I thought I was writing this newsletter for other people. Turns out, you guys have nothing to do with it.

I’m writing this shit for me.

Who knew.

I feel like I’ve gotten away from my favourite version of myself in the last 6-9 months. Just enough for me to see old parts of myself or habits I had in the not so distant past and say, that guy was better than who I am today.

If I’m being honest, I really chalk it up to my addictive personality. I get really into something for about 6 months and then pick a new thing (turns out this is pretty ADHD coded, so that lines up). So I’m surprised I managed to write 3 years of this newsletter every single week without failing.

Disc golf…

Rock climbing…

LitRPGS…

Self improvement YouTube channels…

Or lately, for what seems like the 14th time in my life, World of Warcraft again.

If I had to boil down the prefect dopamine reward system for my particular neural affect it’s World of Warcraft. I feel entirely powerless to the amount of in-the-moment euphoria I feel while playing a game. Addiction is probably the right word.

Turns out, as I always knew, it doesn't translate much to how I'm feeling outside of the game.

All of that is to come to the conclusion, I’m not showing up as the person 85 year old me is proud of being lately.

So if apparently the keystone habit for a lot of things I was proud of in my life over a 3-4 year span is writing a newsletter I should probably get back to doing that.

I listened to Joe Santagato on Modern Wisdom today and they spent about 20 minutes talking about how if you just aim at authenticity things will work out.

I feel like I was aiming 80% at authenticity and 20% at what I thought “would work”. Back to the drawing board to aim for 100% authenticity.

So bear with me as I knock some rust off and try to get back to weekly writing.

The lesson you might be able to take away from my struggles here is the following:

Designing your life and environment proactively is a lot easier than using willpower to overcome a less than ideal situation. ie. It’s harder to eat the cookies you left in the cookie aisle than the ones in your cupboard.

Or in my case, easier to unsubscribe from my game subscription or have a mandatory publishing schedule than it is to work up the willpower to not play the game or publish things “when I feel like it”.

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PHOTW (Parenting hack of the week): Find a 12/10 spouse.