How do your friends describe you? Are you the funny friend that has been successful doing that thing for however many years? Do you own something or have a hobby they bring up? Are you an adventurer or a thrill seeker? Do you have a business they mention with pride? Are you the one from that one town known for that thing? Or are you a parent with a successful career? Does the city you live in make it into the mix of attributes?
And how has that changed over the years? Were you once the shy person who didn’t talk to anyone but now you’re the confident chatty pants at a party? Were you once a lawyer but now you’re a full-time baker? Have you always been the global wanderlust but over the last few years you’ve found successful footing at one company, in one city, staking yourself to not moving around so much? Did you finally launch a sound healing practice? Tell me the truth.
One of my favorite things right now is talking to my friends about all the things we identify with like our class, our race, our job, our role, our relationship status, our hobbies, and our aspirational careers. I read a very unverified internet study that said we carry roughly 700 identities with us throughout our lives, gliding between them like ravers at a packed warehouse. Or maybe all at once if we’re adventurous.
Most of the conversations traverse between our old selves and our current selves, the people we once were, and the people we’ve grown to become. I started thinking about the duration of these identities and how I’ve steamrolled through some and am still working on others. For a lot longer than I’ve been a husband and father, a marketer and “techie”, and even a Seattleite (still getting used to that one), I was a kid from LA who worked in retail for 10 years. I was a community college student. I was obsessed with European soccer. I was a devout Dodgers fan. I was never leaving my hometown. I was a writer.
Was or am.
Some identities will never leave and others I’ll never soon forget (one day we’ll talk about Los Angeles “rebel” culture). But as we evolve, when do identities fade to make way for new ones? And when do we make the declarations that those new areas of splintering for growth are happening? Should people even care? Does it even matter?
Everything deals with price
We’ve supercharged the hustle.
As an immigrant kid, every other person I knew had a parent, sibling, aunt or uncle, cousin, friend of a friend of a friend, who sold shoes out of a trunk, sewed clothes, could get you a gorgeous bouquet for half the cost, or mesmerize you with a tray of homecooked carnitas, catered. These hustles were usually from people I grew up with who were less than affluent and were simply trying to get by day-to-day. But I loved it. I learned a lot about never taking opportunities for granted and never being shy about making a buck.
But there’s something off from today’s hustle culture. When I look around, I don’t see people hustling to get by. I see people hustling because the hustling tools have never been easier to use. I see people hustling because there’s an advertising economy promising lightning fame. I see people hustling because, like diet culture from the 90s, there’s a promise of instant transfer from one life to another, from one identity to another, if you can only unlock some algorithm and find your niche. I see people burned out from their careers and wanting to carve out a new revenue stream (yes, me included). We’re now only a TikTok away from being a comedian or expert, sometimes both, emulating trends and fads that may have a few hundred dollars of “creator content economy” bucks tied to them.
I struggle with it because I’m coming to terms that the hustle culture upbringing of my youth has incinerated my energy reserves for the long term. I’m not the only one.
I want to retire yesterday. I want to go on years-long trips with my family. I want to sit at a cafe for 8 hours with friends and just laugh. I don’t want to hustle, but hustle is the way.
I look around, squint and rub my eyes, because it appears the hustle grew big giant eyes, snarling teeth, and grunts around like a Wild Thing. But I can’t tell if the tools are the monster, or we are.
I failed an AI quiz
I took the New York Times AI quiz last week and scored a 3/10. I won’t post the screenshot I took because I’d like you all to take it, too. I started 0/1. Then 0/2. And I spiraled. I second-guessed every initial reaction and started to look closer at each image, confidently whiplashing between “real or fake” and answering 70% incorrectly.
I wasn’t embarrassed. I was terrified.
What is the purpose of AI creating a visage? I understand the transactional stuff. I’m completely for never going to Rite Aid again to have someone charge me $15 to take a photo with a 2 MB camera and print four little squares of my face that were run over by my kids.
But aside from the transactional, are we gearing for cultural outsourcing? Will AI take street photography and present it as its own? Are we to endorse AI-created war photography? Will AI present to us images of our grandparents and what their life was like based on textbooks? Will it include that my grandfather had throat cancer so his face was completely obliterated (or that’s the story), or make the decision that it never happened? Are these quizzes simply to help us realize we’re completely unprepared for a future where “real” is irrelevant and things just exist?
Terrified. Or maybe you’ll all score a 9/10 like my wife Anna and I’ll feel comforted to know I just need to study more AI and this wasn’t the first sign that technology has officially catapulted my ability to acclimate.
Those 365 medium-format portraits
I finally got the first rolls back. Here are three from the first days of 2024. I’ve missed a few days since then because of a raging stomach flu that hit our house, but this has been a calming activity almost every day.
My buddy Josh was on this podcast about memory and I love how he breaks down dense neuroscience stuff into clear illustrations of how our brain works to remember real memories and falsehoods:
Listen to the tune below on your way out. Happy Sunday.
Damn, I love how the intense light blasts through the monochrome clouds with the sharp contrast of the crow. Gothic skies. Also, that first photo off the tree that looks like its reflecting the sun even though it’s backlit is trippy! That’s not AI? (JK)
I’m writing this sitting across the table from Kiet. We were just debriefing and giggling like teenagers and now it’s quiet Substack time. Wish you were here.
I’m looking forward to your SoCal Rebel Without a Cause post, and I relate to this week’s Hustle Without a Cause post. I see this with so many friends — and I feel it myself: hustling hard without knowing why beyond glorification of the hustle itself. I hope this is the year that I leave the hustle behind. And if I’m able to, I’m curious about what comes next.
These two paragraphs should have been formatted like this:
I want to retire yesterday.
I want to go on years-long trips with my family.
I want to sit at a cafe for 8 hours with friends and just laugh.
I don’t want to hustle, but hustle is the way.
I look around, squint and rub my eyes, because it appears the hustle grew big giant eyes, snarling teeth, and grunts around like a Wild Thing.
But I can’t tell if the tools are the monster, or we are.
Because it read like a poem. And you called me out on my coffee side hustle but I’m one step ahead of you and that’s why I’ve always described it to people as my side-jaunt.