Get closer

Clack-clack-clack-clack

I peered down from my bunk bed and saw a college kid drinking a Monster energy, hammering away at the keyboard.

Clack-clack-clack-clack

I rolled over and checked my phone.

1AM.

Fuck.

My 10AM meeting could not come soon enough.

Now, let me tell you what a thirty-year-old man with no money and a 9 o’clock bedtime looks like in a bunk bed:

He looks like an idiot.

Like the last guy at a party that ended an hour ago and no one told him it was over.

I’d flown out on the strength of a DM.

I was living in Brazil at the time and had been nomading for about 6 years.

I’d heard a big shot producer interviewed on a podcast put out the bat signal that he needed help.

A guy who made songs you’ve sung along to pregaming in somebody’s kitchen once upon a time.

Said he needed someone to help him build his YouTube channel.

Shit, I could do that, I thought to myself, since I’d grown my own channel to a whopping 482 subscribers by that point.

But I knew I could figure it out. I’d always wanted an “in” to the music industry. I’d been trying to be a rockstar for a decade by this point.

This could be my shot.

So I slid in the DM and told him I’d come out in a few weeks to help him build the thing. No salary, just a percentage of whatever I generated. He said cool. I said cool. And two weeks later I’m on the corner of Hoover and Trask, standing outside the liquor store waiting for my Turo driver, as an old head in a beater and blue bandana rides by and stares me down on a BMX bike holding a 40.

Welcome to LA, I thought, thinking back on all the Schoolboy Q songs I’d sung my heart out to a decade ago while driving to work.

I scooped the rental and headed to the Airbnb.

“Shared room in gorgeous house,” it said…

“Plenty of space,” it said…

Turns out what was billed as a “house” was more of a… compound.

Fifteen people to a room. Three rooms.

Guys sleeping on the couch in the garage. Couples set up in the backyard.

And a French house manager who was vacuuming the car with his shirt off when I showed up.

Which was how I got to be a grown ass man lying in a bunk bed at 1 in the morning, wide awake, listening to a college kid code and crush Monster tall boys, the empties overflowing from the trash beside him.

---

In the morning I drove to Calabasas and met the producer.

He gave me a little tour of the house.

“So this is the home theater,” he said, showing me a basement floor theater that was bigger than any apartment I’d ever lived in.

“Nice.” I nodded with approval, like this was totally normal.

We walked back through the hallway toward the home studio.

Dozens of gold, silver, and platinum plaques lined the walls.

He stopped in front of one and turned to me.

“This was supposed to be a Fabolous joint,” he said, pointing to it.

I stared at the shiny record encased in glass, the art to one of my favorite Jay-Z albums underneath it.

“But when Jay-Z asks for the record, you give it to him.” He laughed.

I smiled and laughed, my head buzzing with so many questions I wanted to ask but didn’t for fear I’d expose myself as the fangirl I was.

“Anyway,” he continued, turning back down the hall. “Here’s what I’ll need from you…”

---

Driving the rented Mazda 3 back along Reseda Boulevard to the compound, I could feel the weight of the moment.

A clear sign I was no longer the man I thought I was.

’Cause a decade ago, I would’ve killed for a meeting like this.

Back then, I’d have slept on floors, fetched weed and liquor for whoever.

Fame and clout meant more to me then.

But I was older now.

Too bougie.

Too self-aware of what made me happy.

I took pride in my Ironwood Gourmet acacia cutting board.

The Global Classic knife set that sat next to it.

I spent evenings listening to smooth jazz.

Reading by the light of Mrs. Meyer’s scented candles.

Fuck was I doing trying to be a rockstar?

It was over for me.

All the dark energy and ego that fueled my teens had burned up years ago.

And I’d never taken the time to look closer at the dream.

Not just the nights on stage or studio sessions with my idols.

But the day to day of an indie musician trying to make it.

The countless hours in a Sprinter van with sweaty guys, the grease from McDonald’s fries still on our fingers.

Nah.

Driving home, each traffic light I passed under hammered the truth home:

When I saw the dream up close, I wasn’t willing to do what it took.

Hurts to say, even now.

But that’s real.

I’d been staring at the dream through a telescope.

When I should’ve used the microscope ages ago.

And the reality had been there all along.

I just hadn’t taken the time to face it.

As I cruised by Ingomar Street, the neighborhood started to drift.

From industrial toward residential.

Long, flat, quiet blocks of one-story houses.

I watched kids walking home from school, chasing each other along the sidewalk.

Backpacks bouncing side to side as they ran.

Ten years, man.

A long time for this shit to be wrapped around my identity.

Goals once scribbled in a notepad eventually became the shaky foundation the rest of my brittle sense of self was built upon.

The change happening gradually over time.

Then solidifying all at once.

I could feel my own heart break as I drove home, almost like in a trance.

But I knew it wasn’t fatal.

I’d figured it out.

It wasn’t the first time.

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That drive taught me the idea this whole newsletter is built on:

Get closer.

Before you rebuild your life around a dream, step away from the telescope and look at it under a microscope. The van. The fries. The ordinary days.

Sometimes you fall in love with the day-to-day. Sometimes you realize you don’t want it, and you get ten years of energy back.

Both are wins.

Starting next Saturday, I’ll send you one chapter of the book I’m writing, Calculated Courage, on the science of betting on yourself, one small, brave step at a time. Chapter 1 is Belief Comes Second.

This week’s question: what dream have you only ever seen through a telescope?