I'm EXHAUSTED From Suffering

I don't enjoy my life even 50% of the time. So everything changes today.

Hi, friend!

I think over-optimizing our lives is making us f*cking miserable.

Do you know who Bryan Johnson is? I go on his IG profile often because it’s the best car crash on the internet.

In case you don’t know who he is, he’s a “longevity bro,” i.e. a guy who has made “not dying” his entire personality. He spends $2 million a year on healthcare and lives by strict rules: He goes to bed at 8:30, he doesn’t drink alcohol or even TOUCH “unhealthy” food. He has, and I am not making this up, literally put a sensor on his dick to track his nighttime erections. FOR OPTIMIZATION. Of what? IDK! Because it certainly isn’t sex!

Listen: I’m not here to tell Bryan Johnson how to live. In fact, GOOD FOR HIM. He is MEGA successful. I’ve watched his account go from 100k to 2.6 million over two years! But every time I go on his profile I have one thought and one thought only:

This guy seems f*cking miserable.

Does this look like a man who is enjoying his life? Or who fears his death? Again, I DON’T JUDGE!!!! You do you, boo! But like…I just find it hard to believe that paying this level of attention to yourself makes a HAPPY human.

Which brings me to the question I want to turn my attention to here in this newsletter: What is the point of being healthy and healing if you’re not actually enjoying your life?

I will confess to you right now: I do not always fully enjoy my life. At all. Like. Not even 50% of the time. I still get swept up in emotions ALL THE TIME. I still have those days where I feel like the world is against me, even though the sun is shining and I’m alive and technically everything is fine… but all I want to do is cry in the shower.

Frankly, I'm EXHAUSTED from suffering. I’m done. I want to have a good life and enjoy it now! So this newsletter will be dedicated to two questions:

1. What is a good life, anyways?

That is THE question we’re trying to answer in the free version of this newsletter.

The Good Life is a weekly, honest, sometimes funny conversation about how we heal what ails us, build lives we f*cking enjoy, and the small tools that actually get us there.

Essays, stories, the occasional bit of ancient Greek philosophy, and a lot of honesty about what it means to actually decide what a good life is. And my correspondences from the trenches of trying to be less addicted to my own pain.

2. How can I practice a good life?

For paying subscribers who want to go deeper I present to you, The Good Life Lab. Starting July 1, the Good Life Lab is becoming a place for DOING THE WORK:

Each month has a challenge towards LIVING a “good life.” July, for example, will start off with a question, “How are you right NOW?” We’re going to take an honest accounting of where we are as we plot where we will go next. To explore the month’s challenge, you will get…

• 📓 Weekly Journaling Prompts: every Saturday, you’ll get a new prompt that builds on the last, so by the end of the month, you haven’t just thought about the theme, you’ve actually moved through it. Not into journaling? NO PROBLEM, but I think it’s a very good idea to ask yourself a reflection question each week!

• 📝 A Worksheet: every challenge will have a worksheet for my straight A students!

• 🫂 A Monthly Workshop: Each month closes with a live Zoom workshop, just us, working through the tools we are learning.

The point of The Good Life Lab is to start living a good life, today.

What's your version of the dick sensor: the 'healthy' habit that's secretly making you miserable?

TELL ME!!! For me it’s vegetables. There, I said it! I don’t enjoy them! AT ALL! Arrest me! What are you optimizing for that is stopping you from actually living? Tell me in the comments! I read and reply to every single one.