I realize I am not a normal person.
Then again, does the average person actually exist?
Whatever the answer, I know I’m not him.
Point is, by the end of 2026, I will publish my fifth personal book. I have written for publications around the world, including the Good Men Project, for over a decade. I interviewed some of my heroes. I co-host a podcast and host another. And during the day, I help people sleep better.
Wait…maybe that sounds a little weird.
I sell sleep.
wait…
I work in a mattress store, okay? Stop looking at me like that.
All kidding aside, I have a lot of things with a high comfort level.
writing
podcasting.
Talking to complete strangers about why side sleepers should at least use a hybrid mattress even though you’ve slept on a coil mattress for fifty years because it’s the only thing you know.
None of these things feel particularly scary anymore.
But they are all used to it.
There was a time when I had absolutely no idea how to write a book.
There was a time when hitting “publish” on an article felt like standing on a cliff.
There was a time when I walked onto the floor of a mattress showroom that everyone realized I had no idea what I was doing.
Here’s the funny thing.
No one ever told me I had to get better immediately.
I just… kept showing up.
I wasn’t comfortable where I started.
After enough repetitions, relief finally appeared.
Coincidentally, a few years ago I found myself standing in a lecture room across the street from Madison Square Garden.
About 250 people.
Most of them are complete strangers.
I answered a call to speak during this class. What I said was not planned. I simply stood up, took a deep breath and spoke from the heart.
It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life.
It’s a moment I’m proud of.
The following spring, because I obviously enjoy making myself uncomfortable, I signed up for a six-week improv class in White Plains, New York.
Didn’t know a soul when I walked in.
I think in class three or four, our instructor gave us script pages Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Then he passed around the hat full of slips of paper, writing the name of each animal.
assignment?
Perform the scene like the animal you are drawing.
I reached for the hat.
Snake.
I must have found the snake.
So there I was—a grown man—on the floor, leaning across the room to Gene Wilder’s iconic “You get nothing! You lose!” Speech, while scaring one of my classmates into jumping.
I look at the pictures I took that day and I think, what was I doing?
Comfortable?
Not even close.
Funny?
completely.
Is it worth it?
without question
So explain something to me.
rhetorically…
How can I stand in front of hundreds of strangers and speak from the heart?
How can I pretend to be a snake and cross the floor?
How can I write books that inspire and entertain strangers?
How can I write about men’s mental health and my own mental health with such vulnerability?
Yet somehow…
I feel completely clueless about having coffee with a woman I want to get to know better.
yes
i know
I buried Led.
Get this: Coffee is not what I fear.
Being a beginner.
What I’m comfortable doing today started out the same way.
First article.
First podcast.
First customer.
first speech
First improv class.
None of those moments felt natural.
None of them felt comfortable.
I was only allowed to be new.
Somewhere along the way, though, I quietly developed a different rule for relationships.
Somehow this is supposed to be different.
Somehow I know exactly what to say.
Exactly how to act.
That’s exactly how this whole thing works.
Why?
seriously…
Why?
I don’t expect anyone to pick up a Stratocaster and play immediately explosion
I don’t expect anyone to buy a notebook and write on Monday The Old Man and the Sea by Friday.
One of my favorite stories involves Gregg Allman.
As the story goes, Greg went to one of the Allman Brothers Band’s first rehearsals with something like twenty songs he had written.
Eighteen were rejected.
History remembers the dream And whip post.
The same is true of Eddie Van Halen.
we hear explosion And think genius.
We think, “How did he do that?”
Eddie heard the scales.
wrong note
In his bedroom for hours.
Bloody fingers after countless repetitions.
We celebrate the finished product.
The artist lived through this process.
Writing has taught me that time and time again.
I’ve probably written thousands of pages in my career.
Probably more.
If I’m being generous, one percent of those pages have been read by another human being.
The remaining ninety-nine percent?
practice
The lie begins.
Terrible idea.
Complete chapters that are worth deleting.
Paragraphs that sound brilliant in the middle of the night and completely ridiculous the next morning.
Ideas land like a lead balloon in a manuscript, but three books later hit like a mental sledgehammer.
No one views those pages.
They only see finished books.
Maybe that’s what’s happening here.
Maybe I was expecting myself to avoid a rough draft.
Maybe I’ve convinced myself that if I feel awkward, unsure, or nervous, then I’m somehow failing.
But this has never been truer in my life.
I just keep showing up.
Finally…
Catch the comfort.
Maybe that’s what therapy has been trying to teach me all along.
Maybe I spent years waiting feeling Confident before acting.
But it wasn’t really my story.
My story was always the opposite.
i acted
Then confidence slowly, silently, took hold.
So maybe Thursday doesn’t have to be magical.
Maybe it turns into something special.
Maybe it’s landing like a thud in a crowded elevator.
But regardless of how it goes, it just needs to be the next rep.
Because today every comfortable thing in my life once seemed impossible.
Every chapter I’ve ever boasted started with a blank page.
Every podcast started with an awkward first episode.
Every great conversation started with hello.
Perhaps it starts with coffee.
And perhaps that is enough.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
It’s only Thursday.
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