I’ve written three iterations of this first newsletter because I keep being paranoid about what to share and talk about.

But then I realized this was just the over-planner in me again.

The person who thinks everything needs to be perfect.

The person who cares more about the opinions of others than the dreams of his own.

Something I’ve realized more recently is that everyone really is just worried about themselves. As much as I might convince myself that people care about what I’m doing, most of the time, they don’t. And that’s okay.

In fact. It’s better than okay.

It’s liberating.

I can write this newsletter to exactly zero subscribers and that gives me permission to suck. I can say fuck and not care if someone will get offended.

FUCK!

Anyway, all I’ve written in the past two years are poems, random emails, more poems, and a few Instagram captions, so bear with me as I get used to this medium again.

I’m not going to edit this like crazy, because progress>perfection. Also, I told myself I would have a newsletter out by Monday, and I want to start trusting myself a little bit more, so here we are.

So, if you’re here and reading this, I love you and thank you. Please send me a message and let me know what you think :)

Here we go.

So here’s a lesson I’ve been digesting lately.

The best way to figure something out is by not figuring it out.

it’s not an original idea by any means. I’m just now beginning to understand what it means in practice.

I learned this when I took the opposite approach to this when I left my job 16 months ago. I was so sure that I was going to figure out my next chapter within 3-4 months after leaving my job, but I fell into a depression instead. It hit me like a bad hangover. I was so angry and confused at why I was so sad.

After all, I left the black cloud of a job that drained my life of all my joy and laughter.

Wasn’t that supposed to solve all my problems?

Not quite.

It was also a job that I worked hard to get to for 8 years. I was on pace for my first six-figure year, I had the company car, and the international territory. It was EVERYTHING that I wanted and always hoped for.

Despite leaving the aspirations and ambitions of my former self as a salesperson, I learned that I needed to mourn the person I used to be, the person who yearned for all those things.

I had not properly said goodbye to the person who worked so hard to get there.

Even though I had finally arrived at my dream job, I realized I didn’t want it anymore. I was just chasing what the old David had wanted without ever checking in to make sure I was still going the right way.

For all intents and purposes, that version of David died.

At least, a lot of him did.

And I needed time to grieve for him.

So I slowed down.

I slowed way down.

And it was the best thing I could have ever done. But it came at a cost.

It was a cost many people wouldn’t entertain.

I left Southern California and moved back to the Central Valley to live with my family. I was willing to go “backward” by moving back home at 30 instead of buying my own house.

I left most of my friends and the new poetry community I had just become a part of. I left the beaches and traffic and traded them for poor air quality and sharing the road with tractors.

But I was closer to family, I cut expenses, and was able to stretch my savings.

And I wrote. A lot.

I took courses, I listened to my passion, and I followed my curiosity to places like Morocco, Denmark, Guatemala, Mexico, New York, Miami, and more.

I gave myself space, time, and most importantly, no goals.

In other words, I gave myself permission to just be and to figure out what “just be” meant.

From my experience, to “just be” means to experience who you are without the stress and mental gymnastics we put ourselves through every day.

Life can be overwhelming, and some circumstances out there aren’t fair and seem insurmountable. But those conditions are only worsened by the thoughts and emotions that dictate the quality of that existence.

When you arrive at a place that isn’t controlled by our thoughts, feelings, or our reactions to them, even if just for a fraction of a moment, you get a taste of what it means to “just be.”

Imagine how much more heightened this becomes when you also release the expectations you have of who you are supposed to be, which implies that who you are right now is never enough. But “right now” is the only time we’ll ever actually have, so something isn’t adding up.

Instead of continuing to chase the future version of me who carried the keys to my happiness, I wanted time and space to remove myself from that way of thinking and the operating system that came with it.

I couldn’t plan or decide what my next chapter would look like if I was still in the same environment that I wanted to leave. And once I left, I needed some time to grieve.

There’s nothing wrong with making plans and setting goals, but when you’re looking to overhaul your life, a slower transition can make a world of difference.

The other critical ingredient?

A shock to your system.

A new environment, a new epiphany, connecting your dots and feeling on fire in a way you never have before.

The best way to do this is to travel.

When you’re in the same places every day, your mind gets stale and it's easier for autopilot to take over.

When you are in a new country, a new town, or a new restaurant with new faces, walking at exciting paces following foreign traces and learning new languages, it rearranges the frames you’re used to facing.

See what I did there?

Changing shit up wakes up your brain and makes life feel new. You remember parts of your brain that you haven’t used. It feels like an out-of-body experience but it’s just a reminder of how thrilling it can be to just be alive. And that’s when you realize how far removed we are from that kind of childlike wonder as adults.

But David, I can’t travel because X, Y, and Z.

I get it. I wasn’t always able to travel either for one reason or another.

Here are some alternatives:

You can rearrange your room every few months. You can make small changes in the kitchen or the living room. You can eat at new restaurants and order food you’d never order. You can walk a new route home.

You can ask your friends questions you’ve never been asked. You can watch movies you’d never watch.

You can read books that open your mind and take you on a drive. You can feel the wind dancing through your fingers while you’re sitting right at home, because your mind can remind you what your body has always known:

• what you see is not all there is,

• what you feel is not all that lives,

• and you cannot have what you do not give.

I’m going to detour here to give more thoughts on the last point because I get how it can sound loaded.

So many people navigate life without a cup. So many people feel like they have no choice but to live waiting for rain instead of digging a well.

Life is a stream. And we are natural-born rivers that are born into dams. The goal is to learn our way out of it, but most don’t give a damn because life is just fucking hard.

We get lost in the fight of making it another day to just breathe.

We’re exhausted.

We smoke until we forget how to dream and we drink until we remember we can sing.

We convince ourselves we need to be great at something in order to have fun, but needing to be perfect is a lie we’ve succumbed to.

We settle for wearing doubt on our sleeves.

So how do we grow when an imposter built our home?

To become more, we have to try something we’ve never done. We have to think something we’ve never thought.

We can do this naturally if we followed our curiosity, but we were taught to get in its way.

Most of us want to try but we’re afraid of how life will change. We learned not to challenge the status quo, so in turn we adapted or struggled, never letting our anger show.

We slowly lost touch with the eyes behind our eyes.

And we lost touch with the watcher behind our thought.

In what ways have you been thinking outside the box?

Thanks, ya’ll. Until next time!

David
Mor.intune

I’ll end this post with a poem that I co-wrote with a friend of mine, Chrissy Pappetti, who is the most talented dancers and best coaches coaches I know.

Possibility

I sink into my past like memory foam.
nothing holds me like my regrets,
they comfort me more than whats next.

I’ve never been more afraid of now.

I’ve never been so obsessed
with who and where
and what and why
and when and how,

Tell me how!
And tell me now,
I’m just a child playing
hide & seek with my smile,

I say I love life but
never go the extra mile,
I swear I’m meant for more
but I’m really in denial.

I'm tired of waking up
without knowing who I am,
I’m reaching for my purpose
but I’m sinking into sand.

I’m tired of being moved
without knowing where I’ll land,
I’m trying to ask for help
but no one understands.

I’m lost in these questions
with no answers to be found,
I have all my wishes,
but no genie that is bound,

I’m flailing in an ocean
of our commotion,
I’ll be damned if I drown,
I’m calling for my dreams
but they don’t make a sound.
I can’t see my future
but I feel it all around.

I’m seeing all the signs
but I don’t know what they mean.
they’re just speaking in a language
we never learned to read.

the wind is blowing secrets
and it's begging us to believe
but we’ve given into man
and still buy what he deceives.

so maybe the key to being free
is knowing it’s never what it seems.
we’re sold lie after lie to justify
suppressing our own dreams.

we’re suffocating all our screams.
we’re dissociating through our screens,
we’re living beyond our means,
working like fucking machines,
treating our humanity like a disease
with spirits that ache and bones that break
and walls that shake surrounded by hate,

our hearts never bleed.

we’ve locked ourselves in chains
and threw away the keys.

and now all we care about is money
and opinions and titles and traditions,
without the right dose of questions
we’ll never look past our afflictions.

we never ask what our pain means,
so we never know what our hurt needs
and we never hear our hearts plead.
we ignore the wisdom in our genes
living too blindly to ever see
that the only job we really had
is to find what we’re good at.

What makes you come alive?
what wakes up your bones
and makes you feel like you’ve arrived?

You are the piece of the puzzle
that connects all your dots,
but you have your intuition,
not a picture on a box!

Our answers are inside our bodies,
they were never in your mind,
the next question comes from within,
not somewhere way outside!

You’ve gotta stop judging you,
I know you can be kind.
You’ve gotta stop rushing you,
you know that you have time.

but since time doesn’t exist
outside of our own minds,
I want you in awe of now
while the signs are still aligned.
let your inner voice guide the way
without your soul falling behind.

You are right where you need to be.
you’re seeing what you need to see.
are you grieving what you need to grieve?
because it is time to believe
in what you were born to achieve.

It all depends
on what you choose to perceive.

If we could all just let go
and surrender to life’s flow,
imagine all the wonders
that will be conceived.

You can be more
than you’ve ever dreamed.

Written by David Morin and Chrissy Pappetti