focus.

It’s that I become so enamored with the current THING I’m doing that I get tunnel vision and blast through it like a hyper-speed Sonoran desert toad frolicking through space and time with very little direction.

What a Perfect Place to Be

Not because I want to be lost in the sauce and twirling around reality with no direction, but because I can have multiple interests and actually do something with them today.

I’m not a superhuman, productivity-hacker, discipline-running-through-my-blood, freelance-maxer demon.

I’m just a dude who wants to have enough money to challenge himself with the THINGS I feel like doing that day.

Last week I built a little mini application for my Mom to help her with her catering business. It took 10 minutes of my time and saved her hours.

Small problem to be solved with a huge ROI.

This Substack won’t be where I tell you how I’m currently making the BIG $$$$ with Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence. Because I’m not…

YET.

I’ll save that for some other social accounts where the focus becomes on what I’m building.

But most of my writing on this platform will be directed at the others like me, who feel lost in the sauce with no clear direction.

Just Do the THING

So here is what I will tell you. I’m not perfect, and I don’t even want to try to be.

But I do have a clear goal.

This week I’m building V1 of my micro-SaaS, LISTR CRE. I’m almost done. Crazy.

The most experience I have with coding is building a small side-scroller game in Python.

I vibed my way through it with Claude Code and got a working app from front to back in a stupid short amount of time.

I didn’t read a guide, I didn’t take a course, and to be honest I took almost zero advice.

I bluefished the absolute f*** out of it and just started working.

So here is the deal… If you’re feeling lost and scrolling through these social apps seeing all these wonderful people doing cool shit… I’ve been on the outside of it… just doing THINGS.

Putting skill into action.

I don’t think it really helps you to show you exactly how I did it because there are thousands of other dudes and dudettes on here that are giving you the breakdown.

But if you feel so inclined just message me and I’ll be happy to help in any way I can. I don’t need to “connect,” but I’ll show you as a friend who is excited about doing THINGS.

I didn’t want to write this morning…

Not because I lack discipline… but because my motivation was to keep building the THING.

Back to it…

Talk soon.

My hands shook violently as the fluorescent lights pulsated above my head. Tunnel vision in this moment was a direct result of immense focus, fear, and ecstatic happiness. Time was infinite and fleeting at the same time. A feeling of belonging, along with a feeling of emptiness. The profane and the sacred all wrapped into one day. The prayers, the sacrament, the epidural. The feeling of immense power and the nakedness of powerlessness.

The first ride on a bike with no training wheels, the first time you stand up on a surfboard, the first taste of spicy food, the first talk of the birds and the bees, the first kiss, the first time you feel a woman’s touch, the first time you know you saw someone for the last time — flashes before your eyes.

Because in this moment, you move from initiated into initiator.

The Lost Language of Passage

Rites of passage have pervaded our societies through time immemorial. Men leave their tribe on vision quests. The boy enters manhood after a successful hunt. The painful stick and poke tattoos of Filipino tribal society put pain at the forefront of ascension.

But the modern world has lost much of what makes us actually human. Our smartphones have flexed our necks towards super retina displays, while our original design was to extend our necks towards the cosmos.

Female biology has this rite of passage built into the very magic we call life.

It calls to them the moment their first cycle is awakened. Such a shame that the world has sometimes placed this biological ritualistic cycle as something to hide behind product marketing.

The pain of childbirth, the responsibility of raising life, and the initiation into adulthood.

As someone who grew up in the bustling city of angels, it was hard for myself to see this incredible built-in feature of life.

In our world a cycle of life becomes a period of hormones and mood swings.

Sex becomes a game of vibrato and natural selection.

Pleasure gets packed into a 6 inch screen.

And routine replaces ritual.

East vs. West — Two Sides of the Same Coin

To understand this distinction of modern ritual and primordial ritual, we must understand the distinction of East vs. West — or the Sacred vs. the Profane.

It’s very easy to categorize East and West into the boxes of religion, because secular society sees the western mind as the base of reason, the rationality of science, and the capitalistic alchemy of innovation.

And in this case we will use it to better explain something that you will soon see to be two sides of the same coin.

The eastern mindset comes from a place of contemplation and metaphysical inquiry — uncovering the famous question “Who am I?” The western mind looks outward and beyond. It takes action and conquers reality. One isn’t better than the other, but a life of only looking inward never enjoys the world, and a life of only looking outward eventually hollows out.

There must be balance.

The primordial traditions understood this balance.

The meditating warrior, whose presence was felt in the heat of battle.

The hunter who sat in silence before the big hunt.

Contemplation always preceded action.

Somewhere in the rise of Western civilization, this sacred layer became stripped away and replaced with pure action.

It’s not that western society has no grounding in spiritual practice. It’s that most of these religious practices have lost the initiatory transmission that makes them sacred.

You see glimpses of this in the Catholic religion — the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ.

But when a single transmission comes from the son of god onto the people of his world, it becomes lost in what I like to call Humanity’s Longest Game of Telephone.

The Two Cords

The umbilical cord is the final attachment between mother and child. It provides nutrients, stem cells, and richly oxygenated blood. In the final moments before a child is born, roughly 80–100ml of blood is released back into the baby.

Indigenous and Eastern cultures have always waited a significant amount of time before cutting the cord — because the connection is sacred. It’s the final moments before severing the connection between a life in the womb and a life outside of it.

There are many examples of Western practice undoing thousands of years of ritualistic wisdom on the basis of science and the rational mind.

While some practices are esoteric in nature and could be put to the wayside — many are rooted in a deep understanding of the natural order of things.

And nowhere is this more visible than in the crossing over of an individual from one identity to another — the ritual of initiation.

The first cord is easy to see due to its physical nature. As a man in western culture, you are quite literally the initiator of this passing of the torch.

The second cord is something invisible — but the pain of cutting it too early comes in a form quite familiar to all of us.

We are initiated into ritual from birth till departure, through the economic output of the western world.

This is profane ritual with no connection to the sacred.

Meet Johnny

We will use our friend Johnny as an example.

Johnny is born. His first cord is cut. He is tagged, weighed, and time stamped.

Eventually Johnny goes to school and is taught what to think — not how to think.

He graduates, gets a job, gets married, has a kid, cuts their cord, takes on a mortgage, and retires while he watches his kids do the same thing.

The cycle continues.

Now this is obviously simplified — and I’m not making the assumption that this systematic lifestyle cannot bring true happiness and realization.

But that’s not the point. In our example, Johnny was never asked what he wants to become.

And I’m not talking about a career choice. I’m talking about deep-rooted categories of identification.

His religion is picked. His values are placed by his parents. And society gives him his path through a survey with multiple choice bubbles on career day.

Johnny just kept walking forward with his cervical flexed towards the earth.

Johnny might have been lucky. He is somewhere on a beach with a Mai Tai, taking it all in.

But not all of us are so lucky. At some point you feel the continuous dread of a feeling that you can’t shake.

I’m writing to the ones that wake up at 2 AM wondering why the life they built doesn’t feel like their own.

Maybe all of those things that make you YOU aren’t really your cup of tea.

You’re not alone — and that feeling is something I’ve questioned my whole life.

The second cord was cut too early. And we were never told there could be a second initiation on the other side of childhood.

The Hole That Got Taken Advantage Of

I believe this missing piece of initiation has created multiple generations that outsource direction.

You need to be a man? Follow Andrew Tate. You need to be a woman? The Kardashians are your silicone compass. You need financial advice? Follow Grant Cardone. You need a spiritual awakening? It costs $50k to walk across a field of hot coals.

This is a direct result of the attention economy — and if I’m being honest, really sophisticated marketing.

It’s also the hole that got taken advantage of.

Without this second initiation, we are clearly always going to be searching for something to fill it.

What It Means to Evolve

Now what if we could digitize this second initiation?

I need to make it clear that my writing isn’t a manifesto of abandoning the incredible innovations of western culture, science, and philosophy to move back into a primordial perspective.

I’m asking what it means to evolve.

Terence McKenna said it perfectly:

“When you shed the cultural operating system, then essentially you stand naked before the inspection of your own psyche.”

I believe that technology — especially artificial intelligence — stands at the forefront of bridging a gap between our programmed psyche and the ritual initiation of who we are as individuals.

I’m building something to solve my own problems. I don’t know exactly what that is yet — but I know what has been missed in my own life, and the answer lies there.

If this hit different than your usual scroll —

Subscribe to Ryan Batiste on Substack.

No guru nonsense. No recycled advice. Just an honest guy figuring it out in real time — and sharing the framework as he goes.

Eastern philosophy meets real life. Direction over noise. Your map, not theirs.

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My morning was sultry and sweet — but not in the way that you think.

I woke up every hour last night, oddly energized. I’d check my phone to see what time it was, and to my surprise it would only be an hour later from when I fell asleep.

I’ve done some shedding recently. If you’re anything like me — waking up early and being instantly motivated to get shit done can be like peeling a charred eggplant of all its skin.

It’s not easy. But for the past few days, the life before today has slowly drifted away in the rear view mirror, where it’s vanished across the horizon line.

5:00 AM. Sit up on the edge of my bed, throw a nicotine pouch in, sit on my porcelain throne, and get on Substack. Write a note. Read René Guénon’s Crisis of the Modern World. Respond to some comments and messages.

For the last month my main physical outlet has been taken from me — but this morning is different.

The pain is gone. I have a new outlet in the form of writing. And my day started with some Sade.

Hence the sultry and sweet morning.

My wife still asleep next to me and the kid still sleeping — it makes no sense to bump the sweet musings of Sade. But I didn’t find her angelic vibrations at my house.

After dealing with my normal bodily functions in this flesh vehicle I’m in, I hopped in the car with my gi and rashguard and drove a few blocks to my jiu-jitsu school.

I’m greeted by my training partners who haven’t seen me in over a month. We exchange some “where have you been’s” — and if they know me a little better, “how you healing up’s.”

Sade is bumping in the background, and I can feel the itch starting to grow, because I finally get to release some of that pent up energy that’s been stored for so long.

Now, this isn’t to say that Sade is the normal playlist that plays at my school — but after having a conversation with my professor (jiu-jitsu speak for coach), it seems it’s not for him but for the overall improvement in the quality of rolling (jiu-jitsu speak for sparring).

I barely noticed it until I started rolling.

Jiu-jitsu can be rough and aggressive, but if you have ever rolled with someone who has much more experience than you, you know there is something soothing about someone trying to collect your limbs while they are cool as a cucumber.

I still feel the calming effects as I sit here and write this.

Today I feel like me — because for the last month my ritual has been incomplete.

But with this new practice of writing every morning, it feels like this ritual has evolved.

I’ll now take my jiu-jitsu with a side of Sade, and my writing with much needed physical exertion.

8:01 AM. The coffee is hot, the body is jittery, and the creative life is calling.

My spine is upright, the words are flowing effortlessly, and the day has just begun.

If this hit different than your usual scroll —

Subscribe to Ryan Batiste on Substack.

No guru nonsense. No recycled advice. Just an honest guy figuring it out in real time — and sharing the framework as he goes.

Eastern philosophy meets real life. Direction over noise. Your map, not theirs.

Every Saturday I drop Saturday Morning Cereal — over a bowl of cereal I send out a weekly dispatch. What I’m reading, what I’m watching, and where this public experiment is leading.

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When I look at my character I still feel like I’m building it on the home screen of a video game. I haven’t even gotten to the tutorial level yet.

And if you feel the same way — that’s okay. It shouldn’t feel complete.

Which brings us to the next part.

When I wrote part one of this, I was sitting in a Penske truck in Rancho Cucamonga waiting for a shipment of skate trucks while the entire warehouse was on lunch break.

That’s another story for another time.

The Incomplete Character

So what’s incomplete about it?

My goals have shifted over the years depending on how far up my own timeline I got — which was also part of the problem. But it’s not something to be upset about. If you’re like me and caught yourself jumping back and forth between what you thought you wanted and what you actually want, those continuous cycles of experiments and semi-insanity will end up being some of your greatest strengths.

During my time as a yoga teacher I dove deep into Eastern thought, metaphysics, and contemplation. That gave me a foundation to see systems and human alignment differently. What felt like a detour is actually helping me write these very essays.

But I’ll be honest — instead of using those tools with any real direction, I took “BE HERE NOW” quite literally, as if I was a chicken with its head cut off running around with mala beads counting mantras. I got nowhere and ended up at Erewhon too many times.

That’s not to say we can’t take some of those esoteric lessons and use them on our treasure hunt.

X Marks the Spot

So let’s get to the X.

I want a Rolex, a private jet, a tiger in a cage, a harem of monkey servants, and acres of land to start my cult.

Okay, okay….. I do want the acres of land to start my cult. But the other stuff is what my own timeline taught me isn’t actually important. At least not to me. If it is to you — so be it. This map will help you get there either way.

What I really want out of life is enough money made online to spend more time with my daughter, take my wife to dinner where the menu has no prices (you know the one), and be able to choose how I spend my time.

I have my numbers. Now write down yours.

Write it down — no matter how absurd it is — and mark that X on your map.

Pack your bags, grab your granola bars, and whatever else you need for this adventure.

But before you leave, there’s one tool that is absolutely essential.

The Tool: Discipline

In a piece I wrote recently — “Discipline Does Not Equal Freedom” — I explained that discipline is a tool. And a tool needs to be pointed at the right object. You don’t use a jackhammer to fix your daughter’s play gym.

Here’s what discipline actually looks like in practice.

This morning I woke up groggy from two cheeseburgers, a slice of apple pie, and a Coca-Cola. As you can see, I’m not pointing the tool of discipline at my eating habits.

But I am pointing it elsewhere.

I didn’t want to write this morning. I sure as hell didn’t want to get up early to do it. But I have a clear goal. The X on the map. I have my character and I know he’s incomplete. And I have the discipline to get up and get to work.

The Warning Sign

There is a large WARNING sign at the top of this map.

Most people become absolutely attached to the outcome instead of the action.

I posted part one of this article yesterday and woke up to 18 views, no likes, and zero restacks — except my own. I have 29 free subscribers. I’m far from my X.

If I had focused on that and didn’t show up this morning — if I hadn’t pointed the tool of discipline at the action — I would certainly fail.

You have to stay on the path. Which is why what you do daily is far more important than the goal itself.

I told you from the beginning — I can’t give you a system. The system is specific to your treasure map.

Who Are You? — The Second Answer

Which brings me back to the question we looked at from an identity perspective in part one.

Who am I?

Carl Sagan said we are a way for the cosmos to know itself. Richard Feynman said the most interesting thing about the universe is atoms looking at other atoms.

I like to think of it this way: the universe got bored. So it decided to play.

Without getting too deep into the woo-woo — here’s what that means practically for your map, your destination, and your goals.

Stay in the play of things.

The journey is where you actually make progress. Not the outcome.

Draw your own map.

Part three — the compass — drops this week.

If this hit different than your usual scroll —

Subscribe to Ryan Batiste on Substack.

No guru nonsense. No recycled advice. Just an honest guy figuring it out in real time — and sharing the framework as he goes.

Eastern thought meets real life. Direction over noise. Your map, not theirs.

Every Saturday I drop Saturday Morning Cereal — over a bowl of cereal I send out a weekly dispatch. What I’m reading, what I’m watching, and where this public experiment is leading.

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“Man I really got to get my life together…..”

Amazon is my first step. Self-help section got any good reads?

Power of Now sounds good. Oh, so this guy had an awakening. I guess I could do that.

Okay, I get it. “Be in the moment.”

My wallet is thin enough to sit in a lotus position while it’s in my back pocket.

Gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude.

I need some practical advice. Let’s go on YouTube and search “how to UNFUCK my life in 10 days.”

Reasonable timeline, right? Let’s see….

NFT flipping. So these JPGs hold value because they are non-fungible?

Took a $1,000 check and turned it into $40k.

Holy shit, I’m going to be rich.

Market crash. FML.

Back to square one — but now I fell in love and have a kid. So I have two others I’m responsible for now.

Jeeeeez.

If you have ever been here, or have a similar story, then you know the pain of waking up in the morning thinking the warm covers feel way better than getting up and trying again.

But you can’t find success on motivation alone.

Over the past few months I’ve been awakened.

Not like Eckhart Tolle….

But an awakening nonetheless.

The Real Problem

The thing is — when you’re relying on other people’s signals and destinations, your actions become theirs, not your own.

The dropshipping guy sells you a course on the steps he took to get to that $10k a month.

The spiritual guru stayed in an ashram after a nasty addiction in the ‘80s.

The personal brand expert built his brand on his own personal experience.

The health nut had eczema and decided to do something about it.

The productivity guy might only know how to be productive because he’s selling his own version of productivity.

You can’t rely on someone else’s steps to get to your destination.

The Bridge

Imagine this.

You have a map with an X marks the spot. The guy who gave it to you is a beast of an athlete.

At one point in the journey, you come across a broken bridge.

You’re frail and scrawny in comparison to the man who already made it to the destination.

You give him a call. He says, “Jump the damn thing.”

You know this is not possible with your ability.

Do you listen to the guy who made it to the destination?

Or do you find a broken log and place it across the gap so you can walk across?

I’ve jumped too many times….

So I started looking for a better way. And it turns out it has nothing to do with going outside of yourself for the answers.

The Reframe

There is nothing wrong with consuming content to develop skills, compound knowledge, or purely entertain yourself.

But the problem isn’t the content you digest — it’s following a path that’s not your own.

So how do we actually act on this, and not end up consuming this article and walking away empty-handed?

I’m no expert. But I’ve done the wrong thing for so long that I can speak on this.

By the time you’re done reading this, I can’t promise that you will have THE PERFECT SYSTEM to reach your dreams and goals.

But I can promise you this — you will have the framework to draw your own map.

Start Here: Who Are You?

While drawing my own map, I first had to ask the question: Who am I?

Who is the person that actually takes steps in the world?

Not in a metaphysical sense — in the identity sense.

I wrote a piece titled “Scotch, Spirituality, and the Multiplicity of Life” in an attempt to answer this question. Here’s the condensed version:

Ryan Batiste → born in Santa Monica, CA → only child → unconventional family (seekers on my dad’s side) → addiction → recovery (drinking a beer right now) → spiritual journey (psychedelics, yoga, contemplation) → initiation (Shakti Pat / Kashmir Shaivism) → Commercial Real Estate Broker → Dog dad →husband → father → Brand Manager for a Skateboard Company → Substack writer.

Okay….that was like birth without the epidural.

But the release is nice.

The people you’ve met, the things you’ve done, the family that nurtured you — or didn’t — the career paths you’ve taken, the mistakes you’ve made.

These all build the person you are.

So we start there. This is the paper we draw our map on. Without this we have no adventurer. We have no player in the game.

Write your own timeline in the comments. Morning coffee or a scotch — your call.

Part two — drawing your own map — drops this week.

If this hit different than your usual story —

Subscribe to Ryan Batiste on Substack.

No guru nonsense. No recycled advice. Just an honest guy figuring it out in the world— and sharing the framework as he goes.

Eastern philosophy meets real life. Direction over noise. Your map, not theirs.

Subscribe and I’ll see you next week.

Every Saturday I drop Saturday Morning Cereal — over a bowl of cereal I send out a weekly dispatch. What I’m reading, what I’m watching, and where this public experiment is leading.

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What the duck is that? It looks like a duck but has a tail like a beaver? It’s cute — but is it really?

Maybe it’s cute like women think of Frankenstein’s Monster — especially the latest rendition.

Is it a mammal, or is it an amphibian? The thing lays eggs but it’s as hairy as a chimp. Its eyes are gentle, but hunts like a shark.

It closes its eyes and ears while using a sixth sense to hunt its prey. And not only that — its hind legs have venomous spurs that have the ability to incapacitate a human being for weeks.

This creature shouldn’t exist. In 1799 the first specimen was sent to Great Britain to study. They thought the thing was a hoax — so the first thing they did was look for the stitch marks.

Some sick bastard must’ve taken creation into his own hands — but today we know that’s not the case.

Let us bear witness to The Platypus — one of the oldest surviving creatures on the earth. While everything evolved and specialized for their survival, it just stayed the damn same.

When I hear the words “SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST” — my brain connects back to Mr. Charles Darwin and his seminal writing the Origin of Species.

But the term wasn’t actually said by Darwin.

It was coined by the Philosopher Herbert Spencer after reading his work. And Darwin didn’t actually use it until the 5th edition in 1869.

One of if not the most famous phrases in all of evolutionary science was repackaged and handed back down to its creator, for the world to digest.

So what does the Platypus and our place as human beings in this world have to do with anything?

I was told to go to school, find something I was good at and stay in my lane. I’d reap the rewards and my life would be incredible. If you’re living in the world today you know that this was an empty promise for most of us.

I used to find the Platypus disturbing as it went against everything I was conditioned to understand. As I grow older the creature is a direct reflection of my curiosity driven personality.

I can’t fit in because I’m interested in too much. In my last piece Scotch, Spirituality and The Multiplicity Of Life I described myself as a Martial Artist Hippy, Searing Rib Eyes, With A Full Glass Of Malbec, Waking Myself Up To The Idea That I Am The Universe Waking Up To Itself.

Yeah that’s a lot……but it’s exactly where I see my strengths and I want this congregation to see themselves.

Let me tell you what I know to be true — I refuse to categorize myself as a specialist in a world that is in a continuous cycle of change.

Darwin’s take was actually more honest than what most people assume. He regarded this concept as Survival Of The Fitter. The ability for a species to survive is relative to its environment.

The Platypus doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t need to.

This brings me back to what I wrote about in What Do You Do?. It’s almost an annoying question that I find myself having a harder time answering the older I get.

One of my greatest fears is taking my last breath, with the last thing I did while being alive was digging through a spreadsheet.

My obituary reads:

Ryan James Batiste, 66, passed away peacefully on Tuesday surrounded by his family.

Ryan was born in Santa Monica, California. He spent 33 years as a Senior Analyst at a mid-size financial firm, becoming one of the most respected Excel specialists in the region. Colleagues said if it lived in a spreadsheet, Ryan could find it.

He joined the firm at 33. He was reliable, consistent, and always the first one in the office.

When the company migrated to automated systems in 2059, Ryan took an early retirement package. He had been the best in the world at one specific thing, at exactly the right time.

He spent his final years playing golf and telling his grandchildren stories about a software program they had never heard of.

He is survived by his wife and daughter.

He will be missed.

Nothing wrong with having a great career and enjoying the spoils of a 401K and vacations to South Florida, but it’s just not for me. And if you’re reading this I’m going to guess you don’t fit this category either.

As Artificial Intelligence takes the world by storm, automation starts to replace white collar jobs, and the degrees that promised a career start to fall by the wayside — we are going to start asking some important questions about where we fit in the world.

If you hear nothing else today, know this — The Platypus is a whole being. It didn’t survive this world by changing who it is. It’s here not because it specialized, but because it never changed.

The Platypus is the sovereign individual. And I believe the individual — in all of its glory — will survive a world in constant change.

The Platypus is still here.

Are you going to be?

I drop new essays consistently on whatever I’m currently interested in and curious about. Like the platypus, my areas of interest range anywhere from philosophy, business, everyday human stuff, and what I learned from a simple trip to the market.

Every Saturday I drop Saturday Morning Cereal — over a bowl of cereal I send out a weekly dispatch. What I’m reading, what I’m watching, and where this public experiment is leading.

If you enjoyed reading, I hope you open the door to your inbox so we can keep the conversation going. Drop me a message with your work — I’d love to be inspired by your unique mind.

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I was born into this world upside down. My first interaction with the world outside of my mother’s belly was ass first, which when I think about it today puts a smile on my face. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

When my mom was at the grocery store she was approached by an older Indian woman. She touched me on my forehead and told her I was special.

When I was 5 my dad would take me to Fred Astaire’s old dance studio above a Radio Shack in Santa Monica, but at the time it was a yoga studio. Bryan Kest Power Yoga. A room filled with a hundred sweaty people flowing through various postures, a practice that at the time was still a little esoteric.

My grandfather was part of an underground group of therapists who pushed back against the norm and gave MDMA and other entheogens to their patients. He was also part of a drug rehabilitation center called Synanon which later became a massive cult. Luckily he got out early.

He also dove deep into spiritual practice, reading the works of Anandamayi Ma, Krishnamurti, and Baba Ram Dass.

My world doesn’t really scream average American family.

I’ve been to Burning Man twice with my dad, experienced psychedelic journeys with a good amount of my family members, and named my daughter after a Grateful Dead song.

I sound like a hippy, right? You can categorize me like that if you want. But just to give you some contrast — the only sport I watch is Mixed Martial Arts, I’m a brown belt in Jiu Jitsu, and when I was a teenager my style of clothing was Pro Clubs and Dickies. Take that how you want.

So what does this have to do with anything?

For the last six or so years of my life I’ve been living in the “real world” trying to “make it.” I’m married with a 2 year old and the thickness of my wallet has become more of a priority. Responsibilities stack up and the experimental, esoteric ways of my 20s and teens have fallen by the wayside.

Now I’m not going to say my particular journey brought only spiritual contentment and blissful thinking. It really didn’t. But pockets of experiences and the people I met along the way brought me a lot of wisdom. Some of that wisdom I wasn’t really able to put into practicality and awareness until now.

Now that I’m 33 I have been revisiting some of the stories of my life to try and arrange them in some way I can carry with me today.

The other day I was trying to find some inspiration on what to write next. I knew I was going to do a piece on spiritual practice, but as I started scrambling my brain to find some interesting connections I stumbled upon a face. A face and a name from my not so distant past. The face showed up on a YouTube video titled “Baba Muktananda — Ricerca della Felicità.”

We need to rewind a little bit to get to why this face sparked not just a memory but a pulsating vibration across my whole body. Certain memories you can smell, feel, and sometimes bring you sadness or joy. This memory was neither of those. The only word I can use to describe this feeling is “bliss” or “vibration.” A feeling that doesn’t bring joy or tension but equanimity.

The Chaos Years

When I was 19 I dropped out of college after sitting in class for only half a semester. If you have read some of my other pieces like “The Early Bird Gets The Worm” then you know why I’m averse to school.

This gave me a lot of time to “figure out what I want to do.” Which became drinking, smoking, snorting, huffing, lusting, and diving into a world of absolute chaos.

The funny thing is that the one thing that actually got me on a better path was — well — more drugs.

I met a guy through a friend who was a sound engineer. He invited us over to his house to drink some beer and smoke. Which for me at the time was relaxed.

He asked me if I had ever smoked Dimethyltryptamine before. At the time I had heard of it, but almost as if it were a myth.

So of course Mr. Entheogen Aficionado had to add a little taste to my experience belt. He gave me a bit of a smirk as if he knew that a simple question and a yes response could change someone’s life forever.

One hit. Hold in. Second hit. Hold in. Third and final hit. Hol——

EXHALE.

An intense vibration of sound pierced my ears, almost like a roaring jet engine pointed right at the center of my head. A thousand monks in the center of my brain chanting one continuous AUUUUUUUUUM.

The room evaporated and my body became separated from awareness. Placed in a kaleidoscopic mandala speeding towards eternity. At the end of the kaleidoscopic mandala they were there. The entities. These laughing, dancing machine elves.

I couldn’t describe it any better than Terence McKenna. They had a gift for me.

Gift boxes with hieroglyphics. They showed me the boxes. But I knew I wasn’t ready to open them. They laughed and told me to breathe. Just breathe, Ryan. Just breathe. They laughed at my ego and the urges of my hedonism. They didn’t judge, but they made it clear that my human struggles weren’t that big of a deal. There were bigger things than just ME.

Two weeks later I asked for help.

The Path

After sober living and a year of sobriety, I joined a yoga teacher training program. I listened to those weird little machine elves and took a different path.

This path landed me at Maha Yoga in Brentwood, CA — a legendary yoga studio owned by Steve Ross.

Steve was a guitarist who recorded with legendary bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys. Introduced to asana practice at a young age, Steve wanted more. As he was seeking teachers he ran into his guru during a retreat in Australia.

Swami Muktananda touched him on the head and he experienced a strong altered state that changed him forever. Steve described it himself in Yoga Journal:

“Luckily, I met an Indian guru in Australia who tapped me on the head. I had a strong, altered-state experience and thought ‘Whoa.’ So I followed him — Swami Muktananda — for years in India and the U.S. I lived as a monk in the Vedic tradition, studying the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Yoga Sutra, and more. He told me to go back in the world and share what I had learned. I didn’t want to. Going back into an insanely dysfunctional world was like getting punched in the face. But I maintained my joyful state.” — Steve Ross, Yoga Journal

Swami Muktananda is the thread to my recently rediscovered push toward a spiritual practice.

I mentioned a YouTube video earlier and a face that felt like a tap on the head — as if my previous experiences came running back at me, inviting me back into a world of magic and play.

The woman in the video I recognized from Maha Yoga. While I was teaching there she had approached me about a gathering at her house for group meditation. It was much more than that, as I would frequent her home every Sunday.

She had also met Muktananda, just like Steve, and was initiated into a long tradition of shaktipat transmission — which I’m only now fully rediscovering.

The Yurt

I was invited in by the scent of sandalwood. A small yurt in the back of her home. The air had viscosity and vibration. As we sat in a circle we chanted mantras and sat with the pleasure of being alive. She held the space together as she approached with a peacock feather — the feather gliding across our spines to invoke the energy of Shakti from our root to the crown of our head. Time held still, and the feeling of the world as it is gently returned us home. We were never meant to escape the dynamics of life but were meant to enjoy it in its full multiplicity.

I continued to return, eventually bringing my girlfriend at the time — who became my future wife, and the mother of my daughter River.

She can still feel the room herself. The chants and memories of those sessions are forever with her.

I eventually lost touch with her, and as the practice of yoga became more commercialized, I left my yoga career behind.

It was time to start a family and make some money. Live in the world instead of secluding myself from it.

Back In The World

Along with the chase of material wealth, old habits started to reappear in a different form. The drinking came back — “balanced.” A bottle of Malbec with a ribeye became an enjoyable part of my night. The art of perfectly searing a steak and basting it in garlic butter is something I’m incredibly proud of. Hippy, right?

Instead of all in or all out, these days I sometimes wake up and meditate, sometimes I reach for my phone, sometimes I pour an extra peaty scotch, and sometimes I find myself practicing the stilling of the fluctuations of my mind by sinking in a rear naked choke on a 23 year old kid. That’s a 10 year age difference — so he should be able to beat up the old man.

After doing some research on the lineage of Swami Muktananda I found that it holds its roots in the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism — a non-dualist philosophy that believes all of life is a reflection of Shiva, or divine consciousness. Unlike traditional Brahminic traditions that ask you to renounce the world, Kashmir Shaivism says the world itself is the practice. There is no separation between the divine and the world we live in. Really hard to see some days, if I’m being honest. But deep down I know this to be true.

The Broken Vessel

To make this a fully honest piece I have to mention the allegations against Swami Muktananda — because they reveal a valuable lesson for all of us trying to become better human beings.

In 1983, shortly after his death, accusations were made against Muktananda. Journalist William Rodarmor published an investigation in CoEvolution Quarterly based on interviews with former devotees. Multiple women came forward accusing him of sexual coercion, alleging that he abused the total power his position afforded him — he was seen as a god among his followers.

I believe the women who came forward.

These allegations must be taken seriously and discussed in a way that honors the survivors.

As I write this essay today, the jiu jitsu community has been hit with news of the same power dynamics playing out in a martial art I hold dearly to my heart. We won’t get into that today. But the point is — we have to ask ourselves whether we can separate spiritual wisdom from the teacher who carried it.

Alan Watts was an alcoholic who lectured on presence and surrender. Mother Teresa devoted her life to helping others but her private writings revealed decades of feeling no presence of God. Gandhi treated his wife horribly. Carl Jung’s personal life consistently contradicted his professional insights.

Muktananda transmitted freedom from suffering while allegedly creating suffering at the same time.

Can a broken vessel transmit truth and wisdom?

Can we as human beings take the light and continue to push it forward through the darkness? You can’t move through life spreading love and wisdom without accepting that hatred and darkness are part of the same wholeness. If the deep philosophical teachings of non-dualism are to be lived in this life, then we must accept the non-dualistic nature of life itself.

IT’S JUST LIFE

I’ve wrestled with these questions my whole life. But I know one thing for sure. I’m not perfect. I’m not holy. I’m not divine. But I am what is. A fully aware vessel for the world to flow through.

I can write about a spiritual life with a glass of scotch next to my computer.

I can meditate with a hangover.

I can enjoy an In-N-Out burger while bumping Tupac and speeding down the PCH.

I can make mistakes and learn from them.

I can be ruthless in business while maintaining my compassion.

I can be friends with imperfect people and see my own reflection.

I’ve always been averse to the word “spiritual.” It’s an adjective that doesn’t need to be there.

IT’S JUST LIFE.

Still In Detention isn’t for the teacher’s pet. It’s for the ones who pushed back against authority and forged their own path. The ones who were told they had potential but never felt the room was built for them.

If that’s you — you’re not behind. You just broke away from the herd.

Subscribe below. No filler, no schedule. Just honest thinking from someone still figuring it out.

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“YOU LACK DISCIPRRRINE!”

I immediately think of that scene from Kung Fu Panda that could be seen as slightly racist. An alcoholic shows up at the bar every day and he lacks discipline? I would argue that he is incredibly disciplined. It’s 12 o’clock and no matter what he has going on he shows up and does what he loves to do.

So is discipline addiction? Is it the bronze influencer with calf implants and the rented Lamborghini who sells a course on finance maxing and how to be a man with BIG DICK ENERGY? Or is it Jocko Willink, ex-Navy SEAL, selling his book Discipline Equals Freedom? If you think about it all of these archetypes have discipline because they show up every day, right?

I’m asking myself this question because I’m moving away from the idea that a word has a definition and it ends there. Let’s actually see what Webster says.

“The practice of training oneself or others to follow rules, maintain order, and achieve goals through consistent, often difficult action.”

Sounding eerily familiar to that Prussian education system I talked about in “The Early Bird Gets The Worm.”

Discipline Is Neutral

But is discipline a bad thing? In the sense of getting disciplined to fit the aspirations of iconic industrial billionaires — yeah, that doesn’t sound so good.

Discipline can also take you away from the things you should actually be focusing on. A deadbeat single dad who has the discipline to go to the gym to keep his figure, but doesn’t have the discipline to send his daughter a birthday message, doesn’t sound like someone I want to aspire to be.

So how do we define discipline as something we can take into our everyday lives that grows us into our best selves?

Side note: I hate the term BEST SELF because sometimes my best self is on a beach with a Mai Tai ignoring the beautiful ocean in front of me and scrolling through videos while laughing hysterically with my beautiful wife. That takes no discipline by the way. But discipline can lead to that hefty plane ticket and accommodations.

So as you can now see, discipline has contrast. You can have the discipline to do really horrible things, and you can have the discipline to do things that improve your life and the lives of others.

Discipline is a tool. What matters is what you point it at.

I have pointed it with intensity at many different things in my life, and learned valuable lessons from each.

What Hobby ADD Taught Me

I trained my own discipline through years of activities.

Skateboarding taught me to show up, fall, get back up, and do it all over again with blistered shins and aching knees.

Surfing taught me how to get up at the break of dawn — because in that sense The Early Bird Does Get The Worm, or in this case the wave.

Addiction and recovery taught me how to show up, do the work, and understand to take it one day at a time.

Yoga taught me how to actually live in the moment.

Jiu jitsu taught me that my ego is not a good friend when it comes to learning.

There is a common thread through all of these activities and the discipline it takes to improve.

You can’t have discipline without action.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare!

To understand how discipline can fit into our lives we have to take a little mythological trip to the battlefield of Kurukshetra.

If you have never read the Bhagavad Gita because you got tired of bald men singing Hare Krishna trying to hand you a book — well, I hate to tell you that you’re missing out.

We will keep it short.

Krishna, a god in Hindu mythology, is the charioteer of the Prince Arjuna. They are on the battlefield staring across the void at the enemy army. Arjuna is tripping out because on the other side of that battlefield are his friends, family, and the people he loves.

A little family dispute in ancient myths sometimes leads to a lot of bloodshed if you haven’t noticed.

Krishna tells Arjuna that he must fight and that he must leave his worries behind. Arjuna pushes back and Krishna begins a dialogue of philosophical insight.

Krishna gives a definition of the practice of yoga that is by far one of my favorite quotes — one I have come back to time and time again.

“Yoga is skill in action.”

So we are building our toolbox. We have discipline which is meant to be pointed at the right things. But Krishna is being specific — he is saying we can’t just show up, we must show up with intention. We must do the work without being a slave to the outcome.

Flowosophy

So what does this mean for us? The ones searching for a life of fulfillment, the ones looking to fill the space between our first and last breaths with a life worth living?

We need discipline. But as we have seen, discipline is a tool that can be used to create structure toward our goals. We have to point it at the right things to get the right results.

But for discipline to have any effect on the quality of our life, it needs action to breathe.

And taking disciplined action can lead to a very different state of mind if the outcome does not equal your desired result.

I’m sure you’ve been here. I know I have. You pictured an extraordinary life — maybe a rags to riches story, maybe dreams of being an aspiring artist known around the world. It doesn’t matter. But you know the suffering you experienced when those dreams are crushed and you’re left with something completely different.

So how do we do this?

Krishna tells Arjuna “Yoga is skill in action” because he wants Arjuna to take action without attachment to the results. To do without thought. To take skill and use it without worrying about what comes next.

But how the hell do you do that when your mind is barking at you like a Rottweiler chained to a heavy tire in a junkyard?

Flow.

The words flow and yoga are interchangeable. Yoga loosely translates to “to yoke” — to become one with what is. It sounds esoteric but think about it — a bee doesn’t write a journal or a pros and cons list about whether it should take a vacation. The bee just does what it does. Producing honey and protecting the queen.

To produce a state of flow you must get the caged dog to shut the hell up.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali puts it another way:

“Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind stuff.”

My favorite word in that is “stuff” — when it translates from Sanskrit it’s almost like a funny little poke at the absurdity of our own thoughts.

We won’t get much into how to get there because there is enough on the internet to teach you every mindfulness practice imaginable. Taking copious amounts of psilocybin could help though. That’s for another day.

Skill In Action

So how does this all connect together into a framework you can carry with you in your everyday life?

To find your flow you must have the discipline to take action without being attached to the outcome of your desires. Flow is a state of movement through life where your actions aren’t driven by the outcome.

Now in theory the practice of yoga is meant to guide you to a state of enlightenment — samadhi. But I’m just a dude and I’ve already tried that. Unless you’re Eckhart Tolle or Ramakrishna I’d suggest finding some balance in your life.

Here’s the thing. You can have the perfect amount of discipline, the skills to meet your goal, the motivation and desire to reach your outcome. But what happens when you get there?

Was it the action itself that kept you in a state of equanimity — or did that state only arrive when you finally reached the destination?

I already know the answer to that question for myself. But the pull back to the desired outcome is something I wrestle with every day.

Sometimes I drink, sometimes I write, sometimes I meditate, sometimes I breathe, and sometimes I absolutely lose control.

But either way I show up the next day ready to try again.

Still In Detention isn’t for the teacher’s pet. It’s for the ones who pushed back against authority and forged their own path. The ones who were told they had potential but never felt the room was built for them.

If that’s you — you’re not behind. You just broke away from the herd.

Subscribe below. No filler, no schedule. Just honest thinking from someone still figuring it out.

Still In Detention

The Early Bird Gets The Worm — But Who Put It There?"

“The Early Bird Gets The Worm…

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3 months ago · 1 like · Still In Detention

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As much as some might not want to admit it, our parents shape the person who we become. Other factors obviously have a lot to do with it, such as where you grew up, the generation and culture you grew up in. But your parents are essentially the ones who shape the clay before it starts to harden and gets thrown in the kiln.

In my first piece of writing “The Early Bird Gets The Worm,” I mentioned a not so hidden system embedded in the education of an entire country, that was meant to indoctrinate us into the workforce of a select few. And in my short essay “What Do You Do?” I mentioned that education is the gap between life and death. Sometimes that gap is filled with other people’s dreams.

How do we shed the identity that was given to us? The answer to that question for myself is due to this new responsibility I have as a father. It’s not that I want to fill that gap with generational values that are part of my own identity. It’s that I want to mold my daughter’s mind to forge her own path. Knowledge not too long ago had real value. It had leverage. But what do I teach her when everyone with a computer and access to an LLM has all the information ever recorded in human history?

Where does she fit in this new world that is just starting to form?

This morning I was watching a YouTube video titled “The Bear And The Bee” — a short story turned into a simple animation. The gist went something like this.

Mr. Bear is out of honey, so he goes out into the forest to find some. When he stumbles upon a beehive he reaches in to collect the honey. A bee flies out and tells him to go away. Mr. Bear, with his incredibly large ego, gets angry and decides not to listen since he is clearly bigger and scarier. Mr. Bee and his friends sting Mr. Bear, chasing him all the way home, where his wife is waiting to give him a valuable lesson. Don’t lose your temper.

Solid children’s story — especially now that my 2 year old tends to lose her temper a lot these days. But that lesson isn’t what caught my eye.

Honeybees have barbed stingers. When their stingers lodge into thick skin, their abdomen, muscles, and digestive tract get ripped straight from their body.

Obviously too graphic for a toddler story.

But my point isn’t in the moral. It’s in the information I gathered to come to my own conclusion.

Western culture is averse to mortality. Eastern culture tends to be accepting of it. We hide death from our kids so they don’t have to understand their own mortality at such a young age. This produces two very different ways of living — and could be a topic for another piece.

Which brings me to one of the most important things I will teach my daughter in a world where knowledge is free.

Synthesis

“Synthesis is the combination of distinct parts, elements, or ideas to form a new, complex whole — a ‘putting together’ of components. It is used to create new compounds in chemistry, merge research ideas in writing, or blend concepts in philosophy. It is the opposite of analysis.”

So why is this important in a world where information is free, task-based work is becoming automated, and analysis can be done with a well-written prompt while you sit back and chomp down a bag of Cheez-Its?

Because I believe we are moving from a world where knowledge is power to a world where individuality is power.

Now I could jump into Claude right now and throw in three completely unrelated topics and have it “synthesize” them into a “novel” idea — but the idea itself isn’t what I believe is becoming valuable.

Look around. NPC — Non Playable Character — has become more than just a meme. As humans we input information, find our tribe, build our identity around that tribe, then fight to the death to protect the values of that tribe.

The real value lies in the ideas of a fully authentic individual. This is the same reason I left a life of having no personal social media presence and moved into putting myself and my ideas out on the internet. I wish I started earlier.

Synthesizing information and forming your own identity is already important — but it will become a superpower as generative AI gives everyone a paintbrush and calls them a painter, gives everyone a keyboard and calls them a writer, gives everyone a camera and calls them a photographer. You get the point.

But to share those ideas and your authentic self, you have to learn how to take the stage.

Communication

Getting up in front of an audience is not for everyone. I taught yoga around the Los Angeles area for six years — before streaming classes were a thing. In person, face to face, at the studio. I had to find my voice, my teaching style, and I couldn’t use DaVinci Resolve or CapCut to edit out the wrong side of a sequence.

That taught me how to stand in front of an audience for an hour and a half and hold their attention. How to communicate using the right language. How to manage a group of people.

If you give me a camera and infinite takes, I do just fine. Give me a room and tell me to give a speech, I’m a natural. Where it falls apart is pointing an iPhone at my face, hitting record, and posting it without polish. So I’ve started filming little shorts to get over the fear.

If it ain’t awkward it ain’t worth it. At 33 I’ve come to realize most of the things you want live on the other side of that.

Right now I’m in the trenches when it comes to communication. If you’ve ever interacted with a 2 year old girl, you know your choices are limited. My daughter is very clear in her communication. Ask her if she’s hungry — NO. Ask her if she wants to go to the park — NO. Ask her if she’s tired — NO.

She has no fear of communicating with another human being yet. It’s such a pure thing to watch.

When you become an adult, communication becomes scary. You are afraid to ask because on the other side of that ask is rejection. You are afraid to post because people might reject your work.

That’s just one side of it — because the clarity of your words matters too. If you’ve ever played a game of telephone you know how far a message can drift from the original thing you were trying to say. As my daughter’s vocabulary starts to blossom, I will teach her to write for herself. To take her thoughts — the nonstop voice in her head — and get them down on paper. The most underrated thing about writing is the ability to turn brain vomit into substance.

Clear writing creates clear thoughts. Clear thoughts create clear communication.

And when you communicate clearly, you build stronger connections.

Connection

The connections I want for my daughter run deeper than a like, a repost, or a follow from someone with digital leverage.

Connection is the ability to relate to the human condition. We tend to connect most deeply with someone when we share common threads within the suffering of day to day life. The authentic self becomes more important every year because of this. With connection comes compassion. When you relate to someone else’s suffering you support them when they’re down, and you root for them when they win.

There is an age old saying — “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” That has held real power throughout human history. And in a world where the entire catalogue of human knowledge sits in the pocket of anyone with an internet connection, who you know and the connections you make are becoming more important than ever before.

Everything I’ve written here means nothing if I’m not practicing what I preach. I start every morning walking to my favorite coffee shop. I take a few breaths and write down some observations from the day before. Sometimes those observations build synthesis and turn into pixels on a screen. I share and communicate my ideas even when it’s uncomfortable. I’m working to build connections on the internet and in my day to day life.

We think by the time we reach adulthood the clay is already fired in the kiln — our parents did most of the shaping. But what I’ve realized is my own clay isn’t fully shaped yet. The kiln is the last step, the very last breath. It’s the moment the bee stings the bear and becomes content with the sacrifice it made.

I will help my daughter shape her clay. But the idea isn’t to fire it into the kiln immediately. It’s to keep shaping — to stay open to a life of ideas, to put them out into the world, and to use them to build the life she always wanted.

This one was for you River. Hopefully one day when you’re reading this, you realize your clay is far from forming and the kiln is far from firing.

Still In Detention isn’t for the teacher’s pet. It’s for the ones who pushed back against authority and forged their own path. The ones who were told they had potential but never felt the room was built for them.

If that’s you — you’re not behind. You just broke away from the herd.

Subscribe below. No filler, no schedule. Just honest thinking from someone still figuring it out.

The Space Is Yours. Act Like It.

Education is what fills the space between life and death. For most people, that space gets filled with someone else’s dreams.

Everyone lives in that very space the moment they take their first breath, but do you truly own yours?

From childhood onward I naturally protected that space, even though I couldn’t fully articulate why. I have been fighting a war that most people don’t even know they are a soldier in. It’s no surprise that people make it to their final breath feeling they lived the life of someone else.

The Early Bird piece laid out who built the system and why.

You pushed back against that very system and ended up in detention. So what do we do now?

“What Do You Do?”

To this day I still struggle with identity. In a social situation when someone asks “What do you do?” the answer is dependent on how you survive. If we were early hominids you might answer that very question by saying “I am a hunter.” Your identity has always been dependent on how you push the needle.

This question used to make me sweat. Why must we answer it with a single career definition?

So here is the first step of the new system we will build together.

We must shed our old identity. For most of us this can be incredibly painful. But if you’re here right now, my guess is that the answer to “What do you do?” already puts a lump in your throat.

I’ll Go First

Before we move forward I have to be honest, so that our relationship is built on trust from the beginning. This Substack and everything that follows it is me shedding that identity in real time. Over the years I’ve had varying answers to that very question.

I’m a yoga instructor, I’m a video game designer, I’m a coder, I’m a website designer, I’m a strategist, I’m an entrepreneur…..

You get the idea……

Now — how do we actually shed that identity without being left with an empty shell?

Before letting go, we have to build an honest assessment of the life we are currently living. Take a step back and ask yourself: is the life you are living right now on a trajectory toward the life you want in 10, 20, 30, maybe even 40 years?

If it isn’t, then it’s possible that your space is filled with somebody else’s vision.

The Word They Got Wrong

Let’s look at the word “education.” The Latin root: educare. To lead out. To draw forth.

Education in its original form wasn’t meant to fill your head with information like a hard drive collecting dust in a closet. It was meant to draw out what was already there.

Real education is about finding out who you are and getting exactly what YOU want out of life. We have to fill the space between our first and last breaths — and we have to fill it with something that’s actually ours.

The Playground Didn’t Lie

People on the playground don’t ask “What do you do?” They gravitate toward you based on your interests. Those interests could eventually shape who you become. A kid obsessed with space and the wonders of the universe might become an astronaut. A kid who spent his summers in the tide pools of his local beach could become a marine biologist.

But more often than not, as responsibilities settle in and pressure from parents and society takes hold, we start filling the space with a different identity — one that was handed to us, not chosen.

So how do we start the process over and excavate the real identity after dissolving the old one?

Curiosity is at the heart of what drives children. Why does it have to stop when we reach adulthood?

And I mean this — if your curiosity leads you to the weird world of celebrity plastic surgery rumors, I urge you to go there. I would be a hypocrite to tell you not to follow your own north. We can make an impact on the world even in the strangest of places.

The Elephant in the Room Is Green

To make curiosity a habit we have to address the elephant in the room. It’s green, loud, and tends to be a problem when you don’t have a lot of it — but at the same time takes up way too much room when you do.

Money.

I used to follow curiosity with money as my compass. This mostly led me astray. And for a long time there was only one accepted path to making it. Remember the system?

Sit down. Shut up. Listen. Get a job. Get a family. 401k. Blah blah blah.

That model has been crumbling for a long time — since the advent of social media, where people literally make money sharing their preferences on just about everything. I’ll let you fill in the blanks on that one.

So what’s different now, and how does the relationship between curiosity and money help us build our new identity?

Buzzword Incoming

Artificial Intelligence.

But here’s the thing — it’s not just a buzzword. It’s the reason we have to flip the script on survival and making a living.

With AI making an impact on almost every industry, we have to start asking ourselves: what is left for our human selves to do? What actually moves the needle?

Your authentic self — the thing that made kids gravitate toward you or away from you on the playground — is what becomes valuable. We don’t have to specialize anymore. We don’t have to answer “What do you do?” Because that question belongs to the old model, and the old model is on its way out.

I recently started writing because of this very shift. Genuine human curiosity and the ability to connect ideas across domains is becoming the value. Not the credential. Not the title. The perspective.

This Is Why We’re Here

That’s why I started Still In Detention — to share this journey in public, alongside you. The outliers. The ones who were told they had “so much potential.” The very people the old system didn’t know what to do with.

Our time is now and the opportunities are endless.

The system didn’t fail you because knowledge was guarded. It failed you because it filled the space between with something that was never yours to begin with.

“Free education is abundant, all over the internet. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.” — Naval Ravikant

The desire to learn is still in you. You just couldn’t find the right room.

Still In Detention is that room.

Still In Detention isn’t for the teacher’s pet. It’s for the ones who pushed back against authority and forged their own path. The ones who were told they had potential but never felt the room was built for them.

If that’s you — you’re not behind. You just broke away from the herd.

Subscribe below. No filler, no schedule. Just honest thinking from someone still figuring it out.

Subscribe now

If you have not been living under a rock, you know Artificial Intelligence is more than a buzzword these days and has affected or spooked almost every industry in the modern age. ChatGPT has become a verb, your hypochondriac friend uses it to calm her anxiety (might be making it worse), and you know a few people who scream from the top of the mountain that we are moving into a techno utopia powered by Tesla Bots and Agentic Software.

I’m not going to lie — I’m categorized in the latter. I believe in the power of AI because I use it every day. When I’m done writing this piece, I will use Claude to help me edit, structure, and fact-check my stream of consciousness style of writing so it’s easily digestible to you.

This piece won’t be another “How To UnFuck Your Life and Use Claude Code to Increase Your Productivity” article. It’s about an unsexy industry that recently saw its stocks plummet due to a scare perpetrated by analysts who see a future where AI disrupts everything.

The Selloff Nobody Saw Coming

Earlier this month, shares of CBRE — the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm — dropped 12%, while Cushman & Wakefield fell 14%. We haven’t seen that kind of selloff since the pandemic. And this wasn’t a surprise or even an isolated event. We are seeing real disruption and prophesied disruption in almost every industry you can think of, but what’s interesting about commercial real estate is the complexity of the data and the reliance on third parties to make deals happen and move the market.

If you remember not too long ago, Blockchain Smart Contracts were the thing that would drown out the brokers. Last time I checked, I still used a real estate broker to sign the lease on my house.

Now big institutions like CBRE and JLL have infinite access to new tools, large data sets, and quants in black hoodies trying to strategically analyze their next move. But what about the mom and pop brokerages — and even more so, the individual broker? Where do they fit into the conversation?

What the Market is Actually Saying

Bloomberg broke down the market drop as a knee-jerk reaction to the rise of AI tools.

“The AI threat to the leasing and capital markets businesses is limited. CBRE and its peers benefit from meaningful scale, both from data and industry relationships, and their position as intermediaries for large leases and large transactions is unlikely to change.” — Jefferies analyst Joe Dickstein, via Bloomberg

Now it’s quite possible that analyst fear and the market reaction could be justified in the near future. The rise of AI automation tools is potentially making in-house data analysts, graphic designers, market researchers, and even paralegals obsolete.

The Last Frontier

The last frontier, in my opinion, are those in the field — the Deal Makers, the movers and shakers having face-to-face conversations at the finish line. When your property is about to fall out of escrow, it is usually the broker who gets down to business. He is the mediator, the one pouring Johnnie Walker Blue over a large ice cube, or going back to the drawing board. No algorithm is going to sit across the table from a nervous seller at 11pm and talk him back into the deal.

My dad has been in the business since 1989, and I spent a couple of years as his runner and a year attempting to make a career out of it. It wasn’t for me, but I know the amount of hard work these brokers put in.

The reason for my writing is to move the conversation toward the individual — the brokers without access to institutional funds and expensive data sets, the ones whose stomping grounds are their submarkets and whose rolodex might still be sitting on their desk, along with the same pen they signed their first deal with in 1985.

How can these individuals actually improve their output in this new AI revolution? I use these tools in my own work as a brand strategist, and it’s a lot simpler than you think.

Imagine being able to spend more time closing deals and less time on tedious administrative work — you could be playing more rounds of golf with the people in that rolodex. Relationships are at the center of what a broker does. If you’re still reading, I’m going to show you exactly how to get more done while doing less.

A Day in the Life

You arrive at the office at 7 AM. You have five lease listings and five sales listings, multiple showings on each property, lowball offers coming in on your less premium listings, and motivated landlords who are starting to lose their patience.

Your day consists of writing emails to convince your landlords to extend your exclusive, reaching out to tenant brokers who might schedule a tour but show up 30 minutes late, only for you to get stuck in traffic on the way back to the office.

You get back to your desk to pull comps off CoStar, trying to build a case for a price reduction conversation with one of your landlords. Meanwhile someone on your administrative team is spending three hours making a brochure you needed yesterday.

By the time you’ve collected the comps, written your client emails, and finally received that brochure — you get a call from your significant other reminding you about the dinner reservation.

You spent the whole day on administrative work that you could have been spending building your deal pipeline and getting on the phone with prospects, doing what you actually do best.

There’s a Better Way

What if two hours of that administrative work could be cut down to 20 minutes, and you could get the rest of your day back? I’m not here to give you a complicated workflow that involves learning how to code or building AI Agents. I’m just here to give you an easy-to-use addition to your workflow to make your day more manageable and help you become more competitive in your market.

I put together a free guide specifically for the individual broker — no tech background required, no expensive software, just a $20 tool and about 30 minutes of setup.

[Download the guide here]

Still in Detention

Still in Detention isn’t for the teacher’s pet. It’s for the ones who got bad grades but asked better questions. The ones who took the long way and learned more because of it.

If you’re still here, you probably know what it feels like to see something others haven’t caught up to yet.

You’re not behind. You just broke away from the herd.

If this resonated, subscribe below. Still in Detention comes out whenever I have something worth saying — no filler, no schedule, just honest thinking from someone still figuring it out.

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“The Early Bird Gets The Worm”

I remember those words from my Dad in the morning, as if they would inspire my teenage self to get out of bed and get on with my day.

Here is the societal translation:

“THE ONE WHO RISES EARLY HAS MORE OPPORTUNITY THAN THE ONE WHO RISES LATE”

I rolled out of bed this morning at 5:45 AM, grabbed my computer, and walked to my neighborhood coffee shop. I was the only one there and all I could ask myself was, “where is the worm?”

I should have a handful of worms by now……but that’s not how life works. Now that I have become a child in a man’s body I have come to realize that the worms aren’t a guarantee.

It’s all relative.

Now that I’m a Father with the ability to drop these words of wisdom to my stubborn 2 year old daughter, I’ve come to ask the question:

“Who put it there and why?”

Worm Allocation

You could make the argument that waking up at the crack of dawn gives you the opportunity for a higher net-worm worth.

Time is valuable because it gives you the ability to put in more work. But even that is dependent on the type of work you put in. Did I wake up early this morning with the expectation that I could truly get more worms out of it?

The reality is I spent the night slipping in and out of sleep, taking a piss every 30 minutes because I decided a tall boy IPA and garlicky tilapia was a good idea.

I’m a child…

This isn’t a piece on routine optimization or worm allocation…..but about society and its broken promises.

The quote “The Early Bird Gets The Worm” and hundreds of other quotes just like it have been passed down from generation to generation as universal truths. But who wrote these and what was their true incentive?

I’m writing this for the little boy sitting at his school desk.

School Yard Samadhi

A few weeks ago I was flicking my thumb at my device, getting some much needed mindless screen time. Don’t judge me. I stumbled upon one of those conspiracy channels that got me to stop and listen. Who doesn’t like a good conspiracy theory?

In summary, the 30 second short described how industry titans like Carnegie and Rockefeller had a part in building the modern day education system for their own benefit. What billionaires wouldn’t want a schooling system that taught kids how to be on time, sit down, shut up, and listen.

Now this was obviously a simplistic summary to earn algorithm points…It worked on me.

But after almost yearning for this little viral short to be true…..I found an article that inspired me, made me extremely angry, and had me questioning my entire education all at the same time.

It was a piece titled “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto.

Gatto worked as a school teacher for nearly 30 years, and was not just any school teacher.

In 1991, the same year Gatto received the honor of New York State Teacher of the Year, he stepped down.

And he did it loudly, releasing an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal:

“I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know.”

Gatto would go on to write 5 books on education reform.

What really hit me hard in this essay “Against School” was the overwhelming evidence Gatto drops to confirm my suspicions I had as a grumpy teenager. I believed I was a pawn in a bigger game, tested, reprimanded, and placed in a specific bracket for a worldwide bottom line.

I obviously couldn’t articulate it at the time, but the repetition of the ancient mantra “why?” kept me in a state of school yard samadhi.

To understand why our education system is structured the way it is, we have to understand where it comes from.

Made in Prussia

Just like many things in the United States, our education system was imported. The military state of Prussia has had a significant cultural influence on our country, even as Germany became the heir to many of their cultural norms. Gatto even notes that a Prussian had been George Washington’s aide during the Revolutionary War.

Gatto states that the most dangerous part of their culture that got passed down was their education system — compulsory in nature and built to control the masses — describing it as a system “deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects” and “ensure docile and incomplete citizens.”

Intellectual chatter of Prussia’s education design shows up in a large number of forums, essays, and journals throughout the 19th century, but it wasn’t until the early 1900’s that industry titans like Rockefeller and Carnegie saw an opportunity.

Training a workforce to show up on time, listen to instruction, and acquire the proper skills to move the economic needle was worth its weight in gold. An educated populace creates competition while a factory line of compliant workers built empires for those at the top.

Gatto references a book titled Principles of Secondary Education by Alexander Inglis. In the book, Inglis breaks down how our education system was intentionally designed to mirror what it had been for Prussia in the 1820’s. He broke it down into 6 clear functions and one in particular gave me the image of a dunce cap on my head……spiraling away from my unseen potential.

I’m kidding about the dunce cap……I’m a millennial and luckily corporal punishment wasn’t a thing anymore.

But the subtle humiliation and the feeling I had of not being enough was real.

“You have so much potential Ryan.” I can hear those words in my head like it was yesterday as I turned in another stream of consciousness essay riddled with grammatical errors and void of structure.

Gatto summarizes the Selective Function as moving things along so that schools could consciously tag the unfit — with poor grades, remedial placement, and public humiliation — clearly enough that their peers would accept them as inferior and bar them from opportunity entirely.

“That’s what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.”

Detention, being called on for answers you never studied, grades posted publicly for everyone to see. All rituals of humiliation. All ways of sorting the cattle.

5:45 AM

I’m sitting at the coffee shop, the only early bird in sight, remembering a time when this system and structure held me back. Today the dunce cap is stripped away, and my “WHY” mantra has become a superpower. I learn on my terms and have come to realize opportunity sometimes shows itself at the break of dawn, or the wee hours of a sleepless night. It’s not that “THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WORM” — it’s the bird that learns to fly away and find its own worms, on its own terms, at its own hour.

Still In Detention

Still In Detention isn’t for the teacher’s pet. It’s for those who push back against authority and forge their own path. It’s for the ones who were told they had potential but didn’t fit the status quo.

If that’s you….you’re not behind. You just broke away from the herd.

If this resonated with you, subscribe below. Still In Detention comes out whenever I have something worth saying — no filler, no schedule, just honest thinking from someone still figuring it out.