Archive • Dude, just love yourself • Buttondown

Day 21: Premature

December 17, 2020

A few days ago I had a conversation with my boss — a copywriter who generated more than $50 million for our company last year. He has a sharp business mind,...

December 9, 2020

At 23 I hired a life coach. In our first call together, he asked me about my goals. “If you could achieve only one thing from our time together, what would...

December 7, 2020

As a teenager I slept in the same room where I was born. It wasn’t a hospital room. It was my bedroom. Fifteen years earlier, my mom spent 40 hours in and...

November 23, 2020

It wasn’t until grandma passed away that I realized my mom has never stopped believing in God. We weren’t an obviously Christian family. If you came to our...

November 18, 2020

I could hear her from my room. “God damn it guys!” My roommate had just woken up and stumbled into the kitchen, hungover. A common start to a Saturday in our...

Day 16: Bedtime

November 10, 2020

The jocks at my college didn’t play any of the usual sports. Their game of choice wasn’t even a game. It was a calisthenics program led by a Buddhist...

November 9, 2020

I’ve been to quite a few nude beaches in my life. And I’ve been nude on a lot of beaches. Mostly as a baby, though. Just to be clear. Growing up there was...

November 6, 2020

When I was four years old my dad borrowed a bunch of money and bought a plot of land in the jungle a few miles from the ocean. I spent a lot of time there...

November 4, 2020

By the time I saw the tree it was too late. There was only a couple hours left of sunlight. I had just gotten off at the top of the mountain, strapped on my...

Day 12: Barefoot

November 2, 2020

We rarely wore shoes growing up. Before I got into skateboarding at 11, one of the only times I’d wear them was when I was playing sports. It was normal for...

October 30, 2020

It was pitch black and we were still a couple hours outside of Portland. We’d been driving all day. Me, my younger brother, and my parents. Driving up from...

Day 10: Whisper

October 29, 2020

In elementary school I sang all the time. My mom tells me that we used to sing together every morning when she drove me to school. “Don’t you remember that?”...

October 28, 2020

I remember walking down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood trying to do the challenge. It was simple. A comfort zone challenge. A way to take baby steps out of my...

Day 8: Confident

October 27, 2020

My intentions were good. But something about me was making the hair on their necks stand on end. It was the second day of acting class. Twelve of us in a...

Day 7: Mountain

October 22, 2020

In college, my best friend was a mountain. It was a small mountain. But from the top I could see for 50 miles. To the south the desert stretched on and on...

October 21, 2020

My dad thinks I’m such a hard worker. But I don’t agree. I don’t know what it means to work hard. Is it the results you get? Is it the hours you put in? Is...

October 20, 2020

In Hawaiian the word is “kapu.” It means “no trespassing” or “forbidden.” Growing up in the islands, it’s something you saw here and there. Hand-painted on a...

October 15, 2020

We all have a little bully in us. I first met my inner bully in elementary school. I was probably five or six years old. There was another kid in my class...

October 12, 2020

Before she left the islands, my mom used to take long walks on the beach. And sometimes I’d join her. One time we got to talking about my dad. Now, I love my...

October 10, 2020

“You should’ve opened it.” My girlfriend sat on the floor, glaring at me as she unlaced her boots. It was two days before Christmas Eve, and we had just...