Cultish Creative Just Turned 7?! (And Other Stuff Is Turning 12, 43, And 1)

If I hit the scroll on the notes app in my phone (where I capture most of my random “I might want to remember this later thoughts), I see the first note on February 14, 2012.

I know I was capturing notes in different places before then, but that’s the first time I decided the notepad in the phone was the most easily accessible thing to use, so why not use it more often?

It’s kind of funny, and very telling (in hindsight), that on Valentine’s Day, 2012, the thing I apparently needed to write down was, “Ira Glass on middle school on This American Life.”

The habit continued from there.

At first the notes were scattershot and inconsistent. They were just random reminders or notes from blog post, podcasts, and miscellaneous book notes/quotes that I wanted to maybe remember later. I peppered in the occasional grocery and to-do lists too. It was more convenient than creative.

But, besides the day-to-day notetaking, a collection of things that caught my curiosity started to grow, and I started to be aware of it’s growth.

I started to catch myself trying to tell others about fun little things I had jotted down, frequently looking in my notes for what something I’d remembered was from, and I that’s when I realized:

I’m bad at explaining why an idea was interesting or relevant in a concise way.

Which made me wonder—how do these internet writers, and podcast guests, and book authors do it?

Can I do THAT too? I think I can. Should I try? F*** it. Why not?

So I started to try to take the ideas I’d noticed, and reflect on them, and to do it in a concise way where I could deliberately use it later with friends, colleagues, or others.

Sometimes I was better at it than other times, but I started practicing it.

And that’s how a real habit was born.

Or an addiction. But, a healthy addiction. Or at least I think it’s healthy.

I started to get addicted to taking notes, making reflections, and forcing myself to pause for even a second while drinking from the firehose of life long enough to appreciate life itself.

After much deliberation, and whilst under the iron thumb of a financial industry giant-sized compliance department, I decided to start anonymously sharing these notes. That was in 2017. Here’s the first ever Cultish Creative post:

Numero Uno, hot damn. By numero dos, I was already talking about death and mortality and Spinal Tap. my DNA. It’s funny to look back on it.

I turned 43 this past Saturday, and this Cultish Creative Personal Archive experiment I’ve been running turned 7.

I’m typing this on the afternoon of my birthday, reflecting on how every day for 7 years I’ve filed another entry. Every day, no misses.* You can do the math on how many posts that adds up to. Talk about a streak. Think about what’s really compounding.

I remember when I turned 23 like it was yesterday. I called it, “The Year of the Jordan.” I took some big swings, got scared of taking some bigger ones, and landed in a bit of a dark period.

8ish years on, at 31, I started making notes in my phone.

By the time I turned 33, what I deemed “The Year of the Pippen,” I was committed to being a supporting actor in most of life, since I definitely failed at being Jordan-quality at anything, and admittedly, I was very confused about who or what I was supporting or why. It wasn’t good. But I was committed to writing my way out of it, or at least writing my way into figuring myself out.

I knew that my life up to 23 was full of creativity. I also knew that my life from 25ish to 35ish was not. I’d squashed my creativity in favor of compatibility and I was hurting from it badly.

I started sharing these posts, and even though they were anonymous and deliberately unfindable, they started to work. Not on anything else, but they started to work on me. I was officially getting creative again. I was finding and building cults around ideas again. I was having FUN again.

I realized I’d broken an old rule I used to repeat to myself all the time, which I clearly didn’t full understand, back in my 20s:

Don’t sell yourself to fall in love with the things you do.

I had sold myself to fall in love the things I was doing. I don’t know if I had to do that to learn the lessons I did, but I’ll take the lessons I learned just the same. I needed to learn them to work my way back, to work my way better.

In my late 30s, with the help of a therapist and some close friends, I started to figure myself out. It wasn’t easy. I’m still not good at a lot of it, but I’m getting better. It’s hard work, but what isn’t? Most importantly, it’s worthwhile work—happiness is worthwhile, just ask Sisyphus (or at least Camus, and probably Pema Chodron while you’re at it).

Between my networks of ideas and my networks of people, I started playing again. I started creating again. And, as a result, I found myself feeling love again for the first time in a long, long time.

Flash forward to the eve of my 43rd birthday, when my wife and I walked into a local theater to see Tom Papa perform. She’d surprised me with the tickets as a birthday present. She knows he’s one of my favorites.

Whether or not she exactly remembered or realized it when she bought the tickets, I had used a quote from him in my Personal archive entry about proposing to her. You can read it right here: Look! I Did A Thing (+ Tom Papa On What Love Is).

I wasn’t sure of a nickname for 43 until today, when I woke up thinking about the show and what a great time we’d had.

Papa had mixed in some old material with his new material, did a fair amount of crowd work, and even though we didn’t stick around to meet him, he was hanging out in the lobby after his set taking pictures and signing books. He was mixing all of the mediums he creates in, with a curated environment of sharing the experience with others.

It was beautiful.

I was inspired.

I am inspired.

Here we go, 43.

This is the year of the player.

Not a particular player, not another specific name or identity or template, just the year of playing with my networks of ideas and people, from a place of love, to create as much of the feeling of joy I get from capturing it all and figuring out new ways to share it with others.

Just like I watched Tom Papa do on that stage, just like how my wife knew to get those tickets for us to share in that experience.

I don’t know what the playing exactly means yet, but I don’t have to either. I am giving myself the permission to find out. I know what love is, and I intend to keep creating more of it, in the most playful ways I can figure it out.

This year, in 2024, I started a new project, which I’m sure you’ve heard me talking about a little extra lately.

It’s a YouTube channel, with a centerpiece of a show I’m calling Just Press Record.

It’s almost 1.

And, in a way, the whole Cultish Creative channel (which houses all the video/podcasting I’m doing these days) represents an expression of everything I’ve been working towards, in that it combines networking my favorite ideas, with my favorite people, in the most improvisational, inspiring, and playful way I know how.

Come subscribe and follow along.

43 years of life, 12 years of notes, 7 years of writing online, and 1 year of putting it all together with a big ol’ smile on my face, to share with you all. I’m so happy you’re here. I can’t wait for what comes next.

Ps. after my wife took me out for a fancy dinner, we got together with a bunch of our best friends at one of our favorite (and only slightly less fancy) local spots. You can’t beat that. 43 feels good.