In & Out.

I guess we're being bitches again.

I kind of miss my old voice sometimes, when I got out of school and was really snarky. I started writing almost immediately after getting out of graduate school. It was a fun time in LA and the height of celebrity blogs. I lived in a very cute little Spanish style courtyard building behind the Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard. Vista Street. My apartment was furnished completely with furniture an architect friend helped me design and build, things I found on the street, and a massive haul my mom and I got at Ikea when she helped me move down here.

My first apartment was built in the 1920s and had all the space efficiency to prove it. In the kitchen, there was a (now defunct) fold down dining table with just enough space for two people to eat. The hallway featured a built-in armoire with drawers below. And the bedroom had a recess previously occupied by a Murphy bed. I set up my white Mac desktop, the first one that had the WHOLE COMPUTER INSIDE THE SCREEN, inside that recess and that became my little office.

Cut to a few weeks ago at my cabin as my mother was trying to help me find a technician to come help me convert my new gas range to propane (they come set up for natural gas), she got off the phone and said, “Do you have trouble getting help up here because of your name?” (It took us over three weeks to find someone to come convert the range and we nearly had to use countertop hot plates to make Christmas dinner). The answer is yes. My name might not sound very ethnic to you because you know what I look like, but I’m pretty sure it’s a huge reason I couldn’t get a job for years in my twenties. When I graduated from school, only a few colleges were on Facebook and people in charge of hiring had no way of checking what race I was - they were all Boomers and Gen Xers, not internet natives with adequate searching skills.

It’s been proven that there is name bias in hiring and while I obviously possess the whitest of white privilege, I can’t really think of another reason someone with four Ivy League degrees, countless internships, who had been working since age fourteen couldn’t get a job at a even bakery upon graduating (I applied for higher level jobs too, which I didn’t get). I did have a job, briefly, from 2007 to 2008, but was laid off during the Great Recession.

And while I waited and collected unemployment, I wrote. My first blog was kind of a knock-off of Perez Hilton, who at the time was writing at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf just down the street in Sunset. I used to see him there and seeing him made me see possibility. If someone so clearly dumb and superficial could make it, couldn’t I? See? I guess I’m being a bitch now.

In those days, I was a lot spicier than I am now. I had just gotten out of art school, all my friends were art weirdos. I was a pretentious weirdo. But things changed over the years. First, being on Emily Henderson’s HGTV show brought a different, more middle American audience to me. I adapted in order not to alienate them - I didn’t want to offend anyone.

But also culture changed. If you look at comedy from ten or twenty years ago, it’s so much meaner. We used to use celebrities at punching bags way more than we do now (though we still do that). I wrote about dumb celebrity culture (this was PEAK Britney, Lindsay, and Paris era). I wrote about ridiculously fancy gay pool parties. I wrote about why gay men hate their bodies. Some of you may have found me then. We’ve come a long way, baby!

At some point, over the years, my snark faded. I realized that making fun of other people was kind of a cheap trick. And I realized that while I thought being self-deprecating would make other people feel better by contrast, it actually made people kind of feel like shit. I learned a big lesson about not making fun of my own body or my weight - when you talk about your body you are actually talking about everyone’s. People take that kind of thing so personally and it can be so destructive.

I have been DRAGGED over the years for my snark. By writers that I actually think would really like me in person. By writers who are a lot like me and are friends with my closest friends. One particularly fascinating experience was when I wrote about gay body image expecting it to hit people with bodies less traditionally valued in the gay community (i.e. fat people) only to find that the people who loved my writing the most were the hot gay guys who intimidated me into wanting to write about that in the first place. What. A. Mind. Fuck.

It’s so weird how we can’t fully control how people interpret us. I always saw myself as an outsider, but in that instance I was part of the problem - I was seen as a body hegemon. There’s some sobriety there. And some accountability. And I think it was a desire to take accountability, as well as to try and convey as much nuance and compassion as possible, that drove me away from my snarkier style of writing. That bitchy kind of Ghost World biting cultural commentary isn’t popular anymore and I’m glad.

So you can imagine my surprise, Internet Dinosaur that I am, when I started seeing the plethora of IN & OUT lists in my Instagram feed this January. They seem intrinsically immature, superficial and, mean. Like are we just being bitches again? The idea of things being “In” or “Out” feels so high school to me and a little retrograde. But after a HEAVY few years something that I’m looking to be this year is way more stupid, so naturally I wanted to play!

Most of these lists are simple, no explanation. But if you think someone like me (who just took that long to write an intro to an In & Out post) is gonna let you off that easy, you’re wrong! Below is my list of things you should love and things you should hate.

In & Out, 2024

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OUT.

Whining About Woke.

If I hear one more person whining about “Woke” I’m gonna lose my goddamn mind. My issue with it is that it’s an amorphous target. Like it’s fully in the eye of the beholder, just a simple way of demonizing something you don’t care to examine in a nuanced, sensitive way. One person’s “woke” is another person’s common decency, so it’s kind of impossible to come up with what constitutes something being woke vs something just being, I dunno, not being a total fucking asshole about something you don’t understand.

“Woke,” by definition, literally means “past tense of awake.” So being anti-woke literally means you are anti consciousness, anti being awake. Really? This is what we’re advocating for now? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH A CULTURE THAT THAT IS A THING? Add that to the fact that this is yet another term vanguarded by the Black community only to be turned around and used against them and you have a recipe for a term that should have stayed with its group of origin.

The fear emanating from corrupt troll politicians like Ron DeSantis is that they somehow will be held accountable for being total fucking pieces of shit. So they demonize anything they don’t feel like thinking about or being sensitive to as “woke.” I’ve been a piece of shit before (see above writing about body image). And I grew from recognizing it. Fear of being held accountable isn’t very productive. And that’s what using the word “woke” is. So stop already.

IN.

Etiquette.

The opposite of complaining about woke is etiquette. Whining about issues you don’t understand, and being held accountable for saying shitty things about them, is just bad etiquette. Etiquette, the idea that you should do you best to make people around you comfortable (within reason) would dictate NOT complaining if someone calls you out for using a slur like the R word, the N word, or the F word. Yeah, railing against “PC culture” can seem cool and alt, but ultimately it’s a cheap trick that inevitably hurts someone. When someone tells you something you said hurt them, the correct response is to examine why and try to remedy the problem, not call them “woke” for not wanting to be shat upon.

OUT.

Bass Pro Shop Hats.

Something about these hats, which I’ve seen mostly on “liberal snowflakes gays,” rubs me the wrong way. I guess it has something to do with where I am from and my PTSD from going to a high school where homophobic cowboys sat on the back of their trucks calling everyone else faggots. Something about it feels like a weird cultural appropriation - cool urban people cosplaying at backwoods country hillbillies. That’s cool when like one person does it. And that person is Lil Nasx in his hit song “Old Town Road.” On everyone else these hats just look like a nod to a “simpler” time. Meaning a time where everyone was racist and gay people got beaten and brutalized by police for going to underground gay bars. I have no idea what the politics of Bass Pro Shop is and I refuse to Google it, but something about these hats feels very alt right to me. So I hate them. I could be wrong here. This is one of my stupider points in this list.

IN.

Visors?

I’m guessing that bucket hats, which have been all the rage the past few years with people who can pull them off (read: less than 4% of the population everyone else looks insane) are on their way out. But what’s next? I vote for visors. For people like me with skin the color of fresh mayonnaise, a visor provides all the necessary protection needed to our milky disgusting foreheads. And plus, they wore them in the ‘Barbie’ movie. So we should get on visors this year!

OUT.

Disposable Plastic Flossers.

Seriously? We can’t even floss our teeth now without finding a way to use plastic, thus killing like all sea life forever? I can see the appeal of these things and my ex kind of got me hooked on them. But it feels like year over year we should be thinking of ways to cut down on plastic consumption yet year after year we’re figuring out more ways to use disposable plastic. Plastic for life saving medical devices? Sure. Plastic because you want to floss your teeth while watching TV. No, ma’am!

IN.

A Fucking Toothpick DUH!

I recently made a discovery at the grocery store that riveted me. Toothpicks! They’re a tool that’s been around forever. It’s just basically a tiny stick you can put between your teeth to get any bits of food that might be lodged in there. It’s made out of wood and it will biodegrade like a million times faster than a plastic flosser, which will never decompose.

OUT.

Being Mad at Spon Con.

Whenever I post anything sponsored on Instagram nobody likes it. If you scroll through my feed, almost every sponsored post has a tiny fraction of the likes that a regular run-of-the-mill “hi, this is my life” post. I think this is partially because there’s something going on with Instagram’s algorithm that makes them deemphasize sponsored content unless you put paid money behind it (brands can pay to boost content if you tag them correctly on the backend). But I think it’s also because people are sick of being sold shit. Here’s my problem with that. You don’t get to look at a bunch of free content that costs a lot of money to make AND complain about advertisements. That’s not how this works, folks. Either you concentrate on paid platforms and avoid ads or you get your content for free and deal with the ads.

If you like someone you follow, please make sure to hit *like* on every single one of their sponsored posts. Do this if you think they deserve to eat dinner at night. Do this if you think they deserve to be able to pay their rent. I hate being advertised to as well, but this is the world we’re living in. When I got out of college I really wanted to work at a magazine (which you could argue used the same pay-to-play advertising model Instagram does). But those jobs weren’t available anymore. They were only for trust fund kids would could afford to live in New York for $16,000 a year (which was still nothing in 2004).

It really sucks to work really hard on a sponsored post only to have it get a small amount of engagement. And you can’t help to take it personally because people know that’s how influencers make their money. I make a habit of liking any sponsored content I see because it’s a way the influencer can show the brand their content worked and get more work. It’s so easy and literally the least you can do if you like what someone is putting out there. The past few years I have actually lost money making content. Meaning when it came time to do my taxes I found I’d actually spent more money on putting content out than I’d brought in. It costs a lot to do home makeovers, photograph them, shoot video, edit it, and share it. So do your best to support the people you love online by liking what they share. This is the way information is being shared right now and that kind of sucks but we can’t control how media evolved. It is what it is.

IN

Paying for Content

I’ve been in a bit of a financial hole the past few years but I still have made a point to pay for content. That includes a few newsletters, including my best friend Kelly’s which I highly recommend you subscribe to. I also subscribe to the New York Times because I am scared we aren’t going to have real newspapers with actual reporters anymore. And I get The New Yorker because one of my goals this year is to read again and my ADHD makes it hard to concentrate on anything longer that a magazine (I know I know, I am trying to do better!).

I think one thing that makes people mad about influencers is that there’s no vetting process and they can all seem kind of stupid. I get it. I’ve been to a lot of influencer events in my day and I can attest to the fact that a lot of influencers are in fact idiots. But look at my friend Emily Henderson - she’s no dummy! I count her as among one of my best friends in the world and what she does, essentially, is publish a daily magazine on the internet. The quality of her imagery is magazine level and she does it every day.

Emily is a very special content creator. And when she started her blog, she felt like she was too late to break into the market. She then went on to create something truly amazing, a good reminder not to call things “over” before they really are. But blogs like hers are getting harder and harder to run as advertising migrates to new forms of content like TikTok and Instagram. So it’s important to pay subscription services to any publication you like. I just signed up for a Digital account for Architectural Digest because as snobby and unrelatable as I find that magazine, it’s one of the last great design publications out there. I like to put my money where my mouth.

If you’re interested in paying for this content, you can do so here:

OUT.

Dating Apps.

As far as I’m concerned, the only dating app that works for gay people is Grindr, which is a hookup app. In addition to that, I’m on Raya (an app that’s supposed to be for fancy celebrities but is most grifters and trust fund idiots if you’re gay), Hinge (which has a slightly better success rate but not great), and Tinder (zero percent success rate for gays, maybe better for straights). I don’t know when, but at some point these apps just stopped working. So I’ve matched with basically every gorgeous guy who goes to my gym on all these apps. After we match, I message them. And they never respond.

I guess it’s sort of a validation thing, just people looking for the dopamine hit of matching with someone hot. But it’s really frustrating to message guys who seemingly were into you only to have them completely ignore you. Literally what are we doing here?

I’m guessing this ghosting happens for a number of reasons. Mainly, I think people are sick of aimless conversations that go nowhere. Which is why I normally try to ask people out pretty quick, but that also freaks them out so truly there is no winning. So dating apps are stupid and I hate them.

IN.

House parties and bars.

I’m not drinking this year (which is going really well btw and has been super easy) but I still plan on going to bars. Firstly, I miss participating in city culture. And part of that is nightlife and just being around different types of people. Bars can be really fun places to meet up with friends and, let’s be honest, it’s fun to look around at all the hot guys in a place designed to facilitate conversation. And I think you end up meeting more random people at a bar than in your everyday life and that to me is a win.

OUT.

Ivy League Schools.

I mean, this is kind of a joke but also maybe true. The New York Times seems to have some sick obsession with Ivy League schools and if you read that paper you’d think they were the only colleges in America. In reality, the Ivies only educate a tiny portion of the American populace and they’re not that important. I have four Ivy degrees, two from Cornell (where I was the first person in my college to accelerate the five year dual degree program to four years by taking almost twice the normal amount of credits) and two from Penn, where I studied for a Masters of Fine Arts (I wanted to be a university professor) but also thought I should get a graphic design degree for “practical” reasons (LOL that worked out well!).

What I found out upon graduating from the these schools is that most of the kids that came in rich, left rich. Most of the kids that that came in middle class, left middle class. It wasn’t really the ladder that I thought it would be and, as I said above, I ended up having a very hard time getting a job afterward. So what was it for exactly?

In no way to do I regret going to Penn and Cornell, currently ranked six and twelve respectively in the very-problematic-yet-still-observed US News Best Colleges Rankings. My education is probably the biggest privilege I’ve had in my life. And it definitely wasn’t a given. I had a pretty severe learning disability that wasn’t diagnosed until I was thirty-seven. I went to an incredibly poor rural high school with forty year old text books. My guidance counselor, who I met only once or twice, told me I couldn’t go to a four year university because I wasn’t good at math.

But I ended up getting in (I had really good grades, great extracurriculars, an art talent that I added to my application, summer work and volunteer experience, and doable-but-not-great SATs). When I got there and people found out how my name pronounced (and thus what my ethnic background was) everyone assumed I’d gotten in because I was partially latino.

This is something very insidious and I think most people of color, probably even still today, will recognize this energy. Brown kids are told over and over by their peers, bitter they didn’t get into Yale or whatever, that they only got in because of their race. The different applications had different boxes to check and I can’t remember what Cornell’s was but on most I checked “other,” or “mixed” which most colleges just assumes means you’re an annoyed white person.

I ended up graduating with really great grades a year early. I definitely deserved to be there. But so do like a billion other kids who apply so the whole process feels kind of meaningless. There will always be bright kids from high schools the Ivies have never heard of (like mine) that don’t get in and should have. So the idea that someone is superior for having gone to a selective school is a stupid one. EAT THE RICH! DISBAND THE IVIES!

IN.

Random Liberal Arts Colleges.

I honesty wonder sometimes if I’d actually go to college knowing what I know now. It kind of feels like my generation was the last one that was sold the idea that going to college would do anything for anyone except kids studying pre-law, pre-med, or business. We need leaders of all kinds and leadership takes education, but in terms of how education was sold to us we were all lied to. It kind of feels like our parents generation just had to go to college to gradate into a middle class life. It definitely hasn’t felt like that for us.

But in a way I guess that perception I wrong. Maybe it wasn’t as easy for the boomers as it seems like it was. Sure, they had economic growth on their side. But also probably one of the reasons it seemed easier to me is that my dad graduated with as a doctor with a specialized degree, something way more stable than the multiple liberal arts degrees I got (I have a BA in Government and a BFA in Fine Arts Photography then my masters degrees). Still, it definitely didn’t help my generation to be kicked down the stairs not only by The Great Recession as we got out of school, but also the pandemic as we reached peak house buying/child bearing age.

I think the truly “cool” schools these days are schools like Reed College or Amherst, both of which are known to be good schools but are smaller and notably not Ivy League. Schools like that just seem more community oriented and less competitive. There is some confusion as to what constitutes an Ivy so let me explain it briefly. It started as an athletic conference of a collection of elite colleges, known colloquially as the Ivy League for over a century but only officially founded in 1954. Those schools are: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Penn, and Yale. Those are the only ones and they don’t matter any more than any other college. The end.

OUT

House Made.

At some point over the past five years restaurants started swapping “homemade” with “housemade.” I have no idea why this shift occurred, but it drives me crazy for its utter meaninglessness. It means the same fucking thing. Who cares. And “housemade” sounds so much more precious than “homemade.”

IN.

Homemade.

Just say “homemade.” We don’t need to reinvent words every few years. It doesn’t make things seem more artisanal and it just makes you sound like a pretentious fool.

OUT.

Fast Fashion.

Like everyone else, I have fallen victim to fast fashion over the past ten years. I do this for a few reasons. Firstly, I have gained and lost the same forty pounds about five times in the past three years. It has made it difficult to find things to wear should I have to film something or should I have to go to an event. So now my closets are all full of a bunch of things that look like shit after one wash and no longer fit because they shrunk or deteriorated after one wash.

I watched an incredible documentary years ago called The True Cost about the real cost of fast fashion (ie child labor, death, and environmental catastrophe). After that, I spent the year trying to buy only clothes made within the US. That proved to be possible only because American Apparel still existed. But I found that nearly every item made by mid-to-high-tier designers was made in factories abroad. And I also found out from a friend working on the fashion industry that companies like Gucci were making their apparel in the exact same factories at H&M, so it really feels like no matter what you do or how much you spend it’s impossible to avoid clothing made in problematic ways. I’d love to see a grading system on clothing, sort of like the rating system we have on restaurants in LA. If clothes are made in a decent factory with fair labor practices they get an A. If they’re made in factories with problematic and dangerous conditions they get an F.

IN.

The RealReal and Other Luxury Vintage.

Kelly turned me on to the RealReal recently and while I don’t have money to spend on clothing right now when I do will spend it there. It’s a website that sells high end luxury vintage clothing. And, yes, the clothing is still expensive but hear me out. I think we have too many clothes. I think we’ve been socially conditioned to think we need more clothes than we actually need. The 1929 Spanish bungalow I live in in LA has tiny closets because people used to have like five outfits. But now we have so many clothes we can’t fit them into our closets.

One of the theories posed in The True Cost is that as economic inequality has increased, the need for cheap and quick shopping fixes has soothed people into thinking they have more financial agency than they have. You can buy a t-shirt for $2.99 and that makes you feel powerful. But then you don’t care about that t-shirt because it only cost $2.99 so you think nothing of throwing it away (clothing has become responsible for 20% of global waste and is a HUGE problem).

This is a hard thing to talk about because it sound classist, but clothes should cost way more. This isn’t to say I don’t think poor people deserve clothes, this is to say that even people like me should save up and have way fewer things in their closets. So a few changes I’m going to make this year are:

1. Instead of buying five $20 shirts every six months, I’m going to look for one $200 high quality shirt. That way I will value it more and HOPEFULLY it’ll last longer.

2. I’m going to stop thinking it’s weird to wear the same outfit in videos or photos of myself online. In the past I’ve felt like I needed new clothes so the pictures and videos would be different but the content will be different so who cares?

3. I plan to try and concentrate my buying on The RealReal and other vintage shops, thus bypassing any new waste whatsoever.

OUT.

Doing That Thing Where You Stare at Your Phone and Smash Into People on the Sidewalk, Pretending You Don’t See Them.

I live near West Hollywood, California and there is a behavior that drives me nuts. People, women age 25-35 most specifically, stare at their phones so they can just plow through people. I, on the other hand, go out of my way to be courteous while walking and make way for people. But when I see someone like this I just want to shoulder check them. I kind of understand why women do this. Men take up too much space and are aggressive about it. But the answer to men manspreading isn’t women manspreading, it’s everyone NOT manspreading!

I’m not a manspreader and I don’t feel like I should pay the price for everyone else’s manspreading. I’m the type of person who tries to make himself as small as possible in an elevator or sitting next to someone, especially a woman because I want to make sure she feels safe and respected. But it’s SO FUCKING RUDE to walk down the street staring at a phone without looking up just assuming people are gonna move aside. Male or female, if you do this to me I will hit you in the shoulder from now on and it will be your fault if you fall over and land in the gutter like the actual trash you are.

IN.

Looking Where You’re Fucking Going.

Courtesy, in public, is a necessity. This means looking where you’re fucking going when you walk and moving to the side (go to the same side you would driving, to the right). This also means, especially if you’re in LA, not driving like a total fucking asshole. It seems like everyone lost their fucking minds during the pandemic and no longer knows how to act like a normal person. Walk and drive with your eyes open, people! Or I’m gonna ram into you!

OUT.

International Travel.

There’s a certain type of self-righteousness about international travel that drives me crazy. People who travel the world tend to think of themselves as virtuous, worldly, somehow better than everyone else. I myself have been lucky enough to travel to many places all over the world. I have been all over Europe and Japan and Mexico and Canada. But guess how I feel about that? EMBARRASSED. Which is how you should feel if you get in a plane and travel to a foreign country.

Planes are basically the most polluting way to travel. They pump a fuck ton of CO2 into the atmosphere - way more than driving! So there is nothing virtuous whatsoever about hopping in a plane and traveling to a foreign country, unless you’re going to cure malaria or volunteer. Now, I’m not saying I’m never going to a foreign country again. To me this is more about framing than it is about not traveling. I will travel but I will also acknowledge A) That I am incredibly privileged AND IN NO WAY BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE for going to a bunch of foreign countries. And B) That I am doing something incredibly destructive to the environment to satisfy my selfish curiosity about the world. To me it’s not about doing the “right” thing all the time. I think everyone is tired of living in this time that kind of feels like purity culture. We can do “bad” things, often we have to or want to. But I also think we can do things, acknowledge that they are perhaps flawed, take accountability for that, and move on without being arrogant pricks.

IN.

Domestic Travel.

My mom told me yesterday she plans to start visiting more national parks this year and I asked if I could join for a few. America is a beautiful, vast place filled with adventures, vistas, and sites to see. And I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of it. Even California has so many places I could spend the rest of my life just trying to see them all. Driving is a better for the environment (though obviously not great, even electric cars are powered predominantly by carbon emitting elements like coal). And domestic flights are less polluting that traveling to further destinations. So why not spend this year seeing what your own fantastic country has to offer?

Culturally, I’d like to see domestic travel become the new status symbol. Supporting our fellow Americans, their businesses, and taking pride in what a wonderful place we live may help bring us back together. I was blessed to grow up in one of the most stunning tourist destinations on earth, Yosemite National Park. If you have a chance, visit this year! Go before June or after August though, summer there is awful and hot and crowded. And if you need a gorgeous place to stay, book my Airbnb!

OUT.

Blaming Every Ailment on Being Old.

Ever since I turned thirty, I’ve started hearing this. A friend tweaks their back and they’re like “OH MAN SUCKS GETTING OLD!” And now that I’m forty-one, I hear it even more. I don’t want to spend the rest of my fucking life listening to people complain about being old. Sometimes shit happens to you and it has nothing to do with your age.

When I first moved to LA at age twenty-four, I went too hard at the gym and got tennis elbow. Then I tweaked my back on a squat machine. Then I hurt my knee jumping too hard. I was a mess for months, all before I turned twenty-five.

What I learned from that was to be more careful with my joint and body. In our little cabin in Yosemite, I used to slam my feet up the stairs. My parents always knew it was me because I am definitely NOT light on my feet. I slam my feet down like a giant monster. But now I am more thoughtful about how I walk. I walk intentionally and carefully, partially because my mom has had a lot of joint issues and I have a lot of her genetics.

No matter what your age, you have to be delicate with your body. And yes, when you get really old, you’re allowed to vent because the things that come with older age (like 70+) are traumatic and scary. But if you’re thirty and complaining that your back hurts because you’re old, LITERALLY SHUT THE FUCK UP.

IN.

Expressing Gratitude for the Body You Have.

If there’s one thing I learned from sacrificing my health over the past few years in order to get myself into home ownership it’s that nothing is worth losing your health over. So this year I’ve gotten a lot better at quieting my guilt and blowing things off to workout. Sure, people might get mad that something is late. But those same fucking people would judge me for being overweight. Those same people would be like “Oh my god what a shame you had a heart attack!” We have to be our own security guards when it comes to our bodies and there is nothing more important because it affects everything else.

After gaining forty pounds in the last six months of 2023, due entirely to stress, I decide to investigate going on Ozempic or Weygovy (I also did this as a fact finding mission for this newsletter because I know a lot of people have questions about these medications, how much they cost, and how they work). I found out that I have high cholesterol and a high heart rate. I knew I was making myself sick with worry the past few years but there wasn’t anything I could do about it - I just had to finish up at Londo Lodge and get the hell out of there.

I found out my insurance doesn’t over Zepbound (the high cholesterol/weight loss drug I ended up being prescribed) and I’m not sure I want to take it anyway so I’ve been doing twenty to forty minutes of cardio and working out every day since the beginning of the year. I started off a little too strong and lost fifteen pounds in fifteen days so I’ve upped my carb intake and generally started eating a lot more. I’m not dieting I just wasn’t eating enough for someone burning two thousand calories a day a the gym.

I’m really good at working out and getting in shape so I feel good about this year. But I’ve had to back burner a lot of things, including this newsletter, to do so. The way I’m rationalizing it to myself is that I basically ruined my body last year for a work projects so it’s okay if I spend a few months slacking on work to get my health back. I’ve lost the ability to get adrenaline rushes over worrying about things like money and I think that’s actually helping me shed weight even more than my intense workouts (sometimes I go twice a day, I’m gonna be a little muscle boy soon).

You are the only one who knows what you are facing. And what you’re putting your body through. So it’s up to you to say “fuck it, I am going to get healthy so I can get on with my life” if you’re in a bad space heath wise.

ANYWAY THAT WAS LONG I’M SORRY BUT THAT’S IT.

What are your INs & OUTs this year? And what do you think of mine?

RSVP in the comments!