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Articles by Just Jake
Time Flies
I’m back! Well at least part ways. It’s been awhile since I’ve been regularly posting. I took a break to write novels. It’s been the most challenging, yet rewarding thing I’ve ever done, and I cannot imagine a future in which writing long form isn’t some part of my rituals. Having said that, it’s exhausting and I’d love some instant gratification from my writing. Don’t we all, are we not a society built on the very foundation of instant gratification? My writing has failed the marshmallow test.
Finally Finished My Novel
Member-only story Just Jake · Follow 8 min read · -- It took me several attempts and multiple failed projects to finally have a rough draft of a book completed. After starting “In Love With Us?” last May, I’m proud to be able to share snippets of my full fledged rough draft. It’s 430 pages long and needs a shit load of work, but it’s real and that’s very exciting. Here is the opening chapter: Part One “Welcome Home” Chapter 1 Eden Gates. A place predicated on safety. Community.
To Become A Meme
Just Jake · Follow Just now -- In the search for popularity and fame it has always been beneficial to become a character. On any scale it works. Characterization. Becoming like a cartoon character in real life. More so than ever now in a world of memes; someone can be a walking meme. One can leverage becoming a character of themselves to a mass audience. From the president of the United States all the way down to a niche influencer, being recognizable is imperative.
Collecting Little Luxuries
Just Jake · Follow Just now -- Life is about finding and collecting little luxuries. There are excellent displays of craftsmanship all over if you know where to look. The local ma and pop Greek market that sells the best yogurt you can find. The Japanese restaurant that imports their noodles from a cousin back home. A tailor who hems the best suits or a framer who well captures how a painting should be displayed. A good collection of luxuries leads to a better life.
Namesakes
We used to assign names based on roles and responsibilities. A blacksmith taking on the last name of “Smith” etc. But the universe has a funny way of assigning namesakes for fate to play out as well. Usain Bolt being the fastest man of all time. Sam Altman leading a company that is creating an alternative form of intelligence through OpenAI. Boyan Slat cleaning up the oceans plastic and waste using a buoyancy device. The list of these serendipities goes on an on.
Shit Bubbles Up
In a corporate setting, shit flows two ways: shit flows downstream and shit bubbles up. It’s important to understand the differences in direction of shit flow, otherwise your company is in jeopardy of being shit out of luck. At any larger company the majority of “thinking” is done by the Senior Leadership team, the majority of actual work is done by the low man on the totem pole. Corporate work is like the game of telephone.
High Variability
Some quick thoughts on adding a bit of magic to life The key to a lot of success in life is residing in a place with high variability. If you think of the extremes, New York City is at the peak of variability, whereas a run down, small town in West Texas is at the very low. High Variability goes in both directions. You have just as great a chance of seeing a homeless man jerking off on the subway, as meeting someone new an interesting that you want to further pursue.
Is Utopia Our Flying Cars?
The promises of the past, and our misalignments of the future I love looking at old forms of media and predictions of what the future would look like. Because we are living in the far future. There are aspects of our current timeline that have been a success that wasn’t predicted and others like the flying car that haven’t come true. The is the case for any prediction base model. Things are going to hit and others won’t. But what is our version of the flying car?
The Writing Filter
My best writing happens when I cut out the middle man- my conscious. Good writing is really the conduit from our subconscious to paper. Bypassing the middle lane in which we interject our inner voice. When my writing flows, I don’t even see the words at all in my head. My hand is carrying the words from outside, perhaps the words from the universe itself. As I’ve written before, we are just beacons for ideas. Channeling divine creativity and capturing it for others to behold.
Risk; What Is Our Wild West
A favorite memory of mine growing up was watching Cowboy movies with my grandparents at their house in Florida. Our family would visit and as a night off for my parents, I would have a “sleep over” in my grand parents room. My nana would make toast with chunky peanut butter (my papa and my favorite) and we would watch tales of exploration, violence, risk takers, and heroes. I would lay there and have aspirations of being a cowboy myself one day.
The Revealer
In similar vein to the one upper (see post below) is someone equally annoying: the revealer. The revealer is someone who likes to drop not so subtle hints about how awesome they are. But it’s not a give and take relationship. In any sort of conversation, you learn five facts about them compared to nothing about yourself. They find ways to talk about their accomplishments, as if it’s an update on their resume. The kicker is that the revealer is someone who portrays themselves as humble.
Late Stage Marriage
Today I watched the entire reels “discography” of a husband who cooks for his wife. The flow of the video is the wife asks him to make something for dinner and he says “I can make that,” and then records it. It wasn’t that the videos were all that entertaining, it was basic grilling on a flat top grill, it was the realization I had while watching the videos that required me to get an in depth analysis for a post. The couple looked to be in their late twenties.
Driven By Boomer
Generations point fingers at each other. This has always been true. But even more so, lately there is a culture war between Boomers and the younger generations. The other day I overheard some Boomer relatives continue to drive home the narrative that the younger generations don’t like to work hard. That that is their biggest issue.
The Calm One
The other day I had a startling realization, one that had made me reflect on a few times in my life with embarrassment. It was a Friday before the 4th of July. Absolutely gorgeous outside. Not a single person I encountered was in a bad mood. Except for this one lady. My dumbass forgot to renew my expired credit card, thus leading me to have to go to the bank in order to print a new one out that day. Being a Friday (pay day) and before the holidays, the bank was naturally packed and short staffed.
Artificial Wombs
Not enough is being said about the impending global population collapse. It’s devastating for the future of humanity. I’ve written about various reasons why we need population growth: Ask a random person on the street and I guarantee their belief is that we have too many humans on earth. That we would be better off from a resource perspective and a climate, if we had less people. This is both an absurd and destructive belief. We need humans. It’s the only thing we got.
Performative Culture*
There is another layer I want to add on top of that. That we are becoming a “Performative” culture. One of my favorite all time writers, Kurt Vonnegut, predicted the Performative society that was about to emerge:
Start-Finish Scale
It’s true that you can’t finish something you don’t start. Most advice around “changing” your life is about just getting started. Whether it’s getting in shape, creating a business, or working on a project, without taking the initial starting steps, the chances of success is all but zero. But I rarely see anything about finishing. And what it means to finish something. Nor, do I see anything about the failed tropes of those who start things but don’t finish them. It’s a depiction shown in movies/tv.
The Planner
What good is it having a bunch of friends if not one of them is capable of organizing an outing? Here is the truth, most people suck at planning. I’ve found as I have gotten older that’s it not a lack of wanting, when it comes to socializing, it’s a lack of rounding up the troops. Getting a group together requires a persistent skill set. It involves logistics, follow ups, and follow through. There are no adults to plan for you anymore. No one to sign you up for camp, or bring you to play dates.
Apple Watch At Weddings
Apple Watches, Whoops, and Oura rings, all feel like precursors for a future technology- the ability to live track our health. In the future we will have the access to get real time personal data on all sorts of important metrics. I do personally love my Apple Watch. I use it to log my workouts. It's an essential item for me on most days when I leave the house. It's made me realize that my baseline for being in a good mood is ~8,000 steps. The days I'm under that mark are the days I feel sluggish.
Swearing.
I love swearing. It's fucking fantastic. Swearing is the shit. As children we are told not to use these words. Forbidden words. It becomes part of your growing agency as a human as you get older to be able to freely say the words you want to use. Even the forbidden ones. I remember it being a big deal the first time I swore in front of my parents and weren't scolded for it after. I don't think swears are inherently ugly words. To me there are few things better than a well placed use of fuck or shit.
Choose Now
When I turned 26 I was gifted a nice bottle of whiskey. In that moment I decided I would save opening it for when I deserved it. I didn't even put a hard definition on what "deserved" even meant. It was some arbitrary goal, a sense of validation I was putting on myself, in order to be able to take pleasure in something nice. At an early age, many of us are taught the importance of delayed gratification.
A Little Bit Of Stupidity
Sometimes you need to do something a bit stupid for a situation to become interesting. A ton of funny stories arise out of someone acting out of minor stupidity. In certain moments I correlate stupidity with risk and going with the flow. Over-analyzing every moment is a way to make sure we don't fall into any "mistakes." But this level of thinking can block the right flow. The universe allows wiggle room for some silliness. And often, when one just goes with the vibes it opens the door for it.
Micro-Dosing Lives
It's hard to predict what the next medium to consume content will be. But make no mistake, there will be another medium at some point in the future. My belief is that at some point it might not look recognizable to anyway we consume content today. Think about how fast the world of content has changed in the last century. From black and white movies to now 4K short clips on our phone. A Tik-Tok scroller can absorb an insane amount of content in an hour of scrolling.
Love/Like Importance
A very underrated notion in any successful romantic relationship is the love/like dichotomy. I've seen too many relationships hold onto love, in the sufferance of like. Recently, a good friend of mine went through a pretty rough break up. They had envisioned a long life together and yet it came to a crashing halt. He promises they are still in love. I don't have the heart to tell him she fell out of "like." If love is the foundation of any good partnership, like is everything else.
The New Religion Filler
You will believe in something. Worship it. This is just human nature. Those who scoff at things like religion, end up dedicating their lives to things like W2s and florescent lights. When religion evaporated from the US coasts, it left a giant shape hole where belief once laid. This is particularly true amongst young people. I'm 29. Growing up I was the last fragment of a cohort still left over from a Catholic dominated country. I attended CCD. My younger sisters just two and five years apart did not.
Greener Grass
I have found it. I have found my least favorite expression in existence: "the grass isn't always greener on the other side." This is such a pessimistic excuse to stay put in life. Yes, it's possible that leaving your current situation (relationship, residence, job) can land you in a worse spot. But this mindset has done more harm than good.
Johatsu
Ok I learned a new word this week: Johatsu. It's a phenomenon that happens in Japan. And if you know me, you know I love Japanese phenomenon's, because they are the first experiment in a truly aging population and I think there is a lot we can learn about potential societal behaviors as a result. Johatsu is a term for people who just up and vanish purposely. There are actual night moving companies that help these people just up and disappear.
Picnic Table Rule
A way to value good friendships My fiancée and I love going out to dinner, especially when it involves friends. It's a great way to catch up, whether it's with our well established friendships or new ones. The other day we went out to dinner for the first time with another couple who we had just met at a wedding. They had just moved near us and so we set up some dinner plans. We really enjoyed their company.
Playing with an audience
Success in todays world comes with the ability to build an audience. It has never been more the case, in all of human history. An "audience" it todays world is pure leverage. Anyone can make it in the area they want if they can create 1,000 true fans. That's all you need. Sometimes even less. I was in Austin, Texas the other week. It's the most artificial human experience I've been too. Just a place created to suite modern day dopamine. Which of course is a fucking blast.
Timeline Jumps.
Did Trumps Failed Assassination Shift Us To A New Reality? What if every major timeline event creates a quantum jump? A Schrödinger's Cat Moment for all of humanity. I have never seen a flip in our course direction quite as drastic as Trumps failed assassination attempt. Maybe the world is constantly teetering on a global see-saw. Each global event tilting us slightly one way or the other. We hang on slightly different quantum universes.
Time.
For centuries man has been obsessed with the concept of time. What is time? Einstein's theory showed it is relative, depending on the observers frame of reference. Science will probably continue finding new theories of time as we continue to unlock more knowledge of the universe. The concept and science behind time, is different than what we consider "time" down here on earth. I can certainly tell you that that the time of life is relative. I've lived most of my life obsessed with time.
Giving It A Voice In The Age Of Anonymity
Creating an anonymous persona has never been easier. The internet and social media has given rise to countless, successful anonymous creators. I fall into wanting to be in that category. These posts are anonymous. No one in my real life knows that I write under Just Jake. I do these for myself. And I want the ability to voice my opinions without taking into account repercussions back home. Anonymity works in that sense.
Future Butterfly Effect
I was deep in a meditative state. Sitting by the edge of a lake. The orchestrated rhythm of the waves crashing on the rocky shore washed away my worries. Wave after wave. On this day especially I wanted to ponder. To reflect on my life and the course it was on. A butterfly came and put on a show. It's wings flapping just enough to catch each drift of wind. And then it would float, almost chaotically. Like a knuckleball pitch moving with a mind of its own.
Indifference.
Love and hate are not opposites. They are cousins. Cut from the same cloth. Fueled by the same passions. The only people I have ever authentically hated, were those I once loved. The true opposite to love is indifference. I was fortunate at a young age to have a hard ass coach- Coach Reynolds. He was a yeller, who liked to push. He said something that has always stuck with me- "you may think a coach no longer yelling at you is a good thing. But it's the worst thing that can happen.
The worlds best free divers and what that says about humans
I first read about the Bajau people years ago. They were featured in a blurb from 'National Geographic.' Deemed the 'Sea Nomads' these indigenous Southeast Asian people are the best free divers in the entire worlds. Much like how Sherpas have evolved over time to climb extreme heights with much greater ease than the rest of humanity, the Bajau people have adapted to thrive underwater.
The Move In-Breakup
I want to talk about a modern day relationship phenomenon- the move(d) in-breakup. It recently happened to two of my friends and a peer. The cycle and milestones in which modern day dating have undergone have allowed for a more frequent situation to occur: moving into a place together and then breaking up. Besides divorce, it's probably the worst form of break up there is.
Her.
You saw her once didn't you? Now she's nothing but a blur. A distant dream, gone. Maybe in another alternate universe you chased her down. Had the gall to say hi. The gravitas to win her smile. She calls you hers now. You have a life together. She's not just a dream. Although you dream of her still. Why let her go for any second. Waking or asleep. But you didn't. Nope. She's probably with someone else. Has a full blown life. The sad thing is she doesn't even know your face. You are absolutely nothing to her.
Discipline.
Discipline is a toll that must be collected on the road to success. This has become apparent to me as I've aged. Discipline is in the same vein as making things happen. It's up to the individual and the individual only. Without that inner voice, that mentality, things will fall wayside. There are two paths to discipline: it either gets easier to maintain as we get older, or harder. So far, in my own experience, the majority of people suffer from its hardness with age.
Everything Is Made
It blows my mind that every object beyond what's found in nature, is human made. There is an absolute insane amount of human creation out there. This is a rift off of one of my most viewed posts: As a TLDR- The universe has given us all the building blocks to create. As a result all ideas ever formed are a direct result of the universes offerings to us. It's out there for us to get inspiration from. For some people there are cathedrals everywhere. You just need to see the beauty in it all.
The Camera Maketh
Much of our lives are lived through other peoples lens. The filters they put on for display directly impact our view of them. This is similar to how we think of movie eras. Black and white, to film, to digital, and now CGI on everything. We can lump in a movie to a particular decade just by the way it appears visually on screen. As the world has gone to a camera focus society, this shift in categorization now happens on a micro level at an extremely frequent clip.
Hawk Tuah.
Much has been made over the Hawk Tuah girl. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, congrats! You've successfully avoided the biggest internet sensation of the summer. Like anything, the discourse circling around Hawk Tuah has been filled with both good and awful takes. What started off as a somewhat harmless (albeit lowbrow meme) has dissolved into even political takes. Only America can turn a euphemism for a sloppy blow job into a polarizing culture war.
Running Groups.
Thank god I'm not single. Because I'm not a runner. In fact, I hate running with a passion. But I can see the appeal. And I can see why Running Clubs are not only a good third place, but also a dating scene. Joining a Running Club requires being in shape, having discipline, being consistent. Endorphins are flowing left and right which instantly makes people appear more attractive and easy going.
Compounding Magic
It has taken me almost two years of writing for me to get the blog to a place I want it to be. And here is why... Creativity is throwing a bunch of darts at the board. I've now written hundreds of posts. Some successful, while others are complete duds. Before putting myself out there, my relationship with creativity was that it needed to be flawless. I'd penalize an artist if they put out a bad song. An author if they wrote a book I didn't like. Even if I enjoyed most of their other work.
Learning.
For the first twenty-two years of my life I was largely under the impression that I hated "learning." I was always a decent student, mostly due to the similarities that many young people face in our country today. The anxiety of being a "failure." Modern western schooling in Performative. Based on grades first and learning second. Students go through the school system under the guise that if one does not get good grades then doors will be closed. Life will be over.
Misogis 
By Just Jake I recently discovered the Japanese concept of a Misogi. Try something once a year that completely challenges you physically. Make it really hard and really memorable. The task of completing an intense physical challenge not only moves your body, but pushes your spirit too. The Japanese believe Misogi's to be somewhat of a spiritual cleanser.
Chasing Nothing...
By Just Jake Once you get on the hedonic treadmill it is very hard to get off. Getting off at any point feels like cutting an actual run on the treadmill short...you feel like you've quit. That's how a lot of adult life is set up. Hoping on a treadmill with no goal or end in site. The corporate ladder is very much the case. It's easy to start chasing promotion after promotion, because even at young ages we have been...
Firefly.
Have you ever seen firefly's on the perfect summer night? I remember as a kid, thinking they were something out of a fantasy. Like the Easter bunny and elves. Or maybe just a thing of the past. Because as much as I looked, they never appeared. And then I saw them for the first time. I was 18, it was the summer before college. I was with them. The people I thought meant the world to me. That would never leave my side. You know how you think the...
Which Way America?
By Just Jake A July Post Despite the fact that I'm third generation born and raised in this country, I have no concept of what it means to be American. I suspect many others my age and younger feel the same. I know what America is of course. But in three decades of life so far, this country has changed so many times that I don't know what it's core is.
Fake Love.
A top worst sin is to fake love. To be in love is to go all in. There is no love that should require acting. Or a facade. A mask you need to put on when facing the partner in question. Love is soul consuming. To treat it any differently is such vile. It's the worst thing about myself. I use fake love all the time. This past weekend on a trip I "fell" in love several time. Told woman what they wanted to hear. Showered them in compliments...
Forms of Humor
By Just Jake I love, love humor. I love, love. But humor, of all the aspects of being human, humor is one of my favorites. I'd argue that humor is up there for most impactful in terms of what separates us from other species. Humor is an umbrella. There are layers and layers of humor underneath this "category." Humor is a human tool. And understanding both the complexities and simplicities of it can be used to everyone's...
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