My highlights and lowlights of the past twelve months

2022 has been a year of changes and upheavals for me.

I’ve lived in three countries this year, and moved around 8 apartments.

Back in February, I hit my lowest point in possibly the last two decades, or maybe longer. And yet, 2022 as a whole has been an unequivocal improvement over 2021.

I worked with more zeal this year than ever before in my life. But the most satisfaction I’ve gotten this year is by repeatedly asking myself, “What if I never achieve anything more, what if I never succeed in changing my life in any substantive way?”

Back in January, I jokingly self-diagnosed myself as having a “temporal lobe personality,” after reading the book Phantoms in the Brain.

A few days after that, I discovered I can manifest a stolen license plate simply by the use of imagination.

I’ve settled more or less permanently in Barcelona. I went back to school to study Spanish. I’ve even furnished my beautiful new apartment with some forks and spoons so I don’t have to eat canned sardines with my fingers.

Maybe you’re wondering what I’m on about. The fact is, I’ve written emails over the past 12 months about most of this stuff.

I’ve lived a strange, irregular, and changeable life over the past 12 months, and really, for much longer than that. This daily email practice has been one of the few constants. And a positive one.

Almost exactly a year ago, pickup coach Tom Torero committed suicide. Tom used to say that picking up girls is therapy. Not because you get a momentary boost of validation when sleeping with a new girl. But rather because getting to that point forces you to face all kinds of things you have going on inside of yourself, and address them.

I feel the same about writing a daily email newsletter. It’s a kind of therapy journal, though I’ve worked to make it interesting and valuable for you as well.

So since you are reading, let me say thanks. Let’s see where I am in a year from now, and where you might be, and what I can show you in the meantime to make it worth your while. In the words of David Bowie, which are really the watchword for this entire project:

“The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year.”

In case you want to read my emails regularly, maybe even for the whole of the next year, here’s how to get on my daily email list.