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This week’s question comes to us from Jason Conant:

What’s your go-to piece of advice in life?

Be useful.

Earlier this year I bought a 3D printer. I had no interest in 3D printing. But I wanted to make anti-ICE whistles to hand out to the neighbors, so I bought a tiny affordable printer, learned just enough about 3D printing that I could make it go, found a whistle that I liked (thanks to the generosity of the 3D printing community), and after some trial and error managed to figure out how to write FUCK ICE on them. Next I needed places to hand them out. I started out by hitting up some coffee shops in the neighborhood that I figured would be down with the cause, and they were. They were happy to get ice whistles. (These were all free, by the way.) And I built up my little network of whistle deliveries. After a while, it became a routine. I’d spend weekdays printing batch after batch after batch on my tiny little printer, and weekends making deliveries. I’d load up my bike with whistles, make the rounds, people thanked me, got excited if there was a new color, and told me stories about their customers thanking them for providing whistles.

I felt useful.

In the middle of a horrible thing, I’d managed to find a thing I could do to feel useful.

This went on for maybe six months. Then, a few weeks ago, one of the regular shops I was delivering to told me they didn’t need anymore whistles because they still had backstock from the last delivery. Huh. I went to another shop, same thing. I even tried a few new places, and they said no. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. In hindsight, I now realize that I’d saturated those places. Coffee shops tend to have a repeating customer base, and after a few weeks everyone who wanted a whistle had gotten a whistle. Also, ICE had changed their tactics and people were feeling less alarmed. (I both disagree that ICE is no longer a problem, and find it understandable that people want to believe they’re safe. We should be safe. ) But on that particular Sunday, without the benefit of hindsight, what I felt was gutted. I went through the various stages of grief, including being mad at the shop owners, mad at myself, mad at one set of neighbors for not caring about the other set, etc, etc, and spent a few days spiraling down the drain towards depression. Which is when I realized that the actual issue was that I was in some strange form of mourning. Something that had made me feel useful for six months was now apparently no longer useful.

The thing about being useful is that it’s a two way street. You figure out something that you can do to help your friends, your family, your community, and that’s great. But being useful is also an amazing mental health trick. It makes you feel necessary. It gives you purpose.

I had to get up in the morning because I had to make the whistles. And if no one made the whistles the whistles didn’t get made, didn’t get distributed, and wouldn’t be in the right place if they were needed.

But let’s go back to that shitty day when whistle deliveries fell apart for just a second, because there’s an important harder lesson there. When people started telling me they no longer needed whistles, a fair decision for them to make, I went full entitled white man: “How dare they? Can’t they see I’m trying to do something for the community?! How incredibly disrespectful of them. Yadda yadda yadda.” Thankfully, I’ve had enough therapy that this was an internal monologue. Which means I sat and stewed about it for a while, realized that I could either accept what the community was telling me, or become bitter about the whole thing—which helps no one. Therapy is great.

The thing about being useful is that you need to be doing something your community finds useful. Sure, you can ask yourself what the community needs, but you’ll save yourself a lot of time and energy by asking the community itself. (And no, Claude is not your community.) This means actually being part of your community, interacting with your neighbors, talking to them.

For six months, I’d found a way to be useful to my community. Then I wasn’t. Which means, if I wanted to continue being useful—and I did—I needed to stop doing the thing that was no longer useful, and find out what my community needed now. I am in the middle of doing that now. And yes, I took a little time off to mourn the previous thing that made me feel useful, and that’s ok too.

I’ll tell you a secret. Every once in a while I’ll get on Bluesky and ask if anyone needs a pep talk. And while I very much like giving people pep talks, and while it is intended to help the people asking for the pep talks, the real reason I’m doing it is because I need a pep talk. Helping other people makes me feel useful, which re-energizes my sense of purpose. And for someone with a tendency towards depression that sense of purpose is really important.

I have to get up in the morning because someone might need me. I have to get up in the morning because someone might need to be told they’re doing a good job.

And honestly, being useful can be as easy as that. Think of how many times your day has been improved just by someone telling you they’re happy to see you, or telling you they’re glad you’re here, or because a friend randomly texted you to let you know they were thinking of you, or because someone thought to share the latest Jimothy meme with you. It takes surprisingly little to pull someone out of a tailspin. (I say this while acknowledging that it might take much more for others.)

I fear I’m repeating something from a previous newsletter here, but that’s ok. We’re all familiar with the Mister Rogers “look for the helpers” talk. But it’s worth remembering that Mister Rogers was talking to children when he said that. And we’re no longer children. We’re no longer looking for the helpers, we are the helpers. We’re the people that need to be offering the help. We’re the ones who need to be useful.

Whether it’s telling someone you’re happy to see them, letting a friend know they can crash on your couch for a few days, offering to pay for someone’s meal, inviting someone over to watch TV after a breakup, picking someone up after a medical procedure, or just offering an hour on a park bench to listen, putting in a couple of hours at a food bank, or attending a community meeting. All of these things are incredibly helpful. For sure, not all of them are for everybody. But when you ask your community what it needs, trust me that there will be a long list. One or two of those things will be for you. And the secret is that in helping others, we begin to feel better about ourselves.

We are living through an era of non-stop gaslighting. From our government. From our employers. From our media, both social and traditional. If you work in the tech industry, as many of you do (or did), you’re being told that you’re no longer good enough to do a job you’ve been doing very well for years. I am happy to be useful and remind you that this is bullshit. And I’d urge the rest of you to do the same. Call out the gaslighting for what it is. Call out the lies. The truth is useful. And reminding people that the truth is the truth is incredibly useful. One of the most useful things we can be doing for one another in this particular moment is safeguarding reality.

I’ve had my share of moments during the current hellscape, where I’ve felt adrift. And by the way, that sentence originally said lost, but the more I looked at it, the more that felt like the wrong word. Lost doesn’t quite get to it. I know where I am. I recognize the view. I can touch my stuff. Then I settled on adrift. That felt better. Unmoored. Untethered. Floating around without purpose. Which feels worse than being lost. Human tendency in times like that is to ask ourselves questions like “What do I need?” or “What do I want to do?” And those are fair questions, I suppose. But if you knew the answers to those questions you’d know the answers to those questions, right? You might very likely already be doing those things, right?

The feeling of being adrift is a little tougher, it’s tied to purpose. And over the years (along with much therapy) I’ve found that the best way to deal with this feeling, which can be incredibly lonely, is not to ask myself what I need, but to ask myself what others need. How can I be useful? The only way to stop being adrift is to dock onto something that’s more solid than you are. And by being useful I’m helping not just my friends, my family, my community—I’m also helping myself.

I am filled with glorious purpose, and my community has one more pair of hands it can use.

This morning, on my way to work, I stopped at one of the coffee shops where I used to deliver whistles. I just wanted a cup of coffee. But I was happy to see they still had whistles on the counter, inside a plastic cup that someone had sharpied FREE on. It was half-way full. I got my coffee, then sat on the bench outside drinking it. A bunch of people walked by. Some had dogs, and they all stopped at my feet because they could smell my dog on me. People biked by, and drove by. Delivery scooters were carrying iced coffee to sad young men who can’t leave the house because they have to keep an eye on their AI agents. A cyclist yelled at a Waymo that was double-parked. A few more people walked into, and then out of the coffee shop, coffee in hand.

This is my community. I’m here to help, however they might need me. I want to be useful.

Ok, exciting art news! I’m having an art show this weekend. It’s (not really) part of the SF Art Book Fair. It’s also in a walk-in vault, which is weird, but ok. On Saturday and Sunday from 2–4pm, you can come by, see some art, and if enough people gather I’ll also read a story or two from my new book. But don’t take my word for it, KQED wrote up a really nice and insightful review of the show.

Sat & Sun, July 25 & 26, 2–4pm, 1405 Indiana St. Right next to the Art Book Fair.

🙋 Got a question? Ask it! This newsletter runs on your questions.

📣 The next Presenting w/Confidence workshop is happening next week, July 30 & 31. I’ve got a couple of seats open. And I promise you that you will walk out feeling better about yourself.

🏖️ Mule Summer School is in session! Fun, informal events on various topics. Next up: Erika and Kristina Halvorson talk about How to Sell!

🪑 If you just need to talk about shit, I do one-on-ones.

🍉 Please don’t give up on Palestine.

🏳️‍⚧️ Please help our trans community.