It’s literally a portal to another place in space and time.

If you’re growing any where near the rate you should, even 6 to 12 months ago should feel like an eternity.

That’s exactly how I felt when I was doing some iMessage cleansing the other night.

At first, it’s funny.

There’s mini-nostalgia.

The “where is everybody?! texts from nights out, unhinged requests from old colleagues, coulda shoulda woulda logistical texts from app girls you never actually met up with while traveling, and of course…the whitepaper from the L2 competitor spawned by a group of new tech grads that was shilled to you at 2AM on the rooftop of some Nashville bar back in 2024.

It’s amusing, it’s funny.

Sometimes a little scary.

You can run the gamut of human emotion pretty quickly via an inbox cleanse.

However, on my last particular run of this exercise?

Something stuck in my side, in my brain.

I couldn’t get it out.

In fact, I’d say I’ve been damn near obsessed with it:

Who has access to you, now?

I reread that above headline and I hear “Action League, Now!” which simultaneously makes me laugh and totally dates me.

Anyway, access.

A lot of people had access to John.

Not in some sinister way.

Just…access.

The ability to text me whenever they felt like it.

They got timely responses.

They knew what I was doing that night, who I was with, what I was thinking about, what I was worried about, the overall direction my life was headed.

And as I read through it all, I kept thinking: some of these people do not have that access anymore.

A lot was just the usually passing by in life.

But some were more emphatic.

There were a couple blowups, a couple of instances of looking in the mirror and asking myself why the hell are you even entertaining this person anymore?

Lessons learned the hard way.

That’s what got me obsessed with this topic enough to write about it.

Access to you is not nothing!!

That is the part that stuck with me and got the gears in my brain turning that can’t stop until I get whatever it is out of there.

It is not just a call, or a DM, or knowing what you’re up to this weekend.

It is a piece of your attention…and with that comes a transference of your energy, of your emotional bandwidth.

If you are really moving upward, trying to build a bigger, calmer, healthier, more intentional life, that access becomes more valuable.

Maybe that is the uncomfortable part of growth: realizing that history is not a lifetime pass.

Someone knowing you during one era of your life does not automatically entitle them to a front-row seat for the next one.

This is a harder realization if you’re a “Node”.

I’ve always been a guy people come to with stuff.

Took a lot of pride in that, too.

Advice, a shoulder to cry on, a favor, a reality check, a “what do you think?”, outfit help….the list goes on.

I like that about myself, can’t even lie.

I wanna be useful.

Being there for people feels good.

But I’m starting to understand the difference between being a good person and being available by default.

Those are not the same thing.

Honestly, I think most of us could benefit from taking inventory:

Who has access to us now?

Who gets our immediate attention?

Who gets the real version of us?

Who gets to influence our mood, our direction, or the way we see ourselves?

Not everyone deserves the same level, not even close!

Listicles and Pugilism

So here’s what I’m going to do.

Let’s take the gloves off a little bit, feel like it’s been awhile since that’s happened and I’m feeling a bit fiery lately.

I’ll break it down into a couple of listicles into these next couple weeks.

Field reports on my epiphanies of access.

We’ll do The Three People That Absolutely Should Not Have Access to You, and of course, The Three People That Should.

Idk which one comes first.

The negative one will get more clicks, ik enough about reader habits and copy to know that, but we gotta play fair.

So until next time…and in the interim, be mindful of who you let through the gates.

We’ll lock down that criteria the next couple of times out.

Btw- you can have all the access you want if you subscribe 😆

<3

-John Abbate

8.31.2026

Specifically the Long Island Railroad terminal, where small armies gather all day long, waiting for their train from the heart of Manhattan back onto the Island.

That’s exactly where I found myself two weeks ago.

1:30 in the morning.

Saturday had just become Sunday.

On a trek back from Connecticut, backpack slung over my shoulder, stone cold sober.

Waiting on a track announcement for whatever train was going to take me home.

This usually would be a “You couldn’t pay me” scenario.

Ask anybody in the New York Metro area.

They’d tell you to avoid Penn Station at this hour like the plague.

If you couldn’t?

At least make the trek across the street to the $1.6bn, cavernous and modern Moynihan Train Hall, and catch the very same train in peace.

The kind of place New York built because we were collectively embarrassed that Penn Station was the front door to the greatest city in the world.

But there I was, with the biggest smile on my face.

At the risk of sounding like the worst, I had spent my night holed up in a bougie office, strategizing creator stuff, sharpening my AI skills, things like that.

I was literally the cringe embodiment of the “While they’re out partying I’m working bro!!1!!” TikToks.

My late night subterranean friends?

Quite the opposite.

My surroundings were almost comical.

There were throngs of drunk guys and girls who undoubtedly had been using fake IDs to get into wherever it was that inebriated them to this level.

Some guy stumbling over to the NYPD kiosk and asking “what’s the best bathroom to take a piss at?”

…and refreshingly, they were nice to him.

There was an entire group of people in bright yellow shirts speaking a language I couldn’t decipher, they must’ve been at the same show.

Their joy was palpable.

There were also the usual suspects:

Homeless guys yelling at the passerby, girls in the smallest dresses imaginable scarfing slices of Rose’s Pizza, couples arguing, sober shift workers hiding under hats and giant headphones just trying to get home.

Theoretically, this should’ve been annoying as hell.

It was anything but.

I was in the heart of the chaos and loving it.

Slowly, it dawned on me why.

Nobody was curating anything.

That’s exactly what it was.

You could’ve taken a time machine back a decade and seen the exact same behavior.

(Albeit in a Penn Station that still looked like an Eastern Bloc bomb shelter)

The couple having the shouting match outside Raising Cane’s?

I’m sure their social media is filled with paragraphs-long birthday posts for one another.

The girl in the little black dress with half a slice’s worth of cheese dripping off of her face probably gets into the four figures on likes on IG.

“I need police advice on urinating” guy might be a very apt and able guy in his day-to-day life.

Who knows?

That’s kind of the point.

The facades had come down.

I couldn’t mute the homeless guy lecturing to no one at all about doomsday coming.

Couldn’t scroll past the blowout fights or unsee the girl vomiting into the trash can by Track 18.

Penn Station was the anti-feed.

Finally, it was time to head home.

The 1:47 train to Ronkonkoma.

My track was announced, and thus began the final phase of my journey.

Start the Pamplonian stampede down the triple-barreled staircase to the tracks.

Where the f—- is so and so?

Yo, is this even the right train?

Some minor shoving matches between groups of bros.

Of course, this all continued on the ride home.

Screaming, yelling, laughing, joking.

Pretty sure I witnessed a breakup.

Pizza boxes littering the floor.

Raw humanity expressed on a Saturday night in a world where algorithms, branding, and virtue-signaling reign supreme.

The funny thing is, you can’t look out the window of a night train.

The industrial lighting of the train car and the thickness of the windows just leave you with a muddied reflection of your own exhausted self with AirPods in.

That can lead to some heavy moments of introspection.

On this night, though?

My reflection smiled right back at me.

-John Abbate

8/16/2026

Back in high school, my sister and I had the same teacher for a class.

I remember my mom laughing at the teacher’s remarks when she came back from my sister’s parent-teacher night.

“She’s so organized, like everything on her desk arranged perfectly…which is funny, because when I had John, it was just…blaaaahh! (apparently she threw her arms outward to symbolize a mess).

😕

Ms. L. was right though.

I was largely a chaotic mess.

Been that way.

Made my peace with it.

Oh look at me, I’m so whimsical and artsy and creative and I’m a people person so I don’t have to be a crossed t’s dotted i’s type!

Bullshit.

Recently, that’s been changing…and it feels awesome.

Having an Epiphany on the Metro North

I spent a recent Friday night when I was on the Island trekking up to visit my guy .

Chatting internet biz, AI, creator economy, all that jazz.

What struck me (though I had been there before), was the sheer organization of his office.

LED lights, laptop stands, AI phone farms, mounted monitors, the list goes on.

(The Whispr Flow pedal 🤯)

Meanwhile, had you seen my old office in my Long Island apartment or my current setup in FL, you’d think I was designing some sort of avant-garde shrine to empty Zyn cans and smelly shaker bottles, with a motif of cable mismanagement that’s a “symbol of modern society”.

My Metro North train back to Grand Central got stopped for a track issue.

Idling somewhere between Darien and Stamford, I couldn’t shake the images of the ultra-modern productivity/recording/AI paradise I had spent the last 6 hours ranting and raving (and crushing a few Miller Lites) in.

I had decided enough was enough.

I was going to become organized.

Cute Excuses = Ego Protection

The hardest part of doing this was taking a good hard look in the mirror.

Obviously, this can be extrapolated to whatever it is you currently suck at.

It was a brutal realization, but I’ve noticed that I romanticized being disorganized in a lot of ways.

The reason?

Well, here’s my take:

We turn what we suck at into part of our identity because it excuses something we’re not naturally good at.

It’s easier to dismiss something than take an ego hit.

But now look at my life once I took the bitter pill of realizing there was a serious hole in my game.

Since I’ve gotten back to Florida:

• My meals (with calculated macros) are consistent each day.

• There’s actually visible clear space on my desk.

• I’m getting acquainted with Notion Calendar

• “I should do mobility tonight” has turned into a set time with a saved “Yoga with Adriene” (the goat) video I adhere to religiously

• Time-blocking has led to more tasks getting done.

It’s all coming together.

Like Riding a Bike for the First Time

That’s exactly how I’d describe it.

“Wow, I’m actually doing this.”

Look, what we suck at 99% of the time correlates with what we’re not naturally good at.

(Although I was pretty good at flying around on my bike as a kid..)

That’s where the pride comes from.

It’s why you see elation when people lose a lot of weight and get fit for the first time, or learn public speaking, etc.

All of a sudden, a negative identity trait they’ve embedded into their wiring gets challenged, and what comes out the back end is an improved sense of self.

I had a great chat with an old friend yesterday.

That happened because I plugged chatting time into Notion.

The super lax, yeah bro call whenever, man! sounds great, but then the phone buzzes during writing time (sacred), I ignore it, the convo doesn’t happen, we both get busy, so on and so forth.

Organization has started compounding the things that matter to me.

Of course, there is a caveat.

You’ll Probably Never Be Elite

I remember seeing an article a while back about athleticism.

We naturally, unknowingly self-select for what we’re good at as very little kids.

Through that lens, it’s no wonder I never signed up for a marathon.

Life skills are largely the same.

Kids crushing math class became accountants.

The ones who loved presenting went into sales and client-facing roles.

Our animal brains avoid the pain of what makes us vulnerable, or so it seems.

If the aptitude was there, we’d have delved into it.

Running, cooking, speaking, doesn’t matter.

You and I both have natural ceilings, which is totally fine.

That’s not the goal.

The goal isn't to turn weaknesses into superpowers.

It's to turn liabilities into competence.

The Baltimore Orioles Can’t Do Yoga

When I first got down to Florida, I signed up for a yoga class.

I grinded through the 90 minutes somehow, and chatted with the instructor after.

Told her thanks for being patient, I knew I was brutal, I did the best I could.

She was super kind.

“You did fine. It’s harder for the guys your size, I do spring training yoga for the Orioles, trust me I know”

I was like…ok?

But they’re professional athletes.

“Yeah but they’re probably awesome at it”

She laughed in my face and told me how bad most of them were.

That’s a pretty good way to look at this.

Addressing what you suck at removes the constraints on your low end, so your natural aptitude can shine.

Gulf Coast yoga struggle seshes become summertime 450ft home runs on Statcast.

Carving out time for long walks becomes noticeable weight loss.

Notion Calendar adoption becomes dedicated writing time and published articles.

All the while, it feels great.

Trust me on that.

Alright, enough for tonight- I have email responses at 7:30.

(Who even am I anymore?!)

-John Abbate

8.11.2026

Why do we have to gamify everything?

5 hacks to get ahead!

3 tricks about XYZ nobody tells you!

Here’s how to rig the (whatever platform) algorithm.

and then my personal favorite:

Do THIS to make people like you.

Because nothing says winning friends and influencing people like trying to use YouTube magic tricks to get there.

At some point, we became so obsessed with figuring out the hidden rules that we forgot about the most obvious strategy:

Just be good at something.

I’ve never met a person in my whole life that didn’t have at least one talent.

Writing, singing, dancing, mathematics, unicycling, making a product so good people can’t wait to hand you money, the list goes on.

Everybody has something.

Perhaps you’re just a person people actually enjoy being around.

That’s a tremendous talent, especially now.

There doesn’t always have to be an exploit, or some type of “zero sum gotcha” element involved.

Merit and The Art of War

Look, game theory, strategy, Sun Tzu tactics.

They’ve all got their time and place.

At the end of the day, what’s inside the packaging (no matter how pretty), has to be legit.

Merit trumps all.

Sure, it can be a little discouraging watching some AI slop get serious traffic because whoever put it together understood the meta of the algo that week.

It stings. I’ve been there.

But watch what happens six months later.

The slop gets buried under the next wave of slop.

Nobody reshares it or builds upon it.

It gets clicks for a weekend, sure- the “battle” is won.

But then it disappears into the ether.

Meanwhile the actual good stuff keeps circulating.

People send it to their friends a year later, they quote it in discussions and arguments.

They come back to it.

There’s no hack, tweak, or algo-rigging that can recreate that.

That should make you smile.

(Next time out, we’ll go over 5 ways to smile to signal dominance and status)

See you later this week <3

-John Abbate

7.29.2026

But there I was.

Fighting the counterforces of a sloppy but powerful waist-high set and the outgoing riptide as I surfaced.

Oddly at peace.

Despite the white water of the next set staring me down and the fussy lifeguards who told me I “only had 10 minutes in there because it was the surfing section” (🙄), this feeling couldn’t be shaken.

Perhaps it was because the phone (and its legion of notifications) was tucked away in my hat on the shore.

But I don’t think that’s it.

It was the pause of midsummer, and it took being thrown around in the ocean for me to really unlock it.

The Days Are Just Packed

This was one of my favorite books growing up.

(Also- yes, it’s where the header pic came from, full credit don’t copyright strike me)

Sure, it was lighthearted and feel good, but the premise was something deeper:

Calvin and Hobbes’ daily shenanigans in that brief pocket of time in late July and early August where things are just….quiet.

They hang out in treehouses all day.

Play baseball.

Nap.

In the adult world, the days are equally as '“packed”:

OOO’s.

Cape Cod, Europe, out East.

Summer Fridays, half-days, etc.

Congress is on recess, the World Cup is over.

The weather guy says it’s gonna be 94’ today.

Yankees win.

Mets lose.

It’s almost eerily quiet.

That’s why…

You Gotta Use It

No, not like that.

This isn’t your competition is sleeping bro gotta get ahead!!1!

It’s more like:

Take this little pocket of time and shut your brain all the way off to see what was really deep inside.

Treasure the fact that the seemingly ever-present boogeyman of external stimuli aren’t present.

Biz is slower than usual, school is out.

I’m not saying jump into the riptide-laden ocean with a devil may care attitude.

In fact I’d probably advise against that.

But if you can seek out some peace and solitude, in whatever way that looks for you, the rush of inner clarity will meet you as well.

You’ll find out what you actually want, and perhaps more importantly-

what you don’t want.

Sticky situations seem less imposing while optimism about potential good things grows.

The world shouts at us for eleven months, but the midsummer whispers.

Get It Before It’s Gone

Not the hard sell!

But think about it logically for a moment.

Time flies.

Before you know it, you need that sweatshirt in your beach bag because it gets chilly after 3 o’ clock.

You don’t see your neighbor who jogs past your house every morning like clockwork anymore because they’re back at school.

The dreaded “Bro you gotta join our Fantasy league it’s 0.5 PointsPerWhatever and the Draft is late August and..” texts come in.

(STOP I DON’T CARE!!)

Point is.

It’ll be here before you know it.

It’s going to get noisy and the schedules will get packed.

The summer trip and beach day photos are banished to the annals of the iCloud Library, never to be looked at again.

Life moves on.

Except it can be different this time.

You made the effort to sit with what was in the deep recesses of your mind.

A blissful midsummer moment of self-honesty and introspection.

Suddenly, the crazy months and rigor of real life don’t look so daunting anymore.

The noise is coming back…but this time it won’t drown you out.

Chat again soon.

(I hope you read this at the beach)

-John Abbate

7.26.2026

America’s 250th, the thrilling success of the World Cup, the long days of midsummer…the excitement is palpable right now.

I figured today is the perfect day for something more uplifting, a macro look at life I wanted to share.

It all started with a question.

No, I wasn’t on the phone shilling penny stocks to rural Midwesterners.

I’d just completed some pickleball down in FL, and the group I was with walked into a nearby health food store together for smoothies.

(Pickleball is oddly competitive in Florida)

They walked in with their usual decorum and social graces.

Ordered, paid, stepped aside.

Business transaction complete.

I wandered over to the counter.

“What protein do you guys use?”

“What’s actually good here?”

“If you’re making one of these for yourself, which one are you choosing?”

One question became five, and that became a conversation.

Everyone looking on like “what is this guy’s deal?”

(You get used to it)

Anyway.

We started chatting, laughing, talking about weird niche nutrition stuff, things like that.

Next thing you know, I’m behind the counter.

They started showing me their arsenal of ingredients, why one recipe tasted better than another, the fruits, the potions and powders, the things that aren’t quite listed on the menu.

I was having so much fun back there.

Meanwhile, the people I came with were watching this unfold like I’d somehow hacked the source code.

Not Some Charismatic Matrix-Breaking Voodoo

This isn’t some excerpt about wielding charisma or a “how-to” type of social gamification.

Rather, it’s the downstream effect of the approach I’ve tried to take to every interaction for the majority of my adult life:

Leave people better than you found them.

I could’ve written that 7 word sentence and that could’ve been the whole essay.

That’s it.

My M.O., my North Star.

The simple effort of making interacting with others pleasant enough that you’ve uplifted them in some way when you’re done (whether it’s for 10 seconds or 10 hours), they feel better than they did before.

Sure, this is easier on certain subjects than it is on others.

We all want to charm the older rich guy who has the PJ share, or the girl fresh out of Pilates on line for coffee who looks like she should be getting paid to wear that Dark Roast colored Skims set.

That’s easy mode.

It’s how you impact the people that the majority of society glosses over that really shows the effect of this.

The cashiers at the smoothie spot.

The bartender four hours into a hellish NFL Sunday shift.

The valet standing in the August heat.

The elderly woman moving a little slower than everyone else on the bike path.

That kinda odd person visiting your neighbor.

The group sitting a row behind you on a freezing Tuesday night in January when you’ve only mustered 9 SOG midway through the 2nd against Winnipeg.

This is where it really counts.

Summed up in a more literal way?

It’s the intentionality of presence.

You’d be surprised how little this takes.

Phones and screen addiction, social division, declining interpersonal skills…it’s pretty sad how accustomed the average person has grown to being blatantly ignored.

Just look around the next time you’re in public.

Even a simple “I love your outfit” or “how’s the shift going this afternoon my man” will light people up.

You end up discussing everything from niche fashion brands to random sports teams to music to going down rabbit holes you never expected.

Which helps, because-

You never know who knows who (or what).

Obviously the goal of this isn’t to be transactional.

It’s to produce good energy out in the world.

That being said, there are some downstream effects of this that are pretty positive.

You find out where the good spots are when you traveled.

“Say you know XYZ when you go there, they’ll take care of you.”

You get invited to things.

The proliferation of socials means you stay interconnected, and you can use your new connections as you move around.

The world is a smaller place than we realize- odds are you have someone in common with a lot more people than you’d think.

A good reputation is a useful accessory that never goes out of style.

While the benefits of this are great, the true irony is…

You do it for you, not for them.

We all have bad days.

I know I’ve had my share.

There was a viral tweet a month or two ago that read:

“The cure for male depression is literally leaving the house and going somewhere literally every time it hits.”

It couldn’t be more true.

If you’re spiraling, nothing helps more than to hold the door for someone, spark up a random small conversation, give a little (genuine) compliment.

If your internal energy is a bit of a mess, projecting something positive outward can cure a lot of it and does well to bring you back to baseline.

That’s the whole game.

Not becoming the most alpha bro!! in the room.

Not becoming the funny guy or the clout goblin.

Just leaving a trail of interactions where people are glad your paths crossed.

If enough of us did that, I genuinely think the world would feel different.

So that’s my golden rule.

Leave ‘em better than you found ‘em.

It’s simple enough to remember, impossible to perfect, and worth trying every single day.

Plus, when the time comes to chat up the private jet dude or miss “I have 250K on TikTok and nothing to do tonight”, you’ll have loaded up quite a few social reps to meet the moment.

A quick crypto note before we say goodbye

I’ve been back into the Phantom Wallet trenches (as we’ve chatted about before) and I’ve met some cool people through Substack Notes.

If you’re looking to up your crypto game or just educate yourself on the space, I’d like to shout out Mari Savic's crypto Substack 'Mari's Crypto Alpha'.

Mari has been in crypto for over a decade, is a crypto attorney and has raised over $100M across the major L1’s.

That’s quite a track record (and that beats my random meme coin picks), so do check out her content.

I hope everyone had a beautiful July 4th and a wonderful weekend.

Chat soon <3

-John Abbate

7.5.2026

The kind where the sky goes charcoal gray in about thirty seconds, the wind whips, and the cracks of thunder shake the walls like mortar shells are landing outside your window.

I happened to glance out my window at the golf course.

Pelting rain, palm trees swaying at angles they really shouldn’t.

Really cool lightning splitting the skies in shades of light blue, yellow, and pink.

And then…..

A foursome of golfers still out there, clearly distressed.

Well, 3 out of 4 were.

The one outlier wasn’t going to let something like an insane tropical thunderstorm in arguably the most notoriously dangerous area on the globe for them stop him from finishing up the hole after his sweet approach shot.

“F—- you guys, I’m finishing this out! I don’t care!”

The group was all around my age.

All dressed in that super-patterned, bright golf stuff, the hats with block letters on them, the whole thing.

Their protests, while reasonable, were also kind of funny:

“I can’t even watch”

“Bro this is the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen”

The guy on the back of the golf cart resigned himself to not even being able to watch, choosing to stare longingly at the ground as puddles formed on the cart path.

Then our hero trotted out there in his paisley shirt and salmon shorts.

Didn’t even try to that little fake “half jog, I’m trying to hurry” thing people do when you hold doors for them at the store.

He walked out with his putter, aka a metal rod in a flat open field while the country’s most reputable lightning went off in four different directions around him.

The green squishing with every step.

He addressed his ball, which sat about 9 feet from the cup, slightly uphill.

He drew his putter back pretty far (the green was already so soaked it probably felt like playing mini golf in the sand), and whacked the ball.

I thought for sure he had screwed it up.

It started off hot, rolling at a good clip, slowed considerably….and then totally disappeared off the horizon.

“I F—- TOLD YOU!!”

You would’ve thought our boy just won The Masters.

He ran (like actually ran this time) back to the cart, and hopped on the back.

One of the guys offered the congratulatory dap, the other two just wanted to get the hell out of there.

As they pulled away, that’s when I saw it:

The biggest, ear-to-ear grin from a dude who knows he did something so stupid and awesome at the same time.

Sure, it was objectively dumb and reckless.

But he had guts.

He’s got a great story to tell now.

(Plus a witness he’ll never know about.)

The Timing Was Glorious

I’m not going to leave this short Sunday Essay dripping in obvious CTA’s or cliche’s.

Just try really hard like the golfer did!1!!!

Nobody wants that.

Why it hit so hard, though?

Why I was affixed to my window, watching this dude like he was Scottie Scheffler on the 18th at The Open?

That we can extrapolate.

Super Optimizooor Bubble People

Lately, my timeline has really been irking me.

We talk a lot about health & wellness here.

That’s a good thing!

But I’ve always really, really rejected bowing to the altar of the Oura Ring or the Apple Watch, or making deities of health routines.

Reels or podcast clips about how a couple of glasses of red wine “ruined my sleep score for four days!”, or alcohol-phobia in general (def a future essay).

19-step morning routines.

Elaborate, down-to-the-minute planners.

(Acceptable if you’re Jamie Dimon or something...but are you?)

Talking head videos about the moral grandstanding of not going out, not deviating from the set plan, simultaneously glorifying rigidity and frowning upon risk.

It seems as if the whole culture is in a collective “prevent defense”, and as many an American father has said over the years:

The only thing the “prevent” defense prevents is a win.

You don’t become the heavyweight champion by shelling up for 12 rounds.

So while the rest of the world is seemingly obsessing over their Strava stats or streaming Love Island, measuring macros or scarfing garbage, it was objectively great to see some good old fashioned reckless abandon pay off.

This guy didn’t care about his HRV (probably doesn’t even know what that is) or what his BPM was in the moment.

To their credit, none of the guys had their phones out, either.

This stunt wasn’t measured, it wasn’t performative.

It wasn’t done for a spreadsheet, for engagement, or for clout.

The putt in the wicked storm was an (admittedly really stupid) exercise of the heart and soul.

Pure passion-fueled use of free will.

For those very reasons, I was probably smiling bigger than the golfer himself from inside the safe confines of my living room once they rolled away.

You just gotta love it.

I hope this was inspiring to you guys, too.

Sometimes you just have to shoot your damn shot.

Just don’t go risking your life in the process 😝

Chat this week <3

-John Abbate

6.28.2026

Plainly put, the Knicks had never been competitive in the entire lives of the current Draft class, so why would these up and coming players want to go there?

Growing up and living on Long Island, the Knicks had become something of a meme.

The Carmelo frenzy.

The mid-2010’s doldrums.

F Trae Young.

Knicks fandom, from the outside looking in, seemed to become a caricature of itself.

“It’s never going to happen for us, but let’s have fun with it in the meantime.”

Well, we know how this story turned out of late.

My how fast things can change.

Perhaps it’s something in the zeitgeist, because it happened across the pond, too:

The North London Bottling Company

If you were to tell anybody who watched the English Premier League over the last two decades you were an Arsenal supporter, you’d 100% get chirped.

Trophy droughts, blown leads both in matches and the standings, viral content of fans crashing out leaving the Emirates after yet another calamity on the pitch…Arsenal were a tried-and-true meme team.

4chan’s sports board has literally had a pinned Eternal Arsenal Thread for over ten years now, where fans can come in and commiserate over their suffering.

Then the 2025-2026 Prem season came upon us, and…

Years of memes, jokes, narratives and reputation vanished beneath one trophy lift.

Funny how quickly reality can make old jokes feel stale.

I’ve always believed that there’s an intrinsic link between energy and sports.

That the culture and trends reverberate off of the sporting world, and vice versa.

Maybe that’s nonsense, maybe I’m simply looking for patterns where none exist.

(It wouldn’t be the first time.)

But watching the New York Knicks and Arsenal F.C. win their respective league titles within weeks of one another (I still can’t believe I’m typing that sentence) feels oddly symbolic.

Two organizations that spent years as punchlines suddenly weren’t, and it got me thinking about how often this happens outside of sports.

We all know a meme team or two in our own lives.

As a collective, we do this constantly.

A person struggles for long enough and they stop being viewed as someone going through it or in a rough patch, and they start becoming the token Screwup.

Your roommate dates a few characters one summer and now she’s forever “the girl with an awful taste in men”.

The entrepreneur bro in your crew gets blown up on a few ventures and now he’s “the guy who’s always got a business idea🙄 .”

At a certain point, the reputation takes on a life of its own.

People stop evaluating the current version of the person and instead react to a story they wrote years ago, because why the hell not?

It’s not like things are ever going to change!

Until they do.

Abruptly.

In fact, this is arguably the greatest time in history for such people.

The Meme'd Shall Inherit the Earth

The distance between obscurity and relevance has never been shorter.

The same person getting rekt in the group chat on Tuesday can wake up on Friday with virality and a growing audience.

Suddenly, new opportunities and an entirely new life trajectory exist.

Permission structures are getting cooked left and right.

I’m certainly not running these Essays through an editorial staff or adhering to any sort of deadline.

We all have something of an instant “Public Access TV” with the phones in our pockets.

Every piece of created content is a form of a modern lottery ticket.

Funnily enough, this benefits the Knicks and Arsenal’s among us the most.

I mean, the DNA is roughly the same:

• Showing up every season.

• One or two notable crashouts.

• Passion and fervor, despite the absence of recent results.

• Tweaking, iterating, trading, often all in the public eye.

The majority of people would see all of those traits and call them embarrassments.

I like to think they’re reps.

Make Jokes At Your Own Risk

The uncomfortable truth about these types is that they're often closer than they appear, to both you personally and success itself.

The punchline and the comeback are often separated by far less than we'd like to admit.

So it’s easy to share the Reel or the TikTok for a quick laugh, a wtf is he/she doing judgement from the proverbial digital high horse.

Just don’t lose sight of the fact life’s new seasons turn over faster than ever.

Quantum leaps in the standings happen quicker and more often than ever before.

The Karl-Anthony Towns’ or the Declan Rice’s in your own world might be easy targets now…but let’s not forget their IRL comps just found out exactly how the polished silver and gold of the league trophy feels against their skin.

Closing Out with the Cup

One of the most interesting things about the ongoing ‘26 World Cup is that the smaller nations are more competitive than ever before.

The availability of training materials, sports medicine information, and tactical know-how via technology has quite literally leveled the playing field in a lot of ways.

Cape Verde, with it’s population of 500K and its 41yo goalie, held Spain to a draw.

Results like that are piling up.

They were previously thought to be impossible.

I think this new phenomenon echoes a lot of what we’re seeing in our lives.

Lower barriers to entry, more accessible tools, greater leverage.

People ask me who I want to win the World Cup.

Sure, USA would be a dream.

If not, CR7 finally getting his with Portugal would be fairytale stuff.

Otherwise?

Give me the smallest, most obscure, tiny population country possible to win it all.

For the spectacle of it.

For the life lessons from it.

And, of course…

For the memes.

Enjoy the day ♥️

-John Abbate

6.21.2026

I was being objectively really annoying.

The owner placing the property on the market was some type of heiress who was about my age (no, she wasn’t there) and this girl had style.

A giant, probably authentic George Condo adorned the living room wall, KAWS figures lurked in the corner, and the furniture was minimal and beautifully aligned for “late night hosting”.

There was a glass enclosure in the basement where the elevator from the garage kept the Porsche 911 safe…and visible from the mahogany bar.

I was overstimulated in the best possible way.

The combination of modern art, fast cars, a gorgeous home, getting a fit off and schmoozing with “I can actually afford this place” types tripped my wiring.

"I’m Triggered!”

Being triggered has the worst connotation ever.

We immediately envision Mid-Atlantic lax bro types with the fuzzy mini mic riling up blue haired septum piercing people on TikTok.

But triggering is real, people just lose sight of the fact it can happen positively.

You want to be triggered for this to work.

Stay with me now.

Back to the Bougie Open House

I was outside by the infinity pool talking to another colleague of mine, a former Dallas oil & gas trader who pretty much did real estate to stay busy.

Dude was literally a 6’7 German national in his early 50’s, and brilliant.

We got along great.

Normally (just keeping it real) I’d be a little ticked at the fact I was being outclassed on every conceivable masculine metric when I spoke with him, but not this time.

I was too elated.

Too in my zone.

Our interaction was priceless:

“Dude the aesthetics and the flow, she has taste man you don’t see interior design like this often”

I know, John.

“And like, look around man you know? This shit is possible for somebody!”

“These people have the money for it like how do people lose sight of that?!”

I know, let’s try to calm down a little.

Did you come chat with me just to settle me down?

(He started to laugh)

Yes, yes I did.

I wasn’t even that embarrassed, to be honest.

There was a 75 point brainstorm checklist in my iPhone notes I was furiously adding to as I pretended to send texts.

All that BS, too-small thinking, “what’s it all for anyway” wallowing that latches onto my brain like a barnacle…it all went away.

Yes, I used story time and embraced the abstract here, but for the more logical and formulaic among us, I realized my creative code was as follows:

Artistic Expression +Proximity to Luxury+ People+ Positive Atmosphere

Most of these Substacks get written in mom n’ pop coffee shops in upscale neighborhoods.

That’s not a coincidence.

But enough about me.

You and My Boy Camping in the Woods

Creative formulas are going to be completely different for everyone.

One of my best friends just spent his birthday camping solo in a national park, posted up on the lake and living out of a tent.

(Literally couldn’t pay me, but I admire it.)

The excitement in his voice before the trip and the cool, elevated calm he seems to ooze afterward were both palpable.

He seemed to hit his creative unlock.

I’d say his combo runs Isolation + Serenity + Nature + Faith.

(Which shows how absurdly these can vary)

I’ve seen this in a lot of people I know, where they enter a state where it’s almost trancelike.

They couldn’t hide if they wanted to, which is the beauty behind it.

It seems to be the most common at concerts or in nature, but don’t discount the gym or museums, either.

I’ve gotten a bunch of these calls, the “I can barely contain this emotion”, spitballing at 100 MPH, idea after idea after idea firing away.

I get the biggest smile on my face listening to it.

Hell, one guy I know gets it if he lurks TechCrunch too long.

That one’s particularly strange, but I kinda envy the simplicity.

People find themselves in environments that light an inner fire, and have an ensuing “upward spiral” of conscious thought as a result.

I want everyone to experience their version of it, and luckily it really is not that hard at all.

In fact, the best part about the creative unlock?

You already know where it’s at.

You can search through your camera roll, mental accounts of your happiest moments, or…the ultimate cheat code- what you enjoyed around age 12.

Deep down, it’s 100% there.

Once you see the big picture here, you begin to understand people going to the movies or baseball games by themselves.

The woman doing yoga on the beach, the CEO type staring down a painting on the wall.

A lot of them are entering this phase, even if they don’t realize it.

They’ll probably be glowing after….and maybe a little annoying.

I wrote this late in the evening at the cool coffee shop with the 20 foot high dangling light fixtures and S-tier playlist and people and dogs everywhere and I dressed up for it.

PS- My fault on that “20% off subscribing” email- that was automated Substack BS and I’d never actually send something like that intentionally.

Love always!

-John Abbate

6.17.2026

The majority of us run our errands on the weekends.

Grab a coffee, food shopping, CVS, get gas, maybe a workout.

How often do we see the same recurring characters?

It’s as if our daily interactions in the world have become an exercise in central casting with the same 10-12 archetypes.

Drive to the store, wait at the crosswalk for the Sunday AM Run Club, each member a slightly different font than the other, Garmins affixed to the arms, HOKA’s pounding the pavement.

Get to the coffee shop, Super Individual Barista A makes your coffee and hands it to Super Individual Barista B, who rings you up.

(Even the most apolitical of us can guess their personal viewpoints with 99.99% accuracy)

Now it’s time for the gym, where a small group of Cool Mustache Gym Cowboys are performing a bizarre dominance hierarchy meets mating ritual type thing that could only exist in this modern world as they try to “out-angle” one another doing curls in the mirror.

You might have some “societal fatigue” at this point, which explains why the flowery dress type at the grocery store who clearly just came from Church irks you when she makes a display of asking if the organic peanut butter is “truly seed oil free”.

She’d be commendable and endearing if all this wasn’t on her IG story, step by step….but it is.

It’s all a perfectly curated game of digitally keeping up appearances.

If nothing else, it’s extremely fascinating.

Polarity Pollen

Look, I get the allergy to showing your shadow side.

It’s as if there’s a collective fear that showing any sort of chink in the armor of whatever social media persona you picked off the shelf in the mid-2020’s will result in your exile from said in-group.

Digital identities and groups are the new tribes.

The social media landscape and it de facto gatekeepers have become something of a digital doorman to whatever club you want to enter.

It’s why those in fitness circles won’t dare story that cute $20 Thursday night post-work cocktail.

(Performative alcohol-phobia is a whole ‘nother essay..)

Brooklyn service worker types would rather die than admit publicly that they bitch about the taxes taken out of their paychecks.

Optics have become our new gods.

The Irony of Shadow Side Suppression

What makes this phenomenon the most amusing is the top of the totem pole.

Look at who each group has as their North Star.

The Riley Green cosplay muscle brigade?

They’ll repost Arnold lifting videos with motivational narration played over it.

The Run Club crew will post similar content, this time with Michael Jordan highlights and anecdotes about his discipline.

Our organic-only Church girlie?

IG stories galore about “His Grace” and being so blessed, with a lethal dose of passive-aggressive “I wasn’t out last night like you, you godless heathen” layered on top.

This is where it gets tragically funny.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was an immigrant with a funny name who barely spoke English, and blazed a trail from lifting to Hollywood to politics nobody ever had before.

MJ was not doing breathwork while wearing compression leg sleeves when he had tip-off against the Lakers at 7:05 that night; he was playing 36 holes with his friends (and gambling on each one).

Jesus Christ wouldn’t shame you for having a good time- He quite literally is notorious for forgiving prostitutes and outcasts and sinners of all kinds.

We seem to chase being seen as these smooth, optimized avatars, all the while we hold textured, polarized humans as our ideal.

The Good News? We All Have Polarity Inside

Whether you’ve got the guts to display it, that’s a different story.

What makes people magnetic isn’t the absence of contradiction, rather it’s the willingness to own it.

Embracing your shadow side (aka what makes you, you) is an effort that can come with maximal rewards.

There’s also the stress-free ease of moving with authenticity- no facade to keep up, no digital footprint to obsess over.

Do you risk rolling the metaphorical dice?

Sure.

You run the risk of not fitting in cookie-cutter style into whatever digital in-group your heart desires.

But if said group would repel signals of individuality, is that really somewhere you’d want to be?

The funny thing is that most people can sense authenticity almost immediately.

It’s endearing and alluring in ways optimization and “perfection” are not.

The guy who admits he occasionally screws up is often trusted more than the one trying to convince you he bats 1000% in every realm of human endeavor.

The girl with quirks is far more attractive than the one obsessively curating every square inch of her image.

Performing in a way that’s truly in the top percentile while not entirely optimizing for it is not only impressive, it’s sexy.

Human beings were never meant to be squeaky clean, 100% HR-approved brands.

We were meant to be people….messy, contradictory, imperfect people.

The Intellectual Elite and Their Colorful Followings

I’ve been more active on Substack Notes lately.

It’s literally a digital social experiment, and a fun way to express yourself.

You end up interacting with some pretty unique people.

Ivy League types, Doctors, people with considerable followings.

I’m not above doing my fair share of stalking, so I’ve checked who these people read and follow.

It wasn’t a perfectly curated “Following” list like you’d expect.

There were lots of curveballs in there- niche creators, “off-brand” content, Substackers who would seem to have diametrically opposed viewpoints.

It didn’t make sense at first.

Then, it dawned on me.

It seems as if our best and brightest understand polarity intuitively.

Founders didn’t only consume content about scaling or leadership.

Medical professionals weren’t siloed into their niche.

Finance guys read Substacks about skateboarding and mommy blogger Substackers are devouring content about trading crypto.

There’s an underlying current of curiosity flowing at the top.

The results?

They speak for themselves.

The people building interesting lives rarely fit neatly into one category.

They’re not about fitting into a box, they’re trying to figure out how to expand it.

Who would want to bet against that?

Enjoy the day (and the fights tonight)

-John Abbate

6/14/2026

I’m admittedly pretty ticked off as I’m writing this.

“Full grown man airs his grievances on the internet” is hardly groundbreaking content.

So we’re not gonna do that.

Also- nothing is catastrophically wrong (blessed to say that).

Just an amalgamation of general frustration in various endeavors.

I’ll live.

Anyway, this does offer a fun opportunity to talk about anger in a blunt way!

Let’s do that instead.

“I don’t yell” ≠ Virtue Signal

Anger tends to either manifest itself inwards or outwards.

I’m in the former camp.

Sure, there’s an admirable quality in not having a generational temper, ranting and raving and destroying whatever is in your path.

That type of stuff tends to alienate people pretty quickly.

Re: the “not yelling” thing- sure, that looks pretty in a sentence.

What a good guy.

I mean, fair enough.

I’ve seen a lot of yelling.

“Raised voices fall on deaf ears” is a deeply-held belief.

However, the fact of the matter is that it’s just not in my wiring.

Rather, I’m what I call…

The Internal Crashout

Which is both exactly what it sounds like and not at all any healthier than somebody who projects their fury externally.

I’m sure plenty of people are in the same boat.

Sure, our kind is spared the embarrassing emotional labor of the “post-tantrum Apology Tour”.

People tend to feel a bit more comfortable around us.

That being said, where’s the nobility in tearing yourself up on the inside?

(I’ll spare everyone the esoteric health angle, but do feel free to go down the “bottled emotion —> severe illness” rabbit hole at any time you please.)

This not talking passive aggressive behavior here, btw.

That’s a gross trait and a different conversation.

My conflicts tend to be handled pretty straightforward, usually employing direct questions to work towards a resolution or get an answer.

(Wannabe-CEOmaxxing, maybe….but hey I’m trying???)

Also, while risking sounding like the absolute worst, I’ve got the luxury of not being the type you invite to “talk about this outside”.

Anyway.

For those of us wired like this, I’m sure we can agree that:

Calm (even assertive) resolution ≠ internal peace.

You still end up stewing on something, replaying scenarios, absolutely annihilating yourself.

How is that really any different from the outward explosions crew, in practice?

Somebody makes you angry, you can deal with it, separate yourself physically, all that good stuff.

What is the Internal Crashout supposed to do?

Take peyote and have an out-of-body experience?

(That’s a one-way ticket to permanent psychosis)

Luckily, there’s a couple of things I’ve been doing lately that I’ve noticed have helped.

It’s not “drink water, breathe, be grateful” advice you seen a thousand times.

It sure as hell isn’t a cure-all (I mean I’m still dealing with this right now, no?)

But it does help.

Call Off the Dogs and Call Your Dogs

We have a beautiful human tendency to find like minds in this life.

Whatever your pursuit is, there’s people out there who simply “get it”.

Everything from “mommy groups” on FB to surfers to MS-13 to groups of European kids doing parkour over 20-story gaps on IG Reels…water finds its own level.

So, I reached out to a friend of mine who simply seems to be on the same wavelength.

The gloriously true and unhinged response was exactly what I needed:

You might think this is totally bizarre.

I mean, it sort of is.

But it’s the language I speak, it’s how my monkey brain communicates.

Let’s be real- I guarantee that your friends know your lingo and communication style to a T.

That’s what makes this so useful.

How often do we lament the fact that “no one checks up on us” when it’s really we couldn’t put our ego aside for 10 business seconds to be vulnerable enough to reach out?

So call your dogs, or your girls, or hangout with your dog, or whatever it may be.

The catharsis of release and familiarity do a whole lot of good in turning the temperature down.

Now for the harder part:

Calling off the dogs

Ahhh this one sucks.

Doesn’t change the fact that anger can give us tunnel vision and can screw up our output.

Ask anyone who has played any sport, ever.

Trying to hit a 3-run homerun with no one on base is never going to happen.

How many gamblers or traders have met ruin because they got emotional and “want to make it all back on the next trade”?

Exactly.

Easy to say, harder to do.

Empty Sunday Blues

I pour a whole lot into my Sunday Essays.

They mean a lot to me.

I have longing dreams where there’s 200 or 300 of them and they’re actually worth something one day.

Sometimes I scour them like a newlywed wife does Zillow, doing calculations in my head, what to tinker, what to do next, all that stuff.

Missing a Sunday at this point is catastrophic.

But what was I going to do this weekend if I’m all mad?

Post abject bullshit and then further spiral that I wrote a clunker?

Let 2010’s COD Lobby John leak into the writing and sink the ship?

It sucks, but sometimes you gotta cancel the full court press.

Schedules are largely malleable.

That call, article, post, meeting…trust me, it can wait.

Forcing it with a subpar effort is just throwing gas on the fire, and there’s no telling how that ends.

Now you’re really crashing out.

I don’t want that for you!!

Publicly Making Lemonade Out of Lemons

This was actually kind of fun.

Emotions…they’re tricky.

Am I still angry?

Honestly, yeah…but less so.

These frameworks do help.

Are they the groundbreaking keys to the Universe and total enlightenment?

Obviously not.

Were they enough to keep the Internal Crashout from getting the keys to the car for the rest of the day?

Absolutely.

And for now, that’s really all I could ask for.

See you next Sunday.

(Hopefully 🤪)

-John Abbate

6.7.2026

P.S.- drawing a parallel between ‘Massapequa Moms’ and MS-13…maybe I was in my bag today..

By the time Friday afternoon rolls around we’ve told so many white lies and had our fair share of “death by a thousand cuts” bureaucratic nonsense that it makes our skin itch.

Perhaps I’m hypersensitive to this because I’m overly allergic to it.

If you read me, you are probably in the same boat.

Yes, empathy is so important, we speak of it often.

That being said, human nature is human nature!

This is very much an ersatz TikTok “put a finger down” challenge, but if you’ve done none of these things this week, you’re either a robot or lying:

• Sent something along the lines of “Happy to help, let me know if you need anything else!” while thinking “how tf did you need help with this?”

• Adhered to a completely arbitrary rule just to not rock the boat.

  (For me this came in the form of a pink notice pinned to my garbage can that the bins “must be approx 1.5-2 feet off the curb to be collected” ????)

• “Sounds good!” or “I’ll keep you posted!” to plans you have zero intention of showing up to.

• Used corporate jargon you’d never actually use amongst friends.

• Filled out some form whose information is already available in the three other forms you filled out.

Yeah, that’s kinda what I thought.

Welcome to the Uncivilized Friday Happy Hour

It’s where we like to remind ourselves that we’re living, breathing, vital mammals that were bred with the intent to explore, prosper, and reproduce.

I toyed with the idea of calling it A Fellowship Program for the Spiritually Neutered, but that was A. a little dramatic and B. I don’t think most of us are that far gone.

(Some definitely are.)

The premise is incredibly simple:

Just do what you were going to already do leisure-wise, with a notable absence:

Leave the metric spreadsheet timekeeping etc energy at home.

Shocker, shocker- my UFHH takes place at the gym.

But this isn’t some “85% of my 1RM x 4” type session.

It’s entirely based on intuition and flow, and ridiculously simple:

• Load up on pink sea salt and raw honey

• Queue up a very random, very fun playlist

• (you still have to warm up properly lol)

• Go until you see that cool squiggly vein cluster in your shoulder and you can trace it down your arm into your wrist.

Metrics, timed rest periods, any of that be damned.

If I’m not smiling and elated after and an Andrew Huberman type would look at a log of the session like “what even is this?!”, I did it wrong.

That’s just my example, doesn’t have to be yours.

I know running is big these days.

So go do that- but go with the intent of freedom, with experimentation.

There’s not going to be a cute Strava recap screenshot after this one, that’s the whole idea.

This doesn’t even have to be physical!

Wail on the guitar until your neighbors complain.

Whip up a new recipe off the dome- if you screw it up royally, so what?

Order a pizza and laugh it off.

If you don’t?

Congratulations, you have a new meal and it’s entirely your own.

The Cage Compounds, and the Three Golden Rules

Take any more than 5 minutes on any social media platform and you’ll see these common refrains from guys and girls:

“Where are the guys who act like MEN?!”

“Everything socially is so…blah”

“I just wanna go on a date without dealing with neuroticism”

These are all second and third order effects from long term stays in what I call “The Cage”.

Playing the game professionally (we all have to do it), social niceties, “keeping up appearances”…at the end of the day, too much of this compounds and you become a shell of yourself.

I’m not above it, please don’t think for a second I am.

Now and again, a Snapchat memory pops up and the ensuing jump scare always shakes me to my core.

Deviation from the path of aliveness is scary not just because of the effects, but because of how easy it can creep up on you.

Dw, your slightly unhinged Friday happy hour is the antidote to becoming a woman who is losing what she loves about herself, or a guy who is becoming what’s been dubbed (love this term) as a “Grey Man”.

That’s enough yapping out of me for today.

So go ahead, do what you got to do.

Build some callouses on your hands, get lost on the running trail, get paint stains on your shirt or discover a new chord progression or start a Substack (I’ll subscribe!), whatever it may be.

Just don’t get sucked into the Grey Man’s Vortex of streaming services, food delivery, and drained life force.

Lastly…I almost forgot the three rules of all this:

• Don’t end up in the ER or central booking (you’ll be there all weekend!)

• Be able to wake up Saturday fully functional

• Don’t emotionally or physically hurt anybody else in the process*

(* If your Friday release is heavy sparring, it happens, they knew the risk, life goes on..)

Ideally you wake up Saturday morning glowing with a revived sense of self.

You might stick out like a sore thumb in your daily routine as a result.

….That’s sort of the whole point.

😊

See you Sunday.

-John Abbate

6.5.2026

I was sat at a bar the other night, using up whatever psychological resources I had left after a marathon lifting session, splitting my attention between my friend's conversation and the people around us.

In theory, it should’ve been a more raucous atmosphere.

On the cusp of summer, NBA+NHL playoffs in full swing, college has let out.

The ingredients were there, the resulting effect was not.

It then dawned on me that this bar was afflicted with an inescapable feeling I’ve noticed at the airport, in coworking spaces, coffee shops, the gym, even standing on line at Whole Foods.

Quiet Anxiety and the Hum of Malaise

If I were to try and quantify this phenomenon into a phrase, I’d say it’s a “general societal feeling of unease”.

We’re here, there, and everywhere….but never truly present.

Yes, the screen time statistics and the notification checking habits have gotten completely out of hand.

That’s not news.

Rather, it’s like we’re all quietly collectively squirming in our seats.

The professional and social world has taken on the low-level anxiety of a doctor’s waiting room.

The conversations around me were the most telling.

Normally the environment lends itself to the usual endearing sports bar BS- living and dying with spread, completely obvious Geek Bar rips said user thought were discreet, the one group that’s way too loud but bringing a vibe so it’s all good.

This wasn’t that.

Sure, there were minor instances of normalcy.

That being said, there was also more than one conversation I overheard about AI, and not in the “look what I’m shipping I’m so excited” type way, and more of a “when are the barbarians going to be at the gate” kind of way.

Conversations lamenting COL, exasperation at housing costs, general weariness with the overall political landscape.

Guys sitting alone looking completely fried, with the vacuous look that betrayed the fact they thought the traditional path would’ve gotten them further by now.

Reading From a Script That Doesn’t Exist

Looking at it from the overhead, this societal arc begins to make more sense.

The vast majority of us were sold a script, and to the credit of many, they followed it to a T.

Try hard, get into the college, get the degree, get the good job.

That gets you the house and the car and the stability.

Everyone has begun to see the cracks in this and started reading the writing on the wall, and the downstream effects are stickier than the floor beneath my feet.

My friend- a quiet, polished, finance guy…is asking me about personal branding.

About Substack, about talking on camera, how I got involved with .

It wasn’t in the “that’s so cool, bro” type of way, but rather it was a super bright guy realizing that sole proprietorship and personal brand creation are looking a hell of a less like a “maybe” and a lot more like a necessity.

People are looking around and hearing about threats of job automation and the potential future institution of UBI, while reading New York Post articles about how TikTok Live girls in cat-ear headbands or people eating food on Twitch are raking in multi-five figure months.

It’s part dystopian, part absurd, and entirely unsettling.

The Escape Hatch is Closed

The sports bar has always been the Great Escape, especially for the American male.

I have lost count how many times as a younger guy I was struggling with whatever it was, only to ease the pain by indulging in the bliss of an intra-division Islanders game with my best friends.

Even that has changed immensely.

I’m looking up at the NBA game on the screen above my head, and it seems like the current meta to win the world’s most prestigious basketball league is to shoot the ball while throwing yourself into the defender in an attempt to draw a foul.

Whether the ball goes in the hoop or not is an afterthought.

There’s a Dodgers game on, but the familiar scene of a pitcher, face buried in his hat glaring in for the catcher’s signs after he checks on the runner at first, is gone.

Now he gets instruction from the “Pitch Com” in his ear, makes sure he throws the ball before the 15 second timer elapses, paints the corner (or so he thought), only for the batter to tap his head and overturn the strike with an ABS review.

It’s a collection of people sitting around, sick of the fact that everything from their job description to their fitness routines are becoming optimized, automated, quantified, and mediated by technology, trying to escape.

The problem?

The familiar safe harbors have been…optimized, automated, quantified, and mediated by technology.

Oh So We’re Doomerpoasting Now?

Hardly.

I also can’t change flight path here into a “It’s all gonna be great, here’s how you leverage the changing world!” etc type thing.

I’m sure you’ve all had your fill (and then some) of “how to use AI so you’re not like the NORMIES” articles.

Rather, I’d just like to sit in the observation for a moment.

Take stock of what a bizarre, unprecedented time we live in.

At a certain point, of course, the levee breaks.

This could be a wholly positive experience.

It could be dimorphic, it could be disastrous.

Only time will tell.

Until then, we sit in our collective waiting rooms, putting one foot in front of the other, doing what we can to prepare ourselves for a world we never thought we’d see.

There’s no instruction manual this time around, no playbook.

If nothing else, we can take solace in the fact that some of the greatest lines and monologues of all time were off-the-cuff or ad-libbed.

History tends to remember the people who improvised, not the ones who waited for instructions..

Which is good, because we sure aren’t getting any.

Enjoy the day 🫶🏻

-John Abbate

5.31.2026

Those were my overly dramatic words to a good friend of mine who was OctoBuddy’d to my bathroom mirror.

As we recounted our daily activities over FaceTime, I was applying a Grade 1 all over my face, removing the beard that would’ve looked totally in style should I have been logging 18 minutes a night in the Western Conference Final and ridiculous everywhere else.

I noticed I respected the guy in the mirror more.

He looked cleaner, more polished, more serious.

Not somebody I’d want to let down.

The bearded version?

Eh, he could get to looking like a bit of a dirtbag.

The beard flows into the longer hair, thus making a hat look better….and now we’re going everywhere looking like Jeff Weaver.

So, I did what any terminally online overthinker would do, and tracked the metrics correlated with beard growth and my personal productivity.

Less beardage literally was directionally proportional to more work output, better workouts, and even improved mental health.

The objectively dumbest metric you could possibly track, and it turned out to be a giant one that had leverage over everything else.

Why I’m Sharing This

I’m not anti-beard.

Maybe you look incredible with one or can’t grow one.

Point is, in a world where Oura Ring metrics or Strava stats are our gods, where our water bottles have markings measuring gallons and liters, and productivity is its own billion dollar industry, sometimes it’s not the tangible X’s and O’s type stuff that moves the needle.

It’s a beautiful irony- while productivity culture adores percentages and decimal points, it could actually be that the real needle-movers lie in the abstract.

There’s probably a myriad of ways you can apply this.

Perhaps (hopefully) yours are not so superficial.

You’re better on days you wear your favorite necklace, or call your mom, or remember to hit your stretching flow before bed, so on and so forth.

Whatever (not so) minor behavior or activity is psychologically unlocking the version of you that’s most in accordance with who you want to be.

Certainly something worth A/B testing in your own life.

I’ll just say this:

Writing more short form essays was something I’ve been meaning to do more of lately.

The scruffy guy might’ve let it fall by the wayside.

The guy with the five o’clock shadow would never.

Enjoy the weekend 🫶🏻

-John Abbate

5/29/2026

You wanna hear about a mental framework used by Steve Jobs and Elon Musk to be a super mega billionaire?!

Make sure you’ve had your 10K steps and 4 gallons of water first.

Hope you had zero alcohol last night (or ever), too.

Got it?

Got it.

Now we’re ready to talk productivity in the year 2026.

Blackout curtains down, resting BPM 50<, earplugs in, let’s go.

This whole essay was inspired by a clip I saw of Kevin O’Leary, Shark Tank’s resident Mr. Wonderful, who spoke about a mental framework called “Signal-to-Noise Ratio”, and how much Steve Jobs loved applying it to his own life.

Essentially, it boils down to this:

Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) is not new.

It’s a term that originally comes from engineering.

Signal: The important information.

Noise: Everything distorting it.

Somewhere along the way, this escaped the world of radios and circuitry and quietly became one of the best frameworks for understanding modern life itself.

Let’s dive into it.

Why am I hearing about this from a disorganized creative who meditates under trees and lifts 5x a week?

Because that’s who this is for, silly.

I know.

You’d rather hear about something so cut-and-dried and scientific from an MIT engineering type who coded his first app in his bedroom at 14 and is a year into his Series B.

I’m probably the polar opposite of that guy.

I’d be laughed outta a16z, and I’m at peace with that (sort of).

The good news is, SNR actually benefits the less prodigious among us.

The answer is in your phone.

It’s Sunday morning on Memorial Day weekend.

I can practically guarantee you’re loaded with notifications from last night.

Snaps ranging from boating, beaches, “baby’s first BBQ!”, Parker House mirror selfies at 1:47AM… it’s all in there…and that’s before you take 27 business minutes swiping through hundreds of IG stories.

Then it’s the group chat civic duty.

“You’ll never believe who I SAW ln..”

20 minute cosplay of your inner-circle’s Page Six ensues.

Whew.

That was a lot.

Back to scrolling…and your ex-whatever posted.

They look good.

Is that a new tattoo? Was that there the last time we…..?

Now we’re doing two-finger zoom forensic analysis.

WE HAVEN’T EVEN GOTTEN OUT OF BED YET!

Now you see why I was drawn to write about this?

I wrote an article months back called Give the People What They Want, but I’ve since switched my ethos to Give the People What They Need.

Practical Applications of SNR (Abbate, 2026.)

Here’s how I’ve employed SNR since I’ve found it (which was very recently).

It’s simple af.

(I’ve gotten so obsessed with this I’ve literally scribbled SNR in Sharpie on my hand until it became habit)

Take the day’s goal.

One or two words.

Creative and Health.

Family and Rest.

Recovery.

From there, simply take any input into your life (look down at the scribble on your left hand if you have to) and ask yourself:

Signal or Noise?

Yeah, curveball, I know.

You thought this was going to be all about business, bowing to the altar of your goals, ignoring your family grind grind grind type stuff.

No.

If you’ve been here for more than a month, you know I value human interaction, and reject the 2020’s-era interpersonal skills degradation.

Does SNR have business/life goal application?

Obviously yes, and use it there too.

But that framework is rather obvious.

Think of today.

Memorial Day Sunday.

Family BBQ.

Well, the group chats/legion of notifications?

Noise.

Maybe you want to bang out a super long workout, get right because you got the time to recover on the extended weekend.

Brunch invite that’ll derail you?

Noise.

Answering the red number bubble-infested Apple machine in your pocket between sets?

Noise.

Watching Sam Sulek Reels of him overhead pressing the 150’s, procrastinating while sipping your preworkout a bit too slowly?

Big Time Noise.

It should be stated that Noise is contextual.

A family BBQ can be Signal and a business opportunity can be Noise, and vice-versa.

A hard workout can be Signal one day and BS Noise the next.

(You don’t need two arm days a week)

The point isn’t becoming some dopamine-starved monk who stares at drywall all day.

The point is alignment with whatever it is you want in that moment.

SNR IRL (Guy who can lose entire days writes an essay)

Creative brain + verbal ability + high EQ + ADHD is my brain’s main OS.

Sure, I wouldn’t trade any of the life experiences that particular cocktail has given me for anything.

That doesn’t mean the drawbacks aren’t really, really ugly.

My major fascination with SNR is that I can sometimes lose entire days if I get scattered.

>Wake up

>Check CoinMarketCap

>Substack responses/article rabbit hole

>Red bubbles on phone with horrendous crooked numbers

>Call from really smart friend with biz idea

>AI biz idea rabbit hole

>Healthy lunch

>Triple check healthy lunch’s macros

etc etc etc.

It feeds a vicious cycle.

Hours go missing, anxiety heightens.

Worst case is you go to bed having accomplished less than half of the previous day’s to-do list, thus triggering a “lying in bed spiraling and self-loathing” episode, which leads to less sleep, which makes you more tired for the next day, which makes you more susceptible to….

Noise.

Yeah, not pretty.

Makes more sense a Silicon Valley mental framework is so endearing to this East Coast creative, now doesn’t it.

Of course I had to share it.

Sometimes You Have to Skip Overtime

I wrote this late Saturday night.

Sometimes Sunday Essays get written on…Sunday.

That’s not the idea.

So, I employed my new best friend and got to work.

Phone on DND.

No late night FT’s, no answering the “Bro guess what!” texts, no acknowledgement of Solana’s 5m price action, no dropping at Latte Landing, missing out on “for your eyes only” type snaps.

Hell I even skipped out on Montreal-Carolina Game 2 OT.

That’s how you know it’s real.

The result?

No rush project.

No proofreading with the painful feeling in my chest of “maaan this could’ve been better, but it’s 4pm on a Sunday and this has to get out…”

The Signal for Saturday night:

Writing.

Everything that wasn’t writing, save for rare exceptions like a fire alarm or Iranian scud missiles?

Noise.

Hope this one helps.

Happy Memorial Day, and enjoy the weekend.

🇺🇸 🫶🏻

-John Abbate

5/24/2026

“Just following up here!”

“Let’s get something on the calendar”

“Happy Friday!”

You’ve experienced it.

You know exactly what I’m talking about.

(Maybe you do it, in which case I’d implore you to read this article three times over.)

You’ve seen it in your own life, you’ve seen the PE Guy meme this on TikTok, masterfully so.

I get it, it’s safe.

Speaking LinkedInese makes you feel professional and polished.

It’s a social shield, an unimpeachable veil of feigned nobility.

“Everyone’s gonna take me seriously now!”

In reality, all it’s doing is spiritually neutering you.

LinkedIn Lingo Preludes the Crash

Right around the time of our post-grad era, I noticed this BS started to permeate my friend group, as everyone embarked into the professional world.

“All systems go for Sunday”

“I can make time”

“Should be able to attend, will confirm”

23 year old men speaking like aspirational congressmen.

It’s all so incredibly odd when you take a step back and look at it.

Now, was this ubiquitous?

No.

(I sure as hell wasn’t doing it)

However it was prevalent enough that it became alarming.

What accompanied this new trend?

-Less spontaneity

- “Planning”

-Fast-tracked relationships that felt more practical than passionate

-Far less stories

-Higher bodyfat percentages

-A whole lotta “yeah man…another day” energy

Who wants to live that way?

The second order effects in the romantic world are even worse.

“I got the dreaded HR text”

There’s a trend that’s been going on for sometime where women text men they’re no longer interested in with what’s referred to as “HR texts”.

Here’s some gems from X:

(Credit to the unfairly maligned , who does quite well at aggregating this sort of stuff and starting these hard-to-have conversations on Twitter)

That sounded a little too LinkedIn-esque ^

ANYWAY.

I’ve never gotten an HR text.

I’ve gotten my share of the “who the hell do you think you are” text, though.

Conversations for an entirely different day.

The point is that this blah, modern corpospeak is directly proportional to the death of human life force.

It’s used to signify the end of budding romance.

The death of “do it for the story” energy.

It’s completely emblematic of the increasingly grey world we inhabit.

Real Killers Don’t Speak This Way

The irony of HR talk is that a lot of people (especially men) use it in the most aspirational way possible.

As if dialing your personal communication quality control slider up to 99 will turn you into Bill Ackman.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

Back when I was heavy in the NY commercial real estate game, I spent an awful lot of time doing deals with HNWIs, self-made guys, killers of every ilk.

The commonality amongst all of them?

These guys could talk.

They were real.

Irreverent at times?

Absolutely.

Authentic, nonetheless?

Always.

The comedic irony of getting a paragraph full of LinkedIn mumbo jumbo from a junior broker arranging a showing for his customer only to meet the guy in question (with his $50MM portfolio) and be asked off the bat “Hey man, just give me the straight scoop on this property, no bullshit, I’ll figure out the rest” was never lost on me.

I realize this article probably ruffles some feathers.

A knee-jerk reaction to uncomfortable truths is always to extrapolate the counterpoint to the nth degree and attack from there.

Let’s get out ahead of that.

Oh, so you’re saying I should dress casually and curse and be ridiculous bro?

No.

As with anything, there’s nuance, a middle ground.

The real estate killers’ lack of “fake performative modern decorum” and real social skills were always coupled with legit talent and an eye for deals on the backend.

Which is another reason I think LinkedIn dork talk is so common now- it papers over the user’s perceived cracks in their own armor.

Underneath it all, it could largely be a self-esteem play.

Herd Mentality

Look, I get it.

There’s safety in numbers.

It’s why every other dude at my gym is a Cool Mustache and Mullet Tattoo Cowboy now, and why I thought for a second some foreign country had sent an all-female special ops squad to NYC this winter when I was out and saw a legion of women in the same light wash mom jeans + leather jacket combo walking around.

Attaching to a trend destroys individuality but simultaneously protects the individual in question.

I’d argue that’s the worst tradeoff imaginable.

People remember far less of what you say and do, and far more of how you make them feel.

If you’re speaking or texting like the latest iteration of ChatGPT, where exactly is that going to get you?

Sure, you might make less “mistakes”.

More optimized.

More “brand safe”.

Is that worth your human life force?

To be extra dramatic…your soul?

The irony of all this is that in an age increasingly dominated by AI, algorithms, optimization, consultants, HR departments, and curated personal brands…being a real human being is becoming a competitive advantage again.

The people with actual vitality still stand out instantly, if not more so.

So be the guy who laughs too loud, or the girl that sends the unhinged 3:21 AM voice note (we love this btw).

A person that sounds alive and says what they mean.

Sure, you’ll be misunderstood or feel awkward.

That’s gonna happen.

You might even find yourself on the business end of an HR text.

At least you’re being a real, impactful, tried-and-true human.

That’s a beautiful thing, and it can’t be replicated.

I’ll be back on Tuesday after I run internal readership metrics and determine my next actionable steps.

Enjoy your Sunday <3

-John Abbate

5/17/2026

^ I just took that.

I’m sitting under a massive Southern live oak writing this entire Substack from my phone for the first time ever.

Spanish moss hanging off the branches, zero laptop in sight, actual sunlight touching my skin.

Did some breathing exercises, stretches, that sort of thing.

Deep thought and then no thought at all.

What are we getting at here..?

I’ll tell you what:

Four different people told me today, in one way or another, that they’re overwhelmed.

“I’m extremely stressed out”

Some sounded more panicked than others, but the underlying unease was unanimous.

I don’t blame them one bit.

A thought hit me this morning while browsing Twitter/X and having my morning coffee that unknowingly foretold this:

We seriously have reached unnecessary information critical mass.

Drake dropped three albums at midnight. (they were mid 😔)

The government is blowing up cartel courier boats and posting the highlights in thermal vision.

Every third tweet is about recession indicators, AI replacing jobs, blah blah blah.

You’ll never find love if you’ve had too much sex, and you’ll never find love if you don’t know how to have sex.

You’re too skinny, you need to bulk up…but don’t get fat and bloated, remember- lean is law!

“Oh but John, Elon bought X and that’s why it’s a disaster and…”

Okay.

Let’s look at IG:

Reel of a vacation out of your budget.

Buy the product!

Dude with an 8 pack clearly on anabolics.

Otherworldly Pilates girl who might be AI-generated.

Buy the product!

Buy the product!

Actually funny Reel that would get you fired if you liked it.

"“Well just delete social media then”

See….

It’s the second order effects of modern information overload that we’re dealing with.

Be the change you want to see in the world is my favorite quote ever, but unplugging from multi-billion dollar platforms specifically engineered to keep you on a consumption and dopamine loop is just not going to make a single difference in the fact that almost everyone you know and love is on the same psychological treadmill.

(I love ranting on Fridays and I love run on sentences bc you know I’m not using AI)

This is more observational than actionable- if I were to try and cook up some counter movement to social media information overload and brain rot en masse, it would be both:

A. probably 25,000 words

B. sadly, wholly ineffective

Back to the Oak Tree

I’m certainly feeling a lot better since I came out here to sit down.

It’s cool that nature is largely unchanged in a lot of ways.

This tree probably pre-dates me by a hundred years and will outlive me by a hundred too.

Everyone should do this- a tree, a garden, walking path, the beach.

I think it’s almost a necessity at this point.

It takes a little time, sure…but that Sunday screen time report says you got 7 hours and 37 minutes a day you can cut into to make the time.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction..

Maybe that’s what this is.

It’s scientific.

“Nature chilling” as we’re going to call…it’s rudimentary.

Primitive or maybe even childish.

Doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.

You’re not supposed to see 10 people die, 5 reasons why your boyfriend secretly doesn’t love you, and be sold 2 MLM scams before you’ve finished your morning coffee.

That’s incredibly unnatural.

So this offers the perfect counterweight.

It’s just fighting the extreme with the extremes at this point.

Tree Time is Over

Probably sounded like I was gonna pitch a tent and live out here at a certain point there 😭

Nah.

I got my own stuff to handle and work on tonight.

(Usage rate limited on Claude for another 2.5 hours tho 🙄)

However, I definitely feel calmer, freer.

I’ll do better work tonight as a result, no doubt.

Hopefully this helped, but there’s probably some of you that will think this was bordering on stupid hippie BS.

In that case, I’d implore you call up the most “hippie-adjacent” person you know.

They’ll probably have a lot to say.

You know what you won’t hear, though?

I’m extremely stressed out….

See you on Sunday.

🫶🏻

-John Abbate

5/15/2026

I promise.

If you spend enough time online right now, you’d think every 23yo startup kid in a weighted vest is building the next trillion dollar company off 94-hour work weeks, OpenClaw agents, and burning $6,000 worth of Claude credits.

It’s become essentially what I’ve dubbed productivity theater.

“OMG I’m shipping all day bro!!1!”

That’s the 2026 “look at me” refrain from guys who experience mild tumescence at phonk edits of matte black Lamborghinis cruising down Ocean Drive at midnight.

The AI conversation online has already become what crypto became around 2021: a strange arms race of jargon, screenshots, and FOMO.

I realize this induces anxiety in the general population.

You feel like you’re missing out.

You feel technologically illiterate.

The future is happening, and it’s happening without you.

Let’s push back on that for a second.

Most people don’t even pronounce ChatGPT correctly.

Close friend of mine the other day told me all his colleagues refer to it as “ChatGBT”.

That’s actually more common than you’d think.

The internet is so good at creating an illusion that everybody else is sprinting while you’re standing still.

In reality, the loudest 0.5% of terminally online optimization addicts are simply posting the most, largely because they’re embroiled in a..uh.. “measuring contest” amongst themselves.

Most normal people are not running autonomous agents from a LED-lit Brickell apartment while Huberman clips play in the background.

Sure, I’m keeping the mood light, but I’m also keeping it real.

You do not need to become an AI warlord overnight to have a good future.

Are there people doing tremendous things with AI?

Yeah, of course there are.

(Shamelessly plugging my boi , who is the AI consultant supreme)

That will always be the case with any realm of human endeavor.

Outliers will always be outliers.

However, for the rest of us?

You probably just need to become slightly more adaptable than you were six months ago.

That’s really the whole game.

Mess around with a few tools, get comfy with your favorite one, don’t panic.

Because despite what the internet would have you believe, we are still incredibly early.

Realize the bulk of your friends and colleagues are hardly using this stuff, and if they are, they’re having it write emails (with—- the —dead giveaway—em dashes) or having it tell them what Harry Potter house they’d be in.

(Us Slytherins would never.)

And truthfully?

The people who are going to thrive long-term probably are not the loudest “optimize everything” maniacs online anyway.

I always hammer on about soft skills ruling the roost, and that’s because it’s arguably my strongest-held core belief.

People who can still communicate clearly, build trust, think creatively, and not fry their nervous system are still going to be the top of the food chain as time progresses.

You don’t have to have an existential crisis every time you read a tweet about a guy bragging that Claude was writing an internal memo for his company while he was out sharing animal style In N’ Out fries with his side piece.

Every technological Gold Rush shows the same signs: initial assessments are overblown, the jargon around the tech normalizes, the hysteria fades.

When the dust settles, being adaptable, calm, likable, and competent will still matter an absurd amount.

If you need further anxiety alleviant?

Far less people even care to read or research this topic at all.

If you’ve made it to the end of this short write-up, congrats.

You’re ahead of almost everybody already.

Chat soon.

🫶🏻

-John Abbate

5/12/2026

Looksmaxxing was the logical crescendo in an orchestra of filters and Facetunes that trace back over a decade.

So I guess it’s really no surprise when you ask a person what they look for in a partner, what they find attractive, the physical reigns supreme.

It’s baked into the culture.

The same refrains are common:

Tall

A jawline!

Biceps

Blonde

Fit body

Ass

“at least a C cup” (okay, guilty)

We’ve become physical purveyors, an army of individual judges from the OG era of America’s Next Top Model.

Look, we’ve all got a type.

You’re guilty of it, your friends are guilty of it, I am too.

(Lily Aldridge didn’t grace the thumbnail image outta nowhere)

So, I took a look around.

What made me attracted recently?

What actually moved the needle internally, to the point where I stopped and took pause?

The Timeline Tells All

It all dawned on me during an all-too-familiar 2AM “I can’t sleep” timeline scrolling sesh.

Sure, there’s the mutuals who look incredible all posed up on…whoever’s boat it is that they’re on.

Sultry post-Pilates selfies that might raise an eyebrow or two over at Elite Model Management.

But that’s all noise at the end of the day.

Scroll nationally trending IG Reels, you’re inundated with top-notch genetic specimens thirst trapping away, some selling “memberships”.

Not that we’ve become desensitized to beauty online (okay, maybe we have) but it’s almost as if we need something else to get that warm fuzzy feeling in the chest.

So, what exactly was it?

The profiles that I kept coming back to, that evoked some sort of feeling?

Well, I’ll tell you what.

It didn’t turn into a body measurements contest, I wasn’t calculating Golden Ratio face equations or such things.

Lots of “dude, she’s bad as hell” types, which is all well and good…

but what was it that was scratching the proverbial itch?

The Allure of Intentionality

All of the profiles that I kept coming back to had a common thread:

They all had their thing…and it was dialed in.

(No, I won’t disclose who they were)

A passion.

A career they were proud of- not attractive from an $$ standpoint, but for the enthusiasm behind it.

A physical or artistic pursuit.

A specific aesthetic.

There was an energy about how these girls lived their lives, how they protected their time, how they seemed to be on a path in their life you’re more than willing to join but she’s not going to abandon for you.

It was living with intentionality.

I get that intentionality is a spooky word, especially for us guys.

If a girl hits you with “what are your intentions” or some variation of “dating with intentionality!”, you gotta break into a 40 yard dash in the other direction that would make Christian McCaffrey blush.

(That’s an entirely different conversation for another day)

This is about living with energy, overcoming the modern rot.

These girls were living with life force inside them.

Let’s look at it a little deeper:

“Show me a beautiful girl, and I’ll show you a guy that’s tired of…..”

Don’t have to finish that sentence, we all know how it ends.

I been that guy more times than I can count.

Beauty runs up engagement numbers, though.

457 comments.

23.7K likes.

Double the amount of sends (to group chats across the country).

The formula does work, for a time.

The real retention, however- that stayed with the doers.

A nurse summarizing a chaotic 12-hour shift, looking half dead but speaking in that unique fiery way about the care she gave her patients.

(Scrubs don’t hurt, either)

The interior designer who managed to get herself in a room with a massive CEO, not from “omg girlbossing” it, but rather from being that damn good at what she does.

The girls grinding through Masters programs or the like, steadily posted up in a rotation of cute coffee shops, laser-focused on whatever it is that’s in their hearts.

None of them are curating, thirst trapping, shilling.

Just existing with a pure and unwavering focus on what made them them.

In simpler terms?

They had something going on under the pretty exterior.

This Goes for the Guys Too (Pause)

lol, but it does though.

Not like that, obviously.

That being said, think of your own circle.

Whose texts or notifications come through and you’re like oh, hell yeah, let’s see what he’s up to.

The Pareto Principle is far too forgiving when it comes to my social circle, in terms of who is still “getting after it”.

It’s more like a 15 or 20-1.

This is no drawn out knock on commitment.

Biggest killer I know has a wife and four kids.

Rather it’s an observation of the types that inspire that man-to-man respect out here in the wild.

The guys shipping their asses off on Claude after putting the kids to bed.

Guys pushing big weight, posting absurd PRs into the lifting chat.

Probably the most inspirational chat I’ve had in weeks was a friend of mine lamenting that a current training partner of his lost in the UFC co-main event.

This same friend has his ACL blown to bits two years ago.

Most people I know would’ve ridden that into a lifetime subscription to the couch.

Not him.

Interactions like those are what inspired thoughts like these:

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

If you’re that fired up talking sparring or the creator economy with your go-getter friends, what’s the inverse doing to you?

How bad is hearing “Well yeah, we uhh.. we got new Ikea drapes for the living room” nuking your fortitude?

Sure, the circle may shrink as a result of this practice.

The positive residual effects will only multiply.

That’s a solid trade-off.

Exit Through the Coffee Shop

As I sit here finishing this up, I’m tucked into the corner of a trendy new coffee spot up on the North Shore of Long Island.

Save for the Temu version of Call Her Daddy type banter going on at the table next to me, I’m surrounded by the very types I’ve written about in here.

There’s a girl with AirPod Max’s and a giant oncology textbook.

Two older guys assessing a massive land survey spread across the table.

A group of what looks to be college students poring over some group project (which seems to be about physics and thus, way over my head).

All of them are on a mission.

They’ve got their own thing going on.

Sure, some of them do look great.

But almost everyone in here is attractive.

Love always,

John Abbate

4/19/2026

My First Conversation in Florida

Fresh off of my trek down to the gulf coast in the early days of my relocation, I figured the smartest thing to do would be to introduce myself to my next door neighbor.

Here I was, a stranger in a strange land.

Most Long Islanders inhabit the east coast of FL: Boca, Delray, etc.

(Fun fact that I learned far too recently- this is because of the Interstate system before air travel became so prolific. 75 from the Midwest takes you down the west coast, 95 outta the Northeast takes you down the east coast)

Makes sense that my next door neighbor was originally from Michigan.

Does not make sense that I was a native Long Islander.

Anyway, he turned out to be a great guy- he lived there with his wife and newborn son.

As for our chat, the first conversation I had in Florida that wasn’t with a Zyn-dealing gas station attendant or a cute barista during a pit stop?

I remember it vividly.

There were the usuals, the standards.

So man, what do you do for work?

Where you going to work out around here?

How was the drive?

Usual friendly, cordial, “two people who are gonna be living next to each other feeling each other out” type stuff.

Then he hit me with it, right at the end:

“John, let me ask you- how’s your relationship with the Lord?”

Shit, man.

I don’t know.

What was I even supposed to say?

I guess I fudged something, but the truth was I was caught by a straight right I didn’t see coming.

The Classically Trained Catholic

In theory, I should’ve been a world-class believer.

I came up through as classic and traditional a pipeline an American Christian possibly can.

Catholic school from K-8, prestigious all boys Catholic school for Grade 9 (our authority issues-having hero didn’t exactly thrive there), had all my sacraments right on time.

I should’ve been bossing the midfield of adulthood faith like the veritable spiritual La Masia product I was…but at some point, the wheels came off.

Perhaps it was around college, or sometime after.

There were sparks of it in the late 10’s- I always made sure to get my ashes on Ash Wednesday, my Lenten adherence never wavered.

Nonetheless, it never became habit.

Invoking God in Cold Calls

My neighbor conversation was, unbeknownst to me at the time, a canary in the coal mine for what was to come.

I distinctly remember sitting in my Florida real estate office, newly-minted FL license hanging over my desk (first try on the test btw, real ones know), helping an older colleague bang out lead calls on a multifamily listing he had trouble moving.

Most of these calls were to investment groups or family offices in Florida that bought in the area.

I was in utter disbelief at the responses I was getting.

Hey, not for us at this time, God bless you though.

Sure, send over the OM- have a blessed day.

Hey, gotta thank God for another beautiful day, anyway yeah run me through the NOI.

Listen, Long Island isn’t some godless place, but the invocation of faith inside a business environment was downright foreign to me.

Cold calls back home?

If you made your “50 by lunch”, you better have been told to unalive yourself in three different ways or to go insert a random item into your body, or else you weren’t trying.

It was culture shock.

Naturally, this caused me to keep an ear to the ground regarding faith in-house.

It wasn’t unusual for Monday morning water cooler talk to involve Church, in fact it was the norm.

We tried the new sushi place on Siesta Key Saturday night, then we had a luncheon at our Church after Mass on Sunday.

It wasn’t virtue signaling, or “look at how devout I am”.

Zero percent performative.

It just….was.

Super Rainy Ash Wednesday 2025

It was Ash Wednesday in 2025, marked by a typical "outta nowhere” Florida downpour.

I Google’d “Churches near me” and found out I was in luck- there was a Catholic Church walkable from my office.

So, off I went.

Except this time, it was different.

After getting my forehead inscribed, I sought out the first man of the cloth I could find after I said my prayers.

I ended up finding a deacon in his mid-40’s, affable dude, super friendly.

“Tryna talk to God, but I’m afraid because we ain’t spoke in so long..

Basically the white boy version of that ^

Essentially, I asked the deacon how do I get back into this?

I’ll admit I was expecting to be judged.

To have to perform some sort of penance or whatever.

That’s not at all what happened.

“Just show up, man. See how you feel when you do that.”

Those were my instructions.

Delivered with a smile and a story about how he strayed so far from his current standing in the Church that he was an atheist at one point.

Okay, seems easy enough, I thought.

Turns out it wasn’t.

Holden Caulfield Sings the Blues

It seems ridiculous in hindsight, but my tentativeness tracks back to what I was seeing on social media at the time.

Christianity was starting to come roaring back.

It was becoming “cool”.

Like anything else that becomes “cool”, it became influencer-adjacent.

Bodybuilding, cooking, Fortnite, doesn’t matter- if people do it, there’s an influencer market for it.

Whatever spiritual gusto I had received from my mound visit with the deacon was dampened by what I was seeing on the fyp and my timelines.

Dudes filming themselves driving with the Rosary intertwined on the hand that’s on the steering wheel.

Girls filming themselves tearing up during Adoration.

The tsunami of “tradwife” content.

Former roster members proclaiming they’ve now given their lives to Jesus (let’s just say I’m happy I met them before that).

The hilarious yet puzzling juxtaposition of Tampa Hinge girls answering the “what I’m looking for” prompt with “a man with a relationship with Jesus” sandwiched in between two separate bikini-clad photos of their ass on boats.

I don’t say any of this to judge, but if I’m being honest?

The modern incarnation of faith felt…off.

Performative.

It all seemed, in the essence of this passage’s namesake, so phony.

So, what turned the tide?

Let’s Talk About Waco.

I’ve touched on gaining popularity on TikTok Live in 2025.

One of the best aspects of that run was the fact I got to make friends from all across the country.

The closest to me is arguably my friend from Waco, Texas.

We’ll call her “B”, for anonymity.

B is an early/mid 20’s woman who grew up in the heart of the Bible Belt.

Naturally, I considered her to be an asset in the “John reconnects with his faith” mission.

Little did I know the path I was about to go down.

She was always talking about her church, how she went often, how she and her friends studied scripture together.

That’s when I pried for more information:

So like, what’s Mass like for you guys?

She laughed.

Oh, it’s not Mass..it’s service!

So you’re not Christian?

No of course I am, I’m just not Catholic.

Okay cool, so what are you?

I’m non-denom.

Non de- what?

Just like that, class was in session.

I learned about different interpretations of faith, Bible study, leaders within the Church.

KJV, NIV…these weren’t foreign intelligence agencies, these were Bibles.

(Also, the NIV is a lot easier to read and is now my go-to).

Suddenly, I was awakened to a whole new perspective on faith.

B’s wasn’t as structured, or sacramental, or black and white.

It was almost like..based on vibes?

That’s not me denigrating it- that’s me extolling it.

It seemed personal, flexible…more about the people you are on the journey with rather than placing yourself on trial every time you step into prayer.

I had my eyes opened in a big way.

Faith wasn’t “one size fits all”.

It was more abstract, more holistic, with an emphasis on the growth of the individual .

B sent me videos from her services, and I was struck by the raw joy.

Music, singing, embracing, storytelling.

Sure, I wasn’t loving the sweatpants and sweatshirts in the congregation (this is a guy who is pulling for UConn over UM next week if only bc Dan Hurley’s blazers > Dusty May’s zip-ups), but personal proclivities aside, I had been given an entirely new perspective on this journey I was trying to go on.

It’s not so much about rule-following, or perfection, or feeling forsaken- it’s a journey of personal betterment to be shared with those close to you.

That I could get down with.

So, that Sunday, armed with a new mindset…off to Church we went.

“Well, I didn’t spontaneously combust, so that’s a start.”

That was my response to my deacon friend’s “So, how’d it go?!” when we caught up outside after my first Mass back.

We were able to laugh about it, but there was some truth to that.

I mean, looking around, it had been awhile since my last non- Christmas/Easter/funeral/wedding Mass.

And what did I do in that time, especially recent to that specific day in late Spring 2025?

Was Jesus smiling down at how I was moving in 2024 and early 2025?

Was Jesus loving my NYC summer rooftop BS, or ICSC poolside shenanigans, or the 4AM St. Pete nights?

Probably not!

Looking around the congregation, who was I to even be there?!

Clean cut I-75 types.

Dudes with families.

Floral dresses en masse.

I felt like the Prodigal Son.

Repetition Leads to Revelation

For better or for worse, I can be extremely stubborn.

I wasn’t gonna leave Mass that day on that note and not come back and try to turn this whole thing around.

So that’s exactly what I did the next week.

And the week after that, and the week after that.

Slowly, the tide began to turn.

Sure, maybe the family men and clean-shaven Lululemon golf dudes in the pews led a lifestyle that had been a bit more PG.

The floral dress girlies might be a bit more wholesome than my beloved “iced coffee and resting bitch face” contingent.

Didn’t mean I had any less of a right to be there.

After all, what was I chasing?

I wanted to be integrated.

To improve as a man, which in turn makes me a better son/brother/friend/etc.

I mean, look at my colleagues.

They had a lightness about them when they spoke about attending Church.

It was a spiritually cleansing experience, a stepladder to a better you.

I wasn’t doing this for likes, to posture on IG, to use it as a “mouse trap” to get a significant other.

There was a mantra I came up with along this path:

Perfectly imperfect.

Fast Forward to the Present

It turns out heading back to Church was just the entry point.

As I said above- this wasn’t for likes. The phone stayed off in my pocket.

Mass attendance turned into group texts with my friends (some who have always had strict adherence to their faith, some who are comeback stories like me) chopping it up about whatever the homily was or how we felt afterwards.

FaceTime’s with B where she would read me a verse and actually be able to interpret it and give me the lesson from it.

Faith was becoming a facet of daily life, not just an hour in a jacket and a buttondown on a Sunday morning.

An awareness of something bigger than myself, a North Star for when the path seemed rough or I was losing sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sure, I still have my mental health challenges.

My down days.

The trials and tribulations that come with being a man trying to make his mark on this world.

But now?

I did the hard work, with some nudging from the new environment around me, both physically and digitally.

Did the uncomfortable deep dive and introspection that comes along with it.

As a result?

I’ve got someone to talk to every single day.

Someone who listens.

Someone who gets it.

(He’s been through way worse stuff, especially around this time of year).

Grateful for that.

Grateful for the journey.

Have a Happy Easter, everyone.

-John Abbate

4/5/2026