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Hey Reader,

An email landed in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that left me truly shooketh.

Mark Manson said, “Of your 80-ish years alive, only 15 are truly yours.”

He went on to list them:

I consider this an act of violence committed against my very self, Mark. But it was also a wake-up call.

I’m giving myself another year or so because I don’t commute anywhere anymore but still.

Sobering thought, isn’t it?

Every time I reach for my phone to doomscroll, I’m now asking myself: is this really what I want to be doing with my 15 years?

Will what I’m doing right now matter at all after I’m gone?

I don’t mean whimsy and silliness here, by the way. Those things matter VERY MUCH.

Nothing has any meaning except the meaning we give it, and while I want to do work that makes people’s lives better, I also want to have a good time with no purpose other than having a good time.

I want to read great books and silly books and interesting essays from people with fascinating perspectives. I want to see funny movies and go surfing and lie in bed with Joe talking about dinosaurs and do stand-up comedy and play board games with my friends.

I want to help people like you start trusting their own brains again, so you can write the book you’ve always wanted to write, so you can draw terrible (or wonderful) pictures of pandas just because.

What I DON’T want to be doing is arguing with strangers on the internet and wading through misinformation and AI slop and doomscrolling until I’m convinced the world is doomed. That’s not what any of us are here for.

Picasso said, once:

So let me ask you this: what are you doing with your 15 years?

What would you LIKE to be doing?

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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